Cryptopia

ABC will air Paradise, which bowed in January on its sister platform Hulu, over eight Mondays starting tonight at 10 p.m. ET.



I’m not sure I recommend it even to those who love everything in the pilot because,
for me, it all falls apart too much as the season concludes.

The series has a big twist at the end of its first episode that reviewers have rightly if sometimes backhandedly praised for at least not coming halfway through the season or more. A number of recent shows have belated reveals that reframe their plot or their very premise — for example, 2023’s miniseries The Crowded Room (which I’ve not seen) and the first season of 2024’s Sugar (which I have and I still might write about), both from Apple TV+. Game-changing information can undoubtedly blow a viewer’s mind while blowing up the heretofore perceived status quo in exciting ways: see USA’s Mr. Robot early on, HBO’s Westworld maybe, and for sure NBC’s The Good Place in the hands-down best rule-breaking “Holy shirt!” cliffhanger ever cliffhung on a half-hour comedy. Yet when you take so long to get to a twist, or in another recent trend use most or all of your first season just to set up the actual series premise, you risk not only turning away viewers before they experience full-on the show you ostensibly wanted to make but possibly alienating viewers who enjoyed the series they were watching prior to the colossal switcheroo.

(Now I really want to write about Sugar. Meantime, I’ll point you toward Alan Sepinwall’s review for Rolling Stone, which quotes a hilarious post on these phenomena citing a hypothetical series called Surf Dracula. While it doesn’t spoil the twist in Sugar it does spoil that there is a twist, but so does the paragraph of mine above plus, you know, a fair bit of the past year on the Internet for those who read about television.)

Paradise begins with a Secret Service agent finding the present or perhaps former President of the United States — my recollection is that it was ambiguous, due in part
to the apparently suburban locale — dead in his own bedroom, his wall safe open and empty. The agent, named Xavier Collins and played by Sterling K. Brown, is shown to have had a solid, trusting relationship with the President, Cal Bradford, played by James Marsden, until a rift in the fairly recent past, but they’re still paired up when Bradford’s murdered. The circumstances of the killing and the duo’s falling-out are not, as you’d guess from what I’ve written so far, the only questions raised and perpetuated as the season progresses.

I was immediately of the mind once the big twist came that it sorta made the show
less interesting because the specific character dynamics set up were enough to hook me, but after a couple of further significant reveals at the season’s midpoint — one a rather predictable twist upon the big twist — I still found it worth watching for the cast ere the conspiracies started to eat themselves. Said cast includes Jon Beavers and Nicole Brydon Bloom as agents under Collins; Krys Marshall as Nicole Robinson, their higher-up; Sarah Shahi as Dr. Gabriela Torabi; and Julianne Nicholson as a major player in all that’s going on, Samantha Redmond, codenamed Sinatra for reasons told, not shown, and honestly just attempted vibe.

Folks have mentioned Paradise’s similarity to Lost in that flashbacks are essential to the narrative and it could fit into the “mystery box” category. There’s even at least one crucial hatch! You can also broadly compare its first episode’s revelation that reorients our perspective and the unfurling backstory to This Is Us, likewise created by Dan Fogelman — not, as I typed instinctively, Dan Fogelberg, although music does end up playing an integral part. The President’s awful taste in pop music is admittedly lampshaded, but Paradise repeatedly hit the bullseye on songs I absolutely loathe to
an extent that would be funny if it weren’t so exactly nails-on-the-chalkboard.

Chunks of this got written piecemeal during the season and, given my vague disappointment with how it ended on top of how difficult it is to gather my thoughts right now, discussion of plot details can wait for any comments that arise.

[Update: Since episodes will be edited for time and, to at least some degree, content for broadcast on ABC, streaming on Hulu and/or Disney+ if your account’s connected is likely the better experience for those who opt to check it out.]


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