S01.E08: It B Over

[paulvdb]

Quote

The Old Watch invades Larry’s farm, leaving the Girls with one chance to get home to 1988.

Premiere date: July 29, 2022

[edhopper]

No traffic on this forum. Pity, a very entertaining show and the four leads are compelling.

I hope enough watch for Amazon to pick it up.

[Tuggy]

I do agree, that's a real pity! The show is very well done, with more than satisfying SFX, a very strong cast and a clearly competent writing room. The dialogs are often very witty and they manage to touch on powerful topics without it being forced (first periods and hygienic protections, trauma and grief, family expectations...).

I really hope this gets renewed! Having read the comics, I know there is still a lot of very good stuff to adapt 😁

[edhopper]

Tuggy, how far into the comics did S1go? How Manny issues? Thanks.

[Paloma]

My husband and I loved this show up until the last few minutes, when it was clear the writers were going to leave so many plot threads hanging and so many questions unanswered. We are really getting tired of what I'm starting to think of as a "dirty trick" by the creators/producers of streaming shows, who do this in the hope that the show will get renewed but too often it doesn't. In the case of Paper Girls, I think there could have been some kind of satisfactory resolution that still left the possibility of new things to happen if the show is renewed. 

On an unrelated note, one thing that kept taking me out of the story was the Grand Father actor. Every time he was in a scene, I saw and heard "Derek" from The Good Place. And on a more related note, I don't understand who Grand Father was supposed to be--the big boss of the Old Watch or something else? And wasn't there some reference in an early episode to "the asset" being kept in Father's office? Who or what was the asset, and who was Father? And why was the enforcer called the Prioress? So many more questions. Hopefully we will get some answers in a year or two.

[txhorns79]

I enjoyed the show, but I was similarly frustrated that everything was left up in the air.  They better get picked up for a second season!  I really enjoyed the cast.  The girls were great.  I really liked both Tiffany’s and both Erin’s.  I thought the KJ storyline was too predictable.  I also kind of thought they were going with the idea that Mac’s future death, while tragic, seemingly served as a needed catalyst to make other people in her family better, but I felt like they stopped short before they got to it and it turned into a potential KJ/Mac love story?

[Tuggy]

5 hours ago, edhopper said:

Tuggy, how far into the comics did S1go? How Manny issues? Thanks.

Hard to say, as it is not at all a direct adaptation of the comics. So far, I have recognised elements from the first four issues (French issues, so probably each one is a concatenation of many US issues...) but they also have left a lot out.

Larry does not exist in the comics, for instance, and the story does not go at all the same road, even if you find the same beats in both mediums.

[Paloma]

7 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

I also kind of thought they were going with the idea that Mac’s future death, while tragic, seemingly served as a needed catalyst to make other people in her family better,

Although her brother was clearly changed for the better, her father apparently did not change at all for the better (her brother said the father, who apparently was abusive to them as kids, was living in a trailer park and they did not have a relationship). The stepmother, who previously seemed to be a neglectful drunk (based on the one scene in 1988 where Mac was picking her pocket while the stepmother was apparently passed out on the couch), apparently sobered up and, according to the brother, was very supportive of both of them during Mac's illness. So Mac's illness and death were shown to serve as a catalyst for change for two out of the three members of her family.

8 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

it turned into a potential KJ/Mac love story?

I liked the way the writers and the KJ actress handled the her confusion about her sexuality, and I was glad to see that in the future she had found love (though still had to hide her relationship in 1999). But I didn't want to see a potential KJ/Mac love story because I felt that the developing friendship of the four girls was the most important part of the show. I don't think the scenes between KJ and Mac necessarily were showing a potential love story or even sexual attraction. It seemed more about them getting closer because KJ was the only one who knew Mac's secret and wanted to comfort her, but at the same time KJ was confused and frightened by this closeness because she didn't know how to sort out this specific emotional closeness from a more general attraction to females. I'm not saying that KJ wasn't attracted to Mac, but just that the feelings were mixed up with the growing closeness as friends.    

[nomodrama]

14 hours ago, Paloma said:

And wasn't there some reference in an early episode to "the asset" being kept in Father's office? Who or what was the asset, and who was Father? 

The asset was the big robot that Adult Erin had to pilot right? That is about the extent of how much I understood. 

I agree the KJ stuff was super obvious. I loved her moment of realization and her conversations with future GF, but I hope they don't go down the route of a KJ/Mac romance. 

I also loved Mac's brother and really want to know more about her step mom. I have a feeing I know where that is going as well. 

My biggest question was the ending....so by giving adult Tiff the book with the info, young Tiff actually set all of this in motion? Adult Tiff is actually the one that started all the Time War stuff on the S(forgot the rest of the acronym) side? And are they actually the bad guys? What Grand Father said actually made a lot of sense about going back and trying to fix bad stuff in time and the metaphor with the tape. 

[Paloma]

3 hours ago, nomodrama said:

Adult Tiff is actually the one that started all the Time War stuff on the S(forgot the rest of the acronym) side? And are they actually the bad guys? What Grand Father said actually made a lot of sense about going back and trying to fix bad stuff in time and the metaphor with the tape. 

Yes, my husband and I both came away with the understanding that adult Tiff started the Time War (or maybe it started just because she invented time travel, and war inevitably resulted). It seemed that Prioress was planning to send kid Tiff to the future so she could tell Dr. Quilkin (not the rave party version but an older version who had gone back to get her PhD) to make a different choice--presumably to destroy her time travel research or at least NOT share it with anyone. I guess that Tiff and Erin ended up in the past instead because after Prioress was wounded another bad guy ran to the control and pushed it down. But I'm not really sure about that.

It's an interesting ethical question about who are the bad guys, and I just posted a link in the Media thread to an article that talks about that--but don't read the article until you finish the series. The Underground (I guess that's STF--Larry's and Juniper's people) obviously think they are the good guys trying to change a future where it seems that the elite have all the power and wealth (though we don't really know since we haven't had a glimpse of this future). And until Grand Father's explanation, I was sure the people in white were the bad guys--especially the Prioress, who seemed to have no problem torturing and killing innocent people in other timelines. I still think they are most likely bad guys, but they have rationalized their actions to themselves (and to other people as needed) as being necessary to the safety of society and even the universe. So they may not all be inherently evil, but the evil in this was does seem to be more on their side than on the Underground (at least until we learn more about the society and the Underground). 

3 hours ago, nomodrama said:

The asset was the big robot that Adult Erin had to pilot right?

That's what I thought at one point, but how was it in "Father's office" (if I'm remembering that line correctly, which I may not be)? Who was Father--was he an earlier version of Grand Father, or a kind of VP to Grand Father's president or CEO? I also thought that the asset might be a person, like one of the kids who had been sent to the future. But I'm really just confused about the whole asset business.

Edited August 2, 2022 by Paloma
To let people know about a link in another thread

[SeanC]

On 8/1/2022 at 11:10 PM, Paloma said:

My husband and I loved this show up until the last few minutes, when it was clear the writers were going to leave so many plot threads hanging and so many questions unanswered. We are really getting tired of what I'm starting to think of as a "dirty trick" by the creators/producers of streaming shows, who do this in the hope that the show will get renewed but too often it doesn't. In the case of Paper Girls, I think there could have been some kind of satisfactory resolution that still left the possibility of new things to happen if the show is renewed. 

Ending a season on a cliffhanger wasn’t exactly unusual in the pre-streaming era.

Based on the source material, there really isn’t any other way this could have ended. Paper Girls is one long story, it doesn’t have any intermediate resolution points; basically every issue ends with a cliffhanger.

[Paloma]

1 hour ago, SeanC said:

Ending a season on a cliffhanger wasn’t exactly unusual in the pre-streaming era.

Based on the source material, there really isn’t any other way this could have ended. Paper Girls is one long story, it doesn’t have any intermediate resolution points; basically every issue ends with a cliffhanger.

I'm old enough to remember that the differences in the pre-streaming era were that seasons were longer (as many as 20 or more episodes per season, though sometimes the season was split) and that networks often made the decision to renew a show early enough that viewers knew they would get another season while they were still watching the current season, or at worst soon after the season ended. Now the streaming norm is 8-10 episodes, and it may be months before you find out if the show will come back. So it makes it difficult to get invested in a new show when you know it will likely end in a cliffhanger and may not get renewed. 

I do understand that the source material has cliffhangers, but for the very reason that it is one long story, as you said, the streaming service should have either authorized 2 (or more) seasons from the get-go or authorized enough episodes to be shown over one long season so that the story could be resolved. 

[SeanC]

44 minutes ago, Paloma said:

I do understand that the source material has cliffhangers, but for the very reason that it is one long story, as you said, the streaming service should have either authorized 2 (or more) seasons from the get-go or authorized enough episodes to be shown over one long season so that the story could be resolved. 

Streaming services don't want to make multi-season commitments like that on unproven properties, and they don't need seasons that long.

It's not really functionally any different from that in ye olden days a new show could be cancelled after only a few episodes without any warning.

[Paloma]

9 hours ago, SeanC said:

Streaming services don't want to make multi-season commitments like that on unproven properties, and they don't need seasons that long.

It's not really functionally any different from that in ye olden days a new show could be cancelled after only a few episodes without any warning.

I understand the reason, but it's still disappointing and makes me less likely to want to try a new show. I know that new shows in "ye olden days" were sometimes cancelled quickly, but for whatever reason those tended not to be the shows I watched. Now with streaming it seems that the majority of shows that have a premise that appeal to me do end on cliffhangers in the first season, and then I hear they will not be renewed. It's especially annoying when the show is otherwise excellent, like this one.   

I guess I could wait to watch the first season of any new streaming show until I hear whether it will be renewed, but I lack patience and/or impulse control, LOL.

[DavidJSnyder]

I thought the whole point of mind wiping people by the Old Watch was to preserve the future we’d seen so far, but then they killed Larry in 1999 who we saw in 2019, so are they not really all that concerned with keeping things the same?

I too thought at the end of a season they should be entitled to more of a resolution then they seemed to give us. Then give us a cliffhanger that sets up a potential more seasons.  This just felt like every other episode ending. 

[Mabinogia]

I watched the whole series in a couple days. I liked it. I'm also totally confused by it. I think the cast were great. Even while being total cliche's the acting made them feel very real. I prefer the personal storylines better than the bigger time war storyline. The friendship between the girls is what really sells this story for me. My favorite scenes have been focused on them. I think my abfab scene was the tampon scene which both cracked me up and broke my heart (funny because I've been there, got my period before anyone explained it to me and had the same kind of WTF is this thing? when I opened my first tampon. Broke my heart because it really drove home that in some ways they are still children and they are now completely on their own). 

As for the Time War, I could give or take it. I get that it is the backbone of the show, it is the reason all this is happening to the girls, but it is very confusing for me, in no small part because I just don't care about the adults involved. The Grand Father is distractingly Derek (The Good Place), the Prioress just went around killing everyone and I find that boring. By the time she showed any personality I was over her, Larry was written as too all over the place. I think that is because they were trying to make us question which side was "good" or "bad" but it just left me not investing in either side. 

If it comes back I will keep watching because I'm invested in the girls. I also prefer time travel into the past over into the future so I'd like to see more of the girls in what looked like the 60s/70s.

[HDJulie]

I did not like nor really understand the ending.  As was stated earlier, it felt like the end of a regular episode. 

I also didn't understand why adult Tiffany & adult other lady were sucked up into the purple thing. This was their timeline. Was that the start of the memory wipe for them & they'd wake up at home not remembering any of it?

[Aryanna]

I guess I was wrong in my theory about Tiffany growing up to be the priores.

It got a little confusing for me too. I do hope it comes back bc I don't like being left hanging. 

As for streaming vs the old days, 10-15 episodes seems to be the norm now. I was on peacock browsing through shows  and saw the old Leave It To Beaver was like 40 episodes per season. Crazy!

[Aryanna]

With time travel stories there's always the question of cause and affect. This show also throws in the question of expectation vs reality. At 12 years old these girls have grandiose ideas of what they will become and how their life will turn out. Pretty much every 12 year old does. But seeing their older selves is making them face reality.

Erin certainly didn't think she'd grow up to be estranged from her sister or be a middle aged single, paralegal, alcoholic. But those are the mundanities of life. Now that she's seen this, can she change the outcome? Can she prevent herself from dying in the robot?

Mac thought she could eventually get out of her home life situation and get out of town but found out that she doesn't even make it out of childhood. She doesn't want to die but it she doesn't then does her brother continue down a dead end path? Does her stepmom drink herself to death?

If Tiffany never gets expelled from MIT then her institute may never be established. Does that mean time travel is never discovered? Tiffany thought she'd grown up and realized all of her childhood dreams but did achieving that cause the time war and possibly the unraveling of the fabric of time?

If KJ had never seen her older self would she show any interest in film or film studies? Would she be a lesbian? There was really no indication of either before she saw her older self. 

I just hope they don't go the direction of all four girls growing up to live out their dreams now that they've seen a possible future. That's just not how life works and it's a trite lesson to try to teach. Not everyone can be special. There are middle age paralegals. KJ will probably not be a famous filmmaker. She would probably end up a YouTuber and a slave to the algorithm suffering from burnout. Although for Mac growing up and living a normal life is probably a dream for her.

[Mabinogia]

8 hours ago, Aryanna said:

I just hope they don't go the direction of all four girls growing up to live out their dreams now that they've seen a possible future. That's just not how life works and it's a trite lesson to try to teach.

Same. While I'm not against happy endings, I hate the idea that a happy ending means you have to have all your dreams come true. I think I would prefer a happy ending where they accept what their lives became and move on from there rather than go back to the 80s and rewrite the future. 

[Aryanna]

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

Same. While I'm not against happy endings, I hate the idea that a happy ending means you have to have all your dreams come true. I think I would prefer a happy ending where they accept what their lives became and move on from there rather than go back to the 80s and rewrite the future. 

Yeah if they'd accept what their lives became in a healthy manner and made the best if it. Maybe try to correct their mistakes and grow as a person instead of going back in time to fix it.