'Paradise' Delivers a Devastating Full-Blown TV Heart Attack

After more than two decades of watching and reviewing television and movies, I’ve pretty much seen it all. That doesn’t mean I don’t still enjoy TV, but it does mean I’m rarely surprised. This week’s episode of Paradise blew me away.

I’ve seen the world end in every way imaginable—monsters, aliens, zombies, meteors. But it has never felt as terrifyingly possible as it did in this episode of the Hulu series. Set in the White House, the episode follows the President (James Marsden), his lead Secret Service agent (Sterling K. Brown), and the rest of the White House staff as they grapple with a cataclysmic event.

It starts with a volcano. The eruption triggers rapid glacier melt, which sets off a massive tsunami that wipes out 300 miles of coastline—on every continent. The devastation sparks a global panic, and within minutes, the world’s superpowers are launching nuclear missiles in a desperate bid to hoard what remains of Earth’s resources.

Is this scenario scientifically plausible? No. A quick Google search confirms it couldn’t happen this instantaneously. But my brain didn’t have time to argue with my heart, especially after watching a newscaster report from the top of a skyscraper—right before a tsunami wave swallows them whole.

But the real gut punch of this episode isn’t the apocalyptic spectacle. It’s, as always, Sterling K. Brown. His performance is the emotional core of the story, capturing the harrowing intimacy of this disaster. As Xavier, he knows he has a seat on a plane heading to a bunker hidden in a Colorado mountain—one of the last safe havens for humanity. He knows his two children are on their way there, too. But his wife is in Atlanta. And as the chaos unfolds, he realizes she’s not going to make it.

While Xavier is internally falling apart over his wife, he’s also trying to maintain order, reassuring hundreds of White House staffers—many of them friends—who slowly come to understand the horrifying truth: the world is ending, and only a select few will survive. The tension builds like a lobster dropped into cold water, the heat rising until it’s boiling alive. It all culminates in a final, gut-wrenching phone call between Xavier and his wife—a conversation he believes will be their last.

Paradise creator Dan Fogelman essentially took the emotional depth of This Is Us and crammed it into a high-stakes disaster movie. And holy shit, it works. It’s wildly effective. Jaw-dropping, soul-crushing, anxiety-inducing television that triggered one of my anxieties at the same time.

By the time the episode reaches its climax, the specific plot mechanics almost don’t matter—they’re just a vehicle for the emotional devastation. But they’re still damn compelling. Instead of launching nukes, the President makes a different call. He pushes a button that fries every electronic circuit on Earth—microwaves, computers, even satellites. It also disables nuclear weapons, even mid-air. But in doing so, it sets human civilization back 500 years.

On paper, that sounds ridiculous. But this is why you hire phenomenal actors and ground it in raw, human drama. The result is one of the most crushing episodes of television I’ve seen in a very long time.