Paper Girls: Growing Pains

July 30, 2022 9:22 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

Four girls delivering papers early one morning in 1988 are forced to work together when their routes are disrupted.

Loved the first episode and am looking forward to more.

But I watched the credits since they were playing the Bangles cover of "Hazy Shade of Winter," one of my favorite cover versions of a song ever and just perfect for this episode to go out on.

As they do, they listed several producers and executive producers. But they just kept coming. Producers. Executive Producers. Coproducers. Executive Coproducers. A lot more than I'd ever noticed in the credits for anything.

And then finally a name with the credit PRODUCED BY. And I had the best laugh of the day.

posted by straight (9 comments total)

Looks interesting. And I note the show was based on the comic Paper Girls - which had its debut edition in 2015, a year before the first episode of Stranger Things.
posted by rongorongo at 3:28 AM on August 1, 2022

I binged the season over the weekend and quite liked it. The 1988 scenes did feel true to suburban Halloween in the era.
posted by Karmakaze at 7:34 AM on August 1, 2022

...Brad Pitt?

I'm gonna get out my omnibus edition of the comic; some of the events in this ep happened quicker than I remember them happening in the comic. Casting is mostly on point, although sometimes Mac seems disturbingly like Eddie Furlong in Terminator 2.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:31 PM on August 1, 2022

I got a few volumes into the comic but never finished (though for all I know it's still being published). Had no idea there was a show based on it, interesting.
posted by one for the books at 12:14 AM on August 2, 2022

No, it wasn't that I recognized the name, it's that they had a list of 24 producers and after that the name of the person who produced it.
posted by straight at 1:18 AM on August 2, 2022

I think they've got the four paper girls casting spot on and I'm pretty much ready to defend them to the death, which is usually a good sign. I'm really liking what they're doing with the show so far, got my fingers crossed.

Something that got the tone of the comic just right was deepfake Regan turning up, just the right amount of utter wrongness there :).
posted by invisible_al at 2:47 AM on August 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I had just found the comic series on Hoopla when someone told me about this adaptation! Dialogue and character development are far better in the adaptation IMO, richer and more realistic. But I miss the weirder visual elements of the books, like the steampunk space capsule.

Altogether enjoyable for this GenX person, def check it out for many reasons including the eighties vibes.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 11:23 PM on August 3, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never read the comics, but oh man this was a spectacular first episode. I love Erin to an absurd degree already. (And they're unusually correct depictions of girls -- matching Yellowjackets or We Are the Best for how on point they are.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 8:27 PM on August 6, 2022

The 1988 girls are great and this is kinda like the distaff version of Stranger Things. Not sure about Ali Wong’s character, she’s not really gelling with the rest of the cast.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:00 PM on December 1, 2024