‘Paradise’ Review: Season 2 Is Stuck in Purgatory

Episode 7, “The Day,” is the worst thing that could’ve happened to “Paradise.” You remember “The Day,” don’t you? It’s Season 1’s penultimate flashback episode; the one that jumps back in time to show exactly what went down when a volcano erupted, billions of people died, and a lucky few — notably secret service agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) and his charge, Cal Bradford (James Marsden), the president of the United States — escaped to an underground bunker in Colorado. It’s the episode everyone loves, or at least what everyone recognizes as “serious,” which is too often conflated with “good.”

The main problem is that “Paradise” isn’t a serious show. It’s a goofy show. It’s a show in which our hero’s name (Xavier) is a mumbled letter away from “savior.” It’s a show that won’t stop referencing “Die Hard” while trying to play out its own version of “Die Hard.” It’s a show built from a massive twist — “Whoa, the President is dead and all of humanity has been confined to a bunker designed to look like the Pacific Palisades?” — and then it just keeps building. 

Do you like Xavier’s grumpy fellow agent, Billy (Jon Beavers), after spending Episode 4 witnessing his tragic backstory? Too bad, he’s dead! Isn’t the Wii-addicted Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom) kinda sweet and fun? Nope, she’s a psycho-killer working for Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson)! (Oh yeah, the Big Bad is named Sinatra — goofy!) Too bad about Xavier’s wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma), drowning in the mega-tsunami that also wiped out life on the Earth’s surface, huh? Oops, guess again! Teri did NOT die, and there’s plenty of other people above-ground, too!

As stupid-fun goes, Season 1 largely delivers. The only real bummer besides Episode 7 is the finale’s dud of a big reveal: The president’s killer was… that guy? The librarian? And he did it because he already tried to assassinate President James Marsden once, failed big time, and yet somehow gets another chance? Sure, OK, why not? In a goofy-ass science-fiction murder-mystery like “Paradise,” why not pick a character no one suspects because he’s barely in the show and who has to break out of a high-security prison before he breaks into the most highly fortified shelter on the planet?

Which brings us back to Episode 7 and its super-serious shadow. Goofy-ass shows can survive a silly ending. Laugh, shake it off, and get back to the good times. But serious shows — serious mysteries — only work when all the pieces click into place, and the seventh and eighth pieces of “Paradise” don’t fit. If you’re gonna get scary and solemn all of a sudden, you better earn it, and what comes before and after Episode 7 isn’t laying the groundwork for “A House of Dynamite.” If the tonal whiplash doesn’t zap your spirit, the double-bummer of a relentlessly morbid penultimate episode and its impossibly bonkers finale has to leave you questioning whether Season 2 can get back on track.

Alas, it does not. It’s stuck somewhere between its goofy, twisty old self, and a more deadpan, somber version that lacks the urgency and potency of its inspiration. No matter your preferred “Paradise,” Season 2 comes up short.

Out of necessity, Season 2 brings changes — big changes. For one, there’s no new murder to solve. The engine driving Season 1 is gone, and Season 2 doesn’t cook up another whodunit to fill the gap. There’s also not another premise-altering twist. Instead, the ensemble cast splits up, a bunch of new characters are introduced, and the story slows down to compensate. It’s not a murder-mystery anymore; it’s a survival thriller with plenty of pitstops for character drama.

Shailene Woodley in ‘Paradise’Courtesy of Ser Baffo / Disney

None of this, mind you, is Sterling K. Brown’s fault. Although he is an executive producer, I’ve never met an actor who thinks the way to make their show better is by featuring less of themself — like, way less. Across the seven episodes screened for critics, Xavier appears, at best, 50 percent of the time, which is a real shame since a) Brown has always been the main reason to watch, and b) after six seasons of “This Is Us,” he’s well-versed in navigating creator Dan Fogelman’s turbulent emotional tempo. (Not many actors could survive Season 1’s three-episode swing from “Die Hard” parody to “Fail Safe” remake to “The Bone Collector” vibes, but Brown’s got it, man.)

Granted, some ceded ground is required in order to rebuild the story engine, but Season 2 still overindulges in comparably flat characters whose arcs are stuffed with unnecessary backstories and thin melodrama. There’s Annie (Shailene Woodley), a security guard at Graceland who holes up in Elvis’ old pad to survive the apocalypse. Soon, she’ll meet Link (Thomas Doherty), who tries to get her to join his caravan of do-gooders. Later, there will be a mysterious mailman (Cameron Britton) and a slew of children in need.

All of these new faces play their part in Fogelman’s people-centric world-building, and all of the actors embodying them do a fine job unpacking their characters’ hidden depths. It’s just so few of them lead anywhere exciting, shocking, or even all that significant. At least two could be excised from the season (along with their hours of screentime) without losing much more than a few colorful details. They’re simply not as dynamic as they need to be when they also carry minimal impact for the plot.

This isn’t an “all filler, no killer” argument, if only because “filler” is a term that’s been misapplied into futility. “Paradise” Season 2 is lacking a killer, along with the natural momentum generated by the build-up to their reveal in the finale, and it does feel aimless and laborious at once. It’s an assembly job — by the seventh episode (the final one screened for critics), Season 2 is clearly building toward something, it’s just not clear what that will be.

If the series has a unifying thesis, it’s circling the idea that people are inherently good but social systems are inherently flawed; that we need others to find happiness, but our paths toward connection are broken. That’s all well and good, but the series still needs a sturdy narrative to hold it all together, rather than ping-ponging between random subjects offering trite, emotionally hollow morality lessons. “Paradise” covers a lot of ground, physically, in Season 2, but it doesn’t appear any closer to finding its identity.

Wake me when it’s fun again.

Grade: C

“Paradise” Season 2 premieres Monday, February 23 with three episodes. New episodes will be released weekly through the finale, Episode 8, on March 30.