TV Review: Paper Girls Season 1
TV Review: Perfect timing for ‘Paper Girls’ Season One
The first season adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s Paper Girls was released in full to Prime on July 29. I read the entire graphic novel series a few years ago and was anxious to see how it would translate to the screen. Now having watched the entire first season, I am not disappointed!
To begin, the casting is incredible. The four primary young girls are played by Camryn Jones as Tiffany, Riley Lai Nelet as Erin, Sofia Rosinsky as Mac, and Fina Strazza as KJ. They are all so wonderfully earnest in their acting and I was completely captivated by them. One major improvement the show has over the graphic novel series is that we get to spend a little more time getting to know these girls; knowing the characters better helps the audience sympathize with them, and we get the extended joy of watching these actors work. The supporting cast is also phenomenal. We get to meet the older versions of three of the girls, particularly getting to know Adult Erin played by Ali Wong and Adult Tiffany played by Sekai Abeni, with a few scenes of Adult KJ played by Delia Cunningham. The different sides of the time war are headed up by two great actors each, actors Nate Corddry and Celeste Arias for the STF, and actors Jason Mantzoukas and Adina Porter for the Old Watch. They all give very complex renderings of their characters.
We got a pretty good breakdown of the viewpoints of both the STF (Standard Time Fighters) and the Old Watch (as named by the STF). The Old Watch essentially views themselves as time travel police, making sure the “original” timeline stays intact, because they believe that too many alterations to the original timeline will eventually cause time itself to unravel. The original members of the STF are from far in the future (the 71st century) when times are hard, and they blame their time’s problems on the poor leadership of the Old Watch (who are primarily based out of 2055), so they travel to key moments in time to try to prevent bad things from happening in the future. It’s currently unclear how much the time travel that they do affects the future since one character is killed in two different times at two different ages, but then also the girls are able to confirm that their future actions haven’t yet changed Hell Day in 1988. The Old Watch is certainly right that time travel can get very messy. The four girls meet members of the STF first, witnessing them get killed in the first episode, so they naturally think that the STF must be the good guys. But after hearing Grand Father of the Old Watch explain their viewpoint, the girls aren’t so sure who to believe anymore, thus they would prefer to stay out of it and just go home.
The show understandably changes a few things from the graphic novel series, like Tiffany’s involvement in the development of time travel, Mac getting to meet an older version of her brother, and the increased involvement of Prioress and her motivations. So far, I really like these additions as they serve to help the characters bond and generally gives them more character development than we had in the series. Nothing has completely derailed the events of the series to this point. I’m really curious to see how much more they keep or change for future seasons; they are already working on season two, so I’m glad we have that guarantee of more content. I’ll especially be looking out for the origin of Jahpo and Wari, whether the STF in the show can make clones like they do in the series, and if the elusive Editrixes are mentioned.
I highly recommend this show to anyone who likes sci-fi, especially if you like Stranger Things, as this show also follows kids/teenagers with 1980’s vibes. And since season two of Paper Girls is already filming, we know we won’t be left hanging without a resolution.