'Office' Spin-Off Is a Carbon Copy of a Copy

On The Paper, Peacock’s new quasi-spinoff of The Office, Domhnall Gleeson plays Ned Sampson, new editor-in-chief of The Toledo Truth Teller, a once-mighty Ohio newspaper that has, like an awful lot of print journalism, become a shell of its former self. The Truth Teller now employs only a handful of people, while the bulk of its historical building is occupied by people who work in more lucrative divisions of the parent company Enervate, selling things like toilet paper and office supplies. The newspaper itself largely just runs articles from wire services, while its companion website focuses on stories with headlines like “You Won’t Believe How Much Ben Affleck Tipped This Limo Driver.”

Ned, a journalism nerd who gets control of the Truth Teller as a reward for his great work as a salesman for the company, believes he can, if not restore the paper to its glory days, at least make it a respectable and useful source of news to the community. But aside from Mare (Chelsea Frei), who wrote for The Stars and Stripes newspaper when she was in the Army, he’s surrounded by people who range from merely unqualified to outright idiots. So he spends a lot of time as this show’s equivalent of Jim, struggling to conceal his exasperation with these people, then telling the documentary crew how he really feels about this depressing situation. But he also turns out to be The Paper equivalent of Michael Scott, constantly holding unnecessary meetings in the conference room and displaying an increasingly overinflated sense of self.

On top of that awkward combination of character traits, Ned also in a way feels like an author surrogate for Greg Daniels, who co-created The Paper with Michael Koman. Daniels is a sneakily important figure in the history of TV comedy. He wrote some of the best episodes of The Simpsons at its peak, like “Bart Sells His Soul” and “Lisa’s Wedding.” He co-created King of the Hill. He adapted the British The Office for American television, and he co-created Parks and Recreation. That’s an inner-circle Hall of Fame résumé right there. But those shows were all from the final years of the monoculture and a much healthier time for TV comedy overall. Outside of Hulu’s recent hit King of the Hill revival, Daniels’ work in the streaming era, with shows like Upload and Space Force, has been creatively uneven, while also failing to penetrate the zeitgeist in the way his earlier series did.

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Daniels trying to revive the brand of The Office in a much more fraught sitcom environment isn’t that different from Ned believing that he can resurrect the Truth Teller at a moment when local papers everywhere are bleeding to death, and when the only way he can beef up the staff is to get employees from other Enervate divisions to volunteer their time and learn how to be reporters as they go. Ned and Daniels each find some success on the margins of what they’re attempting, but the overall results for both are a reminder of how hard it is to turn back the clock to the good old days.

The Paper begins with the documentary crew that filmed Michael and company returning to the same office park in Scranton to see how things are going for their old subjects. Instead, the only familiar face is good ol’ Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration, as we find out that Dunder Mifflin was bought by Enervate. The lone employee who agreed to move to Toledo is accountant Oscar (Oscar Nuñez), who’s none too pleased to have the same filmmakers once again following him around.

That’s as far as direct Office links go, though Oscar will occasionally talk about how someone’s behavior reminds him of Michael, even if he never mentions his old boss by name. But it’s not hard to map various new characters onto ones from the original show — or, in the case of unctuous, useless England-born Enervate exec Ken (Tim Key), onto the original Office.

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Mare is a slightly more assertive Pam, and it will no doubt shock you to learn that she and Ned develop chemistry that sits precariously on the line between friendship and romance. The paper’s one veteran reporter, Barry (Duane R. Shepard Sr.), is basically Creed if Creed’s behavior were motivated by light dementia rather than a Sixties drug hangover. The Paper is willing to mix and match other Office character traits and subplots, so that accountant Adam (Alex Edelman) and toilet paper salesman Travis (Eric Rahill) are both dumb enough to be Kevin. But Adam also winds up with this show’s equivalent of Creed’s fake Creedthoughts blog, where Ned prints all of Adam’s worst ideas on a fake internal newsletter that he dubs “The Also News,” just to avoid hurting the guy’s feelings.

Chelsea Frei, Ramona Young, Melvin Gregg, Gbemisola Ikumelo, Alex Edelman, Eric Rahill, and Oscar Nunez (from left) in The Paper

John P. Fleenor/PEACOCK

Ned’s worst moments are probably a bit closer to Andy Bernard in the post-Michael Office seasons, when Andy himself became a watered-down Michael. The most aggressive, ridiculous energy comes from the woman who was running the Truth Teller before Ned arrived: Esmeralda, played by Sabrina Impacciatore from the Sicily season of The White Lotus. Esmeralda is a complete cartoon character: wildly narcissistic, transparently incompetent, hostile, mean, and prone to malapropisms. (She tells the humble Ned to stop being “so self-defecating.”) Impacciatore is a gifted comic actor, but even within the slightly exaggerated reality of this fictional universe, Esmeralda would be fired for her behavior in virtually every scene — or, at least, be the subject of constant HR complaints that would get her reassigned to a do-nothing basement job where she would never have to interact with another employee.

Michael was an obvious moron, too, but Daniels managed to keep his behavior just within the realm of plausibility, and to periodically give him moments that explained how and why he got and kept his job as branch manager. There’s a promising window midway through this show’s first season where it feels like Daniels and Koman are doing a “she’s an idiot, but she’s our idiot” character turn with Esmeralda and the staff, much like The Office did with Michael starting in Season Two. But it unfortunately lasts for only a couple of episodes before she goes back to trying to undermine everyone, in a way that constantly grinds the show to a halt. (By far the character’s funniest moment comes in a subplot that has nothing to do with the newspaper, where she tries to get her son cast in an Enervate TV commercial, then somehow attempts to make it an audition for herself. It’s still ludicrous, but because Esmeralda isn’t actively working to sabotage the main characters, it lets Impacciatore’s talents shine in a way they don’t the rest of the season.)

Most of the other characters — including Melvin Gregg and Ramona Young as another slow-burning potential couple — prove likable enough over time, and the writers have some fun for a while with showing how Ned’s volunteers from other departments are in way over their heads trying to do the jobs of trained reporters. But Daniels, Koman, and their collaborators — including latter-era Office showrunner Paul Lieberstein writing the finale — are also trying to squeeze two to three seasons’ worth of Office plots into 10 episodes, so that both the romances and the state of the paper evolve far too quickly in so short a span of time.

What’s odd about that is that earlier this morning, Peacock ordered a second season — the kind of deal that was surely worked out long in advance, and announced the day before the premiere to goose the hype cycle. So Daniels and the others theoretically knew they had a long runway. That said, Peacock has struggled mightily to launch successful comedies, even ones from producers of beloved Office-era sitcoms. Think Girls5Eva from the 30 Rock team and Rutherford Falls, co-created by Daniels’ Parks and Rec partner Michael Schur. Old episodes of The Office have proven to be one of the biggest hits of the streaming era — Peacock arguably might not exist if NBCUniversal execs hadn’t seen how well their show was doing on Netflix — but it’s unclear if that loyalty will transfer to a show as tangentially related as this. (Oscar Nuñez is as dryly amusing as always, but he was never the primary, or even secondary, reason people watched the original show.)

The streamer originally planned to release all 10 episodes over a four-week window in September. Recently, that plan was changed to a binge-release this week. Is this an attempt to appeal to younger Office viewers who never watched it on linear TV and only know it as a binge? An attempt to do something different after most of Peacock’s failed comedies have been weekly?

‘Office’ Spin-Off Is a Carbon Copy of a Copy

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