Summary
Paradise Episode 1 would serve as a functional premiere for a murder-mystery, but a striking last-minute twist tips the whole show on its head.
Dan Fogelman has a thing for flipping a premiere on its head, and the last-minute twist of Paradise is an absolute doozy. Episode 1, “Wildcat is Down”, proceeds like a compelling but otherwise rote murder mystery, in which the president of the United States is assassinated under the nose of his Secret Service team, the head of which, Sterling K. Brown’s Xavier Collins, he had a complex relationship with. But by the end, it has introduced a high-concept premise bordering on outright science-fiction, and everything you’ve seen in that opening hour suddenly feels a lot more significant.
I didn’t go back and rewatch the Paradise premiere, but I was tempted to. The whole thing’s weird and slightly off-kilter from the jump, which I was fine with, but in the context of the closing five minutes I found myself re-examining every clue and eccentricity, trying to deduce what was signposting the reveal and what was building up further mysteries down the line. I still can’t tell, which is surely the point.
A Day in Paradise
The early stages of “Wildcat is Down” are about introducing normalcy, which is the first clue that what we’re dealing with is anything but normal. It unfolds in the typical manner of an everyday thriller so convincingly, though, that you’d never guess where it’s leading.
So, Collins. We know he was shot recently because he has a bullet wound scar and a flashback later details the incident. We know he’s in charge of protecting President Cal Bradford (James Marsden – Dead to Me; Disenchanted), which flashbacks also reiterate, and we know he’s raising his two kids, Presley – named after Elvis – and James alone since it becomes clear quickly that something happened to his wife that the president himself is involved in.
Collins trusts his fellow agent Billy Pace (Jon Beavers) more than the others, who include a newbie named Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom – Apartment 1BR), who seems to be in a secret relationship with Pace. As it happens, his paranoia is well-founded, because when he reports for duty in the president’s palatial residence, he finds him dead.
Diversity Hire
Paradise Episode 1 uses flashbacks frequently to explore how Collins’ relationship with Cal began and developed, starting as far back as his initial interview in the Oval Office. Cal is all charisma but zero political acumen. He’s forthright about wanting to hire Collins because he’s Black, which means good optics for a Southern politician facing an unexpected second term, but it also becomes clear that he’s well-liked at home and abroad despite – or potentially because of – his refusal to play by the rules.
This presumably extends to his personal life. He smokes, he drinks, he continuously offers Collins liquor while he’s on duty under the guise of a test that he keeps passing by refusing it, and his marriage is falling apart. On this last thing, at least, Collins can relate. After spending so much time focusing on his career, his wife, Teri, now wants to focus on hers.
You get the sense Collins likes Cal. He does indeed take a bullet for him, which explains the scar, but that’s also his job, so you can’t read too much into it. But you get enough from the flashbacks to know that it’s as much of a personal shock as anything else when Collins finds Cal dead on his bedroom floor.
Sterling K. Brown in Paradise | Image via Hulu
An Inside Job
Cal’s death is deeply mysterious. His personal safe is empty. He had welcomed a woman into his bedroom recently. The security cameras cut off for a couple of hours, which went undetected by everyone, and the last person to see him alive was Collins himself. Whoever killed him knew enough about his protection detail to kill him under their noses.
It’s around here that Paradise begins to suggest that Collins might be the prime suspect. His boss, Agent Robinson, with whom everyone seems to know that Cal was having an affair, visibly can’t stand him. In the flashbacks, we see Collins and Cal interact after some indeterminate amount of time has passed, and the relationship is testier. Cal is drunker. Collins is bristling.
Cal eventually asks if Collins will ever be able to forgive him, and after a monologue about how he stays awake at night wondering about the answer to questions he’ll now never be able to ask his wife, he answers rather ominously: “You want to know when I’ll forgive you? I’ll forgive you when I can sleep again. And I’ll sleep again when you’re dead.”
Yikes.
The Big Reveal
The premiere of Paradise builds to a huge reveal. The flashbacks are juxtaposed with a present-day sequence in which Collins runs through town while the camera pans to all the aspects of it that are a little bit abnormal. People are paying for things with high-tech wristbands. A worker is standing in the pond, the water of which only goes up to his ankles, winding up mechanical ducks. This postcard-perfect snippet of suburban America, with the manicured lawns and white picket fences, it’s all fake; a simulacrum.
A flashback to a meeting in the Oval Office gives it away. Cal gives Collins clearance for information that almost nobody else in the world is privy to. Humanity is facing an extinction-level event. And the only means of survival is a gigantic, secretive subterranean city, built under Colorado to be indistinguishable from the real thing. This is where Collins is, holding a stolen packet of the president’s cigarettes, marked with a big X like the loot on a pirate’s treasure map. On one of the cigarettes inside is a number, 812092. As Collins contemplates it, he looks up at the sky, where a lamp impersonates the sun, and the seams open up to the real world miles above.
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