Paradise Lost/Episode Guide
Back to Paradise Lost
Beelzebub Has A Condo Put Aside For Me
When Satan, Cruise Director of The Eternity, learns that a nepotistic God is passing him over for a promotion in favour of His Son, all Hell breaks loose! Satan mistakenly believes that a background in wedding planning and micromanagement will translate onto a larger scale and leads the disgruntled crewmembers in an ill-conceived mutiny attempt — only to be tossed overboard. After days adrift at sea cleaving to some highly suspect flotsam and jetsam, they wash upon the shores of Paradise Island, an impoverished banana republic ripe for further exploitation. Satan quickly devises another retaliatory plot against his Former Employer, this time using PowerPoint, sound effects and other inherently evil devices. With the help of modernist architect Victor Mulciber, Satan erects Pandemonium, a luxury condominium resort meant to challenge The Almighty, who has just finished construction on His own resort destination, Eden Beach, after only six days. [1]
Debate, Boss... Debate, Debate!
Words of fire are stoked as Pandemonium's Board of Directors decide the proper course of action. Satan mentions that in the mutiny attempt of the previous episode he managed to taint The Eternity's food supply with Ex-Lax and Castor oil, hopefully weakening God's bowels defenses. Donald Moloch, former Brigadier-General and current manager of The Purgatory Day Spa, violently suggests an all-out attack on God's crippled vessel, if only to escape the nonstop Kenny G smooth jazz played in the spa. Ted Belial, Director of Housekeeping, suggests they grab a bite to eat, play some Parcheesi and call it a night. Harry Mammon, Food and Beverage Director of Inferno's, an upscale Mexican restaurant, tells the others that they should just go public and expand themselves into a chain, spreading Pandemonium everywhere. At this point Satan breaks out his ventriloquist's dummy, Beelzebub, and does a fabulous song and dance number which convinces the others that he should go to Eden Beach to draw God's guests away and maybe steal a couple bathrobes and some of those nifty little soaps. At the end of the episode, Satan's daughter Sin shows up with three yappy poodles in tow and, surprise!... a baby named Death. In an even more lurid surprise, Satan is the baby's father. Only on Fox.
One Coupon For A Free Will
The third episode begins with a voiceover provided by series creator John Milton, in which he talks about seeing a "holy light". He is clearly schizophrenic. The scene cuts to God's penthouse suite where He is seated in front of a wall of golden televisions, each revealing the goings on in every nook of His hotel, both public and private areas, and He's recording all the footage on an infinite spool of Betamax tape [2]. While playing voyeur He explains to His Son, who is hiding behind a couch, that Satan will succeed in stealing His first guests, and many others, placing a straining burden on His revenue. He explains that even though He knows in advance that this will transpire, His guests still possess Free Will. As a puff of smoke billows from behind the couch, His Son coughs before admitting that He can't seem to follow His Father's logic - if God knows in advance what actions others will take, how can they possess Free Will? This incites God's rage and, in a fit, He fires one thousand indigenous housekeepers -- when asked how they will feed their malnourished children without jobs, God reminds them that He loves them immeasurably before having His bouncers eject them from the premises.
The Jetsetters
Satan approaches Eden Beach and is overcome with the beauty of the hotel strip bar:
"Abash'd the Devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is, saw virtue in her shape how lovely, saw and pined his loss"
After ordering a bottle of champagne he tours the inviting coolness of the Scales of Justice-shaped pool and samples the heady selection of shellfish contained within the extravagant buffet. In a moment of weakness he gorges himself on crab cakes and suffers from severe indigestion due to a minor food allergy. Gathering himself, he fills his pockets with scallops wrapped in bacon [3] before he sneaks into the hotel through a ventilation shaft. This scene is interspersed with a montage depicting the arrival of Adam and Eve, wealthy newlyweds who are scheduled to be the first of many of God's illustrious guests. Satan, peering through a vent, is enamoured by the smooth lines and sturdy build of these creatures, but decides he'll destroy them just the same. It's at this moment that he hears Adam tell Eve not to touch any of the coconuts on the palm tree near the sauna because God is confused by coconuts. Is it a drupe or is it a nut? If God doesn't possess this knowledge, then nobody should.
Angels & Lemons
The fifth episode begins with a dream sequence in which Eve, dressed in nothing more than a grass miniskirt, realizes that she has left her bikini top back in the room and suddenly becomes ashamed. Glaring spotlights flood a driftwood stage where Satan tap dances his way out to the pop music standard "Bright and Morning Star" wearing suspenders and a striped shirt, bearing a heavy mallet. A table sits center stage and on it, a coconut. After performing three minutes of observational humor, Satan begins swinging his mallet. Eve is afraid and topless [4], yet strangely excited by the upcoming destruction of fruit. As Satan raises the mallet high above his head... she awakens to God's goons busting down her door, which only aggravates her now apparent hangover. They gather Adam out of bed, quite forcefully, and instruct Eve to clean up the room on account of the sacked housekeepers; when she is finished she is to start on the rest of the wing. While Eve learns her place, Michael, Rafael, Gabriel, Abdiel, Ithuriel, Zephron, Urania and Uriel [5] drag Adam to God's Lemonade Stand, where he is to be taught the ways of Capitalism. After learning of his ability to reason Adam begins to pose a question, but is promptly intimidated into keeping his mouth shut.
God Is Omnipotent? No Wonder He's So Cranky
In which God reveals His omnipotence, takes some blue pills and retires to His wall of golden televisions for the evening. The rest of the episode involves a power outage, a chariot race and a series of rotating celebrity guest stars getting caught up in a love tetradecagonangle [6]. Meanwhile Satan has entered an amateur waterskiing competition but, after he bails out in a mass of floating chum, is forced to confront a Great White. This is fatefully and tearfully remembered as the episode where Satan "humped the shark". Only on Fox.
Jerking The Earth's Chain
Again the episode begins with a Milton-provided voiceover, this time discussing a red Swingline stapler and then the glow of Uranus. In one of the most famous cutscenes in television history, the camera jumps from the gas giant to a flying softball at the First Annual Eden vs. Pandemonium Softball Game and Clambake to God's watchful eye, as He is now acting as umpire in the game. At the bottom of the ninth Satan, down by two runs but with the bases loaded and aided by "the cream" and "the clear", smacks a ball solidly toward the outfield. As it nearly sails over the back wall God strikes it down with a plague of locusts, winning the game for His team. After receiving the trophy in a spectacularly lavish awards ceremony, He hangs it from a chain and wears it around His neck, just to gloat while Satan watches jealously from the dugout.
Pay No Attention To Celestial Motion
Standing on the veranda, Adam and Raphael smoke cigars and sip cognac, contemplating existence. When Adam inquires about the movement of stars and planets and wonders why all matter seems to be travelling outward as if everything erupted suddenly, from the same location, in some sort of "oversized boom", Raphael tells him to, "mind his business." He then tells Adam that Eve, though beautiful, is a bit of a tart. Adam, uncomfortable with this information, tries to change the subject by bringing up the spareribs he had eaten the night before, but Raphael just keeps talking about what a tramp his wife is.
That's Two Teats of Ewe!
Adam suggests that he and his wife spend the day "lying together", but Eve is already committed to an afternoon of shoe shopping. While her husband takes a trip to the island's zoo and renames all the animals, Eve recuperates at the hotel sauna. While enjoying her steam, a man claiming to be a politician joins her and flatters her with his forked tongue. It is in this scene that the catchphrase "That's two teats of ewe!" is introduced and, although it's meaning was never determined definitively, it was a staple of office conversation and McDonalds commercials. The politician, really Satan wearing a false moustache and cowboy hat, tells Eve that her skin has dried from the Caribbean sun and that to avoid wrinkles she should moisturize with coconut milk. Eve, gullible and vain, asks where she might find such a wonderful skin care product and is led to the palm tree outside. After a completely gratuitous, slow motion coconut milk shower scene that was nearly yanked by the censors [7], Eve realizes her blatant violation of hotel policy and runs crying to Adam with the evidence. After he lectures her sternly, he decides that he should stay with her, if only because he has just paid for her breast augmentation surgery.
Stop... Judgement Time
Hauled into God's penthouse, Adam and Eve beg for forgiveness. God shreds their credit cards, mocks them to the point of tears and then burns their suitcases. But just to demonstrate His infinite mercy, He clothes them each in a banana sack before He sends them on their way. Across the island in Pandemonium, which has now become its own state, Satan's daughter Sin is back and this time she is running a water taxi service from Paradise Island to Chaos with her new boyfriend Charon. But if Charon keeps insisting on being paid only in quarters, how will the business ever stay afloat?
Man Takes Flight
Michael leads Adam to Eden's roof while Eve loads their luggage into the party bus. Michael, who along with being hired muscle is also an amateur fortune-teller, consoles Adam with predictions of his future. He tells Adam that despite his disobediance, he will still soar through the air boundlessly. He says that even though Eve acted like an imbecile, she and Adam will, in the end, be much closer than they have ever been. Then Michael predicts that Adam will see the world from a whole new perspective because of his actions, right before he throws Adam off of the roof.
I Cain, I Saw, I'm Fully Abel
As Adam falls, seemingly to his death, he takes note that Eve is shoving their last suitcase into the bus directly below his random trajectory, possibly to illustrate the doomed pairs intertwined fates or just so the treacherous bitch gets what's coming to her. I mean, really, he would have been better off had he stayed with his previous girlfriend, Lilith, but she barely put-out. Just as he is about to crush his wife under the weight of their combined inadequacies, he is awakened in his bed, at home, by his son Cain. Amazing... it was all a bad dream brought on by Adam's feelings of guilt for eating a second helping of coconut cream pie right before bed. What an original way to end the series... the whole Wizard of Oz, nightmare — wait a tick... Cain, what do you have all over your hands and face? Did you get into the red fingerpaint again? No, that isn't paint, is it? Cain, what is that? And just where is your brother, Abel? Abel?
Footnotes
- ↑ Six days? Do these TV people really expect me to believe that an entire resort could possibly be built in six days? Sheesh!
- ↑ Though an infinite tape spool is most certainly impressive, the fact that God hasn't gone digital suggests that He may be a bit behind the times. Plus, it's a Betamax
- ↑ Some say this appetizer choice was an intentional critique of Jewish and Islamic law... we just say it's delicious
- ↑ Everything was shot quite tastefully for network television and the only perceived nipple slip, when watched in slow motion on the Deluxe DVD set, turned out to be nothing more than a nicotine patch
- ↑ Played by Frank Zappa's offspring
- ↑ No B-list celebrities were harmed in the filming of this episode
- ↑ Censors are a lonely people and this scene nearly required a compulsory yanking