‘The Paper’ Needs To Survive Its Legacy

Greg Daniels already had his work cut out for him the first time he attempted a spin-off for The Office. Unable to find a direct tie to the offices of Dunder Mifflin that could work as a premise, Daniels and Office alum Mike Schur (who he brought on to help spearhead this new venture) simply “couldn’t find the right fit,” the result of which gave us the ‘not-quite a spin-off,’ Parks and Recreation.

More than fifteen years later, Daniels is going for a hat-trick. Much like Parks and Rec, The Paper isn’t a direct spin-off, but it shares a lot more DNA with The Office (a nephew as opposed to a second cousin). Along with the now-familiar mockumentary format—The Paper’s premise is based on the same documentary crew who covered the goings-on at Dunder Mifflin twenty years ago following the corporate buyout string from Scranton, Pennsylvania to Toledo, Ohio, the headquarters of Enervate, which sells products made of paper (toilet paper being a notable seller) and is the home of a flagging local newspaper, the Toledo Truth Teller—characters from The Office make appearances, including accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez), who transferred once the buyout was completed and is none too thrilled to see yet another workplace be overrun with cameras. When he loudly declares that he doesn’t give permission for his voice or likeness to be used, a title card abruptly appears, informing viewers that there was no end date to Oscar’s original signed agreement.

This got a big laugh out of me. It’s also the only big laugh it got out of me.

The problem with being closely affiliated with one of the funniest tv shows in history is that the bar is impossibly high out the gate. Such is the downside of legacy.

But it’s more than a matter of being overshadowed by a series that has the rare privilege of continuing to amass fans long after its finale air date; The Paper is simply not very funny and not for a lack of trying either. You can sense how much it wants to remind you of The Office in nearly every big comedic swing, and it works about as well as a victim of a mid-life crisis donning their high school wardrobe.

The ghost of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott looms large here, and much like how it dragged down the first season of Parks and Rec, it tempers the laughs here, too. Only here, the role of self-regarding buffoon is granted to two people instead. Ken (Tim Key) is Enervate’s boorish head of strategy who likes to try taking charge when he isn’t playing toady. He sufficiently meets the workplace comedy jerk boss quota with the occasional droll line (most memorably by listing products Enervate sells: “toilet tissue, toilet seat protectors, and local newspapers—and that is in order of quality”).

Then there’s Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore), who will almost certainly prove to be a divisive point among viewers. Viewers will either find her outlandishly funny or utterly intolerable. A manipulative egomaniac who’s loathe to give up power to the incoming Truth Teller editor-in-chief (more on him in a moment), Esmeralda isn’t an avatar for a workplace personality (one of the reasons why The Office worked as well as it did) as much as a pile of tropes assembled like a golem that lurched out of a writers’ room. A few of the comedy bits left me grinding my teeth, especially one scene in which she repeatedly interrupts an awards ceremony. To her immense credit, Impacciatore throws herself into the role with a commitment worthy of celebration; it’s hard to square with the fact that this is the same woman who played the imperious hotel manager in the second season of The White Lotus.

It’s a shame that The Paper strains itself so hard to be silly because there’s things here that work to varying degrees. Ironically, it’s when the series is content with its moments of quiet hopefulness that its potential begins to shine. Domhnall Gleeson’s Ned, the Truth Teller’s new editor-in-chief, is a well-meaning idealist whose competence is exceeded by his naiveté, and even though the goofier stuff is, once again, not terribly funny—his bit as a disruptive passenger during a road trip is so long and irksome enough that it made me literally hit the pause button—as a walking love letter to the days of journalism gone by, he’s worth rooting for.

The Paper will almost certainly be a letdown for diehard fans of The Office. But The Office had a middling first season—it’s no secret that the show’s viewership was paltry for over the first year or two, barely garnering renewal status (the show would never have survived the streaming era)—as did Parks and Rec. Even though not all of Daniels’ creations go on to anywhere near that level of success, Space Force being his most high-profile misfire, I think The Paper could become something special, especially when good dedicated journalism is flatlining at a time we need it most. If the second season, which has already been renewed, can shake off the impulse to be the second coming of The Office, and lets itself be The Paper instead, it’ll be welcome news.

The entire first season of The Paper is streaming on Peacock.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba.