Why Is The Paper' Trying So Hard to Ruin Itself?

You know how a lot of leading men just play variations of themselves? Like, Tom Cruise is always Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt is always Brad Pitt. And Denzel is, thank god, always Denzel.

I think Domhnall Gleeson might have some of that leading man energy, and in The Paper, he’s desperately trying to play someone else. But here’s the thing: the show itself seems equally confused about who Gleeson is supposed to be, and that confusion is killing the second season.

In season one, The Paper worked because it understood its own center of gravity. Ned and Mare (Chelsea Frei) were the Jim and Pam—the sweet will-they-won’t-they grounding the whole thing. The supporting characters orbited that emotional core. But season two blew that up and decided to go broader, turning Ned into an Andy Bernard and Mare into the straight man, and suddenly the show doesn’t know what it’s doing anymore.

The problem is casting. Gleeson is fundamentally not a goofy guy. When he tries to play broad—the pathetic foil who makes grand romantic gestures by saving moldy blueberry muffins, then eats them to show affection—it lands false. He can’t toggle between Jim and Michael Scott in the span of an episode. The framework doesn’t fit him. Meanwhile, Sabrina Impacciatore’s Esmerelda was already divisive as the season-one Dwight, but instead of learning from that rejection, the writers supercharged her. They forgot what worked in favor of chasing wackiness.

And the Mare-to-Cincinnati detour? That’s just season 3 of The Office’s Jim-to-Stamford arc, except that didn’t work then either. You don’t solve a broken dynamic by separating your leads. If anything, it underlines that they shouldn’t be together, which means the emotional core you spent a season building now feels pointless.

There are bright spots. The Adelola and Travis material mostly works—genuinely, that tornado scene where Travis’s body was awkwardly humping Adelola was hilarious. Lisa is funny as the overly horny HR lady mining the ridiculous. Oscar and Barry are fine. But the rest is just falling back into stale workplace sitcom muscle memory.

The real issue might be Michael Schur’s absence. He’s the one who kept Greg Daniels grounded on The Office. The Paper is starting to feel less like season two and more like season 9—all wackiness, no center. The show needs to either commit to being a broad ensemble comedy with the right cast to support it, or get back to what made season one work. Right now, it’s trying to be both and failing at each.