'The Paper' Episode 2: "The 5 W's"
- Melanie Weir
- Sep 21
- 10 min read
Updated: Sep 22
I didn’t become a journalist on purpose — it was something I fell into after I graduated from college with a degree in English and Theatre and needed to, you know, feed myself. Luckily for me, my tiny, underfunded theatre program appreciated that they probably needed to offer us some backup skills, so they built a mandatory Writing for the Media course into the major for us.
If there is one thing I remember from that class I took (over ten years ago, yikes), it’s those 5 W’s—so you can understand how disheartening it probably is for Ned to be starting from there on his first real day as Editor for an actual paper.
(But, of course, that’s what makes it fun for us!)
The Paper’s second episode did an excellent job at furthering the established personalities and dynamics they set up in the pilot, and it filled in a lot of the ones I’d wanted more of. I’m seeing it more clearly now: there are so many familiar character archetypes on this show, both from Greg Daniels’ sitcoms and contemporary sitcoms in general.
First and most obviously, there’s Barry, (Duane Shepherd Sr.) who is trending more Creed than Stanley in this episode.
Question: Where does Barry think he is? Like, ever?
Was he once one of the political correspondents in one of the other cities they mentioned in the first episode? Is that why he keeps talking like he would need to fly to get back to Toledo? That would actually be very interesting.
He was giving Stanley for a little bit too, though, when he complained loudly about the Syphilis billboard.
I don’t know who he was when he got injured by a wooden crate, but Barry having to go to the hospital on the way to get their One Real Story for the day reminded me so much of our show Please Help (as do the random people over on the other side of the office who technically work for an entirely different company.) Like, everything falling apart like that is literally the plot of the episode I was credited with.
(No, I’m not accusing The Paper of stealing our ideas — fewer than three hundred people have even seen this video — I’m just pointing out how universal this vibe seems to be on small news teams these days. It’s…..disheartening. But at least I can laugh at it here.)
Anyways, Barry is going to be a wild card. One of these episodes, once everyone gets comfy underestimating him, he’s going to do something that saves the paper. I can feel it. I’m waiting to learn this guy’s storied history—his Grass Roots origins, if you will.
He’s not the only one I’m seeing character parallels in—Adam still seems like a combined Angela and Kevin, but there’s also a little bit of Andy in there; he never has any idea what’s going on, but he makes some wild guesses anyway.
“Dogging” made me laugh my ass off—it reminded me of that one Bill Hader sketch on SNL where they made fun of all the random stuff news channels would make up to fearmonger to parents. (Adam I get, but how did Adelola not realize that they were literally granting those kids an invitation to improv some bullshit?)
I actually love how Into It the accounting department is getting, despite the obvious world of differences set up between Adelola and Adam in the first episode—it’s heartwarming how even the people who didn’t work for the paper are getting excited about it now.
It’s also really sweet how Ned obviously recognizes that, and doesn’t want to discourage it—it’s incredibly kind of him not to tell them their story was a flop. (He might have been able to use it as a teaching moment…if the circumstances weren’t so deeply and uncomfortably weird.)
Adelola and Adam need more screen time in general — but finding out that Gbemisola Ikumelo and Alex Edelman are also writers, like the annex team on The Office, at least made the initial lack of it make more sense.
So far Adelola has continued to give me Donna Meagle vibes, but like, a much younger and much less confident Donna Meagle. Donna Preagle. (And obviously, with an entirely different and much more east-coast sense of style. (By that I mean "vaguely looks like a person I'd see on the New York Subway."))
It was also great to see her rat-a-tat with Travis (Eric Rahill) about their different story ideas. (I have to side with Travis on this one, too: a countdown to the McRib is actually a great idea to fill a mostly empty Culture page in a local paper. No, it wouldn’t "pressure" McDonald’s, but it’d get people talking about something, and it could fill up space...which is what they need so they don't continue to create problems with the Toledo Parks department.)
The snarking back and forth like siblings gives the cast a lived-in, familial feel—they know each other too well to pull punches, and that’s obviously a very good thing, because a group of weirdos like this need to be able to poke fun at each other freely.
Travis has continued to mirror Seth Rogen's Dwight, which makes it even funnier when he immediately abuses his new position as a “reporter” to go bother his ex-girlfriend—and that for some reason she knows he is already aware of an increase in the fish population. (Remember when Dwight tried to use the gift baskets as a sort of practice mission to getting Angela back in Season 4 of The Office?)
Somehow these are only the minor character’s we’re discussing, even though they’ve provided such a heavy portion of one of the most memorable parts of the episode.
I say “one of” because, of course, Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore) is still there.
First of all, I love Esmeralda’s obvious passive aggression about her smaller office. She’s continuing her pattern of getting angry about all of the pettiest possible things—which make the lengths she goes to to get vengeance on Ned all the more hilarious.
They are, of course, also hilarious because despite her visible incompetence at many things, she possesses scary levels of skill in manipulation. The way that Esmeralda undermines Ned is kind of beautiful—she’s transparently lying, in a way that would be obvious to anybody who wasn’t having their own feelings played on.
Esmeralda isn’t necessarily intelligent in the traditional sense—the fact that she unironically says they can write stories using only their “own imaginations” makes me feel much less bad about saying that—but what she is is incredibly observant. She’s excellent at preying on other people’s insecurities, probably because she’s spent so long building up impenetrable walls around her own.
(I also love how she keeps mentioning being a single mother but has made no mention of her actual child. I’m betting they’re either fully grown, or she doesn’t have custody of said child/children, because she’s insane. She’s like a cross between Kelly and Jan, with some of Abbott Elementary’s Ava Coleman sprinkled in.)
It’s clear that everyone in the office has either gotten used to Esmeralda’s manipulation, or, like Nicole, (Ramona Young) have simply learned not to resist her will so they don’t fall prey to it—which is what makes it so fun to watch her get undercut at every turn by people’s unflappable love for this new, shiny, charming little news dork named Ned.
There are, however, some characters who have still yet to unfold themselves on camera enough to get a good read on them.
Nicole, for starters: what’s your deal? I still can’t figure you out. Do you hate work? Do you lack self confidence? Are you actually afraid to know about crime, or do you just not feel like doing the research? Are you simply an agent of chaos in this office? Your motivation remains a mystery. “Sometimes I go limp from resisting so little,” helped me narrow it down at least, but only barely.
I got very little on Detrick this episode though, too—but I have a feeling they’re looking to develop those two together, so we’ll probably see that next episode. (All we got in this one was him downloading the Citizen’s Bank app instead of the Citizen app. So…we know he’s an airhaid, and that he’s in love with Nicole.)
And then there’s…Marv.
(Allen Harvey)
Marv—who are you?? What is your motivation?? Do you want the paper to do well, or do you want cigars? Are you sexist, or just an old, old man? I found you very charming at this lunch, but that in and of itself puts me on red alert.
Then again, you could just be a David Wallace character—a perfectly nice guy who is way too reasonable to be managing this many crazy people.
I’m going to err on the side of crazy though, because how can eating a cupcake be in any way visionary? You agreed without a word. HOLD. I have to take that back, because I watched it again and had a violent flashback to a college cast party where a friend showed me that trick and yeah, Ken’s right, that’s a visionary way to eat a cupcake. (Thanks again, Tess, that trick has made every cupcake I’ve eaten since infinitely better.)
And, of course, I’ve saved the best for last: Ned Samson is a charming, over-excitable little dork, and I was right when I said this is what one of Leslie and Ben’s kids is gonna turn out like.
He was giving Big Ben Wyatt energy in this particular episode: The way he uses the (somehow not stale?) popcorn bucket as a drum to yell a very panicked “MEETING RESUMED” when he realized they had no wire service was so funny. It gave me flashbacks to that string of episodes where Wyatt was working for a congressman in DC and didn’t quite feel like he had earned his authority yet. Thank you, ever so much, The Paper, for giving me yet another hot, principled nerd to drool over.
The morgue thing was really clever—I was genuinely so happy for them for a second, before I realized what was going on. (I was almost as slow as Ned.) In fairness, though, what the hell did he mean by “check the back for bodies??” How would you lose a human body, Ned? How would the morgue be unaware of one’s existence, in any situation?
It might seem like that along with that, and with all the funny shots of Ned bailing his employees out of jail (much like Leslie Knope has had to do, and has had done for her…) they’re only giving us signs that this paper is doomed—but then they give us little bits of hope when we see things like Barry, remembering from his hospital bed that he did, at one point, report on real news.
The rest of the hope, though, is more or less emanating entirely from Ned. Only he would refer to this group of people as “Seven highly motivated tenacious buckeyes” and truly believe it.
The approach he takes at the end is actually, despite its silliness, pretty brilliant: he reminds the people that No News really is Good News—maybe the first time anyone’s been honest about that in decades. It’s an excellent companion ending to the last one we saw—what they gave the people was the truth, as they knew it: Nothing much of note was happening in Toledo that day. (Although I’m both infuriated and endlessly amused that we never find out what the deal was with the building on fire at the end of the last episode.)
It's kind of like the public version of what he did in the first episode, in a funny way: He knew the paper already had a terrible reputation, so he just stood up and acknowledged it—and in doing so, established an air of candor that might at least get people's attention.
In other words...he told the truth.
This headline actually especially noteworthy if you really pay attention, because, early on in the episode, when they’re trying to find crime in the Citizen app, Nicole reports an alleged “a man with a machete” two blocks away from them—but they don’t report on it.
That would be ridiculous to overlook if they had nothing to print—meaning that it was probably just a man walking outside of his home holding a kitchen knife or pruning shears or something. (Just like when my parents’ old neighbors would log on to the Ring app and ask if anyone heard gunshots every single time a car backfired or there were random fireworks.)
It’s a comment on the widespread panic we seem to see everywhere now, and on how much all of it is really just hype (or a whole neighborhood’s collectively overactive imaginations.) Most of the stuff you see people freaking out about these days either isn’t true, or is so ridiculously overblown that the majority of the info you’re getting is useless.
“We’re not going to drum up salacious headlines just to get your hard-earned cash. We’re going to print what really matters to you.”
There was a time when that wouldn’t have been a remarkable statement—sometime after the country’s first wave of widespread yellow journalism died down. And I do believe the underlying theme of every episode, in some way or another, is going to remind us of the cost of allowing our news media to erode into that state again over the last century.
Mare framing Ned’s first paper is so incredibly sweet (especially considering that most of it was just book recommendations that border on plagarization)—and not just because she has a crush on him, or even because it’s totally something Jim would have done for Pam—but because it means she’s really beginning to catch that infectious hope that Ned is generating.
She was bored and hated her job and had kind of stopped believing it would get better, and then this guy came along and suddenly made coming to work feel like it was worth it.
The whole world can look different when you get a shot of optimism like Ned Samson’s in your life, and I can’t wait to see the rest of the staff catch the Hope bug like Mare has.
(P.S. In case you didn’t catch it, there was a little nod to Jim and Pam in the beginning of this episode: The popcorn bin that Ned starts nervously munching on was, according to Mare, a gift to Maria, who had her desk before her, from Enrique, who worked in sales—now a couple with two kids. I don’t think I need to spell it out, but just in case: Jim was in sales, and he and Pam also had two children. It’s subtle, but it’s way too specific to be a coincidence.)
(P.P.S. I’m not going to spoil the little tidbit about Oscar still keeping in touch with the old office, but know that it made me tear up.)