The final episode of “This Is Us” premiered on May 24 2022. As the credits rolled for the series conclusion, it left me with the irreplaceable, blank feeling of departing with the beloved characters and their stories.
Three years later, “This Is Us” writer and creator Dan Fogelman released “Paradise.” The show felt like the perfect match for someone missing that emotional, six-season rollercoaster.
When a supervolcano under the Antarctic ice sheet activates, head Secret Service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) evacuated President Cal Bradford (James Marsden), his two children and 25,000 hand-picked people to a city-sized bunker in the Colorado mountains. After Bradford’s assassination in episode one, Xavier must uncover the corruption and truth behind his friend’s death. Season 1’s finale revealed that the killer wasn’t from inside the bunker and that Collins’ wife Teri (Enuka Okuma) and others had survived the disaster.
This season expanded the setting beyond the bunker, which made intertwining scenes inside and outside the bunker necessary. Outside the bunker, Xavier searches for Teri after he successfully opened the hangar doors in the bunker and escaped by plane to the post-apocalyptic outer world. Inside the bunker, the morally gray Samantha Redomond (Julianne Nicholson), codenamed Sinatra, is dealing with rising tensions in an unstable government and threats from a resistance group outside of the bunker led by a scientist named Link (Thomas Doherty).
Brown, a “This Is Us” veteran himself, and Nicholson remained the driving forces behind the series. Brown’s ability to play a husband determined to reunite his family and Nicholson’s calm and calculated Sinatra work as a great contrast between each other.
“Paradise” takes another highlight of this season straight from “This Is Us.” This season continued the use of flashbacks, woven into the story to drive the character development and explain why a character acts a certain way. The flashbacks always connect through a small detail or character to the current situation. My favorite flashback scenes were learning how Xavier and Teri first met in a hospital and discovering the psychopathic Agent Jane Driscoll’s (Nicole Brydon Bloom) upbringing.
Although not as present in this season, Marsden's performance is one of my favorite aspects of the show because he is exclusively in flashbacks. Bradford’s lack of intelligence, paired with his charm and humanity, makes for a refreshing but alarming take on what a president can be.
The first episode titled “Graceland” centers around a failed doctor turned tour guide named Annie, who survived the disaster by living in Elvis Presley’s Graceland Mansion. It comes off as a waste when, in episode three, Annie dies after giving birth. Usually, when an episode was centered on a person who had a meaningful impact like the episodes titled “The Mailman” and “Jane”, it made for an intriguing story. Using an entire episode for someone who dies before the halfway point of a season is disappointing, especially when there’s only eight episodes.
However, Siddharta Khosla’s score for “Paradise” did not disappoint. Khosla, who also wrote the “This Is Us” soundtrack, stuck with Season 1's soothing theme that advances with the emotionally driven plot. Unfortunately, I disliked the actual songs used. This season featured covers of songs like “The Final Countdown” by Europe and “Hound Dog” by Elvis Presley. It reminded me of using a slowed down version of a popular song in a movie trailer to invoke nostalgia and excitement, however, these iterations felt too forced and overly dramatic.
While still a compelling story, the plot took a direction I wasn’t expecting. At the end of the season, it is revealed that there is a quantum computer, named Alex, deep below the Colorado airport. Alex has unclearly defined and confusing capabilities which include problem solving, predicting outcomes, creating anomalies and possibly even time travel. Xavier and Link have these recurring supernatural visions of each other, presumably from Alex, that have not been explained yet. If used correctly, Alex could potentially help redevelop the world.
Season three is confirmed to be the final season, and though I wasn’t hoping for an AI-centered plotline, I’m looking forward to the show’s conclusion. With a strong first season and a sufficient second season, “Paradise” is definitely worth checking out.
