Sandwiched between an earnest, Frank Capra-esque premiere and an extremely The Office-style finale are eight episodes of THE PAPER that can't figure out what to do with all its characters, let alone what it wants to say about journalism... If anything at all.
The issue with the "volunteer journalist" thing they keep selling as the premise of THE PAPER is that the implication in the premiere is, since they have no budget, the people who work at the company already will try to make the paper great in their free time because they believe in journalism...
...except they mostly don't care, and it's pretty much a non-factor since basically none of them know how a newspaper works anyway. And also, they spend most of their time goofing off.
The premiere promises a Parks & Rec-style show about people trying to do good in society by building up a newspaper to be a bastion of truth and justice in an unjust world. Instead, it's a The Office-style show about people bumbling through their jobs and (mostly) not knowing what they're doing.
Anyway, this was about The Paper. The show hits a groove by the finale, but then the season is done. With another 12 episodes (versus another 10 happening... whenever... from now) they could have really been rocking and rolling bsky.app/profile/azal...
Aw man, I was really happy about the lean toward P&R and away from The Office in the first ep.
Yeah, that's just the first ep. Sorry.