Summary
Paradise Season 2 catches up with Xavier in “Mayday”, showing his first foray into the wilderness while also fleshing out his relationship with Teri.
As brilliant as the premiere of Paradise Season 2 was, it’s pretty fair to say that it didn’t really pick up on any of the plot threads left dangling by the first season finale. But seeing Episode 2, which is focused pretty exclusively on Xavier’s first foray into the world outside the bunker, where he’s still searching for his wife, Teri, you can understand why Hulu elected to drop the first three episodes all at once. “Graceland” was about establishing the post-apocalyptic outside world; “Mayday” is about literally dropping Xavier into it.
It’s also about context. As is the Fogelman way, this context is provided by frequent flashbacks, triggered by Xavier dislocating his knee when the tiny plane Sinatra gifted him crashes in the wilderness. I should perhaps mention that. In case you’ve forgotten, Sinatra dropped the bombshell on Xavier that Teri is still alive and was left behind in Atlanta, so his Season 2 mission is to travel across the country to find her. But it’s a mission immediately complicated by adverse weather, personal injury, technical issues, and bad actors.
Thanks to some of the stuff we learned in the premiere about the giant ash cloud lowering the temperature of the Earth, a hailstorm is less surprising to us than it is to Xavier. But either way, it cracks his windscreen and kills one of his engines, forcing a crash that dislocates his knee. In 2004, during Secret Service training, Xavier suffered the same injury while on track to beat the Service’s obstacle course record. His initial experience with the injury, having his patella reset, echoes in his mind while he prepares to pop the joint back into place in the present day.
But not so fast. Xavier is interrupted by a young boy named Daniel, who wordlessly roots through his bag and tells him to be quiet. Daniel is hiding from someone. He and several other children are living in an old RV in near-silence. They’re not mute, but they’re used to communicating soundlessly so as not to attract any undue attention. They’re in Arkansas, which we know – again, thanks to the premiere – is pretty lawless and dangerous.
These kids are a snippet of what life is like in the outside world now. They were a school sports team that never got the bus home. There are likely countless others in the same predicament. By chance, they happened to stumble on Xavier, who means well, speaks to them tenderly, as children, and offers to read them a bedtime story. In response, one of the kids asks if they can have his jacket when he dies. It’s an alarming moment, but the fact that later Xavier stays up and reads the book to Daniel proves that, fundamentally, these are still children who need love.
While this is going on, we repeatedly check back in on the 2004 timeline. During his post-surgery convalescence, Xavier was laid up next to Teri, his future wife. The way Paradise Season 2, Episode 2 weaves this little love story into the present-day plot is really sweet. We never got to see much of Xavier and Teri together in Season 1, so these scenes are appreciated. They flesh out how strong their chemistry was, and how their relationship was built on a bedrock of empathy and understanding. Even though we know where it’s going, what kind of tragedy awaits, there’s an idealism in these meet-cute scenes that is effectively juxtaposed with the cynicism of the present day.
Speaking of cynicism: When Xavier spots a mysterious raider lurking outside the RV, he gets into a brief fight with him and kills him, though he takes a knife to the side in the meantime. The kids help him to bury the guy, slathering mud over his corpse, but when Xavier passes out from the wound, he wakes up to find the kids have moved him inside and patched him up, but also taken his bag and jacket. Needs must. Survival is everything.
Speaking of survival, Xavier tries to ensure his own by staggering back to the crash site, though he passes out again. And that, of course, is where Annie finds him. Given what we know about Annie from the premiere, she seems like she might be an angelic figure, taking him back to Graceland and patching up his wounds. But “Mayday” provides a neat subversion of that idea. Xavier wakes up handcuffed, presumably for Annie’s safety. But when he mentions his kids being safe in a bunker in Colorado, reflecting what Link said to her, Annie insists that he will be taking her there. Atlanta – and Teri – will have to wait.
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