TL;DR – A fascinating look at survival in a world trying to kill you to survive.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Paradise Review –

Today, we dive into the second episode of Paradise’s second season. While the first episode was all worldbuilding, here we get stuck into the meat cube of things when we get to see how love first bloomed. But also see just why you never want to find yourself in Arkansas.  

So, to set the scene, after taking off in a light plane at the end of Season One towards Atlanta, Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) was flying south when a sudden flashback and a surprise hailstorm forced the plane to come down in quite a crash. Xavier survives the crash, but little does he know that he came down in Arkansas, and the last place you ever want to find yourself is Arkansas. Especially when you have a dislocated knee, and you have to put it back in place by yourself… Crunch … Scream. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

Meat Cube

In this week’s flashback, we get to see how Xavier first met his wife Teri (Enuka Okuma) in the before times in the hospital. Well, can I just say that they are delightful and both have amazing chemistry. We only got a hint of this in Season One, where you get the feeling that things were not at their best point in their relationship. Look, I knew that Sterling K. Brown had game, but wow, can that man be charming, even in a hospital setting. One of the recurring features of this section is the nurse (Britney Young) who is consistently supportive and uplifting, and you can’t help but feel sad that, statistically, she is no longer alive. I feel this section is an important framework for the rest of the season, so I am glad they nailed it out of the gate.

The Kids

Now we get to see what happens to Xavier after introducing his plane to the ground in an explosive fashion. We knew that Arkansas was bad, but the first clue as to just how bad it is was how the kids live in perpetual silence. Now, there have been a lot of films that have tackled silence, like A Quiet Place; however, the post-apocalyptic world is a much more sinister place when the things that you are keeping quiet about are humans. I will say that the kids do a good job showing just what a traumatic life they have endured over the last few years. You also understand why they leave Xavier to die, even though he just saved them.

Fight for Life

The first real test we get for Xavier is when a man finds the kids’ hiding place. This was an interesting fight because Xavier is injured, but unlike anyone else on the outside, he has been well-fed and trained as a secret service officer. However, while he is fighting someone who didn’t have the caloric intake, he has been hardened by two years of fighting for your life. Xavier hasn’t needed to do that before. If we had not seen him sorta alive at the end of Graceland, you would have been concerned that he would not make it because it was a brutal confrontation. It also helps put him in a very difficult situation when Annie (Shailene Woodley) finds him near the plane.

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Paradise? Yes, we would. It did a solid job of combining the two timelines together, making a greater sum. Also, Sterling K. Brown absolutely has the power to ground an episode by himself, by the sheer will of charisma alone. But of course, his performance is much more than just charisma. Have you seen Paradise yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Bluesky at @Tldrmovrev, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Paradise
Directed by – Glenn Ficarra & John Requa
Written by – Jason Wilborn
Created by – Dan Fogelman
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Century Television, Hulu, Star & Disney+
Starring – Sterling K. Brown & Enuka Okuma
With – Shailene Woodley, Thomas Doherty, John Charles Meyer, Alexander Gumpert, Britney Young, A.J. Tannen, & Kila Packett
And – Abigail London, Elijah Maximus, Limi Oniyide, & Sabastian Akerman Zincone