The first season of The Paper on Peacock had the regular amount of issues you might expect from a new comedy, though it had the extra, added pressure of being a spinoff* of one of the greatest TV comedies of all time, The Office. And thanks to that comparison point, the series built around local newspaper the Toledo Truth Teller had an uphill battle to relevance that didn’t quite come together in the initial 10 episodes, though some characters showed sparks of life and an extremely solid finale promised The Paper may have ironed out the wrinkles.
Err, oops. While there’s some impressive recalibration that has gone into the second, 10-episode season of the series (all 10 episodes were provided for review to critics), a lot of that recalibration went in entirely the wrong directions. That includes the show’s view of newspapers and reporting, which was uncomfortable in the first season and becomes downright horrifying in Season 2. And perhaps worst of all for a comedy, it’s just not that funny.
(*For some reason I will never understand, the cast and crew got downright prickly any time you called this show, which takes place in the same world as The Office, has characters from The Office, and uses the same format as The Office, a spinoff. It’s a spinoff. Get over it.)
Part of making a TV comedy is figuring out, week to week, what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes that’s season to season – see the complete flip of Amy Poehler’s character from Parks and Recreation Season 1 to Season 2 – and sometimes it’s making little adjustments here and there… A character trait that seemed to be funny on paper may not work, or an unexpected pairing may work better than expected.
The first season of The Paper took one of those leaps of faith by ending the will they won’t they between Domhnall Gleeson’s nerdy Editor-in-Chief Ned Sampson and his star reporter Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei) with a kiss in the finale. When things pick up, they’re in the midst of a secret relationship that spins out in various ways throughout the season, but never really deals with the imbalance of power between the two in any real way. Even worse, it makes both characters much, much dumber. Ned has vacillated between earnest savior of the news and Michael Scott (Steve Carell) style bad boss, and Season 2 mostly settles on “bad boss” with a side of outright stalker. Mare, at least, was pretty consistent in the first season, a good reporter merely reposting the news from other outlets and dueling with digital impresario Esmerlda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore). In Season 2 she’s stuck in girlfriend mode. You want her to get away from Ned for the sake of her career and well-being, which is not the sort of thing one wants to be feeling while watching a TV comedy, versus, say, a Lifetime movie called Pressed By My Boss.
The Mare-Ned relationship also sucks up all the air and space in the show, leaving little time for anyone else. Melvin Gregg’s ad-sales rep Detrick gets to flex his news muscles while Mare is off swooning, but doesn’t really get to make jokes… He’s in the straight man role, which might be a good place for Gregg, but it isn’t exactly funny. Alex Edelman’s Adam Cooper is basically a non-entity this season, which is perhaps for the best given his character was grating in Season 1, but still feels odd when random employees of the toilet paper company that shares a floor with the Toledo Truth Teller get more time than a main cast member. Ramona Young’s Nicole Lee was left in an interesting place revealing she had deeper feelings for Detrick than expressed, but spends most of the season wobbling around and ends in a place so horribly regressive I hope it doesn’t actually make it to air (it will, but I can hope).
It’s not all bad, mind you. Lisa Gilroy guest stars as the worst HR person ever (when Ned reports his relationship, she wants to know all the juicy gossip), and just with mere energy alone gives the show a spark. And Jon Lovitz shows up as a veteran of a bigger newsroom in a recurring role less interested in news than his sandwich order being delivered correctly. Having worked in an old school newsroom like this, not only is this all actually funny, but it rings more true than any other aspect of the season.
But there are even odder choices at play here. Tim Key’s Ken Davies, basically Ricky Gervais’s The Office boss ported on to a new character, is completely missing for large chunks of the season. The show can’t figure out anything new to say about Oscar Nunez’s Oscar Martinez after umpteen seasons of The Office, to the point that his plot one episode is nonsensically falling asleep. And Impacciatore often feels like she’s on another show entirely, where she’s the overbearing boss of the office, running her weird schemes, to the point that she’s not impacting the plot or the main action at all. The divide between digital and print is one of the biggest aspects and discussions in journalism today, yet a show ostensibly about that can’t figure out a single thing to say at any point. It’s so divorced from reality that it seems to be purposefully working against the very premise of the show at points, or at least is being obstinately naive about how this all works.
…And that cascades into the biggest bone I have to pick with The Paper: some abysmal choices that undercut the idea of journalism entirely. Not to keep hitting the “in season 1” thing but the pilot of the show promised that Ned was hoping to get back to the basic tenets of journalism, and help readers respect the news again. That didn’t quite play out that way over the first season, particularly given the odd choice that Ned was more of a “news fan” than an experienced newsman, so didn’t actually know what he’s doing. After a decisive win in Season 1, that whole aspect of the series takes a major backslide. Ned is downright unethical most of the season (his affair with a co-worker the least of his sins), and seems to have lost any sort of brain cells he had previously.
But worse than that, one of the “volunteer” news workers admits to fabricating quotes… With no repercussions, other than he gets switched to taking photos instead… Where one off-hand joke is about how he’s fabricating photos to make them more dramatic. Sorry to be a stick in the mud here, but this is all horrifying. There is a show to be made about the state of journalism in 2026, but with bizarre and off-putting choices like this, it’s clear The Paper is not that show.
The Paper premieres September 9 on Peacock.
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