Some comedians are simply born funny. When Will Ferrell appeared on The Late Show earlier this summer, Stephen Colbert asked him to name who he saw at his first concert and he responded "Roddy Ricch" with a straight face. "Just a hip-hop guy, about five years ago," he joked. "My first concert." It was enough to bring me to tears, and Ferrell did it so easily—like King Midas, but if everything he touched burst into laughter. It's that same ability that probably keeps Kenan Thompson on Saturday Night Live in prime form year after year. He can just walk on stage and the crowd is already chuckling.
I've been thinking a lot about what specifically makes something (and someone) funny this week, especially as we welcome the premiere of The Office spin-off, The Paper. Esquire held a screening of the first episode at the Hearst Tower on Wednesday, alongside a Q&A with stars Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore. If you're unfamiliar, The Paper follows the same documentary crew from The Office as they capture the lives of their newest subjects: a struggling newspaper. Peacock dropped all ten episodes of the first season on their streaming service this week.
Though the series moves on to a new cast, the tone teleported me right back to NBC's cozy Thursday night comedies in the early aughts. (Arguably, there was no better era in history to watch TV. It was a time when, as 30 Rock's Liz Lemon would say, "If I could press a button and five people in the world would die, but I'd get free cable, I'd do it.")
I thought back to The Office's iconic cold opens—like when Kevin spilled chili all over the carpet, or when Michael hit Meredith with his car. The Office knew the power of physical humor; since the days of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, it will never not be funny to watch a guy fall on his ass. But it wasn't just Steve Carrell and Dunder Mifflin's antics that made the original sitcom such a hit. There's a reason why so many people still binge-watch the series on repeat, even though it's been twelve years since the finale. If The Paper is to prove a worthy successor, there's one comedy trick that the cast will need to nail down right away.
Part of why The Office became such a success was because it was able to weaponize one undersung type of character: The foil. Often called "the straight man," the idea is that for every outlandish performance, you need someone else to take the place of the audience, maintain their composure, and respond with deadpan humor. For The Office, that role went to Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and his deer-in-highlights looks to the camera following whatever nonsense Michael Scott cooked up that week. The Office didn't just sell audiences the joke; it sold the reaction, too.
That's why I—and many Office fans—have high hopes for The Paper, especially after it was announced that co-creator Greg Daniels would return to helm the new spin-off in his signature mockumentary style. There's certainly been no shortage of workplace comedies that feature characters talking (and/or mouthing off) to a documentary crew in The Office's wake. (Parks and Recreation, Superstore, and Abbott Elementary, just to name a few.) But very few of them have understood that The Office was more than just a stage for the boss from hell. For every Michael Scott, you need a Jim Halpert. And that's just what The Paper's debut accomplishes in partnering up Impacciatore and Gleeson.
You might recall Impacciatore from The White Lotus season 2. The Italian actress played Valentina, the short-tempered manager of the resort in Sicily. She tells Tanya (Jennifer Coolidge) that she looks like Peppa Pig after she arrives, which was reportedly ad-libbed. As for Gleeson, it might surprise you to learn that the Ex Machina star is Brendan Gleeson's (The Banshees of Inisherin) son. He's most well-known for his portrayal of Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films and FX's The Patient—which he starred in alongside Steve Carrell.
If you haven't watched The Paper yet, the story follows Ned Sampson (Gleeson), the new editor in chief of a small midwestern newspaper, The Toledo Truth-Teller. He's taking over the role from interim managing editor Esmeralda Grand (Impacciatore), who somehow wiggled her way into the gig following her character's appearance on Married at First Sight. She's totally incompetent, brash, and obsessed with her appearance. And although she isn't a direct one-to-one to Michael Scott, she's every bit his successor when it comes to stirring up trouble.
As she told Esquire editor in chief Michael Sebastian at the screening, she was hesitant to even take the gig without Carrell's blessing. So, she flew to New York City and bought a ticket to see his performance in Uncle Vanya on Broadway, just to talk to the former Office star backstage. "I was like, so emotional, and he came out and I said, 'Can you bless me?' " Impacciatore said. "He was the sweetest. He was encouraging me so much… and he said, 'Just have fun. Enjoy.' " Gleeson heard the same thing during his meeting with Krasinski. And yet, from just about every moment they spend together in the first episode, it's clear that they didn't even need the duo's blessing to win us over.
In one of the funniest moments from The Paper's debut, Esmeralda Grand emails everyone at the office that Sampson has "never been MeToo'd" to ease their nonexistent fears. "These are simple people," she tells him. "When a man leaves his job and moves to a new town, they think 'I wonder what was his evil crime?' " Even though Sampson explains that you "don't need to not a thing that isn't," she forces him to address everyone and clear the air. So, in classic Office fashion, Sampson stands on one of his employee's desks and defends himself to his shellshocked audience. "To address the MeToo thing.. Me didn't. Me wouldn't," he says. "Me haven't and won't. Thank you." Cut to: stunned, zoomed-in faces looking directly at the camera. The joke and the reaction. That's the magic right there.
Most comedies today don't even know what they want to be week to week. Apple TV+ paired a sport with a sad father and called it a day. FX still thinks The Bear is a comedy somehow, and the latest news from Seinfeld creator Larry David is that he's giving up more seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm to create some sketch comedy series for HBO about U.S. history. (Another sitcom about a failing industry, it seems.)
The Paper doesn't have such delusions about the state of comedy nowadays. The Office's brand of workplace humor may seem like well-trodden and holy scripture, but the framework still holds. Even if it's best to gauge the merits of a series on its own, The Paper is best when it leans on what Daniels captured before. Keep it simple, and make me laugh.
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