If you read my columns last year
you know that when I saw the first season of Paradise rebroadcast on ABC
I immediately saw what the rest of the world did. I would eventually name it
the 5th best series of 2025 and advocate it for Best Drama. Few
things have been as rewarding to my soul as a critic when in a year that was
dominated by The White Lotus and Severance to the point that
almost all other shows were ignored by the Emmys for nominations the Emmys did
reward it with four nominations, not merely for Sterling K. Brown for Best
Actor but also Best Supporting Actor for James Mardsen, Best Supporting Actress
for Julianne Nicholson and Best Drama itself – all of which I had pushed for in
my predictions. That the series was shutout was irrelevant to be: in this case
it was an honor just to be nominated.
Like so many fans of the series –
and there were clearly a lot of them – I was eagerly anticipating Season 2. But
I assumed, somewhat naively, that ABC would rebroadcast it during April or May
like they did last year. When they chose not to (as is their right) I realized
I'd have to find time in my already crowded schedule to finally watch it on
Hulu. This was never going to be a burden but I had a lot of other priorities
to get through, as my readers are all too aware. It was only until last week
that I finally got around to watching the first two episodes of Season 2. And
while I was aware of quite a few of the spoilers this time I didn't think it
would be enough of a problem for me to enjoy it and honor it. That proved to be
more than accurate.
At the end of last season Xavier
Collins (Brown) having finally learned who murdered Cal Bradford and that their
were survivors outside the bunker, made the decision to get into Air Force One
and fly to Atlanta where his wife Terri was actually alive. This was a huge
cliffhanger and one that all fans of the show wanted an answer to. So naturally
Dan Fogelman did what he often does and gave us an episode featured on a
complete different character that had nothing to do with anything we'd seen in
the first season at all.
The first episode told the saga of
Annie, played by Shailene Woodley in a role that has deservedly made her the
frontrunner for Best Guest Actress in Drama. Annie grows up as a girl in an
impoverished home in Memphis and the only pleasure she seems to get out of live
is the tours of Graceland. Eventually her mother dies and she ends up going to
med school, something she washes out of just as she's about to begin her
residency. She ends up driving back to Graceland and with nowhere else to go
becomes a tour guide there, seemingly happy, enjoying telling the same joke
over and over again and going to one of the secret rooms none of the tours no
about, and at the stables.
Then on 'The Day' she hears the
message the President gives and takes the opportunity to head into the bunker
with her fellow tour guide having grabbed all the supplies she can. Her friends
breaks her leg before the final blow comes. We see the two of them trying to
exist together for several weeks, see the fires in chemical plants, the country
and perhaps the world going into the equivalent of a winter and no electricity
working at all. For the first time we get a hint at what happened in the
outside world but once again the writers make it very simple by reducing into
one very basic tragedy as Annie watches her friend succumb to her injury and
cold and eventually die.
A little more than two years
later, Annie has adapted. Then a group of bikers show up and Annie hides. We
have no idea what's happened during this period but Annie's clearly terrified. Link
the youngest, ends up coming inside knows she's there and tries to talk to her
with civility – and she responds by hitting him in the head with a vase and
running and hiding again. In the world of Paradise this is essentially a
meet-cute.
Eventually Annie meets the rest of
the bikers and they tell her in certain terms what's happened the rest of the
world. They believe roughly two-thirds of the population of the country is dead
and the rest of America is in camps hiding. They've spent much of their time
trying to shut down chemical and nuclear plants to stop them from exploding. It's
clear that they have some idea of what's happening outside and that some of
them clearly know of the bunker in Colorado we spent the first season in –
which begs the question: how? They also
seem very concerned about something known as Alex, which they think is a bigger
threat.
Again the writers spend the season
premiere less concerned with the story then character development. They focus
on how these bikers prepare breakfast
which they call bacon and is actually wild boar. They show how Annie
seems fine showing them around the place, eventually warming to it, leading to
a last supper before they intend to head out. And Annie gives her last tour of
Graceland which is clearly a set up for the two of them to be put in a bedroom
together. Annie and Link spend the next few minutes awkwardly flirting, Annie
tells her joke which Link takes literally, Link asks Annie her favorite song
and when she tells him he takes it literally and eventually they have
sex. Its sweet and charming and heartfelt in a way we're just not used to for Paradise
so far and is all the more heartbreaking when Link tries desperately to get
Annie to come with them and her fear
paralyzes her from leaving. We then move forward another several months
with Annie now very pregnant and then she hears a plane crash. She rides out
there – to find Xavier.
In the second episode 'Mayday',
the writers again choose to play with us. We see Xavier flying, realize he got
trapped in a hailstorm and that he's lost his ability to see things. His plane
crashes and he fractures his knee. Eventually a young boy (we'll later learn he
was part of an academic tournament) rescues him and takes him back to the few
kids that are still alive. We've been told in the previous episode that in
Arkansas there are still nasty patches where civilization has broken down.
Guess where Xavier crashed?
The second episode confirms yet
again why Brown is one of the greatest actors of our era. We see that him
immediately going to his paternal instincts and trying to talk with these kids
and rationalize with them. He's willing to share his supplies but he needs the
rest of it to find his family. He tells them where he was and where his family
is and he's more than willing to read stories to them. And when one of them
says he wants to have Xavier's jacket when he dies Xavier just says:
"Okay. No book."
And after all the kids end up
going to sleep Xavier hears an ominous noise outside and even though he has a
busted leg he goes out anyway. There's a raider out there who wants to get to
the kids and even on one leg Xavier's training as a Secret Service agent is
just enough for him to prevail. When the kids come out he does everything to
make it clear he was there to protect them – and only then does he notices
there's a knife in him. (In a perfect touch Xavier starts to swear and then
stops because he doesn't want to offend their 'delicate ears'.) When he wakes
up the kids have deserted him with all his supplies, save the picture of his
children and a single word 'Sorry'.
In keeping with how Paradise and
indeed Dan Fogelman's previous series work Xavier's story in the present is
matched with a flashback to the past. It shows him suffering an injury in
training and ending up going to a hospital where Teri, his future wife is also
a patient who's about to undergo surgery of her own. Terri makes it very clear
she's career first, not interested in a wife and a kids, and not getting coffee
with the hot man in the bed next to her. Xavier takes the lesson, only saying
'hot man'.
But in the aftermath of her
surgery Terri is left temporarily unable to see and when Xavier first overhears
and then sees her panicking the next day he stays behind to look after her. We
have no idea how long he waits for her to regain her vision but we know it’s a
while and that makes the fact she will all the sweeter. The fact that this
intercut with Xavier mentioning his wife's name so many times that Annie, who's
taking him back to Graceland, thinks its his name is all the more heartbreaking
– particularly when we see it ends with him handcuffed to his bed.
I realize that its only been two
episodes and the show hasn't even come back to the bunker to show us what
Paradise looks like now. Yet its remarkable just how comfortable the writers
are at completely flipping the formula. Its been two full episodes and the only
series regular from the first season we've seen in any detail is Xavier. We
have no idea what's going on with Sinatra yet, no idea how any of the children
– Bradford's son and Presley and James are doing – no idea what the new power
structure is, no idea what the consequences have been. But I don't feel the
least bit impatient or cheated even in an eight episode season.
On This is Us Fogelman was
never afraid to shake up the format of the series from season to season, even
within the structure of it. Here he and his writers have far fewer episodes to
work with and even less time. (The series is scheduled to end after its third
season which has already begun to shoot.) And yet in a way I haven't really
seen any writers master since Lost have I seen a show which has done as
much to build a world so effectively and spend as much time focusing on
characters rather then plot. This show does have a heart and soul that so many
mythology based series have had in the last decade and that's something to
applaud rather than to be frustrated by.
For Season 2 it's expected that Paradise
will be more prominent in the Emmy nominations that will come out this week
then it was last year. How many remains an open question but no one is arguing
it doesn't deserve to be the way they were last year. But no matter how well or poorly it does I
will watch the whole thing anyway. I care less about what the Emmys do to honor
this series then how the whole story plays out. And that's a trademark of great
television.
My score: 5 stars.
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