TL;DR – This is the episode where all the intrigue from last season gets turned up a notch as we have a less-than-subtle look back at the world today.

Warning – Contains scenes which may cause distress.

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

Paradise Review –

After spending the first two episodes of Paradise‘s second season, Graceland &Mayday, it is nice to get back down into the muck with the city itself. The city feels like a façade just waiting for something to break it down, and this week, we get a lot of potential answers to just what that might be.   

So, to set the scene, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson) eyes move, one blink after another, as medical monitors beep and whirl. One month, she has been in a coma for one month, what could have changed in Paradise while she was asleep, well, maybe a complete police state takeover led by an idiot president. But in the past, we discovered that the main problem with the volcanic eruption was not the globe-spanning tsunami, but the environmental tailspin that will happen in the years after, dubbed the ‘Venus Effect”. Now, from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead.

The Sinatra Effect

One of the most interesting characters from the first season was Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, the potential brains behind the power. Cal Bradford (James Marsden) had the charm, the winning smile, and the right family name, but Sinatra knows how to get things done. Throughout that first season, we did start to see some cracks in that resolve as she overplayed her hand with Xavier (Sterling K. Brown). It was always interesting to see her get down and dirty with the minutia of keeping the power going, even if the motivations behind that were a bit cloudy. Also, it is just nice that her flashback sequence meant we got some more, Jon Beavers, this season.

It is honestly surprising that they waited three episodes to bring Julianne Nicholson back into the fold, but goodness does she make an immediate impact on the show. This first episode back is all about giving her actions up to this point a touch more context, that there is more to this disaster than just surviving the first wave, pun intended. Only time will tell if this mysterious project that is drawing most of the power from the city will buy her the time she is after and be a satisfying answer to the mystery being built up, but now it has me intrigued. If nothing else, at least she taught Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi) how to play dirty.  

The Town of Paradise

While Sinatra is the focus of the episode, the other main job we have here is to reintroduce the town of Paradise, its residents, and oh, its ‘woefully ineffectual and now turned things into a direct police state’ President Henry Baines (Matt Malloy). It is here where we get two plot threads running through the episode, which don’t have a lot of strength but are clearly teed up to be important as the season goes on. The first is all the kids trying to rebel under the president’s police state, and look, it is fine, but it is not something you haven’t seen a thousand times before. It is also a little too on the nose, given: waves-hands-around-generally.  

Slightly more interesting was Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) circling in on Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom) as being not at all who she claims to be. Jane was one of those odd choices in the first season, in that you didn’t understand why the character got top billing right up until it was made very clear why she got top billing. I wondered how they would approach that this season and was surprised to see that they ripped that band-aid off right from the start. I was really interested in this story right up until they had Agent Robinson walk so mindlessly into a trap that she might almost be the most reverse-Wile E. Coyote in television at the moment.    

Recommendation

In the end, do we recommend Paradise? Yes, we do. While I am not sure this episode hit as hard as the first couple of entries this season, it was still nice to be back in Paradise. I mean, it is weird that everyone’s backstories are connected in ways that make Lost look conservative, but it is still entertaining. 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.

Feel free to share this review on social media and check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Paradise
Directed by – Ken Olin
Written by – Scott Weinger
Created by – Dan Fogelman
Production/Distribution Companies – 20^th Century Television, Hulu, Star & Disney+
Starring – Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, Krys Marshall, Enuka Okuma, Aliyah Mastin, Percy Daggs IV, & Charlie Evans
With – James Marsden, Jon Beavers, Matt Malloy, Thomas Doherty, Patrick Fischler, Tuc Watkins, Geoffrey Arend, Erik Svedberg-Zelman, Amy Pietz, & Gerald McRaney
And – Patrick Cavanaugh, Kate Godfrey, Miguel Najera, Roberta Hanlen, Jonathan Tanigaki, Christopher Sanders, Gwen Holloway, Maria-Elena Laas,