Paradise “Agent Billy Pace”

You know, I like how Paradise has been something of a show that’s full of surprises, and then I got to the end of this episode.

Why did you go there, Paradise?

As one might expect from this episode’s title, this episode is filling in the backstory for Xavier’s pal Billy Pace, and it’s not a good backstory.  He was a mercenary who killed an abusive uncle/guardian to protect his dog, went to juvie, and basically wins fights by throwing the first punch.  He’s also Sinatra’s personal assassin for when people need dying, like an expedition that was sent up to the surface to see if there were other survivors out there.

Billy kinda hates himself for that.

Now, there’s something to be said for why Sinatra had the expedition killed.  They discovered that the surface was survivable.  It wasn’t optimal, but it wasn’t instantly deadly either.  Sinatra believes that life in Paradise, which may have only been granted to the “best of the best,” a problematic scenario in the best of times, is preferable to life on the damaged surface.  She’s probably right.  The problem is she made that decision for everybody, and Billy’s job is to keep people from finding out that, hey, maybe they can leave Paradise after all.  It opens up certain moral quandaries, asks the viewer to decide which is preferable.  Heck, it’s kinda like The Matrix:  there’s the illusionary world inside the matrix, or there’s Zion with is real but not as nice by a long shot.  If the likes of Sinatra Redmond are deciding for people rather than giving them a choice, that’s bad.

It even means there’s a chance Xavier’s wife is still out there somewhere.

But then comes the end of the episode, and while Xavier doesn’t know why the President wanted him to know to beware Billy, he decides Billy is his friend (so far, so good), and Billy is a good uncle to Xavier’s kids.  Naturally, after telling Sinatra off, Billy promises to tell Xavier everything in the morning.

Dude, I didn’t need Sinatra to tell me she had other killers.  I didn’t need to even guess that Billy was never going to tell Xavier anything in the morning because he was going to be dead.  I wasn’t even surprised to learn that Billy’s girlfriend, fellow agent Jane Driscoll, is another one of those killers, one Billy didn’t know about.  Partially that is due to the fact that Billy doesn’t seem to be that bright.  Another thing is the total demeanor change Jane demonstrates when Billy gets home compared to what she was like for the entire rest of the episode.  It’s a cliche!  Of course she’s going to murder him!  The question was always more of “how” than anything else, so poisoned dessert, yeah, I can see that.

I can see that too well.  The “I’ll tell you tomorrow” bit is one of the oldest cliches, and I would prefer my shows not use them.  Paradise actually goes down a little in my estimation as a result of that hackneyed plot development.  If Scream makes fun of a trope, maybe don’t use it unless you really have to or you have a way to subvert it.