"Emily in Paris" and the Rise of Ambient TV

By the end of its second episode, I knew that Netflix's new series "Emily in Paris" was not a lighthearted romantic travelogue but an artifact of contemporary dystopia. At that point, Emily had already gone jogging, and the multicolored wheels of her Apple-esque step-counter appeared on my television screen. The circles filled; Emily had pleased the robots monitoring her health. During her next run, a small square popped up: a visualization of Emily's Instagram account, to which she posted a photo of Paris, accruing onscreen likes. Later, Emily talked, via video call, with her old marketing-agency boss back in Chicago, whom she had replaced on the Paris sojourn when the boss found herself pregnant.