Hulu’s sci-fi Lost successor, Paradise, wrapped its season 2 this past week with a truly fitting finale; one that was redemptive, action-packed, and dramatic in all the best ways, staying true to the sophomore-season high that’s kept viewers, like me, hooked each week.
If you’re like me, you might even think this season topped the first which is saying something (less James Marsden screen time, after all). But the more I get inside the minds of creator Dan Fogelman and EP Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us), the more I want to know these characters. In any high-stakes, forced-proximity narrative, you have to be invested in the characters or else what’s the point?
This season introduced us to new characters like Dylan/Link (Thomas Doherty, Dove Cameron’s ex and also co-starred in The Descendents with her), Annie (Shailene Woodley, Aaron Rodger’s ex and also famous from her debut as a teen in the show, The Secret Life of an American Teenager) and of course the sad-but-psycho Gary (Mindhunter’s Cameron Britton) in another chillingly villainous turn here as someone hung up on Terry, Xavier’s wife.
As with any change and my brain’s reflexive disdain for having to adapt to new names, faces, connections in the context of a story, I looked upon these new characters initially as interlopers, feeling protective of the expansive Paradise universe, and rejected them, however I was eventually won over.
Annie’s arc, in particular, as the caretaker of Elvis’s Graceland in the first few episodes was a beautifully told vignette. I respect that Fogelman took us on the offramp here and exposed us to another character and one with lasting ties to Xavier and Dylan/Link, despite her brief existence on the show. The message being: Life outside the bunker, contrary to what S1 led us to think, continued, was tough, and people persisted - well the strong anyways.
Finale spoilers ahead.
So here’s the stuff I really dug in the finale:
Jane & Dr. Torabi
In the penultimate episode, Dr. Torabi stabs Jane—the rogue agent/ commando-style villain who was basically killing everyone—in self defense. And yes, it happened in the very same shower where Torabi had her first-season steamy shower sex scene with Xavier (Brown’s character). Talk about trauma though because fast forward to S2 finale and that Torabi-Xavier-Teri meet cute where Xavier introduces Torabi to Teri, his wife, as “his therapist.” If looks could kill…Torabi might be gunning for Xavier.
Oh and to boot…The beginning of the episode reveals Jane is still very much playing the part of a stabbed, unconscious person on the floor of Torabi’s shower. By the end, poof, she’s gone. WHAT??
Sinatra’s Redemption in which Sinatra becomes Samantha Once Again:
Since Sinatra gave the kill order for Xavier’s daughter, Presley, in a desperate bid to reclaim Cal Bradford’s Wii in season one’s cliffhanger—proof that she hasn’t always acted entirely soundly—she has been on a redemption arc this season. That arc is underscored by the fact that she was shot by Jane in the season one finale and spends the beginning of season two recovering.
The “Alex” time-space quantum continuum definitely needs further exploration in S3. Arguably, it was one of S2’s weaker plot lines. But based on what we know so far, Dylan—the child of Sinatra and Samantha Redmond, who was believed to have died in a tragedy involving him eating ice cream atop a mechanical pony and collapsing—actually survived in this timeline. He went on to become the leader of the rebels and the bunker outsiders and Annie’s baby daddy. Which means that Sinatra is a grandma.
Bloody Noses Are a Symptom of the Time Travel (?): Apart from his date of birth matching Sinatra’s son Dylan and his blue eyes, Dylan also shares a penchant for bloody noses with his possible mother, Sinatra. But then, in the finale, X, or Xavier, gets one too. A bloody nose, that is, which blows this theory out of the water. I think it’s more likely a result of the space-time travel.
And remember Billy, Jane’s fiancé, whom she kills in the first season because she’s the worst? He had bloody noses too.
It’s dry in the bunker or it’s Quantum mechanics VISIONS! It took me till the season finale to figure out that Xavier’s season’s-long vision of Dylan/Link leading him out of the bunker was actually a flash forward. I shouted this out loud at the beginning of the finale and was so proud of myself. It’s the small moments, right?
Xavier/X Becomes the Leader of the Free World or Something Like This
Sinatra passes her bent baton to Xavier/X before hitting the self-detonate button, realizing that Alex has deemed X the one who must save the world. A card marked “AWAITING USER: X” with numbers provides instructions and coordinates to a second bunker under Denver Airport, which houses a quantum computer designed to save the world. So I guess this is next season’s plot…
Paradise Viewers: What did you think of this season?
I know I didn’t write about Jeremy, Cal’s son, and the prisoner’s escape plot, but that story line was good too.
What were some of the other subplots you enjoyed and what were the loose ends that need some tying up? What are you hoping for next season?
The dark suburban mid-life murder mystery DTF. St. Louis, starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, and Linda Cardellini, is a slow burn, but by episode three you are completely locked in.
Harbour stars as Floyd, a down-on-his-luck but not defeated ASL interpreter who works with Bateman’s Clark who is news meteorologist on the news. The real romance is between the bros - Clark and Floyd - and not Carol (Floyd’s wife) and Clark despite their sexual affair.
What lingers isn’t the murder, but the platonic love between Clark and Floyd. In a show that frames Floyd’s death in a public locker room at the Kevin Kline pool (cause yeah, Kline is from St. Louis), surrounded by gay paraphernalia, choosing tenderness over suspicion feels almost subversive.
The show asks us to question Floyd’s potential bisexuality through an innocent encounter with a gay man named Modern Love, a DTF (Down to Fuck) app user. It demands that we question our own complicity in thinking his double life led to a seedy murder. This is somehow a more convenient truth than the idea that two men can love each other purely platonically, and be affectionate without sex being in the mix.
When Bateman’s Clark says, “I loved him,” under interrogation, and Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday’s detective characters look at him dumbfounded, making him repeat it, the moment defies all of society’s conventions. Above all, it challenges us even more than the whodunnit itself—the question of who murdered Floyd—which is meant to engross us.
When Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn joined forces on their first film, the workplace romantic comedy Woman of the Year in 1942, as the story goes, they didn’t like each other at first, but within weeks, they were enamored. The good news is we are the benefactors of their fiery dynamic and get to watch it unfold onscreen in Woman of the Year, a gender reversal film, in which Hepburn plays a worldly polyglot reporter, and daughter of a diplomat who was raised abroad, and Tracy, a working class sports beat reporter.
Woman of the Year is classic opposites attract love story and within days or weeks (who can tell?) of them meeting but not really dating too much, Tracy’s Sam asks Hepburn’s Tess to be his wife. The two marry and, as anyone might predict, Tess’s all-consuming work lifestyle and lack of boundaries begin to strain the relationship, only compounded by Sam’s inability to communicate his frustrations. It’s infuriating but surprisingly real—until Tess brings home a Greek orphan in a last-ditch attempt to save the marriage. Her desire to conform to a traditional female role leads her to neglect her career, culminating in a drawn-out scene of her making eggs for Sam that stretches to 20 minutes and could have been done in two. All said, it’s an interesting film, even if the last 40 minutes go downhill rendering the message a bit muddled.
So This is Happening is HAPPENING: It’s my workplace romance (think Bridget Jones Diary, if Bridget were Jewish and lived in New Jersey) novel! Excited to share that it will be published by the incredible Alisa Kennedy Jones’s Empress Editions. Catch a glimpse of my editing process and a sneak peek passage:
If you haven’t pre-ordered the YA coming-of-age romance See Dot Smile, what are you waiting for? It’s a beautiful story centered around Dot, a high school Senior, and her group of friends. It explores friendship, sexuality and love - platonic and romantic. Not to mention the uncertainty of moving on at a tender age. Brought to you by Meg Oolders and also being published by Empress! [Pre Order on Amazon]
I’ll be moderating a historical romance author panel, “What’s Old is New,” on May 16th for the Romancing New England & Ashland Library 5th Annual Romance Festival. Sign up. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do…
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