Bahala Na

**"Bahala Na"** is the fourth episode of the second season of *Almost Paradise*. The episode was first released on July 21, 2023, on Amazon Freevee.

## Synopsis

World War II veteran Victor Calendas is recounting his time in the war to reporter Maria Manalo. As he is getting to the important part, he is interrupted by his nurse bringing dinner. Maria decides that is a good stopping point for the day and leaves, intending to pick the interview back up in the morning. However, when Victor is asleep someone suffocates him.

At the gift shop, Alex Walker is dealing with a termite infestation. The exterminator says that Alex will have to stay elsewhere while the place is fumigated. Alex goes to stay with his friend, Detective Ernesto Alamares, who lives with his extended family including his father, Silvio Alamares, and several cousins. Alex stays in Silvio's room, but Silvio is distrustful of Alex due to a bad experience with an American spy during the war. During the night, someone breaks in and tries to kill Silvio. Alex fights off the intruder and the entire family tries to catch the intruder, but is not successful.

Alongside Kai Mendoza, Ernesto and Alex investigate and find that other men from Silvio's unit have died in the past two weeks. They start by investigating Victor's death, and they find out he was speaking to the reporter, Maria Manalo. They are unable to locate Maria, but she reaches out and agrees to meet Kai at a parking garage. She says that she was onto something big and agrees to come in. The same van that was at the scene of the previous killings shows up, but Kai scares it off.

Maria interviews Silvio, who recounts he time in the war. Specifically, an operation that resulted in the death of his close friend. They had to smuggle an American spy to an American submarine off the coast behind Japanese lines. Silvio and his friend would smuggle the spy across the beach after their leader, Colonel Alejandro Fernandez, and few others took out the machine gun nest. However, the operation goes wrong and the friend got killed and Silvio got shot. He is dragged to safety by the spy and would spend the rest of the war recovering in an Australian hospital. With this knowledge, Maria is able to piece together what really happened. Colonel Fernandez was too scared to go through with the operation and it was only a success because an unnamed soldier threw a grenade into the machine gun nest once shots started being fired. This is in contrast to the public version of events, which said that Fernandez was a hero. His granddaughter is currently running for Senate and is using her grandfather's heroic actions to bolster her campaign.

Maria spends the night at the Alamares house finalizing her article and wants to bring it to her boss immediately, but Kai tells her to stay for her own safety. She ignores this and dons Silvio's jacket and pretends to be Cousin Angelo Alamares in order to sneak past the guards and leave. She goes back to her boss, who spends the night going over the materials with her. In the morning they finish and he congratulates her on her exposé on Fernandez, before smashing her recordings. The thugs behind the previous killings emerge from a secret door and take her away at gunpoint, with the boss joining. The boss reveals he is on the Fernandez family payroll and is protecting the Fernandez family legacy.

Kai, Alex, and Ernesto wake up and find Maria missing and realize she took Silvio's jacket. They realize she went back to her office but find she is not there. Using a tracker Angelo had put in the jacket, they are able to find where she was driven off to and save her and arrest the assailants. After some time passes, the episode concludes with Maria running the paper, with a team covering the Fernandez family's corruption, and with Silvio finding out that his friend did not die that day on the beach. Instead, she was carried to a local village where she recovered, later immigrating to the United States where she lived a full life before dying of old age in 2010. Alex is also able to use his contacts in Washington, D.C., to get her and Silvio recognized for their success in the mission.

## Cast

### Main

* Christian Kane as Alex Walker
	+ Kane also portrays the American spy in flashback sequences
* Samantha Richelle as Detective Kai Mendoza
	+ Richelle also portrays Silvio's friend in flashback sequences
* Arthur Acuña as Detective Ernesto Alamares
	+ Acuña also portrays young Silvio Alamares
* Nonie Buencamino as Chief Ike Ocampo

### Guest

* Leo Rialp as Silvio Alamares
* Shaina Magdayao as Maria Manalo
* Floyd Tena as Colonel Victor Fernandez
* Maritina Romulo as Linda
* Don Melvin Boongaling as Russel
* Jonathan Villoso as Randall
* Jairus Aquino as Angelo Alamares
* Michael Dolero as Exterminator
* Jerry O'Hara as Victor Calendas
	+ Dylan Menor as young Victor
* Von Lopez as young Guerilla
* Victor Medina as Guerilla #2
* Julian Roxas as Japanese Soldier
* Chivas Nadela as Aurora Velasco