4 min read
Six years ago, give or take a week, the world changed. I was sitting where I am now, with my laptop on my sister’s kitchen table. My newborn niece had just entered a dark, scary world where modern science and our common sense hadn’t caught up to whatever was in the air. We bunkered down. Time passed. I didn’t work in a hospital, so my summer in lockdown was quiet, slow; I remember still afternoons, sipping iced coffees purchased through plexiglass and wandering sun-drenched neighborhoods pretending I had somewhere to be. To borrow from Teri in the newest episode of Paradise: Those were beautiful, terrible years.
Today I’m back at my sister’s kitchen table for reasons that are boring and irrelevant. Any minute now, my once-baby niece will storm through the front door from a day at kindergarten. In its seventh episode, “The Final Countdown,” Paradise turns up the heat as it barrels towards its finale. Its allusions to COVID and its fallout have always been obvious. Still, Gary’s climactic breakdown about how the worst years for the world were the best of his life, and President Bradford’s part-academic, part-layman’s speech about the inevitable fall of empires, are some of the most potent post-pandemic meditations I’ve seen on TV. Even when Paradise buckles under its ambitions—primarily through a hilarious Europe needledrop—it’s hard to resist the show’s magnetic pull.
“The Final Countdown” begins and ends underground. Flashing back to President Bradford’s (James Marsden) first tour of the bunker, Anders (Erik Svedberg-Zelman) gives him and the viewer a caveman’s rundown of how the whole place works. The most important things he mentions are the emergency protocols. Through helpful Lord of the Rings metaphors, we learn how the bunker is prepared to withstand sieges from the outside and problems inside, like fires and oxygen loss. But we don’t know what happens when all of that happens at the same time.
Who is Alex? Or rather: What is Alex? We learn at the very end of Paradise this week.
Anders and Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) wave off Bradford’s concerns, given how unlikely all of that could happen. But Bradford, simple as he might appear, isn’t stupid. From the Roman Empire to the 1998 Chicago Bulls, he explains that history is littered with empires that thought themselves invincible. But time comes for us all. And Bradford was right to raise concerns. Because Link (Thomas Doherty) and his band of vigilantes are at the door ready to lay siege, and inside, Bradford’s son Jeremy (Charlie Evans), Anders, and Robinson (Krys Marshall) are attempting to brute-force the doors wide open.
And that’s just what the side characters are up to. Far away, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) enjoys an emotional reunion with Teri. Despite both actors’ abundant screen time together in season 1 via flashbacks, the triumphant low-angle camera angles and sun peeking through them now in season 2 are powerful reminders that these characters have not seen each other in the present time until now. I felt the weight of their reunion—and it feels good to see such a long-term story come to a close.
But business isn’t done. Or as Teri puts it, “Can’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble when today got trouble to spare.” (It’s such a good line that I am stealing it for my personal life.) Literally right after Teri and Xavier’s big reunion, Teri learns that Gary (Cameron Britton) has more or less kidnapped Bean (Benjamin Mackey), and Teri is resolved to save her adopted son. It’s cool how Xavier asks no questions. His time with Annie and caring for her unnamed baby (again, she’s going to be Hope, right?) has enlightened him to the new ways of the new world. Eventually, Xavier keeps Gary in his crosshairs when Teri and Gary have one last confrontation. Cameron Britton puts on the performance of the episode, as Gary pleads that the little shelter he and Ennis built was all he had, and that he fears the ever-changing world will leave him behind again. The compassionate Teri talks him down to relinquish Bean. The three leave Gary behind, back at the post office where he’s always been. I fear what Gary will do when left to his own devices; I hope Paradise gives him a happier ending than he even deserves.
Paradise risks overstuffing “The Final Countdown” to the point you can practically see the seams holding it all together. But the show’s breathless pace makes it easy to digest the bombardment of plot, plot, and more plot. Presley and Hadley’s plan to break Jeremy out (unaware that he’s doing just fine, actually) is brought to a halt when their elevator is shut down. Gabriela’s (Sarah Shahi) suspicions of Sinatra lead her to the name “Alex,” which puts her in the target sights of our resident sociopath Jane (Nicole Brydo Bloom), who is uncharacteristically taken out (maybe even killed?) by a psychotherapist laying Home Alone-style booby traps. To say nothing of Sinatra’s son Dylan, long presumed dead, potentially being Link. And yes, we learn the identity of Alex. It’s no living person, but the codename for the nuclear reactor that Sinatra goes to to close out the episode. Now it makes sense why Link demanded to see it. He knew it was a nuclear reactor, and he wanted to shut it down. And his maybe-mom was standing in his way.
Paradise had a lot going for it this week—maybe too much. But even so, the deeper, personal moments made it all worthwhile: Gary revealing his wounds, Teri and Xavier finally reuniting, even Sinatra rekindling her love with her husband as she tells him that Dylan might still be alive. Paradise overcomes its corny namesake music cue and avalanche of plot to assert itself as one of the TV shows we look forward to each week. But no reign lasts forever, and if Paradise keeps things up, I fear it just might implode.
