Review by C.J. Bunce
Just when you think the second season of Hulu’s apocalypse series Paradise has tied up all its loose ends, a new trope sneaks into the picture: time travel. The best series yet to deliver an apocalypse with its one-hour world-ender last season (reviewed here), and a solid tie with Station Eleven (reviewed here) as the best post-apocalyptic thriller yet, Paradise wraps everything up only to leave the possibility of bringing back the entire cast for a third season, and that mechanism comes as a nice surprise, especially when the show seemed to have played out all of your typical dystopian tropes. Underground bunker? Check. Hand-to-hand fight to the death? Check. Survival camps? Check. Birth in dystopia? Check. Zombies? Thankfully, no. But the real life menace is lurking out there. That’s A.I., the very thing Americans and the rest of the world seems to be gleefully and stupidly embracing every single day. How stupid can humans get? It looks like Paradise is ready to take that on next–in a Season 3, which has just been confirmed to be in pre-production, to be filming soon.
A hero willing to do anything to keep his family safe. A villain who is thinking so far ahead she is outwitting even the viewer, and may not be the horrific person we thought her to be all along. A U.S. President who was really using his gifts the best he could to look out for his people. A ragtag group of survivors who will stop at nothing to save the world even after The End comes. And a young woman who wanted to be a doctor but instead found herself as a tour guide, and her legacy tied everyone else together.
As much as the first season of Paradise seemed to be a play on several Philip K. Dick stories, including Time Out of Joint, the original story of The Truman Show, this second season of the show uses Dick’s unique ways of tying together impossible things to really dig into the science fiction that supports what could have been just another drama. Somehow with fewer clocked hours this show accomplishes what The Last of Us and Lost only promised. The delivery is on par with Prime Video’s production of Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, and the connections and twists are similar, too.
This season the fact that the cast and the script keeps your attention is an achievement, because the story could have gone anywhere. The fact that the writers chose to embrace its science fiction origins more than the first season means it’s now not just another drama in science ficti0n dress (like Arrival, Annihilation, and Interstellar). The first season’s final two episodes were no joke, and the series only gets better from there.
As with last year it is the finale that becomes the best episode of the season, delivering all the satisfaction you’d hope for after another seven hours of a topsy turvy political thriller. And it does so with a punch. Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins is the hero we all hope to have on our side when the chips are down. But is Julianne Nicholson’s Sinatra the kind of leader we want or the kind of leader we need? Something in between? Sarah Shahi’s psychiatrist Dr. Torabi turned out to be smarter than she seemed, and stronger, too. Viewers also got a window into the late President, played by James Marsden, who only gets better in flashbacks from his character’s past.
The real surprise this year was the interweaving of a new character into the story. That was Shailene Woodley as Annie Clay, who only appeared with her story spliced into three episodes. Does she represent today’s disenfranchised, disaffected young adult? She’s smart enough to be a doctor, but the world sees that her drive goes elsewhere. What makes her meet up with Dylan, played by Peter Gorbis? Was it fate? Destiny? Part of a plan Sinatra dreamed up, or will dream up someday? What’s with the theme of Elvis Presley woven through this dystopia? Is it only a mere Easter egg from a fan in the writers room, or is it one of those coincidences that is the essential tie to the story found in time travel tales like those of Connie Willis? Will we find out next season?
Oscar-nominated actor Sterling K. Brown (Hotel Artemis, The Predator, Black Panther, Marshall, Medium, Supernatural) delivers the talent of juggling all kinds of crazy as a sympathetic husband, father, and colleague as the backbone of the series. This year Emmy Award winning actress Julianne Nicholson (The Outsider, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, Blonde, Mare of Easttown) is the perfect co-star as she emerges from a coma, thanks to a bullet from last year’s badass surprise character Jane, played by Nicole Brydon Bloom (The Gilded Age).
Two seasons in and the writers have killed off some major characters, but we’re in sci-fi world now and anything is possible. At one point in the finale nobody would be surprised to see Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap emerge from behind a curtain. Hopefully all these actors can return to show us some more good sci-fi next season. Directors Glenn Ficarra (Cats and Dogs, DC League of Super-Pets), John Requa (I Love You Phillip Morris, Jungle Cruise), Hanelle Culpepper (Star Trek Discovery, Star Wars: The Acolyte), Liza Johnson (The Last of Us) and Ken Olin (Sleepy Hollow), and writers John Hoberg (Galavant), Stephen Markley (Only Murders in the Building), and Nadra Widatalla (Mrs. Davis) and the rest of the writers room delivered some great television.
Get ready for some great sci-fi. Even better than last season, this year it arrives as one of the year’s best TV dramas and best science fiction series. Both seasons of Paradise are now streaming on Hulu, and the third second season is in the works could be streaming as early as next year.
