Paper Girls is a delightful 80s throwback that showcases girl power!
A sci-fi coming of age tale with parallels to Stranger Things, Paper Girls is its own unique coming-of-age story featuring Tiffany Quilkin (Camryn Jones), Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet), Mac Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky), and KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza), who accidentally cross paths with battling time travelers during their paper route in 1988.
The four girls are also reminiscent of The Baby-Sitters Club, being a similar age and friend group. With a little more cursing and a lot more time travel, life lessons and found friendship tie our paper girls together through the years.
After they’re scattered through time and come face to face with their older selves, both versions of the women and girls learn a lot about each other. The older versions often play a parent role, trying to help their younger selves process where they are and what they’re going through. It comes as a shock to some but especially young Erin that her future is not quite all she imagined it would be.
The show really took their time with the casting of the older versions, as they match up so well to their younger selves. Tiff (Sekai Abenì) is the second future version the girls meet to help them along their journey. This time in the 90s instead of 2019, the girls are able to see themselves at different life stages and in a way, forces them to grow up earlier than they normally would. They learn about their future jobs, sexualities, and sadly some deaths. Not exactly easy for twelve year old girls to deal with. All of the young actresses do excellent jobs infusing their characters with vulnerability, emotion and strength.
While some of the girls were friends before the time travel, Erin was new to the group and their shared experiences solidify her inclusion into the Paper Girls. Whether it’s escaping from time-traveling soldiers or trying to figure out how a tampon works (so cool to see this in a show!) they go through it all together and it creates a solid bond between the four girls.
The world-building and sci-fi elements aren’t as strong as the comics the series is based on. I feel the show put a lot into fleshing out each of the girls and put the magical aspects on a the backburner, but it’s still visible enough to advance the plot. I’d love a season 2 for this show, we need to see what happens after that major cliffhanger and I want to see where our girls go next. A beautiful, empowering show for girls.
Photo Courtesy: Prime Video
