Pod Insights Pop Culture Happy Hour The Paper About this episode The Paper is a spinoff of The Office, and like its predecessor, it’s a mockumentary about a workplace that's facing financial and cultural headwinds. The Peacock series focuses on a local newspaper in Toledo, Ohio, and stars Domhnall Gleeson, Sabrina Impacciatore, and Chelsea Frei – and brings back a familiar face from The Office, Oscar Nuñez.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:19 Linda Holmes? The Paper is a comedy told in a mock documentary format about a workplace that's facing financial and cultural headwinds. If that sounds a lot like The Office, well, it's a spinoff of The Office, just barely. And this time, the industry and the crosshairs is local newspapers. I'm Linda Holmes, and today we're talking about The Paper on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
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2:06 Linda Holmes? Joining me today is Ronald Young Jr. He's the host of the Film and Television Review Podcast, Leaving the Theater. Hello, Ronald.
2:13 Speaker 03 Hello, Linda.
2:14 Linda Holmes? And also with us is New York Times food reporter and author of the bestselling cookbook, Indian Ish. I recommend it. I have cooked out of it. Priya Krishna, welcome back, Priya. Hi, Linda. All right. Great to see you both. The paper was co-created by Greg Daniels, who developed the US version of The Office, alongside Michael Coleman, who co-created Nathan for You, which makes like a weird kind of sense to me, I have to say. The conceit is that Dunder Mifflin was devoured by a paper conglomerate and that conglomerate has lots of businesses that use paper. And in Toledo, Ohio, one of the things it has ended up owning is the Toledo Truth Teller, a local newspaper that has become sparsely staffed and mostly cuts and pastes wire stories
2:59 Linda Holmes? or, on its digital side, clickbait stories. But a new editor in chief named Ned, played by Donald Gleason, comes in with determination and pluck, only to find that there's not a lot of determination and pluck left in The Truth Teller. The most powerful person there is an editor named Esmeralda, played by Sabrina Impacitore, who you might recognize as the hotel manager in the Italy season of The White Lotus. Esmeralda does not want to share power. She likes things how they are. And so she seeks to undermine Ned at every opportunity, like cutting the wire service.
3:36 Speaker 03 Sorry, I'm a little distracted. The wire's not working.
3:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. That was supposed to be a surprise, but yes, I canceled it.
3:45 Speaker 03 You cut the, you cut the wire?
3:48 Speaker 04 Yes, from my little office.
3:51 Linda Holmes? There are allies to be had, though, especially Mare, played by Chelsea Frei, who gave up a while ago but would like to be doing real journalism. This setup allows for stories about chasing down local stories, trying to survive in a hostile media environment, local politics, and of course, the ins and outs of the personal dynamics among the staff. And one member of that staff binds the paper to The Office. Oscar Nunez is back playing Oscar Martinez, who is now a jaded accountant in a whole new messy situation. There are 10 episodes of The Paper streaming now on Peacock. Ronald, I want to start with you. What did you think?
4:28 Speaker 05 So I came to this show very interested as a super Office fan and expecting, you know, I love the mockumentary format. There's so many other examples of this that have gone well of the quirky Office comedy. You have Parks and Rec, of course, which is like a direct descendant of this. So I came in eyes wide open, ready to enjoy something else. I also came in as someone who loves Abbott Elementary. I think this is a mid show. This is very mid. Having all of those examples set before it, I think this show could be a lot better. That being said, the bones of this show are very good. And we know that historically Greg Daniels stumbles out of the gate. He stumbled out of the gate with The Office, season one, and he stumbled out of the gate with Parks and Recreation, season one.
5:09 Speaker 05 This also feels like another stumble out of the gate because there's stuff and storylines and people that I like here, but they're all being used incorrectly, in my opinion. So I did laugh, but the laughs I even had felt out of sequence. So I'd say I'm like middling on this.
5:24 Linda Holmes? Yeah, I think you make a good point that both The Office and Parks and Rec are shows that I think for a lot of people, they're like, well, you know, the first couple are a little weird and they don't feel like the show feels later. Priya, where did you come down? How'd you like it?
5:39 Speaker 06 I largely agree. I love all of the shows that you listed. I think I've watched The Office and Parks and Recreation at least 10 times.
5:49 Speaker 05 Dozens of times.
5:50 Speaker 06 Beginning to end. And I think people who are coming to this show are going to be expecting the same type of sort of cozy, all enveloping comfort watch that a show like The Office and Parks and Recreation can be. And I would say it like sort of provides that. I think the premise is great. You know, as a journalist, the the premise that like a paper company owns a local newspaper is very funny to me.
6:20 Speaker 06 I just found that it like just didn't quite get there. Like just in terms of the storylines, in terms of the humor, like the characters don't fit together as a unit in the way that they do with these amazing ensemble casts. Like if you think of a show like Parks and Recreation, each of those characters could have had their own spinoff show. And I guess that's kind of what made that show so good.
6:42 Linda Holmes? Yeah.
6:43 Speaker 06 I don't feel that way about this. I feel like some characters are shortchanged for others. I'm very surprised at just how much they're really trying to just reuse what has already worked. We've got a grumpy guy. We've got the absurd caricature. We have the budding romance between two young, white, straight people. Dom Hall doesn't quite work for me as a leading character. It might be because I can only think of him for as his character from Ex Machina, but I'm not getting the like pluck and spirit that I sort of want from like the Amy Poehler type of figure in this show. I will say the thing that worked
7:25 Speaker 06 so much for me was Sabrina in Pachatory. I feel that she is like a scene stealer in this show and I want to watch anything with her in it. There is an episode called Scam Alert that I think is the best episode in the entire season where that character is sort of being scammed by someone pretending to be Josh Holloway, the actor from Lost. And it is so funny and it reminded me of like the best episodes of The Office. I would love to see more of that, but I agree, there's like potential here, but it just didn't land for me.
8:01 Linda Holmes? It's so interesting to me because I came down roughly in the same spot as both of you, but Priya, for me, Esmeralda is the thing that keeps the show from working. Wow. I agree. I think she is way too broad. There is way too much of her. It is impossible for me to understand how she would still have a job. She is incompetent and she is also kind of trying to undermine everyone who works there. I don't understand. I think you can go up to a certain point and they found this sometimes with The Office as well. I think you can go up to a certain point with people being absurd and then it just becomes like. Too absurd, and I think out of the gate with her, she's too absurd. It's nothing against the actress. I really liked her in The White Lotus.
8:47 Linda Holmes? I don't think she's doing anything other than exactly what they've asked her to do. But I think she has written way too broad. I do think this show, I started out feeling like, yeah, you know, the, the notes are obviously very familiar. And I don't necessarily think that's a terrible thing. I think when you see spin offs like, you know, Angel and Buffy or, you know, I mean, every James Bond movie has similar elements. It's like you can go back to what makes your thing work. That's fine. But I was feeling kind of mid about it and I was like, I don't know if this really has me. But then I would say the last two episodes of the season, I was like, oh, they did get me actually. I actually do care about this and I actually do like these people.
9:29 Linda Holmes? And I think Donald Gleason, I liked him in this. I thought he was very charming in this.
9:34 Speaker 03 When I was a kid, I didn't want to be Superman. I wanted to be Clark Kent. Cause to me, Clark is the real superhero. He's saving the world too by working at a newspaper. And that to me is much more noble and much more achievable.
9:50 Linda Holmes? It's an interesting, he's the boss, but he's not, he's both kind of a little bit buffoony, but he's also kind of your, your leading man. He's very earnest. He clearly means very well and is not bad at his job. He's just kind of prone to bumbling kind of stuff. I really enjoyed him a lot. And I really liked Chelsea Frei in this. I think she's got a really grounded quality that I, I really felt like it kept, it felt like she kept kind of bringing it back down to earth a little bit when it would get extraordinarily silly with the Esmeralda stuff. I have an idea.
10:26 Speaker 04 Oh my God. How long have you been there? I thought you were a pile of shirts.
10:33 Speaker 03 Uh, yes, Mayor.
10:34 Speaker 06 I think we all landed somewhere in the middle, but for really different reasons. Like, my feeling has been like, if they don't tone down Esmeralda, which they still might, then I'm gonna eventually lose interest in this show, because I can't do that this much.
10:47 Speaker 05 I think the issue with the Esmeralda character is that she is written too broadly. I agree with you, Linda, but I also agree with you, Priya, that she is seasoning to the entire show. She brings that kind of chaos agent that we need for a show like this. If you look at Abbott Elementary, if you look at Ava Coleman, who is kind of this agent of chaos, but she also cares about the students. She has some sort of heart of gold that kind of endears you to her. If you look at Dwight Schrute, he is an agent of chaos, but he also is a very good salesman. And you actually like him. There's a lot of parts about his character that make him extremely likable. He has this moral code that makes sense to him. With Esmeralda, she's a bad mom. She is sabotaging everybody at the paper. And she also, like, she generally doesn't care about journalism.
11:32 Speaker 05 And so when you put all of those on her and then also try to make us laugh at her jokes, there was stuff that she said that I was like, I don't think that's funny, because you're being a jerk. And I'm hoping that in season two, they realize what they have with Esmeralda and kind of hone it down, or at least like narrow the focus a little bit.
11:50 Speaker 06 I think that's why I liked the scam alert episode so much, because the end really humanizes her.
11:56 Speaker 05 Yes.
11:57 Speaker 06 You know, you feel really bad for her. You understand why she is this, like, big, larger-than-life character. And I, yeah, I hope to get more of those moments.
12:05 Speaker 05 Yeah.
12:06 Linda Holmes? I think that's fair. And I do think that that episode is funny. I enjoyed the scam alert element of that, and I enjoyed the Josh Holloway element, which, like, good job, Josh Holloway.
12:18 Speaker 05 You got him for this?
12:21 Linda Holmes? And it's probably not gonna surprise anybody, given me and who I am and what I am known to like, that I was sort of drawn to the rom-com elements of this, this kind of sort of flirtation between Ned and Mayor that takes a long time to kind of start to be anything. And at first, I was like, oh, I don't, I don't know if I really wanna watch this, because of course, he is her boss, which he's super, super conscious of, which at least that helps a little bit, that, you know, this is not something that is unspoken or unacknowledged, or like, nobody cares about it. As I got to the end of the season, I was like, I actually did feel like... Their ability to kind of learn to cooperate with each other.
13:01 Speaker 06 Right.
13:01 Linda Holmes? And I think one of the things that I that I think works in this show that wasn't part of The Office is that one of the things that made The Office genuinely a melancholic show was that nobody there cared about anything they were doing, except for the purposes of like a kind of a very detached, like, I believe in being good at my job, like, which is sort of how some of them were. It's kind of how Michael was, it's kind of how Dwight was, it's important to be good at your job. These people actually are trying to do something that they think is meaningful. And I think that potentially does give the show some more shape and some more depth. And I think they start to get into that close to the end of the season, when you realize that these people are
13:46 Linda Holmes? sort of afraid to admit that they have pride in their work. Because they feel like if I admit that I have pride in my work and that I care how other people receive my work, it's gonna just disappoint me in the end, right? Because it's just easier to not care about your job, which is, I think, something that a lot of people have felt at different times. So like by the end, when it started to pick up those threads a little bit more, I did like it. One of the things that The Office has in common with this show also is that there is a large group of kind of people who work in The Office who don't do a lot, who aren't brought into a lot of stories.
14:21 Speaker 06 Right.
14:21 Linda Holmes? Alex Edelman is in this and I think is excellent and very funny as this guy who just kind of sits at his desk and thinks about all the kids he has at home. And I like him very much. I think he's sort of the supporting one who's working the best for me.
14:38 Speaker 06 But I do think that this show makes the mistake that season one of The Office made, where it was like, we are really only going to invest in these few characters' storylines at the expense of all of these other character storylines, even though we have an amazing ensemble cast.
14:55 Linda Holmes? Yeah.
14:56 Speaker 06 And then I think part of what made The Office so great is that it started to realize, oh, my God, like, our ensemble is amazing. We need to invest in all of these characters.
15:04 Linda Holmes? I think that's right.
15:05 Speaker 06 I also am like charmed by the Mayor Ned romance, but I'm also just like, I feel like as a result, the Nicole Dietrich romance, I'm sort of stuck being like, what is happening here? Who are these people? But I feel like maybe that's just like a Greg Daniels signature that we have to to wait until season two to see untangled.
15:26 Linda Holmes? It's another reason why if they had had 22 episodes like a broadcast season, I feel like maybe you would have seen more of those characters start to get more shape to them because they do have a lot of promise. You know, you mentioned Melvin Gregg as Detrick, who I think is really funny, and Ramona Young, who plays Nicole, and the two of them kind of have, it's not a flirtation exactly, it's like a whole other weird kind of works for them kind of maybe sort of thing going on. And I did, I did like them. I'm always happy to see Oscar Nunez again. I think he still understands how to make this exact guy funny.
16:03 Speaker 06 Yeah.
16:03 Linda Holmes? He's the place where they allow him to indulge in a little bit of occasionally kind of callback humor.
16:09 Speaker 07 God, not again. I'm not agreeing to any of this. Don't you guys have enough after nine years? Nobody wants this. You know what? You can't use my voice, my likeness, my face, nothing.
16:21 Linda Holmes? They don't do a lot of direct referencing of The Office, except for the occasional, like, Oscar will occasionally say something and be like, oh, he's talking about Michael. Those things were fun to me. But I, I do share your sense that like, it's in the middle. It's pleasant. It's fine. I actually don't recommend binging it necessarily. I would watch it a little bit at a time. I'm not sure it's a binge-y show. I think as a binge-y show, it kind of started to get a little, yeah, okay, I got it. I got it. Whereas when I would sit down to it again, I would be like, oh, okay, this is fun. This is cheerful.
16:55 Speaker 05 I agree with the episode count. I think the benefit that a lot of, that any other television show has is that, and especially if you go to The Office in particular, if you go back and re-watch it, it rewards you for saying that we thought about this. We thought about these slow burns. Like, if you just go back and watch Jim and Pam and just look at Jim's face every time Roy is around, they thought about that. Look how Jim feels in this moment. In this one, I did like the Ned and Mare romance. And towards the end, I did like it because he directly addresses the fact that he is her boss. And there's some conflict in him struggling with that before, you know, they continue to exploring or deciding what they're going to do at that point. It also feels like it's forced.
17:37 Speaker 05 It feels like they're making me deal with this romance because every other show that is like this has a romance at the center. And I don't mind it that being there. I like romantic comedies, but I feel like when you put them in the the paper in the very first episode, you could those two, there it is.
17:54 Linda Holmes? Oh, sure.
17:54 Speaker 05 That's what it is. Those two, we're gonna watch that.
17:56 Linda Holmes? Sure.
17:56 Speaker 05 But then it also feels unfocused in a way because like, there's no Roy. You know what I mean? Like, there's no way that we're like pulling them apart, except for these kind of like false obstacles. So like, looking at it in that way, it makes me say, what is your plan for the paper beyond season one? Especially with all of the knowledge that listeners and us all have now, knowing what happens in subsequent seasons of these shows, I don't know what it is for the paper, especially because they really didn't spend enough time talking about reporting.
18:27 Linda Holmes? Yeah, right. Like I said, I didn't think they had me. And I got to the end of the season and I was like, oh, you did have me, actually, on a couple of fronts. I got to the very end of it and I was like, yeah, I actually do care about this. I enjoyed this. These I I'm with these people. I want them to be happy. And I appreciated that. So let us know what you think about the paper. Find us at facebook.com slash P C H H. That brings us to the end of our show. Priya Krishna, Ronald Young, Jr. Thank you both for being here to talk about our favorite thing, journalism. Thank you both.
18:58 Speaker 05 Thank you, Linda.
19:00 Linda Holmes? Thank you, Linda. This episode is produced by Janai Morris and Mike Katzif and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy. And Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes and we'll see you all next time.
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