Basically: In the 1980s, four teenage girls working morning paper routes end up falling into a time travel battle.
Let me start by saying, Amazon is on a run with their comic book adaptations. I don’t watch The Boys but I know folks love it. Invincible was incredible—one of the best adaptations of a comic I’ve ever watched. And now we’ve arrived at Brian K. Vaughn and Cliff Chiang’s (along with Matt Wilson and Jared K. Fletcher) Paper Girls, which I have to say I couldn’t stop watching. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of binging; I actually prefer waiting week to week, you know, old-school TV style, but once I clicked play on the review screeners, I had to keep going.
We start with Erin, on her first morning as a paper girl, the morning after Halloween. The green Erin gets rescued from a customer by Tiffany and both run into the tough-girl Mac shortly after that. All three meet up with KJ. As our POV character, through Erin, we see the dynamic of the other three who have been doing this for a little while. All that is thrown into chaos when the girls run into weird-looking guys dressed like they were in the Masters of the Universe movie. Then all hell breaks loose for the girls, the sky changes colors, folks show up dressed in weird clothes, and tons of dangerous things happen to these girls within 40 minutes.
All the actresses here, Riley Lai Nelet as Erin, Sofia Rosinsky as Mac, Camryn Jones as Tiffany, and Fina Strazza as KJ, are amazing. Not only do they come straight from the comics, all these actresses are able to show a multitude of emotions as these characters navigate this crazy situation they find themselves in. Their performances bring depth to the characters’ relationships with each other and the ups and downs between the four. I also want to say Ali Wong is great as the character she plays. She’s well rounded and does well in the drama, adding the right amount of comedic timing to some of her lines. She’s really an excellent anchor to the first half of the season.
Nate Corddry brings some great tension and sadness to the show with his character Larry and the other stand-out of stand-outs in this series is Adina Porter playing a character I haven’t seen her play before in Prioress. She’s the main antagonist of this season, and she plays it to a T. When you see her on screen, it’s danger time. She has the presence of the T-1000 in Terminator 2, which plays well with Rosinsky’s Mac, who will remind you a bit of Eddie Furlong’s version of John Connor in attitude and style.
The first episode or so after the pilot might feel a little slow for some. While it didn’t for me, I can see that it could be for others. The good thing is, the season doesn’t feel rushed and has a perfect number of episodes.
In the End: Paper Girls is one of my favorite comic book adaptations and is a great first season of a wonderful mystery adventure show with four great girl protagonists.
