Paper Girls Season One Review

Paper Girls is a series that has been anticipated for months by comic book fans and it’s finally here. Releasing its first episode on the 27th of July, the 8-episode series is Prime Video’s version of Stranger Things in casting, cinematography, and nostalgia.

Based on the best-selling graphic novels written by Brian K. Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang, Paper Girls is a high-stakes personal journey depicted through the eyes of four girls, played by Camryn Jones as Tiffany Quilkin, Riley Lai Nelet as Erin Tieng, Sofia Rosinsky as Mac Coyle, and Fina Strazza as KJ Brandman. Ali Wong also stars as the grown-up version of Erin, with Nate Corddry as Larry, and Adina Porter as Prioress.

There will be season-long spoilers…

Story

In the early morning hours after Halloween 1988, four paper girls—Erin, Mac, Tiffany, and KJ—are out on their delivery route when they become caught in the crossfire between warring time-travelers. During the battle, they are transported into the future and must figure out a way to get back home to the past. This puts them on a journey that will bring them face-to-face with the grown-up versions of themselves.

The show starts with a cold open, a technique that works great for the “monster of the week” shows but is really hit or miss with any other genre or structure. In the comic, the action starts relatively quick but the tension is also built up. The pilot of Paper Girls could have benefited from buildup with no cold open.

That said, the establishing shots of each character are incredible, they manage to establish archetype, homelife, and personality in a good 20 seconds for each of the girls. We go into the rest of the episode with a well-informed idea of these characters. 

Plot vs Character

The first interactions between the girls are really wonderful. Relationships are built fast when Tiffany saves Erin. Mac is a very defensive girl and definitely likes being by herself but she really spearheads defending the other paper girls. I love the sense of solidarity that exists between the girls. It’s built up very quickly but it completely makes sense and shows how intelligent these girls are. Being a young teenage girl that has to ride around neighborhoods in the dark with teenage boys roaming around, defending and protecting each other is the only way they’re going to survive, and the fact that the girls realize that says a lot about their characters. 

The characterizations rely a bit too heavily on archetypes, the writing seems to be leaning really heavily into stereotypes for the girls which really cripples their characterization. I was really hoping that would be contained to the pilot but throughout the entire series, the girls’ personalities are really hollow and pigeonholed into their boxes. 

When the girls finally get on the spaceship the special effects are very reminiscent of 1980s SyFy -the tv channel- which I suppose fits the theme but it really took me out of the story for a moment. It feels like Paper Girls has at the very least taken inspiration from Stranger Things, only without the fully fleshed-out story. 

The girls get caught up in some kind of back and forth, there’s a spaceship and guns. It felt like the writers wanted the audience to feel the panic and chaos that the girls were feeling but that really just resulted in the story feeling erratic and incoherent. 

Structure

Generally speaking, there are plot-driven stories and character-driven stories, Paper Girls feels like a character-heavy, plot-driven story that simply doesn’t work. They are separate structures for a reason and the way they were forced together leaves both areas feeling incomplete. 

These young women are absolutely phenomenal actresses, their pacing and delivery is great. The chemistry the cast has together is completely carrying this show. There are a lot of parallels between Paper Girls and Stranger Things, both being spearheaded by such a young cast. The cinematography and color pallets are also quite similar. Both plots also center around this group of kids figuring out and navigating something much bigger than them. 

We finally get into the time travel section of the story and teenage Erin meets her grown-up self. Now their initial meeting was a little anticlimactic for me, it was a quiet build. This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just believe there could have been a little more in the dialogue that explored the tension between the two Erins. 

On the exact flip side, Mac’s meeting with her brother was perfect! Their first meeting had tension; it was emotionally charged, truly incredible. Mac finds out she dies young and it inspires her brother to get his life together and become a doctor. Their relationship is beautifully written and wholesome, and the best part of the show so far. 

Seeing Double

Young Erin and older Erin have a fight and honestly, it was the best writing so far. It really showed the struggle of idealism versus not living up to what you pictured for your life and having to cope with that. It’s the first major theme that’s been introduced and it’s a pretty universal struggle and this scene really explores it perfectly. 

The pacing for the first few episodes is a little slow. We don’t get to the true plot of the show until the very end of the 3rd episode and it really could have gotten there by the end of the pilot or second episode at the latest. 

The second half of the series seems to have found its footing at least a bit better. It is finally more character driven which I believe was the intent from the start. The 5th episode is really where it starts being coherent. In the 5th episode, we get a lot of really meaningful scenes between the girls. As well as some really important character realizations for KJ. Unfortunately, that still comes with a lot of filler. As an adaptation, the plot is almost unrecognizable from the comic. Paper Girls, the show, is not doing its job of staying true to the source material. As a stand-alone entity, it has some rather intense structural problems. But we are getting to a place where the character work is good.

Overall

Overall, I think the show has beautifully written scenes and moments of sheer brilliance in the writing, acting, and cinematography. But everything outside of those moments is poorly structured. The first half of the show is really weighed down. Poor pacing makes it really hard to power through even though the show does get better at the end. For a show that is centered around a time war, we didn’t time travel nearly enough. Paper Girls gets good, but the start is a little rough. That said it is worth the watch. The dialogue, direction, acting, and casting carry the show providing an enjoyable experience as a whole.

All 8 episodes of Paper Girls are streaming exclusively on Prime Video.

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Alexandrea Callaghan

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