Summary
Paradise continues to excel in Episode 5, layering the twisty-turny thriller plot with genuinely resonant character work.
The title of Paradise Episode 5 is taken from a line in Darkness, the hauntingly beautiful Lord Byron poem that bookends this solemn chapter of what is becoming the best TV show of a still-young year. The full verse, which is read aloud at one point, runs thusly:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum’d,
And men were gather’d round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other’s face;
Not to get all lit-crit on y’all, but pretty much everything this show is about is embedded in that passage. It’s a story of the powerful fleeing from their ruined world and realizing, gradually, that the simulacrum they’ve devised is no substitute for the real thing. The house of cards is crumbling. The old guard is dying, or losing themselves, and looking for authenticity in the only places they can still find it.
In some ways, this takes the guise of a conventional thriller, because Paradise still can’t resist a twist, especially in episodes like this where it looks like one isn’t coming. But there’s a more meditative quality to this installment that gives the twisty-turny plot a thematic richness, the feel, almost, of a tragedy.
It’s really quite good.
Daddy Issues
The obligatory flashbacks in Paradise Episode 5 revolve mainly around Cal’s relationship with his father, who we have only seen scant glimpses of in previous episodes. He’s introduced here as the bookish but oddly terrifying patriarch of an oil dynasty, a man who micromanaged Cal’s entire life as a chess piece on the Bradford board. There’s no wonder Cal drank.
Gerald McRaney is a tremendous choice for Kane Bradford, who we learn was one of the first people Sinatra turned to for help building Paradise. We see later that his security clearance was higher than even Cal’s, despite his mind failing him in old age. In several of the later flashbacks, and especially in the present-day sequences, Kane is a shell of his former self, but everything he says is redolent with a kind of Old Testament ferocity and significance, partly because he’s often reading Byron aloud, but also because he clearly knows more about what has been going on than his addled mind allows him to process.
He calls Billy Pace, for instance, “Sniper”, and mentions something about being “lost at sea” which piques Cal’s curiosity. As we saw the previous episode, we know he’s referring to Sinatra’s instruction to assassinate the research team that was sent to the surface. Cal has to use Kane’s handprint to access his presidential iPad, which contains all of the classified files confirming what happened. The team found a survivor, proof that the earth remained liveable, and hope for the residents of Paradise that their loved ones might still be alive. And then Sinatra ensured, through Billy, that remained a secret.
Cal Knew the Truth
It seemed pretty obvious that Sinatra murdered Cal, and “In the Palaces of Crowned Kings” provides her with a clear motive. Not only did Cal figure out what she did, but he confronted her about it. The CCTV footage of his final day even caught the exchange on camera, though without the audio revealing his promise to tell the citizens of Paradise the truth.
What Sinatra doesn’t know is that Cal burned what he knew to CDs under the guise of making mixtapes and labeled them “For Jeremy”, but since Jeremy stood him up for dinner that night, Cal never passed the message on. Sinatra doesn’t know that Cal tipped Gabriela off about Billy Pace — which we also see, even though we knew about it — or that he told Robinson about the existence of guns hidden in the sub-basement of the arena, the code for which is the date of his inauguration in classic Cal style. She doesn’t know he wrote a number on a cigarette and hid it, or that Xavier now has it.
For all his faults, Cal wasn’t stupid. In a powerful scene with his father, he asks him outright if his life — that he hated every moment of, that he lived according to Kane’s whims — had ever made him proud. Kane responds, coldly, “You never did anything I didn’t do for you.”
Sterling K. Brown and Julianne Nicholson in Paradise | Image via Hulu
Unlikely Allies
In the present day, Xavier discovers his best friend dead on his kitchen floor and is sold the lie of his apparent suicide by an Oscar-worthy performance from Jane. Robinson later tells him that there’s enough fentanyl in his system that it couldn’t possibly have been a recreational accident. The official line is that Billy took his own life, but neither Xavier nor Robinson believe that. They both know who’s really to blame.
But Xavier still doesn’t trust Robinson, understandably given she was in a relationship with the victim. However, the flashbacks we see seem to reveal the authenticity of that liaison, at least from Robinson’s point of view. She loved Cal. And now she knows she can trust Xavier, she’s willing to share with him the location of the guns so they can begin to fight back against Sinatra.
Xavier tells Presley about Billy and tells her to pack a bag. They’re going to need to move. He also calls in a favor from Carl. But more about that in a minute.
An Unlikely New Suspect Emerges
Earlier in the episode, Presley had once again been spending time with Jeremy, messing around with Cal’s state-of-the-art indoor golfing simulator. Kane, in passing, had claimed to recognize Presley and grabbed her by the wrist aggressively. But Jeremy wrote it off as confusion. So did we.
Kane thinks Jeremy is Cal, so when he later confronts him about his treatment of Presley, Kane responds as though the conversation with Cal on the night he died had never ended. What he said was a lie — he was proud of his son, more so than any of his other achievements, and he’s deeply sorry for the way he treated him. Jeremy, slipping off the surly teenager archetype for a brief moment, says he’s sorry too, and forgives Kane for everything, giving the old man some solace in what are inevitably his final days.
But later, while reading the end of Darkness, Kane recalls why he recognizes Presley — she was in the house on the night Cal died. As he comes to this realization, we see Presley packing to leave, and discover she has Cal’s presidential iPad hidden under her bed. Why would she have that?
In a clear declaration of intent, Paradise Episode 5 ends by revealing the favor Xavier asked of Carl — he has written “They’re Lying to You” on the dome over Paradise, which beams in bright red light across the fake sky. Xavier stares up at the camera he knows Sinatra is watching, letting her know that he’s going to be fighting back.
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