Exactly 20 years ago, America met Michael Scott and a certain Dwight Schrute. When The Office launched in 2005, it quickly became a cultural touchstone, and its main title—complete with that dreadfully catchy tune—was so popular it was soon parodied by The Simpsons.
Now, the pseudo-film crew that introduced us to our favorite Dunder Mifflin characters is back for another mockumentary. But instead of the dying paper supply industry, they have set their sights on a struggling daily newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.
The Paper, which premiered on Peacock yesterday and has already been renewed for Season 2, follows the ambitious publisher Ned Sampsons as he tries to revive the fictional Toledo Truth Teller along with a team of largely incompetent reporters who have never written a real article in their lives. (Not unless you count “You won’t believe how much Ben Affleck tipped his limo driver,” which Truth Teller reporter like Esmeralda Grand is most proud of.)
So will Ned succeed in reviving the Truth Teller? The show’s main title might have some clues.
Misusing newspapers
Showrunners Greg Daniels and Michael Koman created The Paper’s main title in collaboration with co-executive producer and editor David Rogers. In just 30 seconds, it shows a flurry of people using—or as Rogers put it to me in an email, “misusing”—newspapers.
The show’s shooting schedule was tight, so instead of including actual show footage, like in The Office main title, the team scoured stock libraries for shots of people using newspapers in “unique and entertaining ways.” A worker is plastering newspapers on a window, a group of men play cards on a table lined with newspapers, a puppy Fox Terrier gets potty-trained on a newspaper. We also see a man wearing a hat made of a newspaper, and hands wrapping bread in it, too.
“Greg and Michael had a concept of showing people using newspapers in various ways, except of course, for actually reading them,” Rogers says. The underlying message, then, seems to be that newspapers—once beacons of information—have become so superfluous that their only value now lies in prosaic household uses.
Like with The Office, which includes footage of Scranton, Pennsylvania, The Paper’s main title also gives us glimpse of Toledo, including its famous “Love Wall” mural. “We wanted to highlight this new city that the show resides in, and it gave the sequence energy and a nice contrast with some of the vintage still frames,” says Rogers, who also edited the original title sequence for The Office.
Bad omen or red herring?
The Paper is a spinoff of The Office, so naturally, the team wanted to echo The Office’s main title without duplicating it. This extended to the theme song, for which the team hired Canadian musician and composer Nick Thorburn (most famously known for composing the soundtrack for the hit podcast Serial).
Chances are, when you think of The Office, you are already humming its catchy tune. Here, too, Thornburn has composed a song that’s already etched itself into my brain. “But it’s definitely its own song,” Rogers notes. Still, discerning listeners who stay on until the very end will notice that the last few piano notes are the exact same as those in The Office theme song.
Another reason not to hit that skip button? The very last image of the title sequence portrays one of the reporters scraping a poop-soiled newspaper from the bottom of a bird cage and into a recycling bin that reads “Paper.” Then, just like with The Office, where the team found a real sign that said “Office” and popped a preposition before it, the paper recycling bin gets its own preposition in front of it, leading to the show’s title.
Is the recycling bin scene a harbinger for what will happen to the Toledo Truth Teller? Or is it just the beginning of an upward journey? Seems like this title sequence just might be burying the lede.
