Paradise: Season 1 Review: The Bennefit of low/uncertain expectations

⭐⭐⭐1/2

Rob Ryan

With the over saturation of streaming making choices more and more difficult for the average consumer, I, like potentially many others pressed play on episode one of Paradise expecting a Tom Clancy esc political thriller about "WHO MURDERED THE PRESIDENT?" "Has our beloved state department been compromised? "What secrets is the federal government really hiding?" Attitudes that especially in today's climate seems to be a little tame at best and tone deaf at worse. These inclinations made me plan to only watch one episode and no more if it didn't peak my interest further beyond my expectations.

But then there's that ending twist at the end of episode 1 and I was surprised. While still not without leaning into some genre trappings and featuring some very clichéd dialogue ("your kids need you, I need you!") as well as the fact that any text featuring a mystery of who killed POTUS is not exactly going to be the most revolutionary text in the world, but Paradise invested me from the surprisingly subtle nuances of its premise as well as the way in which the cast especially two main leads where able to overcome the genre.

One is Sterling K Brown who plays Xavier Collins (could you not name a more heroic name than that) a security agent who years ago was promoted beyond his rank to protect President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) one morning when waking the president up at his palatial estate that isn't The White House (one of many hidden red flags before the twist ending) discovers him lying dead by his bed with his head beaten to a pulp, it only takes him 30 minutes to finally report what happened as he wanted to discover any initial clues himself before forensics could get his hands on him, after an episode of picking up potential clues, including a set of numbers written on his Cigarette and a missing tablet that appears to have been stolen as well as flashbacks to his first day on the job and their past relationship. Spoilers from here on out, If you haven't seen the show beyond the trailers I recommend you do so overall.

The episodes ends, revealing that this small middle class American town, that the events we see thus far take place in, is actually a giant underground city in a Colorado mountain, it turns out some sort extinction level event took place on the surface years prior and the government have been preparing this place decades ago so that the wealthiest people and some lucky few have a chance of survival, one of the unlucky ones however, was Xavier's wife Teri (Enuka Okuma) who as in Atlanta at the time of the event and couldn't get to shelter on time, something Xavier blames Cal for which he makes abundantly clear in their last interaction together.

It's in this final exchange and many more moments after where we see that Brown is an actor of immense gravitas that goes beyond the typical action hero lead, you do not want to be on this person's bad side, his emotions and his reactions to his surroundings are all believable and intense and when he cries, your heart will sink. He makes that role more complex then what you would think that you truly by into him having a "strong moral compass" Someone who will always do the right thing under difficult circumstances.

Someone with a even more difficult task however is Julianne Nicolson, she plays Samantha, Code name Sinatra (Yes that Sinatra) a successful Billionaire and the brain child behind Paradise, we learn through flashback that despite her success at being the first woman entrepreneur in her field, she became inconsolable after the death of her son due to a rare illness, and when learning about the upcoming apocalypse at a Climate change talk, used her power and influence to get Cal into office, who she met at said talk, and hire the most knowledgable architects and hundreds and thousands of man power to build the underground city, a place she envisioned in memory of her late son, a place that she would rather spend the rest of her life in, in other words, they built it Her Way (obvious I know)

Nicolson's most powerful performance comes during a flashback, six months after the death of her son, she consults her therapist Gabriela (Sarah Shahi) who later becomes the recovery therapist for the residents of Paradise who are still struggling over their permanent reality. Samantha explains that she still hasn't recovered and doesn't know how to move on, Nicolson plays that grief and anguish in that moment so brilliantly that it almost seems uncanny when she represents someone so megalomaniacal in the latter half of the series. Except it isn't really, this was a loving and caring person who because of her grief combined with her power and influence has self appointed herself in what conformity, normality and moving on in the face of a global apocalypse look like and like all billionaires, isn't willing to give that power up so easily.

What surprised me about the show was its pathos. Everyone has lost something or someone on the surface and everyone is still trying to find a way to move on in this world that very much resembles what came before, how do you move back to normal when you have just witnessed the apocalypse? how do you cope and how do you manage to go about your day to day life when everything that made you whole is left rotting up top? How can we go about our lives as normal when what we see here and what has happened is anything but, the show manages to if only briefly how through therapy and familiar settings we ultimately force ourselves to accept carrying on our lives as normal all while under the watchful eyes of the most powerful people in all the land because confronting the harsh reality is too painful for us to confront especially having your previous comfort in conformity taken away and turned upside down.

Some characters have a good reason for accepting this new reality however, Fellow Agent Billy Pace (Jon Beavers) had only ever known being physically and emotionally abused by his dad and being incarcerated after shooting him with his hunting rifle, Paradise has given him a new found purpose which he never had on the surface, which makes his relationship to Xavier more intriguing considering everything that gave him meaning in life is mostly washed away. It isn't just the wealthy that benefit, the few lucky ones that never had a chance before the end of the world, might not want to give up that privilege of a living the ideal normal life( one of many aspects that I hope they explore more in season 2)

All of this and more is spliced together under a mystery that never once looses your attention. The many uses of flashbacks may prove annoying to some but to me they helped provide more and more wanted information about the characters as opposed to stopping the narrative in it's tracks, when you get to the end of the mystery however, while it doesn't go in directions you wouldn't normally expect, the final confrontation is not quite as compelling as the journey leading up to it, then again it rarely ever is. All in all though, I was surprised how much substance there was for me to chew on then what I initially thought there would be, yes the plotting contains several cliches, yes maybe they could have toned it down on the movie references, ("God I sound like a Bond Villan" ), Yes you do have to susspend your dissbelief over the shows outlandish ideas, Yes, Some payoffs are not as satisfying as others, but I would be lying if I didn't say I wasn't invested. The show was created by Dan Fogelman, who doesn't exactly have the best track record as his repertoire seems to range from silly comedies (Fred Claus) to sentimental twaddle (Life Itself) but here he at least has something interesting if not new to say, lets hope he maintains/expands on that integrity for Season 2.