\n<\/p>\n
\u201cParadise,\u201d starring James Marsden as the U.S. president and Sterling K. Brown as his Secret Service agent and right-hand man, is TV jungle juice in the best way, combining several premises, styles and tones into something so thrilling and potent you barely notice its incoherence. After eight episodes (only seven of which were made available for review), perhaps you will not feel so good, but man, what a wild night. Didn\u2019t we used to do this all the time?<\/p>\n
The show, from Hulu<\/a>, bounces between two main timelines: the present, when our characters live in an eerily cheery gated community of sorts, and five years ago, when Marsden\u2019s President Cal Bradford is about to reluctantly start his second term. What he really wants to do is retire and chill out. Relatable! Brown is Xavier Collins, a stoic father and dutiful wife-guy whose integrity and intelligence put him at the top of Cal\u2019s to-hire list five years ago. Imagine Xavier\u2019s horror and dismay in the present day, then, when someone murders Cal, despite the intensity of his security detail.<\/p>\n Marsden and Brown are mesmerizing together, and their performances fortify \u2014 rectify? \u2014 the show\u2019s goofiness.<\/p>\n Because lo, this is not just a political thriller. It\u2019s a political thriller with a twist at the end of its pilot. The show was created by Dan Fogelman, who also created \u201cThis Is Us,\u201d and that show\u2019s echoes ring out clearly here: The collage of timelines, the weeping over one\u2019s family, Brown as leading man<\/a>. The \u201ctwist\u201d at the end of the pilot for \u201cThis Is Us\u201d was that the characters played by Brown, Justin Hartley and Chrissy Metz were raised as triplets, and Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia were their parents. This is also simply the premise of that show, and if you were describing it to a friend, that\u2019s the part you might lead with. That\u2019s the case here, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Spoiler alert. Again, I say: Spoiler alert, last chance to avert your eyes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The twist is that this place where everyone lives, Paradise, is an elaborate underground bunker where about 25,000 people have fled after a vague cataclysm. Cal\u2019s term has been extended here in the underworld, though he isn\u2019t totally in charge. The real top of the food chain is the icy billionaire known as Sinatra (Julianne Nicholson, also excellent). How\u2019d she build it? Why\u2019d she build it? Whom\u2019d she put in it? So are the days of our lives.<\/p>\n The show captures the modern fantasy to simply go live in a hole, especially one that is modeled on Stars Hollow<\/a>. But we are what we save. In \u201cStation Eleven,\u201d that was maternal medicine and Shakespeare. In \u201cParadise,\u201d it\u2019s cop cars and oligarchs. Eh, maybe it\u2019s OK to just let the sun melt you or whatever.<\/p>\n In its best scenes, \u201cParadise\u201d happily recalls many other faves, especially \u201cLost\u201d and \u201cThe West Wing,\u201d and occasionally \u201cFor All Mankind.\u201d In its worst scenes, an ill child sagely whispers: \u201cMom? Am I going to heaven?\u201d while a morose cover of \u201cWe Built This City\u201d wails away.<\/p>\n The show is filled with bummer covers of \u201980s and \u201990s songs and runners about \u201cDie Hard\u201d and \u201cThe Karate Kid,\u201d which speak to its frustrating lack of specificity. \u201cThis middle-aged man likes \u2018Die Hard\u2019\u201d is enough for picking out a secret Santa gift for a co-worker, but it doesn\u2019t do much for character illumination.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I devoured \u201cParadise,\u201d even when I was rolling my eyes so hard it was practically a workout. Episode 1 is available now on Hulu<\/a> and Disney+<\/a>, and Episodes 2 and 3 arrive on Tuesday but only on Hulu, with new installments appearing there weekly on Tuesdays after that. The show does feel like a network drama, so weekly airings feel appropriate, a chance to reconnect with those \u201c24\u201d cliffhangers that used to sustain us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n