Paradise Recap: What Cal Knew, and When He Knew It — Plus: The Tablet Thief Revealed!
President Cal Bradford’s last day on — or rather, under — Earth is the focus of this week’s Paradise, an hour that also sees Xavier officially go rogue.
We’ve got a lot of poor-little-rich-boy backstory to get through, so let’s get to it: Read on for the highlights of “In the Palace of Crowned Kings.”
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LET’S CAL IT A DAY | The episode’s opening shot gives us some sense of what’s going on at the planet’s surface, and it isn’t good: The Washington Monument is almost completely under water. We immediately flash back to Cal and his father, Kane, in 1997; though these snippets from Cal’s life and final day alive are spread throughout the hour, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to condense them here.
A younger Cal tells Kane that he’s leaving the family oil business to become a high school teacher. “Over my dead, corroded body,” Kane replies. Instead, the Bradford patriarch declares, Cal will go into politics and continue the family’s line of men who have “lived big lives.”
Next, we jump to Cal and his son, Jeremy, fighting at the house not long before he died. They’re interrupted by an agitated and confused Kane, who’s trying to get to his study. Kane’s dementia makes him think Jeremy is Cal; he also keeps referring to Billy as “sniper,” which confuses the president. “You thought they were all lost at sea, those four. And they did it right under your nose. You were never the sharpest tool in the shed, kid,” Kane sneers. Cal doesn’t know what his father’s talking about, but thanks to last week’s episode, we do. When Cal and Jeremy’s argument continues, the teen accuses his father of being “complicit” in what happened to bring them to live in the underground city. “I wish you died with the rest of the world,” Jeremy spits on his way out.
Later, during an interlude with Agent Robinson after she spent the night at his place, his mention of Kane’s “sniper” comment prompts her to say that she misses guns (remember, the Secret Service basically just carry tasers in this new world order), and Cal hints that there’s no way “people this powerful would leave themselves defenseless.” But when she presses him for more, he deflects. Their conversation then turns to their “illicit affair” (his words), a categorization that hurts her, because the relationship means more to her. But Cal says he can’t do anything more serious at that point in time, and no one is happy at the end of that chat.
Paradise’s Big Mysteries: Did [Spoiler] Kill Cal? Join TVLine’s In-Depth, Ongoing Investigation
CAL GETS THE BRIEFING OF ALL BRIEFINGS | Alone, Cal drinks and parses what Kane meant by his “lost at sea” diatribe. When he realizes that his tablet doesn’t give him access to reports from the ill-fated mission to the surface, he sneaks down to where Kane is dozing in the study. Apparently, the older man does have the security clearance to know what happened, because his hand — which Cal presses to the device — unlocks the files.
As Cal reads, he’s horrified. The radiation levels at the surface were high. The team encountered a woman who’d survived the catastrophic event, and they were planning to bring her back to Paradise. When Billy reported that he had the team and the survivor in his sights, Sinatra ordered him to kill them all.
The president makes notes in a notebook then goes to the public library in his bathrobe and asks if he can make a mixtape. After he’s done, he writes “For Jeremy” on it. Then he heads to a session with Gabriela and warns her about Billy via a message written on his palm, similar to how she told Xavier “SAY YES” when he was being questioned. Verbally, he adds that Xavier is the only person he really trusts. “You’re going to want to discuss it with him,” he says.
Then the leader of the free world, which is a far less impressive title than it used to be, heads home to make homemade pasta and text Jeremy that he’s working on something that the kid is going to want to hear about. “Never too late to fight back, right?” he writes. Aw, honey. That’s sweet and admirable, but does anyone doubt by this point that Sinatra isn’t reading every single text/email/carrier pigeon note sent in Paradise?
Speaking of Ms. Redmond, she swings by that afternoon to have a meeting with Cal on the patio. “I know what you did, Samantha. I accessed the files about the expedition,” he tells her. She remains cool: “A decision had to be made, and I made it.” Cal is incensed. “To be a murderer?!” he asks. He threatens to tell everyone the truth, which seems to amuse her. “Say it: I want to see what it looks like when you have balls, sir,” she goads. Xavier is standing out of earshot but close enough to see that the conversation is charged; when he goes into protect mode, Cal waves him off and says everything is fine.
GUNS… LOTS OF GUNS | After Jeremy bails on dinner, a sad Cal summons Robinson via text. “I can’t keep coming over here like your hooker,” she says… after she’s come over when he felt like having sex. She’s about to leave when he blurts out that he’ll take her shooting; those guns he talked about earlier exist in a cache in “the basement of the arena… you just punch in a four-digit code. It’s my inauguration day.” He adds that he wants a romantic relationship with her when his presidency is over, then he tells her he loves her. “Call me when you’re sober,” she says, and leaves.
Dejected, Cal winds up sitting with his dad and talking about Cal’s mom. The conversation eventually gets very honest, with Cal noting that “I lived my life as your chess piece” and asking “Have I ever made you proud?” Kane bluntly replies, “You never did anything I didn’t do for you,” then picks up the book of poetry he’s been reading all episode (namely Lord Byron’s “Darkness”) and ignores his shattered son.
In his bedroom that evening, Cal writes the number on the cigarette that Xavier will eventually find.
THE PLAN TO TAKE DOWN SINATRA BEGINS | In the present, Xavier wonders why Billy isn’t answering his texts; he very much wants to continue the conversation they started the evening before. Before he leaves for Cal’s funeral, we see Xavier’s son, James, playing with a dog; the animal belongs to their neighbor, Carl, even though pets are contraband in the subterranean community. (Side note: A community that bans sweet little puppers? Sinatra MUST be evil.) We also learn that Carl works in the tower, which controls the cave’s weather, sun movements, etc. Xavier warns Carl to be careful with the animal, because you never know where surveillance cameras might be hidden. Carl says he owes him one.
At the funeral, Robinson needs a quick word: The DNA samples from the crime scene never arrived at the lab, and the agent suspects that Sinatra was involved. Then Jane innocently notes that she hasn’t been able to get in touch with Billy, either, so she and Xavier go to Agent Pace’s place and find him — SHOCKER — dead. Jane immediately starts bawling over the body (nice theatrics there, lady), and Xavier can barely choke out the words when he calls to alert the Secret Service to the death.
Much later, Robinson and Xavier meet at the bar; she announces that Billy was killed by a lethal does of fentanyl. He immediately says that it has to be “her,” and Robinson seems to agree. They talk about the difficulty involved in taking Sinatra down without weapons, but wait a minute! “There are weapons, and I know how to get ‘em,” she says.
KANE DROPS A CLUE | Presley swings by to see Jeremy, who’s grieving and drinking. They’re about to kiss when Kane busts into the room, all out of sorts. He thinks Jeremy is Cal again, and he claims to know Presley. She quickly leaves and winds up running into her dad outside their house. Before she can say anything about her evening, Xavier breaks the news to her that Uncle Billy is dead, and that she should go pack for her and James and be ready to go. Presley cries a little but understands that Bigger Things Are Afoot, so she tells her dad to go and do what he needs to do. Next thing we know, Xavier is at Carl’s door. “I need to call in that favor,” he says. “It’s going to be a bit more than a sourdough starter.”
THE TABLET’S WHEREABOUTS REVEALED | Ready for some end-of-episode insanity? First, Jeremy confronts Kane for upsetting Presley, but the older man has no recollection of the incident. Grandpa still thinks Jeremy is Cal, though, and it seems he feels bad about… Cal’s entire life and the way he treated him? “I am not proud of anything Idid, but I am so very proud of you. And I am so very sorry, son,” Kane says, on the verge of falling apart. Jeremy plays along. “I’m sorry, too, Dad,” he says, apologizing on Cal’s behalf and absolving the older man of “everything.”
After Jeremy leaves the room, Kane returns to his poetry and has a flash of memory: “I saw her that night. I SAW her,” he says to himself. And that’s when we cut to Presley’s bedroom, where SHE HAS CAL’S TABLET HIDDEN UNDER HER BED. Hold on, WHAT?!
Meanwhile, Xavier stands outside of Sinatra’s house, where she watches him via security camera. But pretty soon, she’s distracted: Thanks to Carl sneaking into the tower and lending Xavier a helping hand, there’s a message now displayed on the dome for the entire town to see: “THEY’RE LYING TO YOU.”
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Got any theories on why Presley, of all people, has the tablet? Sound off in the comments!
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