On MTV, The Paper Beats Rock—Sort Of

Say what you will about MTV reality shows—call them trashy, exploitative, or amazing—and you’ll probably be right. One indisputable fact, though, is that MTV is incredibly adept at developing the reality villain. This is, after all, the network that gave us The Real World’s Puck and The Hills’ Heidi.

So when previews for The Paper began cropping up on MTV airtime, focusing largely on a girl named Amanda, there was no question as to which role she’d fill on the show. The promos capture her at her worst moments: singing loudly and inappropriately, glaring at others with that familiar ambitious gleam. Move over, Nickelodeon: there’s a new Amanda show in town.

The Paper is the true—inasmuch as any MTV reality show is “true”—story of a year with Cypress Bay High School’s award-winning newspaper, The Circuit. The first episode, which debuts tonight (fittingly in the timeslot after The Hills), follows several key juniors in their quest to become editor-in-chief. Amanda, of course, is one of those juniors, and in a cringe-inducing moment early in the episode, she gestures to the plaque on which each former editor’s name is engraved. “Every editor-in-chief’s name has started with an A,” she notes, going down the (admittedly short) list. “My name starts with an A.” Never mind that two of the other strongest contenders are named, um, Alex and Adam.

Alex, the current sports editor, is probably the most relatable cast member. Promo materials for the show tout him as Amanda’s friend, although footage shows him taking grudging part in the staff’s routine skewering of her. Adam, the current business manager, is melodramatic and, in his own way, just as grating as Amanda—but he has the advantage of position. He’s well-liked, so others take part in his Amanda hatefest to avoid being ostracized. The other frontrunner for the position, Giana, is the current clubs editor: a cute, petite girl who spends most of her time hanging off her boyfriend and fellow staff member, Trevor. She, like Alex, tries to stay civil with Amanda, but finds it difficult—she can’t permeate Amanda’s self-delusion, and soon decides to stop trying.

The show sets up a stark disconnect between Amanda and the rest of the cast early on—they all play beer pong at a weekend party she was apparently not invited to, while she works on her editor-in-chief application at home. She says something to the effect of how she’s glad she isn’t out partying and won’t have to worry about rushing her application, but something in the way she looks askance at her little white terrier suggests otherwise. This is a fundamentally lonely girl. Sure, she’s overbearing and annoying, but it’s obvious that it all stems from crippling self-consciousness and a terminally unfulfilled desire to be liked.

The show can, in fact, get tough to watch. There’s a scene late in the episode in which Amanda is doing her homework alone at the kitchen table. Her cell phone, which happens to be on the table and at which she happens to be staring, rings. The rest of the cast is out to dinner, and again, Amanda hasn’t been invited. They’re calling to “check up” on her—she’s been out with a sore throat—and to “wish her luck” on her application. But the rest of the cast make jokes under their breath (and, in Adam’s case, not under his breath at all), many of which she hears.

If this were fiction, it would be brilliant, but you can’t shake the knowledge that these are real people whose lives will, for better or worse, be altered by virtue of their having been on The Paper. We forgive MTV’s incessant depictions of Puck and Heidi as monsters, because they’re adults who knew what they were getting themselves into and also because each has his or her genuinely mean moments. The Cypress Bay kids, maybe, were a little too young to subject themselves to this­—and Amanda isn’t mean, she’s just annoying. It’s hard to imagine how she will react tonight if she watches the show. For what it’s worth, the playout of this universal disdain for one person is absurdly compelling, and I’ll be watching future episodes of The Paper—but not without a nagging sense of guilt.