It’s finally time to dive into the highly anticipated new Prime Video series, Paper Girls, based on the Eisner winning comic book series from Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang. With a cast of pitch perfect young girls, lots of trippy sci-fi and a rocking soundtrack, the series premiere, “Growing Pains,” is a wildly thrilling ride! Here we go!
Cleveland, 1988 | Beginning our tale is a brief intro with a woman (Ali Wong) alone in her house when the power goes out. After she hears a knock at the door and goes out to investigate, we abruptly cut to Cleveland, Ohio on November 1st, 1988. We see Erin Tieng (Riley Lai Nelet) preparing for her morning paper route and saying goodbye to her mother in Mandarin, as well as Mac Coyle (Sofia Rosinsky) stealing cigarettes from her stepmom and a Walkman from her brother, Dylan. Elsewhere, Tiffany Quilkin (Camryn Jones) is woken up by her mother, while KJ Brandman (Fina Strazza) sees a dress her parents picked out for her Bat Mitzvah and groans.
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Erin goes on her route delivering newspapers to the suburb, but nearly gets clobbered by a racist man until Tiffany arrives and saves her. Tiffany then gives an old school walkie talkie to Erin so they can keep in touch before Mac arrives and asks them to help them bail out KJ from being roughed up by Wally Becker. Mac fires a bottle rocket at Wally and his pals and the four paper girls escape and all introduce themselves to each other. Mac judges KJ for coming from the Brandman family, who owns the local bank and library, and exclusively refers to Erin as “New Girl.” Mac is definitely not the ray of sunshine type.
Sticking Together | Erin asks the four of them to stick together for the rest of their route, but mere minutes into their bike ride down the road, two black clad figures grab Erin and take the walkie talkie Tiffany gave her. After a moment, the girls hear someone on the walkie saying, “Four one six six,” and Mac cusses at them through their walkie and mobilizes the girls to chase after them and get it back.
They follow the men to a house under construction and try to rough them up, but Mac gets startled when she sees the face of one of the men, which is scarred. The men get away, but the girls get even more scared when the house’s fuse box explodes and when they go outside, the sky is pink and ominous clouds are rolling in. The girls take refuge in Mac’s house and notice that the town is now deserted and Mac’s parents and brother are nowhere to be seen. After Mac grabs her dad’s revolver to defend themselves from whatever’s outside, the gun accidentally goes off and hits Erin in the stomach.
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Long Way From Home | Tiffany attempts to drive Erin to the hospital with Mac and KJ in tow, but they are once again jumped by the two men. Next thing we know, the girls are inside a capsule which opens up into the woods. The men beg them to come with them, but one of them gets shot by white wearing soldiers and when the girls duck and cover, Erin notices tons of metal bugs swarming around her bullet wound, which is now magically healed. The other man gets wounded and gives Tiffany a small metal box and tells her to get it to the underground.
The girls get cornered by a soldier who demands to know if they are with the underground, but KJ hits him with her hockey stick and kills him. KJ is shell shocked as the girls race to Erin’s house, while another female soldier (Adina Porter) executes the wounded man. Erin gets them inside her house, when the woman from the first scene walks in and demands to know why they’re in her house. Tiffany notices pictures of Erin on the fridge as well as a calendar with the year 2019 on it, leading to one conclusion: The woman is Future Erin and they just time travelled!
Paper Girls is now streaming on Prime Video.