Los Angeles, CA – At the end of Season 1 of The Office spinoff, The Paper, the Toledo Truth Teller had won three awards, and Ned (Domhnall Gleeson), the editor, and Mare (Chelsea Frei), the star reporter, had admitted their feelings for each other. Season 2 opens with Ned hoping to ask the CEO, Marv (Allan Havey), for money to run the paper as it has won awards, something it has not done since the 1970s. However, he is unable to do so as an employee of Softees dies and Marv wants the team to work on the obituary. When it turns out the employee was killed cooking meth, there is considerable cooling off and the wake is turned into a celebration of the awards.
Following the beats of a crisis being introduced and resolved in 25 minutes feels oddly reassuring in these uncertain times. While not hectically funny or heavy-duty serious, The Paper works because it is deeply invested in characters who feel like people we have all met in the course of our working lives. There are charming relationship dramas happening throughout the 10 episodes. We see Ned and Mare try to keep their relationship secret, while Detrick (Melvin Gregg) and Nicole (Ramona Young) move further away from each other. Travis (Eric Rahill) has a crisis of confidence when he feels he is not a real journalist, but Ned sees the quality of his photographs and hires him as a photojournalist.
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Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore), the loud and flamboyant editor of TTT online, is up to her usual tricks, embarrassing her son and getting things gloriously wrong, including mistaking a halfway house for a haunted house. Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez), from Dunder Mifflin, is making tough deals for his award-winning Sudoku puzzle. There is a charm about The Paper that allows it to sail by on good humour and vibes powered largely by Gleeson, who as a co-worker tells him looks like “someone drew David Bowie from memory.” The episodes move quickly, and we are invested enough in the relationships and career decisions of these harmless, delightful office folk to want to know what fresh trouble the good people of TTT will get into. The Paper currently streams on JioHotstar.
