SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Paradise Season 2, Episode 6.

Paradise Season 2, Episode 6 is what Hulu viewers have been waiting for: the Jane Driscoll origin story. Fully given center stage, actor Nicole Brydon Bloom is fantastic at exploring Jane’s psychopathy. But “Jane” doesn’t quite reach the heights of Season 1’s “Agent Billy Pace.”

The comparison is warranted because both episodes have similar aims: to take a character and show them in a totally different light. In “Agent Billy Pace,” the Paradise fandom saw charming, loyal Billy as the hired killer he used to be—right before his girlfriend Jane murdered him. In contrast, “Jane” does reveal a lot of important facts about who Jane Driscoll is. But Jane’s story doesn’t feel as fully realized as Billy’s did, perhaps because with only three episodes left, Paradise Season 2 has an awful lot of overall plot to get through.

First and foremost, this is the well-deserved Nicole Brydon Bloom show. She was wonderful in Season 1 at turning Jane from naive rookie agent to cold-blooded killer, and she’s fantastic again here going through a version of that journey again. There are moments when Jane is truly happy, such as when Samantha Redmond gifts her a Nintendo Switch. And then there are even more parts where Jane is truly disturbing. Brydon Bloom is able to nail the jaw-dropping moment in which it’s implied that Jane cut off a CIA supervisor’s male anatomy and is now holding onto the evidence. One wonders how that scene was ever conceived in the first place, but Brydon Bloom sells it with Jane not having a clue how wrong that is.

This episode also charts an easy to follow line in the progression of Jane’s issues. Audiences see how Jane’s relationship with her CIA boss Stacy Thomas (The Endgame and All Rise alum Ryan Michelle Bathe, who happens to be Sterling K. Brown’s wife) becomes a substitute for the mothering she very much did not have. Bathe is a great pick for Stacy, able to get the audience invested in her character and wondering what happened to her afterward—as she’s not seen after Stacy finds out about the assault. Did she kick Jane out of her house? Did Jane kill her at some point? Fans might never know, but they want to.

They also learn that Stacy introduced Jane to the Nintendo Wii, that Jane had an imaginary friend and freely admitted to Stacy that she was hearing voices, and that Jane pretends to be Samantha. There is a critical scene in which Samantha finally questions Jane about her line from the Paradise Season 1 finale: “You’re no use to me if you’re dead.” Jane tells Samantha that she’s “always” been a weapon, and that she meant she needs Samantha to tell her what to do. The disturbingly great thing about Jane is that the audience doesn’t know if that’s true. It very well could be, or maybe Jane is lying and she wants to become the next Sinatra. But that line needed to be addressed and it’s done in such a way that Paradise viewers have something to sink their teeth into. The show is at its best when it engages like that.

But “Jane” isn’t perfect because the cutaways to things that have little to nothing to do with Jane’s story feel more prominent than they should be. During the first season, there were always these asides, but they were more seamlessly matched with whatever character story was at the forefront. In “Jane,” audiences are pulled out of Jane’s plot a little too much in order to be reminded that Presley Collins still exists and Jeremy Bradford is still in a secret prison. And for Jeremy, Anders and Nicole Robinson to start their escape out of said prison, and for Xavier and Teri Rogers-Collins to finally be reunited. The latter is the cliffhanger everyone’s been waiting for, and it comes at the end of an episode in which Xavier hardly appears.

The catch-22 of Paradise Season 2 is finally coming due. It spent a few episodes early on telling only loosely related stories, and they were great stories, but now because of that an eight-episode season doesn’t seem like enough. If the creative team had the time, maybe they could have delivered an episode that explored Jane even further and picked up the other stories elsewhere. The shot of Jane stepping out of the bunker into the daylight would have been a perfect ending on its own. But there are only three episodes left, and the “home team” hasn’t even met the militia yet.

Yet even with its flaws, “Jane” still has a lot to offer in both big and small moments. Viewers may be scratching their head wondering how Circuit City Guy got advance warning of Jane’s birth. Then there’s also a tough reveal from Jeremy, who refers to Robinson as “one of” his father’s “side pieces,” implying Cal was having more than one affair? That’s a small line but a big bomb to drop when audiences were so invested in Cal and Robinson last season. And Robinson has the perfect response to that line. Plus, Anders mentioning that the way to open the bunker doors involves cutting off the town’s oxygen supply just creates a vision of one epic but really scary scene that could be just around the corner.

Paradise Season 2, Episode 5 gives more attention to a character and an actor who absolutely deserve them. “Jane” adds valuable pieces to the puzzle that is Jane Driscoll. But it doesn’t come together quite as solidly as other episodes have, and putting the big Teri-Xavier reunion at the end of this means that crucial scene doesn’t quite fit. All the same, even a less than perfect episode of Paradise is still a whole lot of fun to watch.

Paradise streams Mondays on Hulu. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Hulu.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.