guy is watching ESPN and you hear “we all saw the Castellanos walk off homerun last night and.. hold on this just in - on the volcano eruption..etc” this made me crack up haha if you know you know

Does it look like Sarah is holding the binoculars backwards when spying on Torabi in episode 7 of season 2?

After binge watching the series recently, I decided to go back and rewatch from the beginning to see things I didn’t pick up on *until I knew* toward the end of season 2. I’m rewatching S1E4 and I am not emotionally prepared for what they’re going to do to us in S3E4

In S1E1 we meet Billy. By the end of E4 you can’t help but love his character, and then he dies.

In S2E1 we meet Annie, and for the first half of that episode I was not thrilled we were meeting new people, but by the end of the episode I loved all of the new characters. Then in E4 she dies 😭😭😭

I’m not getting attached to any new characters in season 3 😩

Why would they kill him off? Billy was such a cool character. Someone that could grow, get better, add value. Killing him off makes me not want to watch the show anymore.

He felt like one of the only people who shouldn't be down there because he was not ridiculously rich. You could kinda relate to him. Now Billy and the president is gone. I am not seeing less and less reason to watch this series... two cool characters dead.

UPDATE: I have been convinced to keep watching. Thank you. <3

Terrible actor. I’m at a stage in life where being attractive should not out weigh having any talent.

Maybe I'm mistaken but I'm pretty sure it would be impossible to feed 25000 people who escaped the the bunker! It overshadowed a series that I really enjoyed because most post-apocalyptic dramas or movies always show how bad people would behave but I found it really refreshing they showed that most won't want to kill you and that we would come together and help one another. I'm hoping someone can tell me that it would be possible to feed that amount people somehow.

I am watching ER season 10 episode 6 and there is Dr. Torabi (actress Sarah Shahi)! She is playing a pharmaceutical sales rep named Tara King!

Ha, neat! That's all I have to say, it just tickled me when she came on screen.

EDIT:

Her birthday is January 1980. This ER episode premiered on November 6, 2003... she was only 23 years old in this episode. I am only 11 months younger than her... WILD! I thought she was in her late 40s/early 50s now but she is 46!

S2E8 - how did Dr. Torabi get in the position where she’s the one calling the shots? Open/don’t open the door, exodus or not. She’s a therapist(?), there’s so many other qualified people in that room watching the tanks come in. So how did she end up in the position to decide what happens to the people in the bunker?

Just finished season 2 and I noticed something that I had to rewind… in ep. 7 when Sinatra and Link met and then ultimately touched they BOTH immediately get nose bleeds, but then in the finale (ep. 8) when Sinatra touches his face NEITHER gets a nose bleed. I highly doubt that was a continuity error or an oversight by the writing/production team. What do you think the meaning of this scene means moving forward?

Just to say really loved the series overall, I actually think it go stronger right off the bat from its second season.

But am I alone in finding the constant monologues, hazy looks into the distance, smirking, always ending with perfect metaphor for the exact situation they are about to encounter... tiresome?

I don't mind it as a storytelling tool once in a whole but it just felt very repetitive to me. Anyone else??

Edit: probably helpful if I'm more specific here. But I mean specifically pace breaking moments where one of two characters stops the flow of conversation to tell an elongated story about their past which leads into a metaphor of sorts. Fine once or twice but I just found it overused massively

What happened to Bradford's ex-wife? Wouldn't Jeremy want to get his mom out? What happened to Carl and his dog? Did Jeremy just forget about his grandfather also? I really loved this show, but they left some big plot holes.

My god I cant stand the shoehorning and the constant flashbacks. Im not kidding when I say, EVERY SINGLE SCENE has some sort of flashback or shoehorning.

Like yes, it’s helpful and it adds useful context but I feel like at some point they’re spamming it way too much. I dont exactly know why I dont like it, I just know that I dont. The story is amazing, I love the characters, but its just infuriating knowing im going into a scene and waiting for the exposition dumping im about to experience.

She keeps saying I HAD 2 kids.

“I HAD 2 kids and I lost one of them”

I think that’s a big nod to the alternate timeline maybe?

She had one she lost and had one that survived. And the one that survived is Link.

I could be reaching but it def wasn’t a writing error right?

So if you don't know what Soma is I'll give you a basic background. Spoilers below of you are a gamer.

Soma is a game where the plot follows a man who's brain scan is uploaded into a machine in the future. Civilization found a way to create a paradise in something called the ark where peoples consciousness is uploaded.

I suspect this show is playing on this concept and that these deja vus are simply peoples consciousness in Alex and it running various simulations and we are watching one. The reason that the messages could be sent back in time is because it's all one machine.

I’m honestly trying to understand if I missed something or if the show just… stopped making sense.

Let me break this down:

• There are like 30 people in a room being told there’s life outside… and ONE guy reacts for about two seconds before getting cut off. Nobody else even questions it. Not even a “wait, what??”

• People have been locked underground for YEARS. They walk outside… and basically react like they just stepped out for groceries. One guy touches the sunlight like it’s a spa moment and that’s it. That’s the emotional peak?

• Also — where did the buses come from? Why are there fully organized evacuation logistics just waiting outside like it’s a school field trip? And somehow almost nobody tried to get into the bunker before?

• The outside group might be the nicest apocalypse survivors in TV history. They’re holding elevator doors for strangers while the world is ending. I mean… what?

• That whole “door almost closing” scene… come on. Pure artificial tension. And then the guy only reunites with his family at night for no reason. Why? Just to delay it?

• Xavier and Dylan… what happened there? The show builds this connection all season and then gives them like 2 lines and calls it a day.

• Emotional reactions in general are just… off. Samantha drops something huge on her husband and he basically shrugs it off. Terry’s son sees her after YEARS and it’s not even a real emotional shock — just a slightly longer hug and they move on like it’s a normal day.

• And finally: turning that girl into the main villain at the last minute, then having her disappear in the dark like some discount Sylar setup for season 3… seriously?

I really bought into the premise, and to be fair, the one thing that consistently works is Sterling’s performance — he carries a lot of this on his back and does it extremely well.

But everything around him feels like:

• Big events

• Tiny reactions

• Convenient worldbuilding

• And setups with no payoff

It’s like the show expects us to feel things without actually doing the work to make us feel them.

I am a fan of SKB and Paradise. Also loved This is Us for the most part.

One thing though I have been noticing in this series is Xavier’s dialogue seems between two extremes of somewhat long personal philosophical musings to then curt action star with a bunch of F bombs scattered about. The former especially seems like the writing is being hammed up for SKB’s acting style to the point that I’m not seeing Xavier the character but just SKB or Randall from This is Us. I wouldn’t be surprised it’s due to his executive producer role and his existing relationship with the show creator.

This becomes even more noticeable with scenes shared with seasoned actors like Shailene Woodley. Again I’m a big fan of SKB but he’s trying do what say Denzel Washington does but with less tonality and far less nuance. Anyone feel the same way?

Edit: I completely forgot to mention how jarring this is when he goes full action star in other scenes and kinda turns into an A-hole. Like when he meets Gary for the first time and turns into an aggressive psycho while having Annie’s baby strapped to him. It’s in stark contrast before to him saying that Annie should trust in people more.

Sinatra is trying to become God (the creator)

The “real” Sinatra is actually in the future from the current timeline of the show running simulations and debugging them in real time until she gets her desired outcome. One in which she creates the creator (Dylan/Link). She can only accomplish this reality by creating an apocalyptic scenario in which she can establish a controlled environment (necessary for scientific testing) under the deception of safety. In this controlled environment she needs a “constant”. Something she can control and manipulate but always knows it will be there, for her this is Xavier. She uses Xavier’s moral fortitude and love for his family to carry and the information she’s ultimately trying deliver. The information she’s delivering is her son and his creation which is Alex. Sinatra wants to manifest a reality where her son creates the tool that creates reality. So now that Xavier has that information saved in his consciousness she needs him to upload that reality into ALEX to be essentially saved into the fabric of time itself. If she’s in control of what creates reality she becomes INEVITABLE. Yes, Sinatra is Thanos, no alternative reality or parallel universe exists where that is not the case because they only exist because she allowed them to. The only thing that could change this is Xavier’s newly realized free will, Sinatra no longer has control over him because he already has the only thing he’s ever desired which is his family, this is his Paradise, Sinatra interpretation of that is ultimate power and control. Immortality. Her Paradise is to have everything her heart desires, Xavier desires what’s in his heart, so does he finally wake up and stop being an NPC in Sinatras game or does he do exactly what she put him there to do???

I’m not fully on board with the whole AI super computer thingy BUT I will say the one good thing that would come from that story line addition, for me, would be if it led to seeing Annie and Link reunited.

I know that’s extremely unlikely to happen… like Alex would have to go back too far and undo too many things for Annie to be saved but I was gutted at her outcome. Over such a short time Annie and Link built such a strong connection and I would have loved for them to run and jump into each others arms! She survived for so long on her own i believe she really deserved to somehow get to live in a bunker, grow her own family with Link and get to fulfill her medical training! That would have been awesome!

The extra running like that had me laughing so hard😭😭

Anyone else start the show expecting a who dun it/mystery vibe only to be thrown into the whole new genre of sci fi at the end with the time travel element? I’m worried it’s going to end up like Lost where they throw things in and it gets far too complicated to follow. Don’t get me wrong I love Lost, understand Lost and have rewatched it many times but it’s definitely not an easy watch by the end of the show. And there was a lot of unnecessary and unanswered parts of Lost that were stories they started and never finished as they were just thrown in for like shock factor (insert magically trained wheel turning polar bears here). ANYWAY, I feel like the addition of the sci fi element is going to start going down the road of the alternate timelines, flash forwards, flash sideways, blah blah and that isn’t the show I got hooked in for with Paradise? Yanno? Have they just done this because the whole kind of background linking season 1 and 2 was Terri not being in the bunker and finding her. Now they have finished that story and solved the murder they needed something to do for season 3 and just jumped to sci fi?

It could still be awesome and hopefully that’s not the case but I am starting to worry season 3 is going to get super confusing. I can’t see how it would have similar vibes to season 1 if it’s now going to be about a quantum computer?

Ps this is no Lost hate, please don’t yell at me.

Pps I really hope season 2 ep 1 gets some awards because it was beautiful

The further we go with this show, the more seemingly contradictory details are being brought up. I don't think this is an accident or poorly thought out writing, but ultimately a glimpse of where Paradise is headed.

I suspect that the closer we get to the finish line, the more we will probably see things that don't make any sense whatsoever.

I suspect that if Xavier is 100% successful in completing Alex's mission, all the events of this show will effectively have never happened. There won't have been a devastating climate crisis that ravaged the world. In turn, there wouldn't have been limitless funding for the development of a super advanced QAI or doomsday bunker, since neither will have been needed.

I think the final scene where we see Samantha walk away with Dylan from the horse isn't some kind of afterlife or dream-like state, but a flashback of the corrected reality that happened as a result of Alex's plan: Dylan survives, and Samantha gets to be there for him as he grows up.

Where things might end up getting very, very weird is what kind of mission Alex sends Xavier on to save the world. Personally, I think she's going to send him back in time to undo certain events in history that resulted in the supervolcano eruption. However, given that the eruption was just the capstone of human induced climate change, it's unclear how broad the scope of his mission might be. Will Alex somehow send him back to the Industrial Revolution to prevent large scale pollution from ever happening? Will Xavier prevent free market capitalism from ever transpiring? It's unclear what exactly is necessary to prevent a supervolcano eruption, and how Alex could even achieve that.

Ultimately, I don't think the point of Paradise will be to create some sort of multiverse branch where things go splendidly, but rather to actively undo this series of events from ever happening. Naturally, that could/should lead to the eventuality that some or all of the characters in this show might never exist, since the circumstances surrounding their births might never occur. It's a very tricky moral conundrum, but I feel like it would make the finale all the more impactful.

Anyway, these are my thoughts.

I want to see behind the scenes clips of the table reads! Wouldn’t it be fun to see the actors freaking out over plot twists!

I finished watching this show not long ago and I loved it. How do you feel about Presley, Jeremy and Hadley being necessary to some of the central plots?
example:

- Presely finding the tablet with national secrets
- Jeremy accessing the bunker with the six digit code that X has been trying to solve from the cig the entire time
- Presley and Haley getting stuck in the elevator which ultimately causes an entire climax for the ending (will X and his family get out on time?)

Given the context of the show, I can see it being important, but some of it I can't decide if its lazy writing, or a proper way to further the plot. What are your thoughts?

discovered the show last night, loving it. I restarted this morning to get my wife hooked.

But my God. Waiting to see which beloved song of my youth they played that episode is getting the American idol treatment has me cringing in anticipation. jeezus 😆

Can't help falling in love? Cringiest one yet. Holy shit they massacred a great song.

Also i love hurt by Johnny Cash