If there’s one thing to take from Paradise Season 1 Episode 6, “You Asked For Miracles” it is that you should not mess with Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown). But if you want to take more lessons from your weekly television series, you should also know that someone in the show’s writer’s room is a huge fan of Die Hard. And, while I’m not normally a fan of remakes if the universe ever decided to remake that particular much-beloved movie, Brown would make an excellent John McClane (Bruce Willis). Though he might make an even better Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman).
Welcome to the Party
So why all this talk about a Christmas movie from the late 1980s? (Yes, it’s a Christmas movie. I stand by that assertion, and you can fight me on it.) Because Paradise goes full Die Hard this episode, with both its action and its comedy. And it doesn’t even try to hide it, as one might guess from the title.
The episode is full of quotes and references to the movie. Even better, the show allows The Villain Who Carries My Heart, Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson) to point out how ridiculous some of the dialogue in the movie is. Who talks like they do with some of the quotes in the movie? Nobody does. Who cares that nobody talks like that? If there were fewer people than zero, that would be how many.
I’ve enjoyed this series since the first episode. If possible, I’ve only fallen in love with the show more and more with each episode that passes. And I’m telling you, I was living for Xavier channeling his inner McClane. Cast this man in anything. He has converted me into a lifelong fan.
…Have a Few Laughs
We’ll get this out of the way up front: If you’re looking to NOT have a review littered with Die Hard quotes, then you picked the wrong girl to write it.
As anyone who knows me can attest, I love shipping things. Paradise was not the kind of show that I expected to ship in. I certainly didn’t expect to ship Xavier and his (initially presumed dead) wife, Dr. Teri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma). In large part because, you know, she was presumed dead.
Still, their relationship-as-it-was captured my heart a little in a previous episode when Xavier talked about how she was the only person who could throw sand on him. His obvious, palpable love for her got me. Seeing the two of them together in flashbacks this episode? I love them. She’d better be alive because I need these two together. I need it. She is the only person who can throw sand on him, and you can see why, and you can see why he needs her.
And you will put some respect on her name. When the principal referred to her as “Mrs. Collins” after being corrected about her title and name? Boy, bye. If she’d jumped across the desk and slapped him, I’d have been rooting for her the whole time.
Yes, in less than five minutes of screen time, Okuma – individually and with Brown – captured my whole heart. But in that same screentime, Teri also proved that she knows her husband every bit as much as he knows her. He knew she wouldn’t give up a work trip at his request. Not without a reason. And she knew that, as calm and controlled as he was, when the time came for him to let loose? He was not a man to be trifled with.
An Exceptional Thief…
Okay, Sinatra isn’t a thief (that we know of). She’s more…a mastermind of multiple murders. But work with me here.
I know Sinatra’s a bad guy, if not the bad guy. And I personally don’t believe that she’s behind the murder of President Cal Bradford (James Marsden). For one, she’s too obvious. For another, she said she wasn’t, and I believe her. I mean, she admitted to the other things she did. And she admitted to it thinking she had a straight flush in her hands. If not a royal flush. Why would she lie?
But I still love her. I don’t agree with her choices. Not the ones I know about, and probably not a fair few we haven’t yet discovered. But I love her. She’s a complex villain. She’s not a villain for the sake of being evil. Rather, she’s a woman who is trying to protect her son’s heaven and her daughter’s salvation. She’s willing to go to pretty far extremes to do so, but I get it. I’d also be hard-pressed to say that many people wouldn’t be willing to do the same.
Maybe I’m wrong about the world above ground. It seems, at least, like people may have survived, but hardly in idyllic conditions. Are they surviving a nuclear winter? We don’t really know. But there’s a good bet that many of them would be scrambling to join the survivors in Paradise if they could. The city is at capacity for the oxygen systems, however, so it can’t take any more.
So, from SInatra’s perspective, do you tell the survivors on the surface about Paradise? Do you try to save them? If you do and it’s too much for the system, then everyone dies. What few more-or-less-guaranteed survivors of the human race get wiped out? Including the child that Sinatra did all of this for. It’s a roll of the die whether anyone on the surface lasts much longer. And that’s it.
Again, I’m not saying I agree with her choices. But I understand them. She’s a villain, but she’s a complex one. Even, to a certain degree, a sympathetic one. She’s a broken person, doing everything in her power to save what little she has left. Part of me wants her to be brought down, because I also see things from Xavier’s perspective. But part of me also wants her in the next season of the show, so…it’s complicated. I love her. That’s all.
…Moving Up to Kidnapping
One villain I’m okay with being taken out is Jane Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom). Not because the actress doesn’t do a good job, because…damn. Driscoll’s ability to turn off all emotion and be a cold, ruthless, remorseless killer is nothing short of sociopathic. And Brydon Bloom’s ability to portray that switch from emotional breakdown to heartless killer? Flawless.
But, yeah, she kidnapped Presley (Aliyah Mastin), and that’s unforgivable. (I know, I know, it was at Sinatra’s orders. I’m dealing with some emotional turmoil, here.) Now, in another show, I might be frustrated with Presley for putting herself in danger. Her father had put her somewhere safe for a reason, and she would be perfectly safe if she’d stayed there!
It’s always frustrating with teenagers in shows do stupid teenage things for stupid teenage reasons and get themselves in unnecessary peril. But I’m going to give Presley a pass on this one. First, because she had the tablet. Which, yes, she absolutely should have told her father about. Though I understand why she took it and kept it. (Who stole it and then tossed it aside is another question.) I’m also giving her a pass because her actions are the reason Jeremy (Charlie Evans) could get the tablet unlocked. He can now get to the truth – about the conditions on the surface, but possibly also to his dad’s death.
Would any of that have happened if Presley had stayed put? Maybe eventually, but who knows what Sinatra could have done in the meantime. And, at any rate, if Xavier is going all John McClane on Sinatra when all he knows is that she’s hiding something? He’s going to go all John Wick on her when he discovers she has his daughter hostage. I am here for every single second of Xavier’s revenge.
If This Is Their Idea of Christmas…
So much happened in this episode, and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface with this review. There are a few things I definitely have to mention before I forget, so here goes:
- Robinson (Krys Marshall) gets MVP for this episode for shooting down Xavier’s suggestion that they bring Driscoll in on the plan. The show did not do the thing where the hero is too trusting of the people in his inner circle and unwittingly brings a villain into the Circle of Trust. He suggested it, and she said “Nah,” and almost thwarted the villain. Love her for that.
- Okay, I get that Kane Bradford (Gerald McRaney) was probably instrumental in doing the massive amount of underground excavating necessary for the creation of Paradise. And maybe it makes sense that he would have Even Higher Than Top Secret clearance when even his son didn’t. After all, Cal was both a patsy and a figurehead. And, at either rate, neither Sinatra nor his own father thought much of him. But Kane is clearly in some latter stages of dementia, so…nobody’s revoked that clearance yet? And don’t tell me Sinatra doesn’t know how far his mental deterioration has gone. She knows about Xavier and Dr. Gabriela Torabi’s (Sarah Shahi) shower sexcapade. She has to know.
- Xavier and Company may have all the weapons, but I still wouldn’t count Sinatra out. She has more up her sleeve than she’s showing, I’m sure.
- I know Jeremy is instrumental in getting the tablet unlocked, so he’s already proving his purpose in the show. But I still think Cal left some sort of breadcrumb in the library for his son to find. I’m going to be very disappointed if that’s not the case.
…I Gotta Be Here for New Year’s
And all that brings us to the final twist in the episode: Teri might still be alive. I mean, I’ve assumed that was probably the case. But it seems like Sinatra doesn’t just think she could be. She knows that she is. Now, is she telling the absolute truth about that? Maybe, maybe not.
I completely believe her when she says she didn’t kill the President because she didn’t really have a reason to lie about that at that point. Xavier is hardly going to be more angry when given a confirmation that she was behind Cal’s assassination than he would be to find that his wife is still alive and Sinatra hid that information. She did have a gun in her face when she dropped her little bombshell on Xavier. And it’s more likely he’ll hold off on pulling the trigger if she says Teri is alive than if she says she could be.
So maybe she’s lying. Or maybe she’s telling the truth. We’ll undoubtedly find out soon. One way or another, Paradise season 1 episode 6 “You Asked For Miracles” kicked the show into high gear, and I’m as excited for the last few episodes of the season as I am dreading not having a new episode to look forward to every year. This series is taking no prisoners, and I’m sure Xavier won’t be, either. Even if Sinatra’s confession gets her a (temporary) stay of execution. Wherever this show goes next, I am here for it.
