Paradise Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Agent Billy Pace

Paradise Season 1 Episode 4, “Agent Billy Pace” settles us more firmly in the current post-apocalyptic day but continues to leave us much less settled about everyone existing in it.

Fresh from Dr. Torabi passing on Cal’s message about Billy, we see the man himself from childhood to the present. Raised by a viciously abusive uncle he kills while still a young boy, the man’s adult life is marked mostly by more incidents of violence.

That’s why he’s chosen to be saved. In Paradise, his acts continue at the will of Sinatra. Most disturbingly, he’s sent topside with three others to look for survivors and instead kills them all to maintain the image of horrors in the dead world outside.

All this is starkly juxtaposed against the town’s excitement over a carnival. Billy goes with Jane (her sweet personality at odds with his own), is confronted by Xavier, and eventually convinces his friend he’s not behind Cal’s death. In turn, he confronts Sinatra over all he’s been asked to do.

He asks to spend one last night with Xavier and his kids; the only family has left. And it’s a last night indeed. Following an ominous warning from the woman who hires him to kill, he’s poisoned to death himself by a startlingly calm Agent Jane Driscoll.

So yeah. Not only is our political thriller actually a post-apocalyptic drama, it’s also a dystopian post-apocalyptic drama with shadow leadership that both orders and shrugs off the casual murder of some of the only 25,000 people presumably left alive.

Billy initially seemed like a relatively minor player in these games. His launch into the spotlight in what winds up being his final hour casts a complicated sympathy. His humanity was stripped at a young age, and by the time he finds it again, his own past brutality catches up with him.

But of course this whole episode is about the darkness within those who are deemed worthy of this life. Despite the tragic death of her son, we’ve already had several occasions to doubt Sinatra’s morality, Still, seeing just what she’s become for her role is on another level.

And then there’s Jane, who until now has put up such a convincing act of innocence that it fools even Billy– to a fatal degree. Among the many questions the series has put before us: just how many serial killers does Sinatra have in there?

Is there anyone we or Xavier can truly trust? Cal must have had at least some idea of what really shapes Paradise. And Dr. Torabi is likely well-versed the nature of all these people, having been tasked with choosing each one in the first place.

The doubts extend past the rocky walls of the city. One of the explorers sent up with Billy sees something before he dispatches her. Is the planet as desolate as citizens of Paradise are made to believe? Did the end of the world even happen like they’ve been told?

Though we are drawn to the sinister side of media, it still takes great acting and writing to keep audiences eagerly engaged with so many characters who do so many terrible things. Maybe its inevitable in such a place and that’s why we can’t turn away.

We might at some point regain empathy for characters like Sinatra and Jane, but that’s going to be a considerably harder task. Once you start choosing the darkness, it’s hard to change. And as Billy learns, your past can just catch up to you anyway.

 

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New episodes of Paradise first stream on Tuesdays on Hulu.

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