Or perhaps they just look like someone trying to scrub an unbearable past. If that’s the case, then rather than looking like someone who’s never received a text, they just look like someone conscious of their data usage, or a digital neat freak. The only charitable explanation is that these are not oversights but deliberate depictions of vigilant text deleters. (Netflix did not respond to emails seeking comment.) (Her Instagram posts appear the same way how she surges from 48 to 25,000 followers with photos of roses and captions #EverythingsComingUpRoses is a separate credibility issue.) It’s as if the creators assumed viewers were both unfamiliar with text threads and also completely unaware of smartphones. After that establishing shot of Emily’s iPhone, every text she receives for the rest of the season pops up beside her. What makes the Emily in Paris example so abominable is the show soon switches to the better approach. Some shows are savvier at this technique than others, but even the clunkiest versions are less disturbing than the blank slate route. Rather than cut to the phone itself, have the texts appear on their own, as a character receives them, over the screen’s main action. There’s also a more elegant and cheaper option. ![]() Why not show an earlier photo Doug sent Emily of his slurped-dry T-bone at Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse and the caption “booyah”? Why not show Hugh Grant and his son backchanneling over text for weeks without Nicole Kidman’s knowledge? If you’re going to include a shot of a texting app, that app becomes the stage, and its mise-en-scène should be treated with as much care for realism as any set, or you lose the audience. Shows and movies would often be better served by keeping those extra texts in focus, and seizing the opportunity to add Easter eggs and deeper characterization. ![]() Even hinting at a couple lines of past exchanges, out of focus or beyond the frame, to fill out the text box would do more than enough to make us believe these are texts between two sentient humans. We don’t need a character to scroll through days of texts to establish verisimilitude. The immediate question that arises any time this problem appears is, how could the writers be so lazy? They sweat so hard creating a richly imagined world, only to rip us out of it by botching a simple element of the everyday one. Did Emily get a fresh French phone and not back up her iCloud? Did Doug get a new number after he lost his device at a Wrigley Field urinal? Did they have some romantic pact to always call, never text, and Doug just finally ran out of minutes after spending 28 hours screaming at Robinhood customer service about his stonks? Most likely: Was every text Doug had sent beforehand so grotesquely unimaginative she had no choice but to delete them? ![]() Why devote a precious 10 seconds to ensuring the audience can read some inconsequential past messages about ordering pizza and the texts that matter to move the story forward when you can get in, get out, and cut back to actors acting? But the attempt to avoid distraction with brevity only introduces a slew of new distractions. Directors know that after spending the day hunched over a screen and trying to detox in front of a bigger screen, audiences are reluctant to spend much time squinting to read a text. The obvious answer is that these shows are trying to avoid distractions. On Insecure, Lawrence gets a text from his girlfriend, Condola, in what appears to be the modern messaging equivalent of in medias res: “Hey I know we said Tuesday, but any chance you’re free tonight?” On and on, scripted shows and movies cut to shots of characters’ phones as they appear to implausibly receive the very first texts ever from their spouses, moms, bosses, and best friends. In New Girl, Jess sends what appears to be her first text to her lifelong best friend, Cece (“Schmidt is still here!!”), when she’s in her mid-thirties. In the series finale of The Undoing, amidst a murder trial that’s tearing his family apart, Hugh Grant’s character sends a text to his very online son that reads “Miss you buddy.” It shows up as a colorful balloon in a sea of white. ![]() From frothy Hallmark Channel Christmas movies to awards bait, a years-long scourge of showing extremely intimate characters with zero text history continues to taint TV and movies. Before we revoke Emily in Paris’ Golden Globe nominations, keep in mind that this blemish probably exists on your favorite show too.
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