Acting is the engine that drives Paradise. Not the plot, which you’ve seen before on better shows (watch Silo! watch Fallout!); not the dialogue, which is a wildly mixed bag of astute and cartoonish. Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, James Marsden: These are the load-bearing components of what creator Dan Fogelman has built down in that bunker.
To that number we can safely add Jon Beavers, who plays — or played — Agent Billy Pace, the character who gave this episode its title. Via a series of flashbacks, we learn how he became the man he is — or was — today, and it’s a very different man than what we’ve seen from him so far. But Beavers is so endearing in the role and so deft with his bantering dialogue that he almost singlehandedly makes the contradiction make sense.
I reviewed this week’s Paradise for Decider.
Tags: decider, paradise, TV, TV reviews