‘Paradise’ Season 2, Episode 5 “The Mailman”

By Nicole Gallucci

Paradise Season 2 is delivering banger after banger. Last week, we bawled our eyes out over a heartbreaking character death. And this week, we traveled back to “The Day” to learn what happened to Xavier’s (Sterling K. Brown) wife, Teri (Enuka Okuma). Like “Graceland” before it, Episode 5, “The Mailman,” was an incredible showcase for Dan Fogelman’s razor-sharp world-building skills. Anyone who’s watched This Is Us or Paradise Season 1’s “The Day” knows that Fogelman makes an absolute meal out of flashback-heavy episodes and masterfully tells an expansive story in under and hour. In this case, that story was how Teri, a mailman named Gary (Cameron Britton) — the man Xavier met at the end of “A Holy Charge” — and a small group of people survived for the past three years outside the bunker. The ambitious installment takes you on an emotional roller coaster with twists, heartfelt moments, and an ending that will have you counting down the days until the next episode.

Photo: Disney/Ser Baffo