Paradise: Season 2

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I will admit that while watching Season 1 of Paradise I thought that it might just be a weekly procedural. Until things took a jag. And then I kinda got into it because it progressed at an insane, breakneck speed while somehow simultaneously spinning its wheels. It didn’t worry about small details at all. Like at all. It was scene, yada, scene, yada, scene. And never left enough breathing room to question what the hell just happened. Those of us with a pause button, however, knew the truth. The show was never really interested in details. Or realism. Or anything other than a propulsive plot that eventually got us from point A to point B with some absolutely insane things in between. Now, if this is something you enjoy, then congrats, you have another season of TV to watch. Not quite as batshit as the first, mind you, but in parts equally as dumbfounding and disinterested in anything other than moving shit along and hitting milestones.

I believe we left season one with our hero, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown), fleeing the underground cave bunker in an airplane that I’m not really sure he’s qualified to pilot. But, hey, see my prior paragraph and the whole thing where we’re just asked to go with it. And go with it we do. But, in semi-disorienting fashion, we start season two with the lovely Annie Clay (Shailene Woodley) in the midst of her medical residency. Or internship — I can never remember which is which. It doesn’t much matter, as she soon drops out and gets a job as a docent at Graceland. Because of course she does. She is there when the big nuclear / EMP blast from season one happens and is basically confined to a basement room in Graceland filled with doomsday prepper supplies that I’m sure totally exists. Hint: it does not. But in the world of Paradise, we just gloss over this silliness and assume that somehow there’s a place in a museum that is stocked with enough food and supplies to last several months for absolutely no reason. Anyhow, a couple years after the blast a band of dudes show up at Graceland because they know there are vintage cars there that perhaps wouldn’t have been affected by the EMP thing? I mean, c’mon. There are plenty of classic car dealerships dotting the country that would have a lot more options than Elvis’ garage. But, hey, this is Paradise and why question the absurdities? Unlike a lot of post-apocalyptic dramas, these guys are neither cannibals nor looking to rape and murder a young woman alone in countryside. Which, frankly, felt kind of good. Not everyone would turn evil come the end of the world. They eventually take off, but leave behind some consensual sperm inside our dear Annie — well, actually just one dude with the curious name Link (Thomas Doherty) leaves it there. And you’ll never believe what happens to these irresponsible kids! Honestly, despite all of this not at all contributing to the first season, and being way more languid and take-its-time than the previous episodes of the show, I kinda dug it. Woodley is a calmer and more measured presence than we’re used to on this series. But, sadly, our time with her is relatively short. So, back to the grind.

Essentially the rest of the season involves Xavier trying to find his wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), out in the wilderness. While we get flashbacks of her experience when everything went down and what she’s been up to until the present. Honestly, this is where a bit of the hustle could have been slowed down. Not that they didn’t spend time on it — and god knows I don’t want a whole season or two of Teri and her crew milling around on the farm fighting off zombies and bad guys a la The Walking Dead — but, while the build up to the apocalypse was well done, the time during it and emerging from it had a sleepy-bear quality where they emerged into the sunlight and everything was just cool and fine. They spent so much time and effort talking about how they put together their own mini bunker plan, recruiting for certain roles and whatnot, but then the show’s typical fast-forward thing happened and we just were there at the end of that plot line and the end of the world was just a blip that required staying inside for a little.

The thing is, because Xavier is out running around in the world and we have left the rest of the cast from season one in the bunker, the second season becomes a bit disjointed. And, at least to me, it seems like the focus on the bunker becomes scattershot and even less detailed in its writing. Some of this may be on account of the fact that the series is clearly trying to add in that mysticism that I thought might be creeping in around the edges in the first season, but was never made explicit. Because, yes, there is definitely some time travel or multiversal wizardry going on here. So it may be the writers’ way to hide the ball a bit on what’s going on by making things kind of vague and murky, but I honestly think it’s because they know the A plot is Xavier and, while all the stuff that happens in the bunker while Xavier is gone will factor 100 percent into season three, it just all felt muddled and a bit stuck in the mud. There was some sort of underground brig that was meant to hold prisoners of what I think was supposed to be a popular uprising against Julianne Nicholson, but was more like a high school cafeteria run by the keystone cops. And also had a Death Star-like weakness built into it, maybe? And, somehow with all the brilliant planning that went into the technical marvel that is the bunker, the whole thing can be brought down by pressing button A and button B at the same time? Like giving the computer competing instructions causes catastrophic meltdown. Okay, seems like really shoddy planning and something that the world’s most talented bunker builder dude might not overlook. But such is the world of Paradise, where really smart people do absolutely stupid, asinine or psychotic things on the regular. But, yes, there is some sort of universal AI temporal transference going on here. And, honestly, I’m all for it. I wish that a suspicious nose bleed wasn’t a portent for all of it — as that is like the biggest trope in all of media history — but I’m happy to see the show swing for the fences. Yeah, it’s not a procedural. Nor is it a straight-forward family drama or even totally a post-apocalyptic thriller. It’s trending sci-fi mystery now. And a sci-fi that is like 99% fiction, but who’s to say I can’t be won over despite all the absolutely unexplained nonsense that happens in this whizbang of a series? I will say, season three is gonna be off the chain. People still say that in 2026, right?

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