Start engraving another Emmy for her now.
After Paradise‘s jaw-dropping plot twist in the final moments of Episode 1, “Wildcat is Down,” I believed that there was nothing this show could do that would have me glued to my television in the same way. Boy was I wrong.
As a true lover of TV and someone who puts a lot of weight into a project’s performances, I pressed play on Paradise expecting greatness. After all, Sterling K. Brown is a three-time Emmy Award winner and James Marsden — who should have three Emmy Awards as well as an Oscar just for playing Prince Edward in Enchanted — are known for giving their all to whatever show or movie they are working on. But in Episode 2, “Sinatra,” it is Nicholson that left me thoroughly captivated and bewitched.
In the twisty Hulu drama, the Emmy-winning actress plays Samantha “Sinatra” Redmond, the world’s richest self-made woman and an integral player in the foundation of the community underneath the mountain in Colorado. As the title suggests, much of the roughly one-hour Episode 2 follows her story, both in flashbacks and in the present, reacting to everything from the murder of President Cal Bradford (Marsden) to the health issues and death of her son, Dylan.
About halfway through the episode, after already giving glimpses of her true acting range by showing an earnest meet-cute with her husband (Tuc Watkins), an adorable ice cream moment in a grocery store with her husband and kids, and a stomach-turning moment where she watches her son keel over unexpectedly while riding on a coin-operated horse, Nicholson delivers a series of scenes that will stick with me for years to come.
As Dylan’s doctor tells Sinatra and her husband that it’s time for “an impossible conversation,” the actress perfectly embodies a stolid mother refusing to come to terms with a terminally ill child. Being the richest woman in the world, she promises to find a better doctor and save her son, even rejecting the helpful advances of Dr. Gabriela Torabi (Sarah Shahi) and rushing out of the doctor’s office to the dismay of her husband. In doing so, Nicholson concretizes the true reaction of so many people who have dealt with a terminally ill loved one.
