‘Paradise’ Episode 5 Finally Hints at a Motive for Cal’s Death
Zayn Malik once sang, “It’s our paradise, it’s our war zone.” The former One Direction singer was talking about pillow talk, but his lyrics fit just as well into all the murders that are taking place in Paradise. The president is dead, for crying out loud, and Paradise held a damn carnival last episode. Paradise? This is a war zone.
Granted, there’s a lot for the citizens of Paradise to concern themselves with every day. It’s been three years since nuclear fallout of some kind occurred on Earth’s surface, prompting President of the United States Cal Bradford (James Marsden) and a population of 25,000 hand-selected citizens to settle in an artificial town built under a mountain in Colorado. Samatha “Elvis” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson)—the world’s richest woman and Paradise’s orchestrator—is our current top suspect. She’s been at the head of our hit list ever since she branded our main man Special Agent Xavier Collins (Sterling K. Brown) as Paradise’s public enemy number one.
Then Redmond ordered Billy’s (Jon Beavers) death. His own girlfriend (Nicole Brydon Bloom) took him out with poisoned funnel cake as if he was nothing to her. Trouble in Paradise? That’s an understatement. There wasn’t a single murder in Paradise before the president was assassinated. Now we have two. Am I to believe that someone other than Redmond killed the president?
Well, we haven’t met everyone yet. In episode 5, the president’s father, Kane Bradford, (Gerald McRaney) takes the spotlight. He was an oil baron who now lives in Paradise with escalating dementia. Still, he’s not completely out to pasture. Kane has special clearance to files on the president’s tablet that Cal didn’t even possess access to view.
For some reason, there’s audio proof on the tablet that Redmond ordered Billy to kill the surface exploration team. I couldn’t tell you why they recorded those conversations. Feels like a major blunder. But when Cal confronts Redmond about it, we finally receive our first motive. The president was set to tell Paradise that the surface is more habitable than everyone thought. Later that night, he’s killed. Billy threatened Redmond about the very same secret before she ordered his death. Is it crazy that this case feels done and dusted in just five episodes?
Naturally, I expect Paradise to throw something crazy at me until the finale reveal. I thought we might add another suspect in Cal’s father—especially since he’s the subject of this episode. Another question mark is Cal himself. We weren’t that focused on how sad the president’s last day was until this episode. He was rebuffed by his son, his father, his love interest, and his country. Ouch. He even talked a lot about how he knew where the guns were hidden. Could the president have committed suicide that night? It’s a possibility, but it doesn’t seem like the big reveal that Paradise is heading toward. And if we can all ignore that monstrosity of an “Eye of the Tiger” cover, that would be greatly appreciated.
Instead, the Hulu thriller takes a spin in episode 5 by involving Collins’s teenage daughter, Presley (Aliyah Mastin). Somehow she’s in possession of the president’s tablet. I imagine the latest twist has something to do with her new relationship with the president’s son. Most likely, everyone is just working toward the same goal: uncovering the truth. So Collins becomes the leader of a new revolution in Paradise. With his neighbor’s help, he lights the sky with a message: “They are lying to you.” Collins, you don’t even know the half of it yet.
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