Much has been made about how the rise of corporate oversight in studio productions has resulted in less control for individual filmmakers; a small group of clueless executives at Sony or Warner Brothers have more creative control than those that sit in the director's chair. Those interested in a “blank check” to pursue challenging material are now better suited to serve as showrunners for streaming television. In a game of ratings and viewership, the ability to hit the right numbers is more important than any quality assessment.
Given how infrequent it is for a series to end on its own terms, the showrunners who’ve guarded their projects from inception to conclusion are trusted with a level of creative jurisdiction that would only be possible in the era of unlimited streaming budgets. David Simon’s masterpiece The Wire allowed him to make niche, issue-oriented miniseries such as We Own This City and Show Me A Hero; four Primetime Emmy Awards for Best Drama Series on The West Wing gave Aaron Sorkin the greenlight to make whatever The Newsroom was supposed to be.
Dan Fogelman’s name wouldn’t be mentioned alongside great showrunners like Deadwood’s David Milch or The Sopranos’ David Chase, but his resume is deceptive. Although it’s easy to point out the obvious misses in Fogelman’s screenwriting credits (including the abysmal mother-son comedy The Guilt Trip and the botched ensemble dramedy Life Itself), he did oversee NBC’s family melodrama This Is Us for six seasons. This Is Us isn’t high art, but the fact that Fogelman supervised a sustained hit with multiple A-list stars attached was enough for him to land the opportunity to make a series that is far more outrageous.
Paradise is the first of Fogelman’s projects on Hulu, which means he wasn’t bound by the content or length restrictions of a network. To describe Paradise as a political thriller is the equivalent of Breaking Bad being labeled an educational drama; while the series starts in one place, it has moved far beyond the initial pace at a rapid rate. It doesn’t affect Fogelman’s employment if Paradise viewership is based on legitimate interest or stunned disbelief.
At the center of Paradise is Fogelman’s This Is Us star, Sterling K. Brown, as Secret Service Agent Xavier Collins. Despite being the father of two young daughters, Collins is so cold in his demeanor that it’s instantly obvious there will eventually be a flashback episode with details of his traumatic backstory. One of the reasons that Collins is so dour is that he’s responsible for the protection of President Cal Bradford, played with alarming charisma by James Marsden. Bradford has the mischievous edge of Bill Clinton with the down-the-road platform of JFK (who Marsden ironically played in Lee Daniels’ The Butler), but his reign is cut short when Collins finds him dead on the floor of his residency less than halfway through the pilot.
Paradise is littered with enough time jumps that Marsden still has a title card, as the series does suffer from a weak supporting cast. While Julianne Nicholson delivered an Emmy Award-winning performance in HBO’s riveting miniseries Mare of Easttown, her performance as the self-made billionaire Sinatra Redmond in Paradise is layered with camp. An actress of Nicholson’s talents can’t be blamed for the delivery of Fogelman’s superficial dialogue. There’s an entire sequence dedicated to Sinatra’s abrupt recollection of her past to a stranger at a bar, which no one could imbue with authenticity.
The entire series is set within an underground bunker designed to protect humanity’s survivors from a doomsday event. However, the new society that’s been created beneath Colorado is intended to resemble life in an average American suburb. As a result, those that catch a few minutes without context might be deceived into the belief that Paradise is set within the present. Even if the show makes a point to mention that the survivors avoid discussions about the apocalypse in an attempt to move on from their collective trauma, the fact that the collapse of mankind is infrequently brought up is evident of Fogelman’s lack of interest in details.
If Fogelman sensed that there are loopholes within the premise of Paradise, he decided to avoid those discussions through the development of new mysteries. The revelation that Collins’ wife was killed in the apocalypse leads to more questions about the status of their marriage, and the exposure of Bradford’s killer results in a consideration of what dirty secrets the Commander-in-Chief left buried. However, Paradise doesn’t have the same extensive mythology as Lost, nor does it have the political relevance of Homeland. A majority of the show is centered on the various intimate relationships between survivors, including a romantic bond between Collins’ daughter Presley (Aliyah Mastin) and Bradford’s son Jeremy (Charlie Evans).
Paradise has a place in the same category of elevated soap opera that This Is Us was part of. Nonetheless, there’s enough baffling choices made that suggest Fogelman has pulled an elaborate prank—why else would Collins have an extended monologue about the color of the titular fruit in the Roald Dahl children’s book James and the Giant Peach? The fifth episode even includes an extended montage of grieving people set to a dramatic cover of “Eye of the Tiger.”
Paradise is an experiment in execution. Although the show would’ve been forgotten had it been dumped in its entirety on Netflix, a weekly release on Hulu has generated speculation, click-bait headlines, and memes from an audience that may only be watching it ironically. It’s unclear if Fogelman’s experiment can sustain its bizarreness past a single season, but Paradise isn’t dull.