Recap of Episode 2 of ‘Paradise’: Inside the Billionaire Girl’s Club

Samantha has hit it big. She’d just rather not say how big. 

A billionaire named Sam, portrayed by a digitally rejuvenated Julianne Nicholson, demonstrates a modest and amiable attitude that hints at the fictional nature of the setting in “Paradise.” After selling her startup and becoming a potential $14 billion richer, Sam approaches a bar where she encounters Tim (played by Tuc Watkins), a charming man unfazed by her financial success. Although Sam reveals her actual prospective net worth of $34 billion, Tim playfully downplays her achievement, claiming his team won a casual softball event instead.

Their playful banter serves a purpose as Tim confesses, with a grin, that he lied in hopes of sparking a romantic connection with Sam. Prompted by his question about her own motives, Sam tacitly acknowledges her shared interest in him.

Fast forward, Sam and Tim are now a happy couple with two children, a son, and a daughter. Despite her immense wealth, as hinted by an upcoming merger set to increase it further, they continue to engage in everyday activities such as grocery shopping as a family. The scene portrays a familiar sense of familial bliss during their supermarket outing, filled with light-hearted moments, laughter, and affection while selecting items like ice cream.

This culminates in a lovely shot of Samantha leaning against the wall outside the supermarket as her son Dylan (Peter Gorbis) eats his ice cream sandwich while riding on one of those ubiquitous mechanical horses. In one simple shot you can feel so much about this moment; you can tell that even though Dylan knows he’s too old for horsey rides, he still does it because it’s such a beloved tradition, because it makes him feel safe and loved.

I single out these two moments for a reason: Man oh man do they make creator/co-writer Dan Fogelman’s strengths crystal clear. Working with co-writer Katie French, he just sort of casually tosses off two enormously endearing moments, from two very different spheres of human interaction. The flirtation is fun and genuinely sexy. The family bonding is warm and sincere. None of it feels particularly like something from a television show — or if it does, it feels like it’s from a good television show. You know, the kind of television show that doesn’t immediately give young Dylan a terminal illness to wring out extra sympathy points for his mother, who in the present day is a calculating man-behind-the-throne figure straight out of billionaire reality. 

But Paradise is that kind of show, too! Paradise is the kind of show that has the son beg Julianne Nicholson to tell him if he’s going to Heaven and what it will be like — it’s going to have more horsey rides! — over a breathy cover version of, I swear to god, “We Built This City” by Starship. This is a level of tasteless, mawkish sentimentality that feels like it comes from a whole different universe than that bit about her lying in hopes of picking that dude up. It’s so much broader, too, than everything this beautifully observed moment outside the supermarket on the horse with the ice cream had been right up until that point. 

From a strictly mercenary perspective, I get it: People like having their heartstrings tugged. But the show had already proven it could do so without resorting to crass, poorly soundtracked emotional manipulation. Why settle for a single when you’re a home-run hitter?

Anyway, the primary purpose of this episode is twofold. First, it incrementally advances our understanding of how things got to this point: a desperate warning about a massive tsunami soon to be triggered in the Antarctic, Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond preparing for the inevitable by hollowing out a space the size of Toledo beneath the Rockies, hiring the experts needed to make it work, and fleeing to it three years prior to the present day when whatever happened finally happened. (It seems both Sinatra’s daughter and Agent Xavier Collins’s wife didn’t make it.)

In the present. Collins is cleared as a suspect thanks to the intervention of Dr. Gabriela Torabi, therapist to both Redmond and the late president. During an interrogation, she boots Agent Robinson from the room — probably overdue, considering Xavier’s accurate observation that she’d been sleeping with the victim — and flashes a handwritten note at him: If he admits to hating Cal and being partially glad he’s dead, he’ll effectively take suspicion off himself. Seems kinda basic reverse psychology, but maybe the fact that the observation room is like something from Twin Peaks makes it sound more convincing in the moment.

But the investigation has no suspect, no leads, no murder weapon. And Xavier suspects that Sinatra is up to no good. He vows to take her down. “How?” asks his buddy, Billy. “Very fucking carefully,” he replies. I appreciate the bluntness!

In addition to those very effective flashback moments mentioned above, this episode admittedly has a lot going for it. The score, by Siddhartha Khosla, is absolutely rapturous at times, which is not something you say very often about the music for political thrillers. Having Xavier’s daughter Presley and Cal’s son Jeremy (Charlie Evans) bond over the badness of “We Built This City,” by contrast, is a funny bit. 

And whether she’s almost reflexively slapping her husband’s hands away when he tries to hold her in his grief, or sitting there for a lengthy long take as she talks to Dr. Torabi about how her son’s death broke her and she’s desperate for anything that keeps her from thinking about killing herself, Julianne Nicholson does tremendous work. Yet not even she can save us from the unfortunate spectacle of her character bonding with her dying son while somebody sings the phrase “Marconi plays the mamba” on the soundtrack. How do you keep a show with these kinds of positives and negatives balanced? Very, ahem, carefully. 

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.