This episode examines how the Bahamas was engineered to look like paradise and what that image concealed over time. From the rise of mass tourism in the early twentieth century to the pressures of independence, drug trafficking routes, offshore finance, and modern crime fears, the story follows how illusion became infrastructure. Tourism created jobs but fixed power in place. Secrecy protected profit while communities absorbed the cost. The episode centers lived reality over marketing, showing how a nation learned to survive inside a mirage built for outsiders and how that mirage continues to shape policy, safety, and identity today.