Paper Girls review: Comic-book adaptation finds rich emotional resonance in a tween time-travel saga

The 1980s don’t come with the usual umpteen layers of nostalgic coating in Paper Girls. Plenty of dust collects, some rust too with the corrosive elements of the time. There was more to the decade than listening to New Order on the Walkman, wearing denim jackets and jelly bracelets, teching up with walkie-talkies, and riding the bicycle with friends on epic adventures — although all these do feature in Amazon’s adaptation of Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s comic book series. There is also the most casual racism, antisemitism, homophobia and Cold War paranoia, and the characters in the show aren’t insulated from these Reagan-era issues. Although the central conflict here is about a century-spanning time war, it is careful not to sanitise the unpleasantness. This is a clear departure from nostalgia-baiting movies and shows which boil away the ‘80s to its super-concentrate form, leaving only the sugary joys and innocence.

While out on a newspaper delivery route the morning after Halloween 1988, four 12-year-old girls become unstuck in time and caught in a civil war between two rival factions of time travellers. The girls travel to the future, meet their older selves, get a front-row seat to mecha fights, and nearly get their heads torn off by a pterodactyl. The conceptual punch of the time-travel gimmick is given a real emotional edge with coming-of-age trials that will be achingly familiar to those navigating them on a daily basis. As is typical with these Amblin-type stories, parental supervision is non-existent. Which often means courage doesn’t need permission to grow for the children to become heroes.

What separates Paper Girls from the more frothy sci-fi romps is the balance it finds between the ordinary and the extraordinary. The balance is striking, if not always organic. Time travel is an elastic narrative device with boundless potential, but stories often get too bogged down in the mechanics. Though the rules of causality in Paper Girls remain a little iffy for now, the eight episodes of the first season fly by with enough self-confidence to keep the viewer invested in the all-too-real anxieties of four girls on the precipice of adolescence, rather than fret over the paradoxes. When the girls end up in the future, a comical but relatable scene plays out when none of them can figure out how to use a tampon. Even a girl bound for MIT, seemingly since birth, who figures out the technicalities of time travel and mecha piloting, is so mystified by the inner workings of a tampon they ultimately opt for the pad.

Where the show suffers is when the grounded coming-of-age bits make way for grander mythology bits. Halfway through, it struggles to sustain its narrative momentum on the charms of its cast alone. In the effort to pack in the required exposition and world-building, the storytelling gets too choppy. This is an issue that plagues many streaming series. Instead of delivering solid self-contained seasons, showrunners keep trying to set up the foundation for future instalments, compromising the quality of ongoing ones.

At the crack of dawn on November 1, 1988 aka “Hell Day”, Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet), Tiffany Quilkin (Camryn Jones), KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza) and Mac Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky) run into each other on their newspaper route in the sleepy suburban town of Stony Stream, Ohio. Erin is the shy new girl on the block and the eldest of two daughters of a widowed Chinese immigrant. Tiffany is a nerdy Black girl with MIT dreams and a veritable scientific genius in the making. KJ is an upper-class Jewish girl dreading her upcoming bar mitzvah and the endless nit-picking of her parents. Mac is the most seasoned paper girl and an oh-so-cool misfit with a cigarette dangling from her mouth. The young cast gives the characters multitudes beyond these single-sentence descriptions. Their friendship is textured with changing dynamics and the odd conflict. Together, the four are heedful, they’re impulsive, they’re strong, they’re vulnerable, they have great chemistry, they get some good zingers in, and they grow to become fiercely loyal to each other.

The morning of “Hell Day” begins with a straightforward enough rescue mission as KJ is tormented by teenage bullies. But things take a turn when the stormy sky turns an apocalyptic pink and causes a space-time rift. Soon, the girl find themselves in the middle of a time war between two groups from the future. One is the Old Watch, the ruling order who have outlawed time travel. On the other is the STF (Standard Time Fighters), a rebel faction looking to put an end to the Old Watch’s fascist reign. When the four tweens get thrown into 2019, they desperately try to find their way back, make some familiar friends and run into some relentless enemies along the way. In keeping with a show about time-travellers, the soundtrack compiles needle drops from the era the girls find themselves in. So, it’s not just New Order. A selection of bangers from David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Pavement, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and LCD Soundsystem give the show ‘90s and 21st-century cachet.

When the Old Watch commander Prioress (Adina Porter) launches a hunt for the quartet across time, they first find refuge at older Erin’s (Ali Wong) home and later at older Tiffany’s (Sekai Abenì). On reconnecting with their older underachieving selves, both Erin and Tiffany are dispirited by how their futures have materialised. If you were confronted by your 12-year-old self, there is every chance the reaction may be the same. At its core, Paper Girls is about accepting that our lives may not turn out exactly as we dreamed. As Erin and Tiffany reconcile their expectations with reality, KJ comes to terms with her sexuality and Mac confronts an unfortunate truth about her own future. In a show featuring time-travelling factions and Pacific Rim-lite mechas, self-realisation proves to be the ultimate risky adventure. After all, the show itself is less about changing the past, more about how we face the future.

All eight episodes of Paper Girls are now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.