Welcome to my new weekly TV show blog. I try to keep up with everything that’s going on, this week I want to focus on Hulu’s Paradise. Warning, spoilers will be included as the season finale was this week. I’ve been talking to everyone who will listen about this, but unfortunately no takers yet so I’ll be blogging this on the off chance someone stumbles upon it.
First off, this show is complete slop and I love every bit of it. It’s a cross between Netflix’s Designated Survivor and Apple TV’s Silo, two shows that I love. The story is focused on secret service agent Xavier Collins and his family. In the Paradise universe, the world suffers catastrophic world ending events and a few thousand survivors are living in a man-built town within the Colorado Rocky Mountains. They have artificial sunlight, sustainable food and water, and everyday amenities that simulate real life. No one comes in or out of this facility, as far as the residents are concerned the outside world is a toxic wasteland with no survivors.
In episode one, the events of the series are kicked off by the President being found murdered. This launches a massive investigation, where agent Collins slowly begins to solve the mystery. It goes a tad off the rails, the story telling relies heavily on flashbacks to provide the pertinent info and it is confusing to follow without paying attention. Over the next few episodes, they give you some info on how this facility was built and go into each character’s life before ruling them out as a suspect. The town was built by a billionaire woman who is determined to survive the world ending. This character, named Samantha (Sinatra is the code name), pulls all the strings and essentially runs the government.
There’s a therapist named Gabriela, who helped counsel Sinatra through the loss of her son. Gabriela is tasked with choosing who should live in this new town that’s being built. She always believes Sinatra is still that mother at heart, but ultimately gets close with Agent Collins and alerts him that the President believed Agent Billy Pace was dangerous and would be responsible for his death.
Midway through the series, they examine the background of Agent Collins’s fellow secret service agent, Billy Pace. Billy is shown as Collins’s closest ally, regularly helps him with his kids and is the closest thing they have to family down in Paradise. Billy and another agent, Jane Driscoll, were absent the night of President Cal Bradford’s murder. It was explained that they are in a relationship and were playing Wii at the time he was murdered. The rest of the flashback shows Billy’s rough upbringing. He was a violent kid that found his way into black ops work and trained to be a killer. A flashback shows that he was sent to eliminate a group of scientists that discovered humans are still alive and the disaster wasn’t as bad as initially thought. He is instructed to and proceeds to kill the scientists and bury their discovery. He is adamant with Sinatra that he will not hurt agent Collins or his kids, telling her “Send the biggest motherfucker you got”. Well, Sinatra played the ace up her sleeve which was Jane Driscoll. She was also an assassin, who proceeds to kill Billy Pace and stage his death as a suicide.
The next few episodes go into more back story, it explains that Agent Collins’s wife was not able to be evacuated in time despite the President’s assurances. More flashbacks occur, showing this issue weighing heavily on President Bradford and the show deliberately withheld any info pertaining to the disaster. Agent Collins doesn’t’ know who he can trust as he investigates further. They introduce Agent Robinson, a law enforcement officer who Collins deeply distrusts and who was having a sexual relationship with President Bradford. An unlikely alliance forms, and they figure out how to gain access to the weapons cache that was previously off limits.
Collins and Robinson stage a takeover, telling the citizens that they are being lied to and ultimately kidnapping every member of the government except for Sinatra, who is alerted by Gabriela before the assault. Sinatra has Collins’s oldest daughter held with Agent Driscoll which forces Robinson and Collins to release their prisoners and return the weapons.
The whole reason I’m writing this blog is for the penultimate episode. It’s a detailed, step by step breakdown of the day that the world ends. In my opinion they did it better than every form of media that has tried to portray this. A super volcano in Antarctica goes off, which triggers global Tsunamis. They start by showing the southern hemisphere getting decimated, as the whole world watches in terror. There is a mad scramble at the White House to evacuate to their new city, and James Marsden puts on his best performance of his career. You saw the internal conflict he faced of not being able to help everyone. You saw the distress in him when he realized Agent Collins’s wife wouldn’t make it on time. The citizens turn to violence, as the government and bureaucrats escape to safety. Society broke down as they saw the devastation sweeping the world, and this was a brilliant display of the reality of this situation. Once airborne, the world leaders start launching nukes in a battle to secure the habitable regions in the world. President Marsden ultimately decided to launch an EMP that would destroy every functioning piece of electronic equipment in the world, including the nukes that been launched. In his words, “This will set the world back 400 years, but give them a chance”.
For the finale, they put us back into the present situation. Agent Collins has been told that his wife is alive and still in Atlanta with a group of survivors. He is also told that his daughter had been killed. A distraught Agent Collins kills Sinatra’s guards before turning the gun on her. Agent Driscoll walks in and shoots Sinatra, Collins still doesn’t’ know that she’s the assassin that killed Billy and working for Sinatra. With the kids safe, Agent Collins heads to the library with new information to discover the secrets President Bradford had given him clues to find. This is where the criticisms of the finale start.
Earlier in the season they show an assassination attempt on President Bradford. I found it odd they never explained why that happened and never expounded on it. Well, they did in this episode. The would-be assassin was a supervisor who was building the new town within the mountain, he had discovered the workers were being exposed to toxic chemicals and would die if not stopped. He was fired and couldn’t save his friends. Anyways, flashback to when the world is ending, and he escaped from his jail not far from the new town. He kills and steals the identities of two people who were cleared to go in, and he begins his new life in Paradise as the librarian. Eventually he snaps and carries out his plan of killing the president. As Collins arrived at the library, he is knocked out by the librarian, and everything is explained. TBH I don’t remember how that resolves itself. This was a lot of fans’ gripe for this show. All the suspects, all the theories, and it’s a small character they left minimal possibility of being the suspect. I don’t know, I didn’t mind it. I was worried the wife would be the assassin. All in all, this was a great season of TV.
The season ends with Collins’s kids safe, Sinatra is recovering in the hospital, and Collins is headed out to Atlanta to find his wife. It was renewed for season two and I can’t wait to see where they go next. There are so many questions about the outside world, and we still don’t have the reason why Driscoll killed Sinatra (She said it was because she wouldn’t let her play the Wii, I’m guessing there is another reason). If you made it this far, thanks for reading and see you next time!
