From the inception of Paradise Season 2’s penultimate episode — appropriately and menacingly titled “The Final Countdown” (the hit Europe song is not only mentioned, but a rendition of it serves as an ominous needle drop) — it seems inevitable disaster will strike the scientific experiment-turned-Levittown.
The installment opens with a flashback set six years prior: President Cal Bradford (James Marsden) is still alive and well, receiving a tour of the underbelly of Paradise alongside Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond (Julianne Nicholson); there are mighty oxygen-and-nitrogen tanks set to pump out a precise supply of Earth-like atmosphere to future residents and four modular nuclear reactors to power the whole thing.
In a Chekhov-esque manner, Cal questions how the automated system will respond in the event two dueling emergencies — like a loss of air and outside siege — occur simultaneously. The chances of that are infinitesimal, he’s told. Regardless,
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