Despite some misgivings about a spinoff arriving more than a decade after The Office ended in 2013, The Paper has been a resounding success. With an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score and an early renewal for season 2, the spinoff of The Office has proven that time is no obstacle when it comes to extending a beloved franchise. Yet, its success was never guaranteed.
The Paper wasn’t the only revival of a fan-favorite workplace series in 2025. Suits LA, the long-awaited spinoff of Suits, also arrived. However, where The Paper has built solid foundations as a worthy successor, Suits LA crashed and burned. The Suits spinoff was unceremoniously canceled after a single season, despite high expectations and a built-in fanbase.
Comparing the two makes it clear why The Paper succeeded where Suits LA failed. Spinoffs of long-finished shows are always a delicate art, especially when the originals are as revered as The Office and Suits. However, when examined closely, the reasons The Paper stood tall but Suits LA stumbled become glaringly obvious.
The Paper Gave The Office Fans What They Love Without Copying It
The Paper Felt Like The Office’s World Evolved, While Suits La Felt Like Suits With The Magic Drained Out
The Toledo Truth-Teller staff listening to someone in a staff meeting in The Paper season 1John P. Fleenor/PEACOCK
The biggest reason The Paper worked where Suits LA didn’t is simple: it knew exactly what to keep from The Office and what to leave behind. The spinoff is clearly tied to its predecessor’s DNA, but it doesn’t live in its shadow. Instead, it evolves it. Set at a struggling small-town newspaper, The Paper mirrors The Office’s relatable workplace absurdity without repeating its beats.
Where The Office thrived on awkward silences and petty office politics, The Paper thrives on creative chaos and generational clash. It’s a different type of dysfunction that still feels like it belongs in the same comedic universe. Fans immediately recognized the spirit of The Office, but none of the same jokes or scenarios, and that’s what made The Paper refreshing.
By contrast, Suits LA felt like it was trying to hit copy and paste on Suits, only without the spark. The legal jargon, the slick montages, the high-end offices, all of it felt like set dressing around a hollow core. Where Suits succeeded because of its chemistry between Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) and Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams), Suits LA’s new leads never formed that same magnetic bond.
Suits LA’s scripts seemed desperate to recapture the snappy dialogue of Suits without understanding why it worked.
Even worse, Suits LA’s scripts seemed desperate to recapture the snappy dialogue of Suits without understanding why it worked. The conversations felt forced, the swagger performative. It’s the exact problem that plagued the Australian version of The Office, which was also canceled after one season. Audiences don’t want a carbon copy of a show they loved. They want something like it, not the same thing reheated.
The Paper achieved that balance beautifully. It kept the mockumentary format and awkward humor but injected it with new energy and stakes. Its humor feels lived-in, not recycled. The Suits spinoff, on the other hand, showed what happens when nostalgia is treated as a formula rather than a foundation.
Suits LA Mishandled Its Callbacks To Suits
The Paper’s Callbacks Felt Organic While Suits La’s Came Across As Desperate Fan Service
Rick Hoffman as Louis Litt and Josh McDermitt as Stuart Lane in Suits LA episode 12.
Another major reason The Paper soared while Suits LA flopped was how each handled callbacks to their parent shows. The Paper used its ties to The Office sparingly and smartly. Suits LA used its connection to Suits like a crutch, overloading episodes with forced cameos, heavy-handed references, and all-too-familiar themes that reminded viewers just how much better the original was.
In Suits LA, Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht) shows up at the end of the season, Louis Litt (Rick Hoffman) drops by mid-season, and countless other Suits Easter eggs are shoehorned into dialogue. Even the Suits theme song was recycled, leaving little room for the show to find its own rhythm.
Instead of establishing its own identity, Suits LA was too busy reminding everyone that it was related to something better. The Paper, meanwhile, got its callbacks exactly right.
It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake
The bridge between the two shows is Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nuñez), and the ways he ties The Office to The Paper are perfectly handled. His transition from Dunder Mifflin to Enervate, Dunder Mifflin’s new parent company, feels organic and believable. It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake; it’s a natural character evolution.
Even the decision to have the same unseen documentary crew from The Office filming The Paper works brilliantly. It’s meta, hilarious, and plausible. When the mockumentary’s origins are referenced, it never feels overplayed – just a sly wink to longtime fans. The show trusts viewers to catch the jokes without underlining them.
Suits LA, by contrast, didn’t trust its audience at all. Every callback screamed “hey, remember Suits?!” rather than letting the show breathe. The result was a project that felt suffocated by its own legacy. The Paper proved that subtlety goes a long way; that the smartest nods to the past are the ones that don’t interrupt the present.
Studios Should Use The Paper As A Spinoff Case Study
The Paper Shows How To Make A Legacy Spinoff Thrive While Suits La Shows Exactly How Not To
Oscar Nuñez’s Oscar leaning into a meeting room doorway in The Paper season 1Aaron Epstein/PEACOCK
If there’s one major lesson from the arrival of The Paper and Suits LA, it’s that not all spinoffs are created equal. The Paper stands as a shining example of how to revive a legacy series without losing what made it special, while Suits LA demonstrates how clinging too tightly to the past can doom a show before it finds its voice.
In a television era defined by reboots, sequels, and revivals, their contrast couldn’t be clearer, or more instructive. The beauty of The Paper lies in its confidence. It didn’t need to shout its connection to The Office at every turn, nor did it rely on nostalgia to hook its audience.
Meanwhile, Suits LA represents the opposite end of the spectrum. It leaned too heavily on the legacy of Suits, positioning itself more as a tribute act than a genuine continuation. From the recycled tone to the copy-paste aesthetic, Suits LA never quite earned its own identity.
The result was a tale of two creative mindsets: one willing to evolve, and one stuck in imitation. From a studio perspective, this contrast is a goldmine of insight. Every network wants the next hit spinoff, but few understand the balance between reverence and reinvention. The Paper proves that respecting the past doesn’t mean being bound by it.
Suits LA, by comparison, should serve as a warning to showrunners and executives alike. Even with name recognition and nostalgia-fueled marketing, a show can’t sustain itself if it doesn’t justify its existence. A beloved brand might attract initial curiosity, but if it doesn’t evolve, audiences will quickly lose interest – just as they did with Suits LA.
As studios weigh potential revivals of classic shows, they should look closely at what The Paper achieved. It didn’t try to replace The Office, it expanded the world in a natural, believable way. Suits LA did the opposite, and it cost the show its future. The next wave of legacy TV depends on which example future creators choose to follow, and The Paper has already written the perfect playbook.
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The Paper
7/10
Release Date
September 4, 2025
Network
Peacock
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Domhnall Gleeson
Ned Sampson
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Sabrina Impacciatore
Esmeralda Grand
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Suits LA
4/10
Release Date
February 23, 2025
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Lex Scott Davis
Erica Rollins
