'The Paper' Episode 3 Recap: "Buddy and the Dude"
- Melanie Weir
- Nov 7
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 7
The Paper: Season 1, Episode 3
Esmeralda and Ken try to sabotage Ned’s plans for the Truth Teller during a budget meeting while he and Mare investigate a mattress store. Meanwhile, Detrick uses a journalism exercise as an excuse to get to know Nicole better.
“Buddy and the Dude” did a great job cementing key character dynamics and establishing the day-to-day of things at TTT, while still fleshing out some of the less central characters. It also, perhaps more importantly, expanded on one of the central complaints that The Office had about the modern state of business—but this time they showed us a different kind of solution than the honest competition Michael Scott preferred to employ.
THE PLOT(s)
C PLOT: Two Truths and…Technically Zero Lies with Detrick and Nicole
The episode actually begins with the introduction of the least important plot in the episode: In the spirit of trying to train his newly minted journalists to detect falsehoods, Ned (Domnhall Gleeson) hosts a little journalism class and has them play two truths and a lie.
This was a fun and clever choice by the writers, because it's a super easy way to slide in more details about characters who don’t get as much screen time.
I’d also like to note that I am #Tracking that Martin Lawrence thing—that’s gotta come back. It would be so funny if, later in the show, they need to contact Martin Lawrence for some reason, and Adelola (Gbemisola Ikumelo) having that number comes in clutch. (Someone, quick, find out if he’s seen this show and if he likes it. Maybe he could use a guest spot to cross-promote his new Martin spinoff, Varnell Hill—think 30 Rock, but for a late-night talk show.)
All of that aside, however, the main thrust of this part of the episode was to further the relationship between Nicole and Detrick—Detrick (Melvin Gregg) catches Ned on his way out the door and manages to get him to issue the command ‘keep doing this exercise…with Nicole,’ so she has to spend the afternoon talking to him.
To his credit, it does work—maybe too well. Nicole (Romona Young) lets her guard down by inches throughout the day as Detrick’s easygoing charm lulls her into a state of comfort…and then she accidentally lets it slip that her bird (named Cardi Beak, a pun that deserves an award) was given to her by a man she dated…who was married.
As soon as she realizes what she said, she quickly closes off again…until Detrick, perhaps more perceptive than he’s been given credit for, gives her an out by guessing that said relationship was one of her two lies. It’s a moment that I can only describe with the word “grace.”
He’s graceful about it; he’s a gentleman. He recognizes that he didn’t mean to open up that much, and, instead of prying—like most people would probably do—he lets Nicole stuff the secret back into its closet until she’s ready to talk about it. It’s a beyond-classy move, and Nicole will definitely remember that.
A PLOT: Mattress Store Mischief with Mare and Ned
This main plot of this episode gives us a taste of what real intrepid journalism used to look like—that stuff where journalists go undercover to find some great protected truth or horrible secret isn’t just the stuff of movies and TV. It’s how we got comprehensive pieces on things like the Playboy Mansion —or, you know, Watergate—but more often, it looked a lot like this: regular people doing things that are kinda sneaky (and possibly even illegal) in search of the truth.
In this case, that truth is one that is sort of an open secret: Mattress stores use different names for the same mattress in order to get around “price-match guarantee” offers. Mare plans to go undercover and investigate—but when Esmeralda (Sabrina Impacciatore) tells Ned that a recruiter for a hotel concierge training program had just called her as a reference for Mare, Ned starts to freak out.
He ultimately decides to go on the outing with her so he can try to encourage her to stay, but he initially actually drives her in the opposite direction. When he over-optimistically declares that the only way the paper could fail is if they were hit by an asteroid, Mare (Chelsea Frei), knowing this isn’t true, begins to wonder if she can trust Ned’s judgement...but that changes when they go to bust the mattress store on its scam.
Ned’s reporting instincts give Mare hope, and together they take advantage of the store’s unenthusiastic and underappreciated staff environment by impersonating an employee on a call to the manufacturer—also highlighting the same decline in business-customer relations that The Office pointed at from the very beginning, and expanding it to show how that has also bled into many business' treatment of their own employees.
More importantly, though, afterwards, Ned comes clean and gives her a slightly less optimistic projection for the paper’s success: 85% instead of 95% might not seem like a big change, but it’s clear that it is to Ned—and that’s what earns him Mare’s trust back.
Of course, all of this is made more complicated by the other thing Esmeralda says to Ned at the beginning of the episode…
B PLOT: MOBMIAB (Or: Esmeralda Attempts Sabotage)
Esmeralda telling Ned that Mare is asexual is an interesting move, and I’m not even sure what her motivation was beyond messing with his head—and she’d already effectively done that by telling him that Mare was thinking about leaving. Her words smack of jealousy, but definitely not because she’s attracted to Ned—more like because he finds someone in this office attractive, and somehow it's not her.
Of course, this frustration could also be because she’s used to getting her way, and she thinks that her “busy little body” is the main reason why—Ned would certainly be easy to manipulate if he were attracted to her the way he so clearly is to Mare.
Regardless, it’s clear that said frustration is based mostly on unearned confidence. She’s clever, but not THAT clever; it is quickly becoming apparent that Nicole’s method of simply taking the path of least resistance with Esmeralda isn’t really a personal policy so much as it is just the generally accepted response in the office—so when Esmeralda runs up against somebody who actually cares enough to fight back, she has to compare them to a cockroach who is too stubborn to die.
This deception was really only tangential to her main ploy in this episode anyway, which is to undermine Ned and make him look bad in front of the boss—specifically, making sure he misses a budget meeting so that she and Ken (Tim Key) can push their agenda through without issue.
That plan would have worked, too, if not for one thing: Oscar Martinez. (Oscar Nuñez) He knows what the right thing to do is, and unlike that time Michael texted him to come talk to the board, this time he chooses to nut up and do the right thing—even if it puts him in Esmeralda’s crosshairs. (Ken’s too—because the budget discrepancy just so happens to be his rent.)
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
"Buddy and the Dude" manages to set up three different romantic storylines without it being entirely obvious that that’s what they were doing, which is actually incredibly impressive—it’s easy to let romantic storylines overtake everything else, and yet this episode had one in every single aspect of the plot, and I didn’t even consciously notice until I was writing this out.
On top of that, they also gave us a solid look at characters that I still had lingering questions about: Marv, Detrick, Nicole, and even Adam a little bit. The emerging pattern is one I absolutely adore: They’re all just kind of…stupid, in their own sweet ways. (I’m still trying to find Mare and Nicole’s Stupid Traits, but I’m sure they’ll emerge eventually.)
It even makes fun of them in a more kind and human way than a lot of shows bother with: It specifically highlights their incompetence at their jobs, rather than taking shots at their general intelligence—in all cases except Adam’s, I think. Adam is just dumb.
FINAL EPISODE SCORE: 4.8/5 ★★★★⯪
PLOT: 4.5/ 5 ★★★★⯪
The plots were all winners—Detrick and Nicole were a little slow, but the stories wove together well enough that it was negligible.
CHARACTERS: 5 / 5 ★★★★★
This was a big character development episode for a lot of the stars: Mare is being featured very prominently, but so are Detrick, Nicole, and even Esmeralda—and then there’s the background characters like Marv also getting to move forward and show us more of who they are. All of this might make some shows feel a little crowded or heavy with character development—but not this one. They give us just enough to leave us wanting more.
DYNAMICS: 4.5 / 5 ★★★★⯪
The new relationships explored and the dynamics we saw were awesome: Marv and Ann were introduced, Mare and Ned begin to really gel, and even Adelola and Travis have a fun tit-for-tat type rivalry that’s always fun to watch. The only ones who weren’t that fun to watch were Detrick and Nicole.
DIRECTION: 5 / 5 ★★★★★
All of the direction was executed incredibly well. The spy shots, especially, were really cool, and drew my attention to the fact that despite knowing very well that I was watching a mockumentary, I had forgotten the cameras were there—which makes it even more funny when they’re pointed out, or when they speak back to the audience. (“Oscar Martinez is 61 years old” was pure gold.)
VIBES: 4.5 / 5 ★★★★⯪
This score is not as arbitrary as it sounds (though it is admittedly still a little arbitrary): The vibes or overall feeling of an episode usually inform me roughly how often I’d rewatch it. To use The Office as an example, "Dinner Party" and "The Injury" are total fives: I will probably never get tired of them. Conversely, Scott's Tots is probably close to zero: Very difficult to watch all around.
The vibes on this one are nearly perfect—between getting Oscar starting to thaw for the cameras and the cute caper Mare and Ned go on, there is endless joy and fun. The only thing that prevents it from being a full five is...you guessed it...Detrick and Nicole. (I really hope these two start to grow on me eventually, because it seems pretty clear that they’re determined to keep it going.)
“Buddy and the Dude” delivers perfectly on the expectations of the previous episodes, with very little to complain about. This is shaping up to be exactly what I expect a series from this production crew to be: Real, Hilarious, and Kind, with a heartbeat that stays consistent through the whole thing.
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