When NBC announced a follow-up to their hit show “The Office” last January, the internet was skeptical.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” one commenter wrote on Facebook after hearing the announcement. “A spinoff could ruin [The Office’s] legacy.”
I was skeptical, too. “The Office,” in many ways, feels unique – a creation of its time that can’t simply be copied and pasted into 2025. In fact, the refrain I hear most often when people talk about “The Office” is something akin to “this wouldn’t fly today.”
“The Paper,” which hit streaming on Peacock last week, had a tall task. It needed to be funny in the same way that “The Office” was, but in a culture where what can be laughed about has arguably shrunk quite considerably.
Somehow, “The Paper” pulls it off. Like “The Office,” it rides that line between culturally acceptable and dangerously out-of-bounds as closely as possible. Its characters are funny, their struggles relatable, and the hijinks just as insanely comedic.
There’s one aspect of “The Paper,” however, that is still a question mark for me – and it’s the one aspect of “The Office” that I think we overlook.
“The Office,” as funny as it was, was not simply a sitcom. It was, and continues to be, a shaper of culture.
Though we watched “The Office” for its laughs and its characters, what we got in tandem was an expectation of normal life. That was the whole point of “The Office,” wasn’t it? A look inside the normal life of the average American worker.
If you are normal, “The Office” tells us, your faith won’t impact your personal life, you’ll hold to an untraditional sexual ethic, and you’ll spend most of your days at work wasting time just hoping for 5 p.m.
These expectations might have had little predictive power on those already in the workforce when “The Office” was on the air. But for those of us who grew up watching it? The dynamics we saw of normal life bent us to believe that it would be abnormal for our faith to impact our personal lives in a meaningful way. We would be abnormal to hold to a traditional sexual ethic, to find purpose and value in our employment.
Sitcoms, perhaps more than any other type of entertainment, have this catechizing, culture-defining power.
The perhaps most dramatic example of this power comes from ABC’s “Modern Family.” When “Modern Family” premiered in 2009, less than half of Americans approved of same-sex marriage. By the time the show – which boasts a stable, relatable, and funny same-sex couple – ended in 2020, the approval rating for same-sex marriage climbed to 67% and the Supreme Court had made same-sex marriage legal throughout the nation. While this cannot completely be credited to “Modern Family,” the show’s normalizing effects are undeniable.
Will “The Paper” have such culture-defining power as “The Office” and “Modern Family”?
It might. Like sitcoms before it, “The Office” spinoff pushes the envelope on what its audience will accept as normal.
Two coworkers, for example, begin a sexual relationship that is explicitly anti-monogamous. Their relationship, we see, is fully centered on sexual gratification – we hear comments that they don’t even enjoy each other’s company, and they certainly don’t look out for each other’s best interest. In the last episode, they break up because one finds out that the other is not sexually active with someone else. This is, admittedly, partially played for laughs – though who can really know for sure?
Same-sex marriage, bisexuality, and asexuality all get mentions here, too, but mostly in passing.
Whether or not “The Paper” shapes our culture like sitcoms before it did is still a question mark. But what we do know is that it will not be neutral. “The Paper” doesn’t just want to make us laugh, it wants to create our expectation of reality. It wants to tell us what is normal.
And I’ll be the first to admit, I enjoyed “The Paper.” But if I’m not careful – if we’re not careful – we’ll find ourselves slowly starting to believe their version of reality and normalcy.
So perhaps the question isn’t whether “The Paper” will shape culture, but whether we will let it shape us.
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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.
Image Credit: YouTube/Peacock
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