Paradise Is A Hit Because Sterling K. Brown Is The Hero TV Needs

Welcome to “What’s Good,” a column where we break down what’s soothing, distracting, or just plain good in the streaming world with a “rooting for everybody Black” energy. This edition is all about Paradise starring Sterling K. Brown, streaming on Hulu now. Spoilers ahead.

What’s Good? Paradise is so good, it got renewed for a second season halfway into its first. Paradise is so good, the first episode amassed seven million views in just nine days. Paradise is SO good, it will give you newfound respect for its star Sterling K. Brown (and shower scenes) which is saying something since the Oscar-nominee was already one of the most respected (and hot) actors in the game. Paradise is so good, I’m not exaggerating when I say that it is singlehandedly saving television (OK fine, I’ll give The Pitt and Severance some credit too). The series premiered on Hulu a month ago and will hit ABC primetime in April. 

Paradise opens with a mystery: who killed President Cal Bradford (played by James Marsden)? Xavier Collins (Brown), his head secret service agent, is a suspect because he was one of the last people to see Cal alive. Special Agent Nicole Robinson (Krys Marshall) is too. She’s his mistress; the mistress is always a suspect. The billionaire pulling strings in the background is leading the investigation (Julianne Nicholson as Sinatra is eerily brilliant) even though she’s too shady to be innocent. All the ingredients are there to make this series addictive: a whodunnit, a stellar cast, a creator (Dan Fogelman, This Is Us) who has proven he can hook us every week. That all would have been enough. But in the final seconds of the show’s pilot, another big mystery is revealed. The “paradise” our characters are living in is actually a dome inside a mountain, built for the 25,000 last living people on earth. They survived the end of the world and were cohabitating in a blissful bubble — until their president was murdered. He was beloved by everyone except Xavier Collins because on their last day on earth, President Bradford didn’t get his wife, Dr. Terri Rogers-Collins (Enuka Okuma), to safety in time, even though he promised he would. 

The man tasked with protecting the president also hated his guts. And now he’s dead. And oh yeah, the world ended. Paradise did all that in a single episode. Now you know why so many of us have been, and will be, SEATED for eight plus however many more episodes Fogelman and co. give us. 

Who It’s Good For: Post-apocalyptic stories when times are feeling very apocalyptic in real life aren’t for the faint of heart. If you are someone who watched Contagion during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, firstly, there is something wrong with you (it’s me, I am someone), and second, Paradise might feel like a cozy light version of whatever masochism you’re looking for in your viewing habits. It’s not that much of a reflection of our current days that it’s triggering, but it does — especially by episode 7 — feel like it’s depicting a reality that could be right around the corner, and that will leave you waking up in a cold sweat for days after you finish the series. Just me? 

It’s easy to simply say that you will love Paradise if you loved This Is Us but the shows aren’t remotely similar, save for the fact that in both you get Brown giving award-worthy performances that unveil layers of humanity and masculinity you haven’t seen on TV until now. It’s also an easy connection to make between Paradise and white-house centered shows of the past, like Scandal or The West Wing. But again, it’s not really like those either, except they all feature presidents who could get it. Paradise is reminiscent of the classic shows of network TV’s prime because of its pacing, rich storytelling and commitment to being a TV show (it’s not trying to be a movie every episode like some of the series lauded as the best television of recent years). Paradise is for the real TV lovers, those of us who lived for Shondaland Thursdays, who love getting to know characters over multiple episodes, who live for episodes that make us cry, who have missed TV that makes us feel and that gave us water cooler moments we can obsess over together. 

How Good Is It? In the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard about how good Paradise is. You’ve probably seen people posting excitedly on various social media platforms about its epic end-of-pilot big twist, a staple of Fogelman’s work (see: This Is Us and Pitch). But what is it about this show that has everyone in a chokehold? Aside from its riveting, timely, and terrifying premise, Paradise showcases what Fogelman does best: delivering layered, captivating characters (with Black leads! Including complex Black women!) who you can’t help but root for and who feel familiar and simultaneously fresh. There’s the nepo baby president who never really wanted the responsibility but rises to the occasion because his country needs it in Marsden as the charming President Bradford, reminiscent of Scandal’s Fitz but less petulant. The enigmatic Marshall as Agent Robinson is the career-driven woman in a male-dominated field risking it all to sleep with her boss, who is slightly Olivia Pope-coded but less righteous. There’s the teen daughter meddling in matters she shouldn’t be. Aliyah Mastin is perfect as Presley Collins who is one of the more realistic and relatable teen girls on TV, unlike her insufferable predecessors like Homeland’s Dana Brody or The American’s Paige Jennings. And, of course, there’s the hero secret service agent, Xavier Collins who has a tragic backstory and a dead wife. Brown is at his absolute best, channeling all the great action stars in Hollywood history while giving Denzel-like gravitas and singular vulnerability. 

Print Sterling K. Brown’s name on the Emmy ballot right now. His nomination was already secured by the interrogation scene in episode 2, where he was stern, affecting, resolute in his innocence and yet there were enough unsaid emotions simmering on his face that the audience — and Sinatra — still doubted whether or not he did it. There are various moments throughout Paradise where the audience is playing a guessing game. Was it Presley, who was seen at the Bradford residence the night of the murder? Was it Agent Billy Pace, Xavier’s best friend and fellow secret service (also known as Uncle Billy, who has one of my favorite character arcs in the whole series)? Was it Sinatra, the series’s clear Big Bad? Or was it Jane, the wildcard agent who — SPOILER — killed our beloved Uncle Billy (his death broke me; Dan Fogelman, you will pay for your crimes)? All of this uncertainty makes for great television, but it just scratches the surface of what makes Paradise the best show on TV this year. 

Often, these big prestigious shows either exclude Black women (Succession) or treat them as afterthoughts (The White Lotus) but in Paradise, characters that could be one-dimensional (the mistress, the wife, the daughter) have depth and nuance. Sure, Agent Robinson was sleeping with her boss, but she has her own ambitions and strength outside of Cal. She takes her job seriously, misses holding a weapon and is as hellbent on taking down Sinatra as Xavier is. And yes, Presley is a teen girl in a world where the adults are dealing with so much of their own shit, she could easily fade into the background, but thanks to a powerhouse performance by Mastin, she’s one of the show’s brightest lights.

“Don’t underestimate joy and shit,” Presley says to Cal’s son Jeremy, who she has a crush on, during the town’s carnival. His band is playing at the event just days after his dad’s passing (which Sinatra and the other billionaires are trying to play off as not a murder) and he’s convinced playing songs when things are absolutely not OK is insincere. The importance of the “joy and shit” Presley emphasizes can also sum up the allure of Paradise. In Episode 7, we're finally given the backstory as to how Dr. Teri Rogers-Collins didn’t make the plane at the end of the world and proof that she is, in fact, still alive and living amidst survivors outside the walls built by billionaires and Sinatra’s secrets. The episode is devastating and I cried so hard my head hurt for hours, but it’s also such a stunning showcase of Brown’s talent — his single tear game is going to go down in history right alongside Viola Davis’s snotty cry — and the way a really good episode of TV can change the chemistry of your brain. In its penultimate episode, Paradise pushed us to think about what humanity will succumb to if the climate crisis we’ve been so warned about hits its brink. It forced us to reckon with what happens when billionaires hoarding money run the government. And it made us face the lengths people would go to save themselves, including disregarding the lives of their neighbors, their coworkers, their friends. 

In its finale, Paradise attempts to land the proverbial plane (the side plot about Xavier’s grandpa, the Tuskegee airman, coming right as the Trump administration tried to erase that history hit a little too hard) but its descent is rocky. President Bradford’s killer turned out to be — one last spoiler warning — one of the men who helped build their bunker and who had been disguised as the local librarian for three years. It was a clunky twist, and I don’t love when the killer ends up being a character we barely knew. We weren’t invested at all in the librarian and only had one episode to start to care that Sinatra let his coworkers work to their deaths in a toxic environment. I understand the point: the safe haven the rich and privileged ran to at the end of the world was erected by the sacrifices of the poor. It’s a good moral of the story, but it’s also a bit heavy handed and a late payoff. Even though Cal’s killer reveal was its weakest moment, Paradise’s ending was still satisfying. As I mentioned, that was only one of the show’s mysteries. At the end of Season 1, Xavier is suited up to venture into the world outside Paradise to find his wife and other survivors. It’s setting up the new season to look like Sterling K. Brown in The Last of Us meets The Walking Dead. It’s brilliant. 

We’re in an age where a show with a Black lead gets written off by online trolls as “too woke” or full of “DEI hires” and anything that makes us feel our feelings gets denigrated as “silly.” But the absurdity and sincerity of Paradise is its strength. And its hero? A Black man, the descendent of a Tuskegee airman and Black pilot, who took a bullet for the president, feels a bit too nationalistic for the current moment, but it also harkens back to a time when that guy was the hero everyone welcomed, and the one TV wanted. Right now, Sterling K. Brown as Xavier Collins is the hero we need. 

What Else Is Good?
•  The Residence on Netflix is very good, and so is this mini Orange Is The New Black reunion. Never forget these women built Netflix.
• With, Love Meghan is boring, unrelatable (as it should be!), soothing, and good. None of those things are mutually exclusive. This essay by one of my fave writers, Alanna Bennett, is the best defense of Meghan and the misogynoir she receives I’ve read — and I’m not just saying that because I edited it.
• DOECHII!!!
•  Severance is so good. And how the series is handling workplace racial dynamics in Season 2 is even better. To find out exactly how and why Mr. Milchick is the perfect character to portray the intersection of capitalism and race, read this.
• DEI is good. In business. In beauty. In entertainment. But if they are taking away the seats DEI created at tables set up for us to fail anyway, we’re building and buying our own.