‘Paper Girls’ Recap: ‘Matinee’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode Six of ‘Paper Girls’. To revisit the previous episode, click here.
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If there is one critical lesson that we’ve all learned courtesy of the Prime Video series, Paper Girls, it would have to be that meeting your future self, would be downright terrible. For time and time again, we’ve seen the Paper Girls in this series, be utterly rattled by their future iterations. Because none of them took the paths that were in their minds when they were younger and in some cases, learning about the future has brought about tough moments of reflection and painful revelations, especially for Mac. Leaving one to wonder if there is to be any saving grace regarding these consistent encounters and well… believe it or not, this series finally took the time to find something positive about potentially encountering a future version of yourself in its next episode.
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For when we catch up with the Paper Girls in ‘Matinee’, they’re stranded in 1999 and unsure of what to do next and that brought them to Tiffany’s future self. Wherein they came to learn that she turned out to be pretty freakin’ rad to begin with and while she didn’t exactly meet 1988 Tiffany’s expectations, since she dropped out of MIT and was pretty keen on people pleasing and doing her own thing… 1999 Tiffany did embrace, embracing one’s uniqueness and talents. A mantra that put Past Tiffany right at home and of course, allowed for her to work with her future self on a potential plan to get back to 1988 since two giant brains are always better than one. But more on that in a moment.

Because we’d be remiss to not point out, that Mac and KJ found some positives out of knowing their future and future self after all. Since KJ was able to observe how happy 1999 KJ was in her own skin and the joy following her own path brought her. Something that allowed for her to dig deeper into understanding what brought her to explore her true self, a moment that will clearly arrive years from now. As for Mac, knowing that death was near, while depressing and painful, did indeed help her to ponder upon her path and the time she had left. Since clearly, the path she was currently on wasn’t exactly yielding results happiness wise and that needed to change if/when they got home, and Erin… well this quiet time just allowed for her grieve and process and that’s never a bad thing.

But there was mention of the fact, that Team Tiffany was working hard on figuring out how to get the heck back to 1988 and well, that involved visiting Larry once again. In order to get hold of his cypher so they could come to understand when the next portal was going to open. A meeting that was quite tense in nature and quite heartbreaking as well. Because it really did appear as though, the next portal wasn’t going to arrive until 2006, something the girls simply could not reconcile. But alas, Larry’s data was clearly flawed. Since the closing moments of this story saw the Paper Girls bikes and papers from their route fall from the sky via a portal, meaning that either a way home has indeed presented itself, or the Old Watch has come to realize that the timeline isn’t whole.

But while we wait to see what else will come from that portal, we can celebrate one quality episode. For this one did a wonderful job of slowing things down so the characters could finally catch a breath and reflect upon the wild journey they’ve endured so far. And wow, did they genuinely ponder upon some important moments and concepts, and it is just great to see a show take the time to do this with characters that wouldn’t normally receive this kind of care, since few twelve-year-olds in books or movies or shows get to think about the meaning of life and the future. Plus, it was nice to finally see a future version of a Paper Girl not bring forth harm and strife and well, it is best we enjoy the feel-good nature and wonder of this episode while we can. For there are only two episodes left in season one of this magnificent series and those are likely going to be filled with big and intense moments as the Paper Girls work to finally return home. Until next time.

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