I was rooting for you, Gary! We were all rooting for you!
Leave it to Paradise to once again introduce a new character, give us all of the lore, and suck us into their story to the point we’re completely invested in their survival, only to pull the wool over our eyes at the last minute.
How dare you, Gary!
Considering there are only three episodes left this season, it’s kind of crazy that Paradise Season 2 Episode 5 was another hour not only outside of the bunker, but without even a glimpse of those in it.
It’s like someone complained about Paradise Season 1 being mostly relegated to the bunker, and Dan Fogelman took that personally.
Teri Rogers-Collins feels like a character we know well and yet don’t know at all. So, on one hand, I was excited to flashback to her life since the world ended, but on the other, I was dreading another flashback-heavy hour when there is so much present-day stuff to tackle.
The hour started slowly, let’s not pretend that it didn’t, but it was also one of those episodes I don’t think you could fully appreciate until it was all over and you could judge it in its totality.
The overly long opening, which walked us through Gary’s mundane life, was pivotal to our understanding of who Gary was at his core: a lonely man with a good heart who found connection and clung to it with an iron grip.
Gary was a meek man, and the only thing that got him out of his shell was his relationship with Ennis, an online relationship that became a tether to something bigger.
I think a lot of people can relate to making a friend, whether it’s in an online space or through work or other means, who becomes an important part of your day-to-day. Gary and Ennis connected through the video games they played, but that quickly morphed into a shared interest in planning for something bigger.
The zombie apocalypse plan is a fun, non-threatening concept in principle, but Gary and Ennis took it to another level. And I almost wish we had another hour of this episode so I could have seen what the conversations with everyone Ennis recruited looked like.
When everything went to hell, Gary and Ennis were more than prepared, but that fateful day, it was interesting to see that no matter how prepared you think you are, something will inevitably come along and mess it up.
Bean was that thing.
Bean wasn’t something Gary planned for, but his immediately seeking him out spoke to Gary’s character. And when he saw Bean with Teri, you could tell that he wasn’t leaving that road without the two of them.
It was a sweet moment, especially considering the inner turmoil plaguing Teri.
Here she was miles and miles away from her family, the world crashing down around her, and this little boy was gripping her hand so tightly, finding trust in her in such an unbalanced time.
Then there was this stranger promising safety, and in that moment, surely the only thing she was thinking about was that, if there was a chance to see her family again, getting into the back of that mail truck was her best bet.
Seeing the way everyone rallied together in that bunker and made a life for themselves that became about more than just surviving to see another day was so interesting, considering all we’ve seen about the bunker.
The bunker people are living a cushy life, with amenities and a hope that those left in the world, even with adequate shelter, probably never had, even as time went by and life got a little less daunting.
They rebuilt from nothing and, over time, as connections and priorities shifted, realized they were no longer tied to the post office.
It’s insanely impressive what they were able to achieve over the years, but it became increasingly obvious that, while things were changing, that wasn’t what everyone had envisioned.
Ennis was painted as the big bad, and he was very much a heartless apocalypse survivor. The one who’s thinking ahead, instead of in the moment, and counting an extra person as a liability and not an asset.
Teri and Bean were never supposed to be there, and I wholeheartedly believe that most days, Ennis went out of his way to make sure they knew that. But Teri, someone full of kindness and love and with people in the world she longed to get back to, was the complete opposite of him.
I believed Ennis when he said he didn’t hate Teri, but he didn’t understand her. Gary was the closest thing he had to family, and Teri had taken his place as Gary’s best friend a long time ago.
The time spent in the shelter was a bit more interesting than Xavier and Gary dancing around each other, mainly because you could tell that Xavier didn’t fully trust Gary.
And honestly, for most of the hour, I was majorly confused about that.
From everything we saw, Gary was a decent man and someone Teri came to rely on.
Xavier doesn’t strike me as a jealous guy, so his distrust and borderline disdain didn’t seem rooted in the fear that Teri fell in love with the man over the past three years or something.
But knowing Xavier and the way he’s made a life’s work out of reading people, I should have been more skeptical of Gary, like he was.
Xavier’s a person who’s not used to hearing no, and he’s certainly not going to give up, so his plan to create a bomb should have been ridiculous, but would you ever root against Xavier Collins when he sets his mind to something?
I almost did, because that train was HEAVILY protected. But once we got the real story about that group of people, who weren’t some tactical group of bad people, how was Xavier not able to see that during his reconnaissance?
Obviously, that would have ruined the big twist, but it was still frustrating because Gary can play me, but he should not be able to play Xavier!
I believed in Gary until he shot Ennis. I genuinely thought his love for Teri would outweigh his fear. Losing Teri and Bean meant losing everything, and that drove Gary to desperation.
Gary and Teri were partners in every sense of the word. When he built her that radio, it felt like an act of love, not something he imagined would ultimately lead her to leave him behind to reunite with the almost mythical family he probably assumed was long gone.
Before the world ended, Gary lived a fairly ordinary, ho-hum life. In the aftermath, though, he built something that actually meant something to him: a home, a partnership, and a sense of purpose alongside a woman he’d fallen in love with.
The possibility of losing all of that didn’t just scare him; instead, it broke something in him.
Xavier’s arrival wasn’t something he could have ever expected, and I’m scared as hell for what comes next.
Where is he hiding Teri and Bean? If he was willing to kill Ennis to keep her, there’s pretty much nothing he won’t do, and a person that desperate can become far more dangerous than the world they’re trying to survive.
Thinking Twice About These Paradise Details
- The shelter’s Christmas was so creative and an excellent way to make use of all the packages just sitting around.
- Teri becoming not only a motherly figure to Bean but a teacher was such a neat little thing for us to see. It’s incredible to think that Bean was thriving more in that fallout shelter than he might have if he had stayed with his negligent family.
- That swap meet was so intense. Every time we meet new people now, I just want a slice of their backstories and how they survived all those years.
- It seems fairly obvious that Gary has Teri and Bean stashed somewhere, and Crystal and Jackie left, but what about the others? Is Gary holding them all hostage somewhere?
- For all those wondering, myself included, we did not miss the name reveal. Annie’s baby is what little Miss will be known as, presumably, until she’s reunited with her dad someday.
I was unsure when the season began about all this focus on the outside, but it’s slowly winning me over with hours like this one that are just so carefully constructed.
What do you guys think about this hour?
Let me know what you thought in the comments so we can discuss!
You can watch Paradise on Mondays at 12:00 a.m. ET (available Sundays at 9:00 p.m. PT) on Hulu.
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