‘Paradise’ Episode 3 Recap – Hulu’s Thriller Continues to Deliver Game-Changing Twists

First and foremost, “The Architect of Social Well-Being” is a deeply cynical title. If someone were to offer you that role – which, we learn in Paradise Episode 3, is Gabriela Tarabi’s official job – you’d immediately suspect something was afoot, and if nothing else in its first three episodes, Hulu’s thriller has proved that something is indeed afoot.

After the premiere flipped the script and the second episode colored in some of the contours by fleshing out who was who, “The Architect of Social Well-Being” widens the scope a little more to reveal more about Tarabi, provide some illuminating background on Collins’s relationship with his father, and once again deliver a game-changing last-minute twist. Phew.

Collins Finds an Ally

Now he’s no longer the prime suspect in Cal’s murder, Collins has a bit more leeway to investigate it. And while he knows he can’t trust Sinatra, he isn’t entirely sure who he can trust. Since Dr. Tarabi helped him out during the interrogation in Episode 2, he suspects she might be an ally and goes to see her, leaving Pace to be his eyes and ears back at the White House – a decision that will backfire, as we’ll see at the very end of the episode.

Tarabi wants to speak to Collins outside her office, implying Sinatra might be bugging it, which is probably true. Remember, these two have a professional history, but it was short-lived – Collins literally pleaded the fifth in the therapy session. But their connection extends much further than that. Since Tarabi was instrumental in hand-picking everyone who went to live and work in Paradise, she was almost solely responsible for his position as the head of Cal’s personal detail. Again, more on this later.

This conversation also acts as a sort of framing device to explore Collins’s relationship with his late father, which doesn’t seem especially important to the main plot – other than his father being a pilot, and Collins wanting to be a pilot but not being able to be because of his eyesight, and the number on the cigarette potentially pertaining to an aircraft serial number – but is apparently vitally important when it comes to Collins’ psychology.

Collins Has a Moral Code

Tarabi demanding Collins open up about his father in exchange for information forces him to lay out the breakdown in their relationship, which is also pulling double duty as a reiteration of Collins’ moral fortitude. And this will come to matter later too.

Basically, Collins’ dad was a pilot who, as he got older, developed Parkinson’s disease and began to have tremors. He refused to retire, though, continuing to fly – as safely as possible, apparently, with a few of his fellow pilots aware of the need to be extra vigilant – despite his symptoms. Each time he and Collins met at an airport, the tremors would have gotten worse, but he’d still be flying. Eventually, Collins reported him, knowing that his father would have never reported himself.

This move irreparably damaged Collins’s relationship with his father, whose Parkinson’s worsened until he died, the two never having quite made amends. But Collins never regretted the decision because he knew it was right. And this is what’s particularly compelling about him; what was compelling to Tarabi when she specifically selected him to head up Cal’s protection detail. She seems to have been planning much further ahead than anyone realized.

Sarah Shahi in Paradise | Image via Hulu

The Official Investigation

While this is happening, Robinson is trying to investigate Cal’s murder officially, which isn’t made any easier with Sinatra breathing down her neck all the time. Her relationship with Cal is also massively complicating matters. After being told by the coroner that he had his head stoved in by an uneven blunt object, possibly a rock, she starts to reimagine some of their romantic liaisons as having been gate-crashed by his bloody corpse.

And there are no leads to follow. Some DNA pulled from Cal’s fingernails will take a couple of days to yield any results, and in the meantime, there’s almost nothing to go on – no prints, no fibers, no trace evidence, and the key clue, the suspension of the CCTV, turns out to have been entirely innocuous. Pace and Jane are forced to reveal that they frequently turn the cameras off to buy themselves a couple of hours to play on Cal’s Nintendo Wii and chill out.

This is the peril of an assignment where nothing happens. Nobody’s prepared when something does happen.

Another Twist

Evidently not satisfied without turning the narrative on its head once again, Paradise Episode 3 delivers another swerve by pointing the finger directly at someone unexpected – Agent Pace.

After opening up about his father Collins is able to get more than he expected out of Terabi. Quite a lot more, actually – after he walks her home she makes a move on him, and despite his protestations that he’s married (his wife is dead, apparently because she was in another country at Cal’s behest and he didn’t get her a plane to safety; there’s probably more to this yet to be revealed) they end up in the shower together.

In the middle of their liaison, Terabi drops another bombshell. She has a message from Cal. If something went bad, he told her to go straight to Collins. She tells him that Pace can’t be trusted, and she must be right, since the final shot of the episode finds him outside Collins’s house, a gun on the passenger seat, watching Presley through the window.