Critic’s Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
4.5
Since Lost went off the air 15 years ago, I’ve been searching for a series to scratch that itch.
While shows like The Event, Flash Forward, and Manifest all came close, they fell short in many key areas, particularly with long-drawn-out mysteries that spin their wheels for too long.
After Paradise Season 1 Episode 3, I can confidently say that I’ve found a worthy replacement that has me questioning every character, their motivations, and, of course, where they fit into the mysteries that drive the series.
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Initially, I figured Gabriela was about to get the flashback treatment in this hour, but I guess that’s being saved for later in the season or series.
Sarah Shahi has had some fantastic roles throughout her career, but she’s delivering a career-best as this therapist with a wealth of secrets and knowledge about this rock, which became the perfect place to shield people from the apocalyptic world outside.
Gabriela is enigmatic, which makes her the perfect person to pop up here and there with world-building nuggets of information that turn everything I thought I knew about Paradise on its head.
Gabriela Is One to Watch on Paradise
I figured there was a reason why she coached Xavier into saying that a part of him was happy that Cal was no longer in the land of the living, and that reason came to fruition in a big way during Paradise Season 1 Episode 3.
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There were many awkward moments between them in what may well have been a date. They went for cheese fries, observed everyone in the diner, and learned some details about each other before retiring to a shower to get hot and heavy.
They had chemistry for days, so I had a feeling it was headed in that direction. You can only imagine my surprise when Gabriela stopped their passionate embrace to deliver the intel Xavier needed to come to terms with what’s been going on.
Billy has been difficult to read because, to us viewers, he’s been so blinded by his love for Jane and his tenacity to keep it under wraps.
We had no other reason to deem him one of the bad guys, but I figured there was more to the story when he was caught for ensuring the cameras went down the night of Cal’s brutal death.
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How many excuses can you make for someone like Billy? He wants everyone to think he isn’t analytical and makes stupid decisions without considering their ramifications.
Just no. This dude is a former mercenary assigned to the president’s secret service detail. Those credentials alone make him a scary individual because he knows how to escape sticky situations.
People need to have a certain level of drive and quick thinking to do both jobs well, so it’s been difficult watching him with puppy eyes whenever Jane is around. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon.
We’re Getting A Fantastic Mystery
Some shows spoon-feed viewers answers, but Paradise Season 1 is thriving because it’s moving the plots along at a breakneck pace and has some fantastic acting, too. It’s a departure from This Is Us for Dan Fogelman, but the writing is excellent.
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Billy hanging around outside Xavier’s home with a gun doesn’t give me the fuzzies that he’s there for anything good, so my best guess is that he’s looking for signs that Xavier is on to him and won’t take action until we get to that point.
My biggest gripe with this plot is that Sinatra was shown on Paradise Season 1 Episode 2 to be this great judge of character.
She pretty much manifested her son’s vision into a post-apocalyptic safe haven, so she didn’t get there without analyzing the people in her circle and whether any of them could be up to anything nefarious.
Instead, she balked at the idea of Jane and Billy having anything to do with Cal’s death because they said they played video games and got up to things they shouldn’t have, all because they thought they were inside a rock where nothing bad ever happens.
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I’ll be pretty miffed if we learn in a couple of episodes that Sinatra wanted to leave them be because she thought they’d slip up with some more concrete evidence against them. I’m just being honest.
Sinatra already had it out for Nicole before she started investigating Cal’s death, so I’m surprised she didn’t remove the agent from the case because she’s in too deep.
Sinatra’s Motivations Are Murky
Then again, perhaps Sinatra believes that Nicole will leave no stone unturned in the quest for answers because of her secret relationship with Cal.
The reality is that Nicole may have cracked the case had Sinatra not been upset with the lack of evidence.
Have Billy and Jane really managed to exit the list of suspects when their job is to be cunning to keep the president safe?
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Then there’s the Xavier of it all. How can he realistically maintain a friendship with Billy now if he believes his former colleague could have had the president killed?
Cal leaving Gabriella with the message for Billy is certainly concerning because it suggests that the president was slowly peeling back the layers of his security detail’s evil deeds, and Billy had to take swift action to keep whatever he’s really up to under wraps.
Then again, there’s also the possibility that this is a smokescreen from Gabriela and, possibly, Sinatra to throw Xavier off the scent because they could be working together to create some form of uprising inside the Paradise.
The mark of a great mystery is when it delivers a wealth of answers, which only create another raft of compelling questions. I can’t wait to see where this goes next because I’m invested in discovering everything there is to know about this universe.
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What are your thoughts, Paradise Fanatics? Do you think the mystery is moving along swimmingly?
What’s your take on Gabriella’s episode-ending revelation about Billy? Is it rooted in reality, or is Gabriela playing Xavier like a fiddle?
Agree? Disagree? Have a theory?
Let us know in the comments, or share this article with someone who will want to argue about it with you. That’s what makes it fun.
So come chat!
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