Paradise “Graceland”

So, I held off for a while before covering the second season of this show.  I had other Friday shows to cover, I wasn’t entirely sure how well this series would hold up once the mysteries of season one were resolved, and the other Geeks who did see season two seemed to be underwhelmed by it.

But here I am anyway.

Actually, this seemed like a decent enough start, and not just because the episode focused on new character Annie Clay, as played the generally-fun Shailene Woodley.  Annie was outside when the world went ka-blooey as was most of the human race.  She never got to the Paradise bunker.  Instead, she hunkered down at her job, cared for an injured coworker and friend who died shortly after the apocalypse started, and essentially kept herself alive, avoiding the outside world for as long as possible.  That was made possible by the simple fact that Annie was a tour guide at Graceland after dropping out of medical school due to patient care reminding her too much of her late mother.

Yeah, Elvis’s house was a fortress.  She didn’t even get hit by looters…at least, not right away.  Eventually some guys with codenames showed up.  The only guy, Link, he hits it off with Annie.  The oldest, Geiger, says they are going around the country and turning the nuclear power plant reactors off before something goes horribly wrong.  They’re fun, friendly, and they don’t really take advantage of Annie in any way, making meals for her, befriending her, and so forth.

She really gets along well with Link, if you watch my drift, and the fact that Annie has armpit hair is just another sign that, you know, the world kinda ended.  But then thing is, the world looks a lot better right now.  At least people can go outside without dying of radiation poisoning from the looks of things.  Why, Link even asks Annie to come with them!

Did she say no because they plan to kill someone named Alex?  I had to check Wikipedia, see if there was some character named Alex I didn’t remember.  Nope!  No Alexes!

She declined, as I said.  And months later, she’s pregnant, and then she finds Xavier unconscious next to a downed plane.  That’s the first we saw of a character from season one, really, and it’s the end of the episode.

Anyway, not a bad hour of television.  It expands the setting a bit, shows the end of the world was survivable, by more people than the series had suggested up until that point, and even if there’s no mystery on par with “Who killed the president and the world?” at least the show tried something new.

Whether it stays this good or not, I do not know.  Yet.