The Paper: Season One Blu-ray Review: Return-to-Office Mandate

Dunder Mifflin is no more, but their Toledo-based parent paper company is still very much in business. Operating out of the once-thriving downtown newsroom of the local newspaper, the company focuses its efforts and resources on paper products such as Softees toilet paper, while retaining and sharing office space with the remaining skeleton crew of the destitute newspaper, Toledo Truth Teller.

When a fresh new editor-in-chief (Domhnall Gleeson) arrives on the scene, he hopes to turn around the paper’s fortunes with little more than his sheer enthusiasm for journalism, enlisting volunteer reporters from the Softees roster to bolster his handful of downtrodden, full-time newspaper employees. The same documentary crew from the Dunder Mifflin project returns to film his progress, against the very strong objections of the weary company accountant, Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez, reprising his role from The Office).

As designed, the series feels very much like The Office, with equally ridiculous characters and situations tweaking the everyday follies of office employment. The surprise comes in the competence, dedication, and golly-gee virtuousness of Gleeson’s Ned, a character who genuinely wants to return the newspaper to its former glory in spite of the ongoing death spiral of the industry. The show is also a biting indictment of clickbait journalism, shared office co-working, and ever-declining editorial space in favor of ads, offering a decidedly more robust take on the state of modern journalism than one would expect from a sitcom.

There are the expected office romances, initially between a couple of young staffers, while Ned allows his shared attraction with his star reporter (Chelsea Frei) to simmer all season. There’s also a breakout star, the wildly over-the-top Italian diva/managing editor (Sabrina Impacciatore, The White Lotus) who was displaced by Ned’s ascension but constantly undermines him in revenge. There’s even a Stanley stand-in, a sleepy old reporter (Duane Shepard) who hasn’t been relevant since the 1970s but wakes up occasionally to keep drawing his paycheck. It feels familiar, but not so much that it seems like a total rehash of The Office, offering enough new perspectives and character dynamics that it’s worth returning for the greenlit season two. Also, at only 10 episodes, it doesn’t have time to wear out its welcome, making for a comfortable weekend binge.

The Blu-ray set splits the episodes between two discs, with no bonus features on either one. Video and audio are top-notch, with sound presented in the typical DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 format. The set is available for purchase beginning Tuesday, July 28th.