At the first episode of “Paul American,” a brand new reality-TV display these days streaming on Max, the YouTuber, influencer, and wrestler Logan Paul mounts a PowerPoint pitch for his fiancée, the Danish twiglet Nina Agdal, as a way to persuade her that being on actuality tv would get advantages the couple. Logan and his more youthful brother, Jake Paul—himself a YouTuber and influencer, who has additionally grew to become to boxing—had been well-known for greater than a decade now, and actuality tv, Logan explains to Agdal, will be the apex of the pyramid that the siblings had been scaling. “This display is a part of my herbal evolution,” Logan says, pulling up a slide that includes a inventory graphic of the step by step building from ape to Homo sapiens. Every determine within the chart is labelled for a degree in Logan’s occupation trail, from the defunct short-form video-hosting platform Vine, on which the Paul brothers were given their get started, via vlogging, podcasting, and, in the end, live-TV wrestling and boxing. The definitive degree on this years-long building, Logan concludes, is “the circle of relatives reality-TV display.”
Agdal cracks up: the pitch is obviously tongue-in-cheek, and but it however corresponds to the objective “Paul American” is making an attempt to succeed in, which is to provide Logan and Jake, for the primary time, as totally fledged human beings slightly than half-baked Neanderthals. With all we find out about actuality tv—its crafty edits, its cooked-up tale strains, its behind-the-scenes manipulations—it would look like a stretch to view the style as a chance for the show of genuine, multidimensional individuality. Nonetheless, it’s all relative. In comparison to the Pauls’ earlier outputs, “Paul American” is almost “The Brothers Karamazov.”
Till now, authenticity and intensity of persona haven’t precisely been most sensible of thoughts for both of the Pauls. They got here up as teen-agers at the Wild West web of the twenty-tens, which noticed the profitable explosion of social-media and self-produced-content platforms. Born in Ohio to Pam, a nurse, and Greg, a real-estate agent, roof craftsman, and free cannon, who frequently seems at the display with a searching knife strapped to his forearm (“Cancel tradition can suck my ass all day lengthy,” he says at one level), the brothers every discovered early good fortune in 2013 via making pratfall- and prank-filled six-second Vines. Inside of a few years, that they had moved to Los Angeles and brought their undertaking to YouTube. Jake enacted bodily dangerous, increasingly more extravagant stunts on the Group 10 influencer area (erecting a huge snow slide outdoor the mansion; turning the home right into a trampoline park), whilst Logan evolved a name in his personal vlogs as a stunt-happy jokester bro (bringing sixty thousand kilos of snow to California; freaking out a brand new roommate with a stay alligator).
As their careers grew, Logan’s and Jake’s logo construction grew an increasing number of cartoonish. In a similar fashion blond and muscled—the 2 are alike sufficient to be twins, despite the fact that Jake now wears a furry, jutting beard, while Logan’s is extra carefully cropped—the brothers frequently beefed. Logan stole Jake’s love hobby, and every launched a diss monitor tearing the opposite down. (Logan’s: “I’m a savage, you’re reasonable / I’m a beast I’m going wild / This tune would be the loss of life of you / I’m ’bout to be an most effective kid.” Jake’s: “You thirsty for the perspectives, name it Kalahari / You the Karate Child and I’m Mr. Miyagi / You only a Prius and I’m a Bugatti.”) They drove luxurious cars and flashed fats stacks of expenses; they wore iced-out watches price masses of 1000’s of bucks and courted mayhem and controversy. (In a 2017 vlog, Logan filmed the physique of a suicide sufferer in Japan, a choice for which he later apologized; in 2020, Jake’s Calabasas mansion used to be raided for firearms.) Even sooner than coming into the real ring, that they had already formed themselves as pugilistic, larger-than-life characters, with nicknames to check (Jake: the Drawback Kid; Logan: the Maverick). Unsurprisingly, their content material resonated in large part with younger males, and after collecting round 100 and fifty million fans throughout primary platforms they started to show their on-line succeed in into good fortune in some real-world ventures. Logan, who’s now thirty, become a W.W.E. champ together with his personal power drink, High; Jake, twenty-eight, become a boxer with a body-care line for males, W. (“You almost certainly scent . . . get W at Walmart.”)
In all their endeavors, the Pauls’ leader purpose has been to draw the utmost selection of audience and likes, which the pair freely speak about at the display. “Having your content material be won via a large number of eyeballs is good fortune,” Logan says. Controversy has performed neatly with the brothers’ audience: Logan’s diss monitor of Jake, as an example, is his “most-viewed video of all time,” a indisputable fact that he now claims he regrets, and “Paul American” works to turn the brothers as newly reflective, softer, and able to make amends. (“[Logan]’s the one one who is aware of what I’ve been via and I’m the one one who is aware of what he’s been via, and there’s a trauma bond in that,” Jake says, sounding strangely touchy-feely.) In 2021, the brothers moved to Puerto Rico, which, beginning in 2012, become a tax haven, particularly for high-net-worth people who’ve change into wealthy due to cryptocurrency. For the reason that transfer they have got grown nearer, and feature taken to coaching in combination—Jake with the objective of being a world-champion boxer, and Logan to give a boost to his place within the W.W.E., in order that he can “change into the face of probably the most greatest media conglomerates in all the international.”
The street towards concord, alternatively, is proven to be a bumpy one. At one level, we see Logan internet hosting the British influencer and rapper KSI, who’s Jake’s sworn enemy, on his podcast, and the 2 shaggy dog story on air about Jake’s upcoming combat towards Mike Tyson, whom he hopes to very best. “It’s simply now not what brothers must do,” an irate Jake says. (Logan brushes the criticism off. Jake is “delicate and I’m an asshole,” he says.) However Jake, who went professional in 2020, is probably soft about this slight as a result of he desires to transport previous being an influencer-boxer, who fights for likes, and emerge as a real-world champ, like Tyson himself used to be in his high. Having the ability to deal definitive blows in a hoop, at some take away from the net international, is Jake’s middle’s need. Can he be, because the podcaster Joe Rogan suggests, in a clip shared at the display, “for genuine”?
The query of realness is one who comes up time and again in “Paul American.” Jutta Leerdam, Jake’s Dutch female friend, who’s an Olympic pace skater, chides him when he slips again into vlog-like bombast. On a non-public jet, the pair take to Minnesota to consult with the manufacturing facility the place the W body-care logo is produced, Jake clowns round, bellowing on the digicam that Joe Biden—then nonetheless President—must use W as a result of he’s “almost definitely sweating via [his] go well with.” However Leerdam is displeased via this efficiency. “Babe, that is actuality. You might be your persona so much,” she says. “So snap out of it . . . be a genuine particular person.” Jake throws his head again, as though taking into consideration this. “Boooring,” he in the end brays. One in every of his worker buddies, additionally at the flight, is heard pronouncing off digicam, “He’s a misplaced purpose.”
Each Leerdam and Agdal appear to impact Jake and Logan as ameliorating brokers, however even they may be able to’t make those leopards totally trade their spots. The Paul-brother act is a troublesome factor to shed, and, finally, it’s the place the cash is. “The item that assists in keeping other folks glued is the shit display,” Logan says. He notes that he likes to combat within the W.W.E. as a result of “I am getting to be a showman, I am getting to inform tales, and use it as a automobile even to simply advertise my manufacturers. Maximum of all, receives a commission.” When he and Jake pitch their actuality display to more than a few networks, they provide it as “the testosterone Kardashians . . . , true hardcore American circle of relatives.” As a clip of Logan receiving a MAGA hat from Trump flashes at the display, along different moments—Jake brawling after a combat, Logan taking pictures a rifle, Pam rolling round in a pile of twenty-dollar expenses—we pay attention Jake give an explanation for that “that is The us, and we’re from the center of The us.” On the right way to watch Logan combat at a WrestleMania match in Philadelphia, on but some other non-public jet experience, Leerdam, who hasn’t ever attended this sort of fit, tells Jake that she’s now not positive what to anticipate. “Neatly, a host of guys—” he starts, as Leerdam cuts in. “It’s so American! It’s essentially the most American factor ever!” Jake chuckles. “Neatly, sure, certainly, brother,” he says.
