Rhea Seehorn in a world Breaking Glad. Vince Gilligan's PLUR1BUS on Apple

First two episodes available now then weekly instalments.

Your life is your own, Carol

thought abt starting this & would have exactly used that “your life is your own, Carol” quote so well done

this show seems extremely good so far based on moral of second episode (‘americans are worst xunts going’)

from reading early reviews I might have gotten the wrong end of the stick - rhea seehorn is the heroine apparently though you’d never know it from her nauseating individualism and narcissistic total absence of curiosity in the first two episodes. interested to see how they develop this to make her perspective more sympathetic - have to say the blissful community and interconnectedness of everyone else on earth seems mildly idyllic (and def not at all dystopic - notwithstanding the mortality figs) so far

Vinny gills has done it again

starting this tonight -excited to dig in!

I like it so far

Seehorn’s contrarianism & fear & righteous indignation speaks to me pretty deeply so I enjoy the growing sense that she is on the outer rather than the hero. Also the shiny + creepy vibes of the whole thing is very good

Albuquerque suburban sprawl & its associated architecture continues to confuse, delight, amuse & fascinate me

Rhea Seehorn is the GOAT

The Mauritania dude & his Fanta Girls is v good

Carol frisbeeing the sunhat over the fence, and her sitting in the VERY back row of the plane = god-tier contrarianism no notes.

Oh also in ep1 the CSPAN phonecall w the President/Secretary of Agriculture and the buzz words of their convo appearing in the chiron was so funny to me

I did chuckle at the Indian (?) woman's look of angry FFS! at Carol when her son is fitting next to her after Carol's latest outburst has set them all off again.

Did I miss them explain how almost the entire planet seemed to turn at the same time? Like it seems to need fluid transfer to spread at first (kissing, licked donuts etc) so not sure how it then happened to everyone instantaneously

yeah i tried not to ponder that stuff too hard i dont really get it

It did lead to that fantastic sequence at the bar so not going to complain too hard

I assumed they dispersed it in the _chemtrails_

wonder if we’ll get a sutter cane-like situation - ‘bitter chrysalis’ seemed a little too pointed

Of course, lol xp

This is like that twilight zone episode where the guy wakes up and he’s the same but everyone else is different!

For real tho, very it’s a good life in particular. Also thought of watchmen with the idea of this v extreme cataclysmic intervention for supposedly benevolent purposes

I laughed at the doughnut licking scene coming AFTER the agar plate sequence, v funny hat on a hat

The whole concept of this is so clever, upending the idea that zombie-like infections have to be spread in a horrible way and that becoming infected is a fate worse than death. Apart from anything else, it saves the production company a lot of money in special effects to simply spread an infection through kissing rather than ripping each other's throats out.

I would like to know that there's a full roadmap for this series before I get too invested in it, though. I mean, I've more faith in Vince Gilligan than I would in, say, Damon Lindelof, but still.

Thought this was toe curlingly bad!

just finished the first episode and I’m dying at the chyron messages on the tv while she’s on the phone

so good!

Dying at Peter Bergman showing up. Didn't know he existed outside The Young and the Restless

omg i didn’t realize that’s who it was! perfect casting

i was listening to a lovely interview w Gilligan on The Watch podcast this morning and i am struck by this feeling that maybe is just unique to me, not saying its a universally held truth by any means but:

i feel like just in terms of loyalty and creativity, Gilligan is sort of like an American George Miller.
Crews and actors work w him for years and he engenders so much loyalty in his projects; but also he never ever stops praising and giving credit to the people who get him to this place of fame, etc. They both have that.

I dunno.

Obv George for me is one of one, let’s be real, but Gilligan gives me a little of that flavor and I enjoy not only the things he creates, but listening to him talk, and listening to ppl talk about him.

It’s good when good ppl create good things!

I went into this very excited and completely spoiler-free. My reaction after the first two episodes is… cautiously optimistic for the rest of the season. Right now it feels like an episode of the Twilight Zone which is going to stretch for an entire season and I’m not totally sure it’s got enough juice to last that long without wearing extremely thin. But I trust Vince Gilligan—it’s nice to see all that trademark yellow—and will stay along for the ride.

my kids said it was like a Black Mirror episode and i have to agree, though probably at the top end of the scale of Black Mirror episodes. it seems churlish to say so but I can't help noticing what i think of as Extreme Netflix Cinematography i.e. inky blacks and high contrast accent lighting, rich reds, deep primary colours, everything kind of oversaturated and the focus so crisp you could sharpen a knife on it

I loved all the colours. Felt refreshing after so any shows these days with either drab colour schemes or almost perpetual darkness

Oh I think the colors are definitively Gilligan’s. That’s how you can identify his shows.

Got more Good Place / Last Man on Earth vibes than Black Mirror, but maybe they're going in a different direction in next episode? They could go so many ways with the premise.

Is New Mexico really amping up tax breaks for production or is it a Gilligan thing?

Gilligian said he did it in Albuquerque so that he could work with his same crew again (the same ppl he’s worked w since Breaking bad and Saul)

Oh we'll probably see a lot of subconsciously familiar extras then! (I thought Michael McKean was in Ronald Reagan makeup to play the C-SPAN guy)

Enjoying this so far if mainly just for having no idea where it will go and the to be expected lavish Gilliganery. Funny how close it is (which I suspected it would be) to an idea for a show I've had in my head (that no-one else ever has...um) for a while but tbh couldn't expand on much beyond a more straight up 'godlike alien power descends, actually enables justice/peace/utopia and this is also interesting somehow..').

It did feel off to me tho how accepting all of the others unaffected came across as compared to the white American tho.

I thought that too. But theyre possibly more accepting of it as they have families.

from reading early reviews I might have gotten the wrong end of the stick - rhea seehorn is the heroine apparently though you’d never know it from her nauseating individualism and narcissistic total absence of curiosity in the first two episodes. interested to see how they develop this to make her perspective more sympathetic - have to say the blissful community and interconnectedness of everyone else on earth seems mildly idyllic (and def not at all dystopic - notwithstanding the mortality figs) so far

I'd like to see the show go in this direction, like a satire of American fetishization of "individual liberty" over the good of society or subversion of the common "pod people" trope that we already have plenty of films about. (Perhaps she's the galactic equivalent of an anti-masker/vaxxer).

A friend complained it was odd that Carol seemed like the only voice of reason—but aside from the fact that she's our POV character, we don't actually know she's the voice of reason. As the others point out, she hasn't bothered to learn much about her foe. She assumes the hive are lying about people being happy as part of the collective and must be evil, but perhaps she's biased by Hollywood movies about how these things work. She tells one of the others that they will lose everything that makes them unique, but she has no way of knowing that. Maybe people can ebb and recede as they please, with the hive as the mainframe/cloud and physical bodies as interchangeable computer terminals. Maybe Carol will turn out to be the anti-hero, obstructing humanity's ascension into nirvana or even forcibly dragging them out of it.

I think they’ve done well setting Carol up as a character that is interested in her own sense of agency and isn’t really a social person. I think it’s interesting to ponder whether you can retain a unique sense of self when everyone has a shared sense of consciousness, but to someone who’s a perhaps self-loathing individualist this isn’t even a question, just a flat-out “no.”

yeah they quickly set up the big & small ways Carol is suppressing her own happiness, hating her fans & hating her own books, even down to going w the male instead of female pirate protagonist, plus the alcohol intake & DUI underlines how she’s “dealing” w all of that

she’s so indignant & angry at everyone’s compliance but it’s pure kneejerk fear - she’s not talking TO any of the ppl

also just being the lone American makes the rampant individualism & self-interest quite stark & amusing

so yeah it’s super interesting

plus the “other side of the other side” is that we dont know what complete subjugation means for Us once it’s achieved - like there are so many shoes still left to drop

its a good setup w interesting possibilities imo

There was more levity in the first two episodes than I expected, which made me happy as I'm burned out on eschatology.

And I wonder, and hope, that the touches of absurdity, like Airforce 1 appearing and all that came with it, will give them license to keep moving events along quicker, rather than the need to linger on dire circumstance, and also bypass any desire to stuff it with internet minutiae, the kind which dulled my enjoyment of the last season of Severance.

It was kinda fun that it felt like barely any time had passed before all the immune characters had met up and were interacting, if it had been Lost, or some other similar show, that shit would have been strung out for ages. It feels to me, so far, more like The Truman Show than some Reverse Zombie/Stepford Wives/Black Mirror thing.

as soon as air force one rolled up my thought was “oh, of course at least one of these guys has to big dog this situation”

that Mauritius dude is v funny

xps yeah I was surprised how quickly the meet up with the others unaffected came about too! thought that would get more build-up and drama around it

kind of pondering how the hive mind consensus is supposedly super chill but if they get worked up, thousands of people drop out of it and die. hrrrm

they don't drop out of it, aiui, they just go into that trance thing and if they happen to be in the middle of, say, driving or some other dangerous situation requiring full attention, they die as a result

yeah was kinda hoping that turns out to be a manipulative lie tho that probably doesn't make sense

def does feel that way though!

First half an hour of this show is ridiculous in a bad way. Does it get better? I’ve seen enough zombie shows. Can’t even make it though this first episode. So dumb.

omg just finish the ep dont be such a drama queen lol

i cant tell you how to live yr life but ep 1 and 2 kind of need to be watched together to get the full effect but feel free to complain abt a show you effectively have not watched

not tryna be rude but this kind of performative haterade annoys me

I too thought of "The Truman Show" when I was watching this, but I was also thinking of "V," tbh.

Unlike zombie or other post apocalypse stories, survival is not really the issue here, and I suppose that's an interesting take. But there is also no threat of mortal danger (yet); right now the only real stakes are psychological. Gilligan (who of course cut his teeth on The X Files before going more terrestrial) is a really smart dude, and I've got to assume given the efficiency of the storytelling in these first two episodes that he's got more than his share of surprises in store. I mean, I hope! The challenge of stories broadly like this is that there is no clear narrative exit, which is intriguing. Maybe earth will be invaded by *real* aliens! Maybe she will go to space! Maybe it will turn out this new collective entity *needs* her. There are a lot of way this can play.

The first few minutes of episode 2 were mesmerising and real classic Gilligan flamboyant set piece stuff. I'm a sucker for long tracking but the camera following Zosia on the scooter was particularly cool.

Btw did anyone catch where in the Middle East (I presume) that intro was taking place?

Tangier

Great show so far. Though Carol isn't making the best case for it, I'm in her camp here -- I don't trust this hive mind at all. It's clear it has an ego of its own separate from its individual members, with Zosia talking as the virus about how it doesn’t kill, it just follows its biological imperative to reproduce. I think the virus has subsumed all individual egos into its own, using their brains as mere cognitive substrate for one bigger consciousness. Presumably, it's going to redirect humanity's entire civilizational resources toward the one goal of spreading further beyond earth: essentially, coughing on another planet. That's how it got here in the first place, after all.

i’m into it. reminds me of the vanpires in sinners who all share all the experiences and memories of anyone they’ve ever bitten. or ancillary justice, where puppet bodies are just nodes of one consciousness.

xps thanks, realised North Africa was more likely after watching it again

Hmm, don't want to fall into zeitgeisty punditry, but the way the virus is described feels very much like AI (ie gathering an,d regurgitating all of humanity's knowledge), including the cheerful obedient tone in which they communicate

good point

Btw did anyone catch where in the Middle East (I presume) that intro was taking place?

It was in Tangier! I don't know where it was supposed to be, but it was filmed in Tangier. I know that because we were just there a month ago and my husband recognised it, and then you see it written on a sign.

Hmm, don't want to fall into zeitgeisty punditry, but the way the virus is described feels very much like AI (ie gathering an,d regurgitating all of humanity's knowledge), including the cheerful obedient tone in which they communicate

I thought exactly the same. I'm on the fence about this so far. Enjoyed episode 1 then found the introduction of the other (English-speaking*) non-podders very cringe. Feels like Gilligan, in trying to not be Americentric, or criticising Americentricity, is just digging himself into an Americentric hole. Certainly Carol's hero/antihero status is intriguing but it feels icky having the others be so paper-thin, so far at least. Maybe it'll surprise me.

*Hey, did you know only 19% of world's population can actually speak English?

it’s an american show with an american main character so idk! it’ll be interesting to see if and when we see the other remainders

the english-speaking group reminded me of some of my coworkers I sit near at work. except for the flamboyant guy; we could use one of those

I'm fine with shows being US-centric in principle. It's just that here it feels like if she's right to be anti-hivemind then the others in the group just feel like patsies, and if it's a criticism of America's flawed reverence for individuality then we need them to be more centred. But it's early days and maybe an interesting third way will emerge.

I didn’t get that at all. They came off as people who loved their families and wanted to be with them, which is more an indictment of individualism than anything. If anything, it felt like the writing was acknowledging that not all societies treat the individual as the basic unit of society!

Immediately undercut by Carol trying to get the one lady’s son to admit he had all the gynecologist knowledge, and the realization that perhaps a separation of the individual is important even if, societally, we exist as collectives

Not necessarily more centred, just less cartoonish I guess.

I feel like the possibly good or bad part from a north american standpoint was the fact that the number of people who can speak english in the most populated countries outstrips so many other places. Of course they were from India or China, that is where the people are

also the chinese dad is 100% my snarky but respectful coworker and I need to get him this show, especially if it has a good sub/dub

i initially thought the opening of episode 2 was Lebanon based on the "Laiterie du Levant" truck

I was idly commenting about how to me, on the surface at least, it kind of seemed cool that everyone was able to do everything, so no one needed to fight for dominance anymore etc. Partner said "but there'll be no more creativitiy, everyone's the same". Then we had a thought: wait, thats exactly like AI. A homogeonous blob of absolutely everything, on tap, indiscriminately.

I feel like this story has a lot of metaphor going on but its too early to tell where it's going with it.

Also, was it intentional that she was the only white person unaffected?

Well if there's just 12 people unaffected worldwide, it's pretty likely that only one or two of them would be white, demographically

I just watched the first episode, the bar sequence was incredible. Imagine being the extra who causes six extra takes because you can't twitch right.

Also, was it intentional that she was the only white person unaffected?

We haven't seen the non-English speakers yet. Could be a European in there.

Oops, meant to be quoting not hiding!

3rd Ep was solid, but I hope Carol's not gonna glower through the whole series, I understand the motivation of course but I fear it'll wear thin w/ me.

another decent metaphor about american excess, waste and indulgence restocking the supermarket on one person’s whim - neatly undercut by carol’s choice of a tv dinner. you can’t tell me gilligan’s not a secret commie

rhea seehorn great so far - assume she’s thinking about how she can try manipulating the hivemind’s accommodating nature to e.g. give her scientists, lab kit etc

yeah. the supermarket bit was an amazing indictment of rampant individualism and waste, we want to make arbitrary decisions in consumption but what happens to make that available is invisible, often by choice

honestly felt humbled by the sight of so many people bringing in so many perishable items into a building

Carol in the ice hotel was so good. I definitely have a lot of uh, Carolisms

But the whole Sprouts thing made me mad at her. Also throwing that nice breakfast in the trash! Goddammit Carol.

but if i was the last person in town i’d definitely hole up and get drunk & watch tv ONE HUNDRED PERCENT

I could totally see Barnes & Noble signing off on a pretty neutral book-signing scene but Sprouts HQ signing off on a scene that conjures the idea of legions of non-union labor working without complaint is either self-sabotage or diabolical.

The DHL guy gave great face acting. "....whyyy..would you want that (atom bomb)?"

Like everyone else, I loved the Sprouts scene. Yes, you want to be independent, but nobody is independent. This is a woman who has never given a single thought to how much work everyone else puts into her life, and now she's forced to, because they're doing it right in front of her. And she's so sulky that she still doesn't appreciate the food. And I loved it as another overturning of the beats in an apocalypse story. There's always a bit where the survivors have to go out and forage for food, and they always end up in a supermarket having to fight off zombified supermarket workers or other groups of survivors or some supermarket-manager-turned-gang-lord who is hoarding the food supply.

Got a bit carried away thinking about how the affected would be managing things like livestock now, presumably intending it all to die out naturally, increasing capacity for growing and farming only essential foodstuffs to sustain an imminently exclusively vegan population of billions.

great post trishyb

loved that extremely symmetrical shot of the trucks pulling in, perfect example of how this creative team could probably make paint drying look interesting

I did wonder how they got there so quickly but either this was just pratical editing or they suspected Carol might be upset about the empty sprouts so kept the trucks on standby.

I never heard of sprouts and assumed it was their fictional take on whole foods. Def adds to the comedy of her having a tantrum & yelling “I want my SPROUTS!” & them being like ok carol

(This is maybe too cheap/black mirror but i do wonder if they chose the name carol because it evokes “Karen” in scenes like this)

The first scene really sets up how babied carol is by Helen/everyone, just having everything arranged for her, turning up not knowing shit about anything and whining about every little inconvenience like an arsehole

the visual punchline of carol shopping alone in a fully stocked sprouts -> carol eating a tv dinner is pretty good

i feel like it's impossible to walk into a sprouts and not want to cook something from scratch

my prediction is that the benevolent us is going to reveal at some point that they're not causing the humans they control to reproduce anymore, something like that, to 'rightsize' the population, and that will seem bad to us

great post trishyb

You're very kind.

my prediction is that the benevolent us is going to reveal at some point that they're not causing the humans they control to reproduce anymore, something like that, to 'rightsize' the population, and that will seem bad to us.

This is a good shout.

I was imagining the refusenik Paraguayan guy on the other end of the plane phone being like one of the crusty older guys from the Eternaut, just sitting in his apartment shouting at this weird woman to fuck off.

Would be funny if that’s the last we hear of that guy

Their 'biological imperative' does suggest they will want to sustain the population as is if not increase and maybe their fragility (triggered by Carol's anger or distress, tho I do think that may be bs) is a factor in that also. If nothing else they must have years of 'cleanup' still to do!

We've heard enough mentions of the Paraguayan guy that I assume he'll show up eventually, or even get his own episode.

I think the shoe Gilligan is waiting to drop is what all these millions and billions of people are up to, what they even do in their spare time, if anything. They still must eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, die, but they've nothing left to read/learn/watch/whatever, and while I assume they still make memories through experiences and therefore must be collectively changing, they are clearly working on something bigger as yet not revealed. And yet, some hunk of them must still be doing what we all did before - maintenance, cleaning, construction, farming, manufacturing - just as some huge hunk's original calling education or purpose has been made irrelevant (law enforcement, for example, or teachers). Weird little show. I still maintain that as of right now it is a narrative dead-end, which isn't a bad thing, depending on how they handle it, but does point toward ending up as bleak parable, which this doomy latest episode (prematurely, probably) points to.

Yes, I’m very curious where all the people have gone. I know a lot of people died at the outset but there are still billions on the planet. Why does everything feel so desolate?

I also agree this does feel like a narrative dead end. I’m still not fully on board with this show although I really want to be.

Might be cool to see some glimpses of how e.g. the formerly destitute are now sheltered and provided for everywhere, if only purely thru the hivemind's logical redistribution of space and resources. Government buildings and office blocks as reconfigured dormitories etc.

the people are all cooking meth

I wondered why the pilots told Carol she was in good hands with the "individuals" flying, having logged over 51,000h, when any able-bodied person would be just as adept.

The Rose stories were interesting (I think 3 seperate ones), I wonder what that's attempting to evoke. Just comfort? Definitely relateable.

I really liked the DHL guy scene, ep3 kinda boring though. Hooked, regardless.

they told her why they got those pilots -- because she seemed skeptical about "the gal from TGI Friday's" flying the plane to Spain

can the pluribus tell you who has blocked you on socials

Watched the first three episodes and I think three hours of The Adventures Of Carol, Who Sucks has been more than enough for me.

what if she wrote about jazz instead of writing romance, and had fucked off to montana instead of the southwesr

Can the rest of the series be about the Mauritanian guy flying around in Air Force One and being awesome, please?

no.

I often wonder when a big streamer will make a show that has an interconnected universe with loads of different stories in different languages. I know the Walking Dead did some international spin-off, but I think it was still made by the same company, and had a lot of the same characters in it. Didn't Daryl go on holidays to France or something (I only saw one episode). And I know Amazon has its Citadel spy thing, which is bad, except for the Indian one, but it would be great to do something like that with this show. Different people's stories all over the world, all made in different styles. They're doing a pretty good job of laying the groundwork for it here.

star wars

Nice to see Jeff Hiller in tonight's episode.

fantastic episode - Rhea Seehorn was so good. Loved the bit where she filmed herself on thiopental. Itcwws a welcome change of pace from mopey angry Carol to let’s figure this out Carol.

Yeah not much to say about it but I was suitably engrossed. It's been a while since I had a show I can really look forward to the next episode of each week (Andor s2 I guess) but this is it.

I did think would Zosia twig what Carol was up to as they have the shared knowledge of humanity's psychology experts but then cleverly Carol was never really making eye contact with her, always behind the wheelchair until the spike was done. Good tension.

Didn't realise that was the real Albuquerque Mayor!

Was wondering if they would feature someone famous IRL as 'themselves' at some point.

Fingers crossed Mark Linn-Baker shows up he was also Left Behind, but had faked being pluribussed by feeding reruns of Perfect Strangers into the collective consciousness providing Carol with the technique to de-integrate everyone.

I did think would Zosia twig what Carol was up to as they have the shared knowledge of humanity's psychology experts but then cleverly Carol was never really making eye contact with her, always behind the wheelchair until the spike was done. Good tension.

ha, true enough

i think i have 0 interest in what the pluribus is, what its motivations are, etc. it's clearly a plot device to examine why americans can never let another person be happy.

in that regard i think it'd be pretty bad if there was like a 'to serve man' type of finale where the pluribus is secretly evil etc. whoever said upthread that this is similar to the good place is otm in that regard

but i'm also worried that future plots may draw too much upon boring utilitarian thought experiments, trolley problems, effective altruism (so in the news) etc. type scenarios

not reading the thread but I got to the end of the first ep and there's an orange light in the sky, a huge fire raging in the countryside nearby, a bit too immersive (it's out now thanks to the er teamwork of the fire service)

Carol is what my mother inlaw would have called
“a pill”

all of these assessments of Carol’s personality are making me do some self-assessment

oh i am definitely having a great many “i am in this show and i do not like it” moments, let’s be real

In her first scene, we see that she was perfectly capable of faking niceness around her fans. So why she isn't capable of faking niceness around the nicest, most helpful people in Earth history is kind of puzzling.

because they've had their souls hollowed out?

She was nice on her own terms, for personal gain, when interacting with fans. Being nice to these space nerds would mean being nice *for* them, for *their* benefit and comfort, but given they took away the one thing that made her happy (even though we haven't ever seen her happy), she refuses to play nice.

I assume we'll learn more about her curmudgeon twin in South America.

They know it’s fake. Her partner’s memories are in there! They’ve created a world where pretense is nearly impossible.

She’s one of the few people on the planet capable of lying, or having a self-image that differs from their public perception. Everyone else (minus the other outliers, etc) know exactly what everyone thought. Her little experiment was, if nothing else, a way to determine how she’s lying to herself.

Next episode drops tomorrow apparently

I guess all the neo-nazis and psychopaths and passive-agressive co-workers and anti-vaxxers and creative people etc etc just aren't themselves any more, and neither is anyone else? I'm glad she finally asked what they liked and whether they had any preference in anything whatsoever.

also btw I love you all but I am tickled by the fact that this board full of people who cannot deal with, idk, someone saying "whilst" thinks that a woman who has watched her life partner die in front of her and also seen the entirety of the human race including everyone she has ever known and loved be changed beyond all recognition and also stare at her all the time is not dealing with it nicely enough

The first scene really sets up how babied carol is by Helen/everyone, just having everything arranged for her, turning up not knowing shit about anything and whining about every little inconvenience like an arsehole

and the conversion therapy as a kid along with all of the recent happenings!

right!? our Carol, while definitely kind of A Pill, is also Dealing With A Lot.

This episode was hilarious. So many great moments.

Best since the pilot I reckon

Watching a person alone performing tasks is what you tune in for — well that and fuckups fucking up, so we’re *really* cooking now

the pluribus is on the huel

Hmm guess I was wrong about them all going vegan... but hope the reveal isn't gonna be that obvious

But another really impressive shot at the start with the pan round to the evacuation in opposing directions.

blue meth?
I had to look up who the voice was on the recorded message.

can't believe they did that to us when we have to wait 9 days til the next one

Uncredited but was fairly sure it was Howard and that appears to be the case

yes that's what imdb said :D

I'm just watching ep 1 of the Chair Company and there are some parallels - tracking down a manufacturer and breaking into the facility under the roller door.... lol

So apparently Rhea had no idea about that cameo lol

https://www.tvguide.com/news/pluribus-star-rhea-seehorn-better-call-saul-cameo-episode-5/

I’m behind on my watching so I’m not reading the thread

But this might be the hardest most grueling piece of new media I’ve watched since, like, Dancer In The Dark? I am delighted by the jokes and the performances and great writing but this scenario is so unbearably sad that it verges on cruelty, it’s very strange

this week's episode was pretty great, imo

Return of the dude from Mauritius living out his best life. Makes Carol look small and lost. Love that he has lots of answers because he asked some good questions instead of skulking around in freezing cold warehouses. The reveal at the end that the 12 won’t be assimilated without their consent, raises some interesting questions - without a clock ticking down, what now? Try to save everyone? Kick back and enjoy all Vegas has to offer? Make “friends” with the others? Carol stays true to herself do far and might have a kindred spirit from Paraguay coming to help

Mr. Diabaté is a smooth guy

Everyone’s gonna get kuru from hdp

Some potentially spoilery speculation I have seen online: The hive agreed to Carol's demand not to take stem cells "from my body." But we learned in the ice hotel flashback that Carol had frozen her eggs, which are another source of stem cells.

The Vegas stuff feels like a riff on that twilight zone where the degenerate gambler goes to heaven and it’s a casino where he always wins & the twist is that in fact it’s the bad place bc there’s no joy in a game where they’re letting you win all the time — & the gag here is that diabaté dgaf, like the end of that bugs bunny cartoon, “OK, so it’s mechanical!”

Lots of inversions of classic TZ in this, I still think it’s a good life is the main one but there’s also time enough at last and of course to serve mankind

I do not think that they do, jaymc

you don't think they do what?

I don't think eggs have stem cells. You can coax stems cells into egg cells in theory, and you can fertilize eggs to create an organism with stem cells, but eggs do not have stem cells. The harvesting procedure could have picked up some, though, I guess.

This episode has completely won me back to this show. The Mauritanian guy rules, of course, but also John Cena! And I admit feeling legimately bad for Carol when she learned that the other survivors have also shut her out. ("It wasn't unanimous.")

I wonder how much help the Paraguayan guy will be willing to accept on his drive north?

Yeah you really feel carol’s loneliness and pain in the last couple of eps, I was thinking in the previous one that the withdrawal of all the hive beings feels like a kind of ostracisation/ solitary confinement that the likes of camp freedom farm or whatever it’s called might use as punishment & that would be another confirmation to carol that they are the enemy along with the grinning conformity

(I don’t think they actually are being emotionally manipulative there, I think for the most part the point of this show is that it’s more interesting if they are being completely genuine, so they’re regretfully keeping their distance out of self-preservation)

Who knows where it’s going, Paraguayan ehrmantraut is on the way, diabaté has enjoyed a childish fantasy for 2 weeks but obv doesn’t buy into the collective & must have a sense that this stasis won’t hold

Perfect* episode no notes :D

*apart from Cena not popping up to actually meet Carol in person maybe

Love that he has lots of answers because he asked some good questions instead of skulking around in freezing cold warehouses

M. Diabaté’s poker opponent is named in the credits as “Blofinger”, heh

I’m all caught up. I wonder how dangerous/impassable the Darian Gap will be without threats of cartel violence? Paraguay is my favourite character and I hope we get lots of him in the coming weeks

Was a bit puzzled by Diabate's curious copying of Carol's breakfast eating strategy. Maybe he's been one of those 'eat the least liked component first' cats.

This episode has completely won me back to this show. The Mauritanian guy rules, of course, but also John Cena! And I admit feeling legimately bad for Carol when she learned that the other survivors have also shut her out. ("It wasn't unanimous.")

Agreed with all of this. Great episode. And as to the "it's really hell for a gambler if you always win", I don't think that's the fantasy. I think the fantasy is more James Bond, suave guy, king of the world, etc, and he's got that down pat. I wonder who came up with the costumes and everything for his party? Like, did he have a parade beforehand and OK all the suits and dresses and eyepatches, or is the hivemind accessing its design department? I suppose this is the kind of thing they tell you on the podcast, isn't it?

(I don’t think they actually are being emotionally manipulative there, I think for the most part the point of this show is that it’s more interesting if they are being completely genuine, so they’re regretfully keeping their distance out of self-preservation)

Yeah, I briefly wondered if they realised that lovebombing Carol wasn't working, so freezing her out might be a better option, but, as was repeated in this episode, they can't lie, which presumably includes that kind of emotional manipulation.

if I was the pluribus I would simply do one exception to my stringent moral code and murder carol

(j/k scene in the hotel was p tragic)

yeah it was so sad when they told carol she wasn't invited to borad 77 :(

big lols at the guy having to push start his MG midget. british roadsters, famously reliable! he could have at least asked his mom how to replace the starter, she would have done it for him.

and now he’s gonna try to drive it 5,000 miles

including through the darien gap which i am pretty sure does not have roads

good interview with Samba Schutte, the actor who plays Diabate. Happy to learn he was previously in Our Flag Means Death.

I was a bit puzzled by his curious copying of Carol's breakfast strategy.

I loved that bit, not sure of its significance beyond a character thing showing his easy openness to new experiences

I took it as him being a gracious host. It reminded me of an old joke about etiquette - maybe in The Official Preppy Handbook - that if you're hosting a party and a guest drinks from their finger bowl, you should immediately do the same.

He could obv tell that Carol was hungover and depressed and overwhelmed and was both trying to cheer her up and demonstrate that he was genially trying to learn from her. It felt like a team-building gesture and I thought it was touching

Happy to learn he was previously in Our Flag Means Death.

That's where I know him from! I knew he was familiar.

I like this theory that the carrier wave that Manousos was listening to is somehow linked to the the theme tune (after A/B ing them, I can't really hear it myself)

The next episode is called 'The Gap' so I wonder if the Darian Gap itself is going to play some sort of bigger role, this radio transmission has gotta be some kind of sync pulse for the turned tho.

ffs *Darien

Wouldn’t be surprised if the next ep is entirely manousos’s (I guess I should learn that name & stop saying Paraguay guy) journey to New Mexico. He’s obv determined not to accept help from the pluribus but I don’t think that means his plan is to take the mg the whole way lol

xps re the breakfast scene I think that’s all there but he does also appear to have a genuine reaction to how much her way is clearly better (it’s clearly better) — could be a germ of the idea that everything being served to you exactly as you ask can close off any real discovery. I don’t think diabaté will be on carol’s “team” in this season but he’s clearly gonna be one of the (three?) holdouts & might end up being the most interesting

A whole episode of Manousos travelling without any dialogue at all...I don't hate it.

He could end up being a spectacular adversary. He seems pretty content at playing king, he might attempt to act in ways to protect the current dynamic. Already the show has given us a Chekhovian atom bomb, I def anticipate some extreme conflict in this show

Clapping myself on the back that my first thought when Manousos fanned out his pile of maps was “but: the gap”

Xp I’m referring in my first paragraph to Diabaté

i watched the first episode of this. i found the premise very compelling, the show well-made, but i have no desire to watch further. i can get enough pleasure from just imagining the various potential ways it could pan out

Finally caught up with the two most recent episodes. I guess it's nice that something is actually happening/changing, however slowly, though still not sure to what end. We were spitballing potential narrative destinations and came up with a couple of ideas, but none ultimately felt like something this show would do. I guess we'll see. I had no idea Apple ordered two seasons, so I suppose I have low expectations of where this one might actually end up with just three episodes left.

I’m loving the slow unfolding of the story …

yeah me too! The joy is seeing Rhea Seehorn’s micro-reactions to each unfolding plot moment

I like slow (Better Call Saul was very slow, or at least deliberate). But I don't especially like Carol (are we even supposed to?), and I do find it a little frustrating that she is our avatar and we (mostly) see the world through her eyes, because she doesn't seem particularly smart or curious about anything, just a curmudgeon. Hence the most recent episode, which is essentially an episode-long exposition dump, as Carol herself (at least as written) isn't enough to really push the story along. Almost every development has been someone else telling/explaining stuff to her (us). To that end, yeah, I'm glad other movement is happening around her, because I was otherwise losing interest. I do kind of wish this was one standalone season that wrapped things up (or even didn't), but I guess that's too much to ask for these days. At least it's done very artfully.

I had a suspicion (before the stem cell reveal) that the 12 were immune because they also had a little Carol in them.

But I don't especially like Carol (are we even supposed to?),

I was chatting to my brother about this, and he remarked on how much respect he has for Vince Gilligan as a programme-maker because of this very fact. The fact that he took on board all the grief that he got and that Anna Gunn got for the character of Skyler, and how she was perceived as a killjoy and a block to Walt's progress, and how she was never funny, and all she did was complain and cry and blah blah blah, and he decided you know what, fuck yiz all, I'm doing your favourite kind of end-of-mankind show and I'm going to make a killjoy woman the main character, ha ha ha.

I'm bemused by the notion that it's inherently preferable to have a story conveyed through a character with whom you identify/admire. I prefer to read about or watch personalities with whom I have little in common.
That said, personally speaking, I like Carol a lot. Her intransigent individuality and belligerent contempt for present-day culture ("You a big fan of mindless crap?") is most enjoyable.

I identify way too much with her
I would be way more of an asshole to these people that killed my partner, too, particularly with all the 'noooo too mean, you're murdering thousands of us with your harsh words but we still LOVE YOU!'

she doesn't seem particularly smart or curious about anything, just a curmudgeon. Hence the most recent episode, which is essentially an episode-long exposition dump, as Carol herself (at least as written) isn't enough to really push the story along.

But yes, agree with this, and like the idea that we see different people 'exploring' the new Way Of Things in different ways.

I would probably be the biggest asshole in the world to these alien-beings, lol. But for an intransigent individual, Carol seems mostly intransigent and not much of an individual, just set/stubborn in her boring ways. TV dinners, watch Golden Girls DVDs, doesn't care what car she drives, given every choice in the world just wants to do everything the same way she did before. It's only been a week (give or take) and she's still processing grief, but we didn't even get much of a glimpse of what she saw in her wife (or vice versa), or her life. The Vegas guy described her as lonely, which is no doubt true, but the way she's been written/acted doesn't seem a radical departure from where she started. At least not yet. In fact, she's changed so little, if at all, that if Gilligan went the traditional sentimental route any change on her part might seem kind of cliche/trite. I got a glimmer of that from her obvious hurt at not being invited to the Zoom calls or whatever. But I thought, really? She's shocked? She's been nothing but an asshole to everybody from the start, and before the start. Are they really going to pull a Christmas, er, Carol?

It has to be really galling to work so hard at becoming the individual person you are only to have every bobble-headed drone approach you and say "we," and by the way, "we" are all good with exactly who you are, even the ones of us who ran your conversion therapy camp and rejected your work and etc etc

Enjoyed the cameo but "Hi, Carol. We're John Cena" was probably not the move if they're trying to win her over

Yeah, it was a good gag but didn't make a ton of sense. They (supposedly) have all the knowledge of the universe (and Carol, by way of her wife), all the psychology, etc. They already found a person that looked like her book cover (and who Carol secretly found attractive). Why they pick Cena? Maybe what's his name, who had been hanging with "John Cena," suggested it to them and they figured, sure, why not try him?

I get the "give it a chance, the world is peaceful now" advocates but the thing Carol did way back at the beginning when she was asking the kid about gynecology was the right angle, wrong format imo.

Manousos in Paraguay gets it. "You're not my mother. My mother's a bitch" or w/e

I mean, it works backwards -- John Cena was there because he, irl, accepted a guest role on Pluribus and then when that stunt casting was complete, they primed the pump by having someone say they were hanging with John Cena, isn't that cool? so then Carol was not surprised by John Cena

it's like subtly asking your kids if it'd be cool to meet Mickey Mouse and then revealing at a later time that you're going to vacation at Disney World, where they might encounter Mickey

Dunno if it really relates to Carol but John Cena is the ultimate American babyface. His literal life and persona is based around being fucking sickly amounts of nicey-nicey. There aren't that many people who have such a public facing persona. This could be why, in kayfabe, they picked him.

That Manousos line was great and suitably intruguing as it suggests he is doubly upset and creeped out by his fake-mother being 'sincerely' (under the circumstances) nice.

xp lol yeah if you said to me ten years ago Cena would be appearing as 'himself' in the latest Breaking Bad creator show I'd have grimaced and rolled eyes. What a manouevre!

Also, now i think about it, why was he allowed to wrestle with Cnea? Wrestling can still exist in a universe where they are not allowed to hurt each other, because it is supposed to only give the illusion that someone hurts their opponent. Interesting tidbit imo.

I think it's established that nothing like that is happening any more. There's no art, sport or entertainment being carried out en masse. Only tasks related to maintenance and survival.

Sorry think I misunderstood...but he was learning how to do a specific move from not-Cena so would only be hurting himself

John Cena could show you how to safely do a move because as part of the pluribus he's also a spinal surgeon, physical therapist, and chiropractor

I still don't quite understand the division of labor. Obviously right now, in the real world, there are enough people doing essential work (farming, medicine, etc.) to support the rest of us that don't do it. So if everyone suddenly possessed the same skills and knowledge, there would be a lot of aimless standing around. Do the aliens procreate? Have we seen Othered babies yet, or did they just, you know, eat them.

Oh, and also, do they possess all the knowledge of earth or all the knowledge of the known (to them) universe and every place they have been? Maybe they haven't been anywhere else. Lots of dangling threads to potentially be pulled at in the future, if they want. Like, some intelligent being, somewhere, beamed the genetic code to earth in the first place. Wonder if we will ever meet the hive-mind epicenter?

i dunno how much you'll enjoy thinking about that stuff josh, on the spectrum of soft scifi to hard scifi this is pretty squarely in the former

a shame. I was really interested in how they would portray the Mongus

Oh, and also, do they possess all the knowledge of earth or all the knowledge of the known (to them) universe and every place they have been? Maybe they haven't been anywhere else. Lots of dangling threads to potentially be pulled at in the future, if they want. Like, some intelligent being, somewhere, beamed the genetic code to earth in the first place. Wonder if we will ever meet the hive-mind epicenter?

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, 8 December 2025 16:19 (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

They are not aliens. They are humans infected with a virus that aliens caught humans the code to finding. It has made all humans connected and agree on certain standards of living based on all of the information they have, that fits their viral survival pattern. Right?

taught* not caught

I suppose that is a central conceit of the show: are they humans if they don't think or feel or do all the things that make us human?

They don't do those things... as individuals

feel like we've caught up on what the show is about

There was something sort of disappointing/unsurprising about Cena popping up since he's the kind of guy who happily does cameos in anything, and so part of me wished it was a more delightfully random celeb playing himself (like Mark Linn-Baker in The Leftovers). Then again, the fact that Cena is that kind of guy also makes sense for why he was appointed to deliver the message to Carol.

fan theory sprouted up on a podcast that Carol = Kim Wexler.

i hate fan theories so much

lame

fan theory sprouted up on a podcast that Carol = Kim Wexler.

This might be the worst, laziest fan theory I've ever heard about any show. It's like "gauntlet thrown!" level bad.

Carol died and she is in purgatory, and all of these people are trying to guide her to heaven/happiness!
Carol died and is in hell, and the devil thought it would be funny to surround her with kindness!
Carol is in a coma and this is all in her head!
Carol is a rival long-game alien sleeper agent driven to sabotage!
Carol is on another Severance floor!

I really loved the hivemind’s presentation methods, the corporate “we hear your concerns and want to address them specifically” while simultaneously not addressing much of anything except fruitarianism (lol)

Have YOU had your H.D.P today?

Carol is Carmela Soprano in witness protection after Tony got killed.
Carol is Tommy Westphall's lost twin.

also apparently the shrinkwrapped head was modelled on Gilligan himself <3

I have no fan-theories behind Carol but the blandness of the time-elapsed font is bugging me to the point where I wonder if there's a narrative reason behind it.

Carol died and she is in purgatory

TBH this is fairly plausible, if a little too lazy for someone of VGs skills. But the whole thing feels like such a heavy metaphor for american exceptionalism.

Carol is in purgatory: This type of plot twist was the big reveal at end of season 1 of The Good Place. Would be surprised if Pleur1bus is going to do that.

I think VG would be insulted by even the suggestion. Infinitely more interesting for this to be the characters reality.

Very different pace to this episode. You can feel the weight of the isolation / loneliness. At least Carol tries to have a bit of fun even if it doesn't look like much fun. And we get a beautiful travelog as Manousos drives north to the inevitable difficulties in the Darien Gap. Lovely ending to the episode.

This episode should have been incredibly annoying (and probably would have driven viewers mad prior to the era of "prestige TV"). Hearing Carol listen to Judas Priest made me wonder if Rob Halford (who lives in Phoenix) is a fan of Gilligan's shows.

Amazing TV, this one, 10/10

Carol and I are basically the same, from stubborness to music choices (however i have zero golf game)

Also Manousos is hardcore

also: am now reconsidering my hatred of golf

that tree though aggh

Vince Gilligan really loves Georgia O’Keefe (thinking back to that scene between Jesse and Jane in Breaking Bad)

So much to love with this episode.

Carol's free-associative singing to entertain herself was very relatable. That little twinkle in her eye when she gets the O'Keefe home, and her "Aw yeah!" at dinner when she sees the food. Also howling at the moon and smashing things and tempting fate, not caring if you live or die, all remind me of the loneliest depths of alcoholic despair.

Manousos is kind of an idiot and that's also relatable. I get strong Walter White vibes (in the sense of, you're not supposed to idolize this guy's toxic traits but of course some people will). Having to tend his own wounds because he can't go to the hospital and has no support network makes him an honorary estadounidense, I think. And I think I want him to change and heal his (normal, human) trauma even more than I want Carol to.

Any thoughts on the 'EL FRITZ' licence plate?

Can any ham radio operators tell me why checking every 3hz for a minute is better than a slow scroll?

Why the fuck would nature invent something as fucked up as a Chunga palm: the tree that looks like Kerry King’s nail gauntlets

That's exactly what I thought of when I saw the tree!

Vince Gilligan really loves Georgia O’Keefe (thinking back to that scene between Jesse and Jane in Breaking Bad)

Georgia O’Keefe also looms very large in New Mexico so it’s a natural touchpoint, plot wise, to a show set there.

Ultimately I’ve come down as liking, not loving, this show. But I still hold enough belief that it will go somewhere great either by the end of the season or next season. This was one of my favorite episodes so far, largely due to just giving Manousos something to do so we’re not so focused on Carol, whose plot this week strongly resembled the pilot of LAST MAN ON EARTH.

This is a show I will probably watch eventually, it sounds weird and gripping

probably obvious to most but struck me that carol is just was just as indulgent as diabetes prior to this episode - making the pluribus keep the lights on for a whole city at night + keeping a whole sprouts stocked is indistinguishable from the james bond playacting diabete does imo

i looked up how much that 100 paraguay dollar bill is worth. i think it's worth one cent USD!

Carol doesn't have sex with people who have to give you anything you want without question, so imo that's one difference.
I mean she does drug them but I guess she did ask about the effects of drugs/alcohol on them

Im stilling mulling over why Manousos felt it necessary to leave a note under the wiper of each vehicle he took petrol from

to keep his humanity!
he want to maintain a connection to before-hivemind earth, believes in it. i mean the sole reason he is going to find carol to reverse whatever they are/whatever is happening, etc.

Apparently this episode was mostly filmed in La Palma (Canary Islands).

really gorgeous visuals!

I again felt the allegories in this episode. Carol is isolationist, stubborn America. Manusos is the south/3rd world/what you will. A cipher for the downtrodden, which I felt was made pretty blatant when he told the aliens they could not give him anything because they did not own it, they'd stolen all of it, it wasn't theirs to give. His determination in the face of insane adversity.

And conversely, Carol's descent into isolationism, wrecklessness, and remaining selfish (demanding dinners and ice-cold gatorades and so on).

When the end happens, I was not sure if we were meant to think thats what They wanted all along - to just wait, til she broke?

Anyway, beautiful slow pace, loved the lack of dialogue.

Why the fuck would nature invent something as fucked up as a Chunga palm

For the same reason it invented the gympie-gympie plant I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides

You know the more I think on it I wonder if this could be a Trek-like "experiment" being done on humans to see how they react? We got Carol and Manusos, but also the Indian family who immediately defaulted to family-above-all in their actions, and greedy Mr Diabate. I hope it isn't something that trite.

We wouldn't have seen the initial spread of the ...affliction, though - none of the twelve were there to witness it spread from the lab.

It's funny how the 12 (who really strike me as being more Carol-like than not) have made their own little no-Carols collective and the show seems veering towards the most Carol-adjacent Manusos having his hopes dashed with meeting Carol in her state of full surrender, but I wonder if the big joke will be Manusos joining and becoming captain of the no-Carol crew.

Carol will be all, "but Manusos is the biggest Carol! How can you let him in your no-carol squad" and they'll be all "oh it's not no Carol, it's no CarolS"

a shame. I was really interested in how they would portray the Mongus

This was definitely my favorite episode in a while. Change of scenery, different protagonist, emotionally and physically dramatic stakes. And some actual character development, too, just for funsies.

There are a whopping two episodes left this season. Reportedly a second season is planned, but I've got absolutely no idea where they will leave things at the end of this one. It remains a dead end, at least until they drop some more pressing info/lore or find a way to open this closed-box world a little. Given the collective is compelled to tell the truth and make Carol happy, there is a long list of questions I am shocked she has (as far as we know) not asked. I suppose that could be Gilligan keeping his narrative powder dry.

Whilst they (apparently, although we only have their word for it) can only speak the truth they're not compelled to as they can choose to not answer, just as they did earlier in the season when Carol asked about whether it could be reversed.

Honestly, I can't remember how Carol came to the conclusion that their non-answer meant there was a chance it could be reversed.

It was in the episode where Carol interrogated Zoshia (sp?) after giving her truth serum

I remember the episode, I just can't recall exactly how she came to her conclusion. Iirc she asks "can it be reversed?" and they respond with something like "we can't tell you that," or "we can’t answer that question," which is ambiguous. Just looked it up, and Carol's response to that was “Right, except your non-answer is my answer. 'Cause I don’t think you can lie to me. I don’t think it’s something you can do. But you would definitely tell me if the answer was no.” But I don't follow, why would they def. tell her no if that was the truth? Maybe they don't want to make her feel bad/sad/mad.

...do you remember the inciting incident that caused them to leave her completely alone, and the forceful questioning that caused that incident?

Yeah. The way I remember it, she asks them when Zosia is recovering in her hospital bed (post grenade) and Zosia says "I can't tell you." And Carol is all, a ha, that means there *is* a way! And then she later drugs and fucks-up Zosia, and *that* is why they cut ties with her. Still not sure how that proves there is a reversal?

so the answer is no

She drugged Zosia, took her outside, and was repeatedly badgering her about it by asking how it could be reversed. That's when Zosia totally glitched out, and a large crowd surrounded them. After that, they ditched Carol outside of the voicemail and drone route.

isn't that what I said? that she glitched out when confronted and then they shunned her? but how does that mean it can be reversed?

The confrontation outside is the second time she asks her. The first time is when she's visiting her in the hospital room. That's when she is told that they can't tell her.

I'll give you that they cannot answer no, so the answer is either yes or some mysterious third thing that they resist giving an answer, to the extent that one of them would nearly die before answering.

Isn't even that a bit ambiguous as well? It's possible Carol just gave her too much medication. When Carol freaks out against one of them, it makes them all freak out, but Zosias seizure didn't seem to directly affect the others, did it?

!

https://www.instagram.com/p/DScsM66kvFA/?igsh=OGFoeGJkZXltZzZl

oh i love this <3

Just in case anybody did not realise that Carol is a gay woman let's have her steal a Georgia O'Keeffe painting.

and also have sex with a woman

xxp amazing <3

Carol doesn't have sex with people who have to give you anything you want without question

turns out she will but not til two whole months after her partner's death hey no judgements in this brave new world

Man behind winkies is Howard hamlyn, calling it

Gonna be v funny when manousos arrives from his long hell quest having mastered English & carol will be like “ok here’s my angle. I date pluribus”

cool! 35°09'55"N 106°44'45"W

Heads up that the finale will be dropping Christmas Eve not Boxing Day

heh that suits me

just picked up on the pun in the dog name “bear jordan” lol

OK, I think this episode finally set up a real conflict, and also what the Uruguayan guy has been doing with his radio. But I guess they will have to wait until next season, whenever that arrives, to get into it.

By the way, here is my prediction: Manousos will get to Carol OK, but the Pluribus is going to kill him. They've been ambiguous about their benevolent "no kill" rule, anyway - there's some grey areas at work - and rather than risk him telling Carol what he has learned they are going to take him out (perhaps also ambiguously). That introduces the threat of violence/danger, especially after this episode (where Carol is almost lulled into complacency), and offers an omg finale that hinges on the shock/irony of him making it all the way up to her, through all that danger and stubbornness, only to have his journey end in dramatic fashion. Also sets the stakes higher for season 2.

I think they would not have bothered saving Manousos in the jungle only to kill him later. Maybe they took stem cells from him during surgery tho.

ha ha wrong tag sorry

I don’t think either of those theories follow the logic that the show has built and I don’t think either will be the case

Most of the episode I’m afraid will be caught up with a tedious moment of plurb-lovin’ Carol having to convince Manuosos that she is still seeking to unJoin

But practically speaking, since this is still TV, how can the season end to make everyone go "omg, what is going to happen next?!" and remain excited or talking about the show for a year-plus? I think it needs a dangling hook.

I can't imagine Manousos, kind of one-or-no note character so far, will or can become a regular returning presence, which is one reason they've been focusing on his arduous journey and efforts and even more than Carol resistance. Hence my prediction, which would serve a shock or twist after the season-long build to his arrival. He and Carol will finally meet, his hardcore hatred for these Plurbiuses - he held a scalpel to a throat this past episode, and in the previous one lit his car on fire out of spite - will even give *her* pause. She'll be all, OK, they are bad, and I want the world back, but I don't actually want to kill anyone. And he'll be all, I sure the fuck do, btw, here is their plan, but before he can reveal what he's learned about the radio frequency he'll die or be disappeared and renew Carol's suspicions about these invaders who, she was quick to remind herself, EAT PEOPLE, and who also often bend the no-killing-anything rule. Where the show goes after that, dunno. It's still kind of a closed box with no clear path to resolution. Which is the dangling hook. I guess we'll see!

I wonder if the twist is that the radio sync beat that unifies humanity turns out not to be theme to the show but theme to mad men or succession.

When have the plurbs bent their no-kill rule? I think the major conflict in coming episodes/seasons is going to be between the humans— Chekhov’s atom bomb suggests a Cold War in the future, I think

But I do think Manousos knows something important re radio, that I agree with— I wouldn’t be surprised if this finale we see some significant flashbacks to the Joining as it happened in Paraguay, through Manousos’s eyes, and what made him so resolutely anti-plurb

I was intrigued by the number of births mentioned. I mean, sure, pregnant women were part of the Joining, but I've been wondering whether the Joined have any plans to perpetuate the race. They're fucking Diabaté (and now Carol), but do they fuck each other?

When have the plurbs bent their no-kill rule?

Maybe not directly, but the biggest indirect act was when they expedited the infection/whatever because the military was on to them, knowing that it would result in a billion or so deaths. But you could get nit-picky and say that even, say, antibiotics would be off the table. Regardless, it's unclear what they are or are not willing to do or accept; we're taking them at their word. Of course, their fundamental existence doesn't track as explained. Why spread around the universe to propagate only to accept that you are inevitably going to starve to death? That violates the (universal?) biological imperative of individual reproductive success.

Ya, I mean, not to mention the billions of bacteria and viruses existing in our personal biomes. I can’t get my head around why picked fruit (or ethically harvested milk or honey) (or potential meal sources from “dead” grains?) is off the table for consumption. But all of this just kinda buttresses my feeling that “it’s just storytelling”, and there’s some suspension of disbelief that is required to watch this show— and that the “do no harm” mandate won’t suddenly switch off for some logical reason, mostly because it’d end up being bad storytelling

Why spread around the universe to propagate only to accept that you are inevitably going to starve to death?

Was there something said that they starve to death in every biosphere that they occupy? I haven’t even picked up that the human Joined have any knowledge at all about other planets’ pluribii

That violates the (universal?) biological imperative of individual reproductive success.

It was said that the pluribii have “a biological imperative,” but nothing iirc about reproduction

I don’t know that it even makes sense to think of this as a species “spreading” or “occupying” other parts of the universe. All we know is that some entity in another galaxy, for reasons we may never know, gifted humanity with the recipe for a protein that codes for unity, pacifism and happiness. It’s possible that whoever did so didn’t realise this would render the species unable to feed themselves or that being around any strong negative emotion would give them seizures. I quite like the idea that these were basically mistakes and when they send pluribus v1.1.2 out to the next hopeless planet they’ll have fixed these bugs

(Agree that fundamentally these questions don’t matter & it’s all just there to set up an interesting situation)

I'm with fgti. I imagine there might be some shock revelation cliffhanger type ending but I'd be stunned if it's them killing Manousos because it'd just be terrible writing, especially when they could have just left him in the Gap if they didn't want him to meet Carol.

Tell it to Hallorann in "The Shining," lol.

I must have missed where jack torrance airlifted him part of the way to the hotel

Just sayin'. We already know that the Plurbs will go to ridiculous lengths to please Carol (and Manousos), but also that they have their limits/concerns. They can not want him to get to Carol while at the same time helping/healing him. If they were faced with the prospect of reversal, how would they react? Probably not well.

It feels to me that the do no harm/can't lie stuff has been hammered enough that I'm primed for it to be misdirection. Like we the viewers are supposed to think the matter's settled. But I have my doubts, just as Carol did, before she emphatically reminded herself that THEY.EAT.PEOPLE.. Then again, what difference does it make, if over a billion have already died, and there are only a handful of regular people left on the globe? How do you raise the stakes from there? *Are* there stakes? I don't know if it's good storytelling or bad storytelling, but this first season has been dancing around conflict in an almost subversive way, like watching a one-sided adversarial relationship, with one side aggrieved/scared/paranoid and the other just kind of smiling and shrugging benevolently. I suppose this (lack of) mystery is preferable to larding on lore, but I'm on the fence as to how compelling it and its characters are. Hence my suspicions about Manousos, who thus far has been even more one-note than Carol.

Anyway, it's all enjoyable conjecture, we'll see soon enough.

e8: carol finally avails herself of the pluribussy

I don’t know that it even makes sense to think of this as a species “spreading” or “occupying” other parts of the universe. All we know is that some entity in another galaxy, for reasons we may never know, gifted humanity with the recipe for a protein that codes for unity, pacifism and happiness. It’s possible that whoever did so didn’t realise this would render the species unable to feed themselves or that being around any strong negative emotion would give them seizures. I quite like the idea that these were basically mistakes and when they send pluribus v1.1.2 out to the next hopeless planet they’ll have fixed these bugs

(Agree that fundamentally these questions don’t matter & it’s all just there to set up an interesting situation)

― 🤷‍♂️ Cunt Tory Cheese (wins), Monday, December 22, 2025 1:59 AM (seven hours ago)

i sort of like the opposite angle - that an alien race looked upon 'survival of the fittest' as a despairing philosohpy when paired with intelligence and sentience, and decided to engineer a euthanasia virus that spreads throughout the universe (via the imperative) and that is designed to slowly burn each species out over time

I assume that there is no plan to ever show us the aliens who sent the code but knowing how these writers like to challenge themselves maybe that means they actually will do so down the line

We generally hold that evolution isn't directed or intentional or designed; genes just either work or don't and what works gets saved and replicated.

The original broadcasters may have been beaming the code out in every direction for a billion years with no hope of it reaching a place where beings have the tools and knowledge to replicate it. Its internal problems (killing its host) don't matter as long as it works. Whether its effects seem benevolent (to us) or bonkers (to us) is immaterial.

It makes sense for it to work to replicate itself but it's also okay if it fails. There could be planets with beings that are more amenable, who knows?

lmao

Great episode.

I don't know if it's good storytelling or bad storytelling, but this first season has been dancing around conflict in an almost subversive way, like watching a one-sided adversarial relationship, with one side aggrieved/scared/paranoid and the other just kind of smiling and shrugging benevolently.

that an interesting comparison. Like if every episode had Carol trying to figure out a new way to break the hive.

Even better if they sent a new representative each time.

For a split second, when they said "you know what we need to do," I thought my prediction was right, lol. Anyway. Good episode, but this season could have been a short story.

I thought the last few eps of this were absolutely perfect

their weaselly way of answering questions "truthfully" is doing my head in, particularly because Carol doesn't take the opportunity to find out as much as possible about them

anyway, psyched for the next series but not the long wait!

Carol is a pretty boring, not terribly smart, and certainly very self-absorbed person, which makes her a frustrating watch but not necessarily a bad character. It follows logically that the number of random sentient people left wouldn't be rocket scientists or whatever, so in that sense I appreciate the show's choice to make her utterly average (or below average?) in so many ways. It's kinda funny that of the how ever many left, Vegas guy quickly sussed out the Plurb people's deal, as did Manousos in his literal first interaction with them, and each time Carol is shocked at what they've learned just by, you know, asking. She's the ultimate anti-hero, because she sucks at being the hero.

Only on episode 7 after binging it over the past week so won’t hang around here for fear of spoilers - I just want to say that I find the amount of shit Carol is getting to be really bewildering! Obviously they’ve made her out to be jaded/a smartarse/possibly an alcoholic, but up to ep7 we’re less than two weeks out from the weirdest event in human history occurring - an event which resulted in her wife(?) dying in front of her! I find her reaction and her lack of desire to have long conversations with the plurbs to be much more relatable than the guy in Vegas who apparently instantly realised that there’s no such thing as ‘consent’ any more and has no desire for the people he’s fucking to get their free will back. I get that I am out of step with the consensus on this but, just to pick on the post above, ‘boring’, ‘not smart’, ‘utterly (below) average’ - I’m just not seeing any of these things?! Maybe people want more backstory/internal monologue/big conversations where Carol reveals more about herself, which is fine to want I guess but it just wouldn’t be this show. Anyway, I’m quite enjoying it!

i agree... i posted this upthread

also btw I love you all but I am tickled by the fact that this board full of people who cannot deal with, idk, someone saying "whilst" thinks that a woman who has watched her life partner die in front of her and also seen the entirety of the human race including everyone she has ever known and loved be changed beyond all recognition and also stare at her all the time is not dealing with it nicely enough

btw can I just say I LOVE the contrast between when they are around non-joineds then instantly drop the "act" when they're not... as per the girl in the finale. like the biggest con trick ever

That goat looked properly distraught like damn.

Big contrast between the acts of joy / fun / community when the Others are shown interacting with the non joined vs when the Others are on their own and just look like joyless automatons. Same was shown when the Others were cleaning up after the poker game in Vegas

My point is that she is in a situation where she can literally sit any of the Others down and ask them any question and get a more or less honest answer. Vegas guy did that, guy from Uruguay did that. But Carol seems to have no interest in doing that. I think it is an intentional built-in character flaw. Yeah, she has experienced plenty of trauma from the takeover, but she seemed pretty troubled (what little we saw) before this happened as well. She clearly carries a lot of trauma around with her, it's how she is written. It may be why she seems more interested in personal gratification/comfort (not hedonism) than helping others/the world. She wants her Golden Girls, her booze, the way things were before, for selfish, not altruistic, courageous or heroic reasons. Maybe that's true for Manousos as well, we'll see. I'm still not particularly emotionally invested in this journey, but I am curious how or if they can offer any sort of satisfactory solution or even conclusion to their scenario.

They imply they know what they are up to in this hilariously maddening interview with Gilligan et al , in which he coyly responds to questions more like a viewer than the show creator:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/pluribus-finale-cliffhanger-creator-vince-gilligan-interview-1236455087/

I don't believe the plurbs are jobless automatons! It's just that they have no reason to speak to each other because they're all connected and know the others' thoughts.

It seems like they regard one another with a vague general tenderness as they work together on tasks, but why would they need to be demonstrative when their kinship is known and felt?

*joyless dammit, not jobless, they clearly have jobs

I wonder if Vince sat down one day to try to imagine if universal contentment actually existed and we were all finally connected (like in the way communication technology has been advertising itself for decades), and thought 'ugh'.

It would appear incredibly cold and creepy to someone outside the loop. It's like the first step in that sci fi trope of future humans sloughing off their corporeal form and existing as a cloud of gas or a brain in a jar.

But I"m glad it's not getting caught up in the (narratively dull) idea of 'what makes a soul or a person' like in 46514513987536 anime/manga.

surprised carol hasn’t yet asked ‘why you?’ about zosia. why out of the however many billion ppl on earth did the pluribus pick you as their emissary. she must be the perfectly calibrated person to try get carol on side. would expect carol to be more alive to how cynical that is

She realises that ("why so fuckable?!"/like Raban?) but gave in to it for a while as a means of cope.

I think she just looks like carols vision of Raban. Do these people even have different personalities beyond what the may be acting as for her benefit?

She literally holds the book cover up to Zosia’s face and then has a whole conversation about the genderflip, it’s not a mystery

Binged the whole thing over the past 3 days, amazing show, still riding an endorphin (or oxytocin or whatever) high. Not perfect, but really really good. There is a bit of a deus ex machina in the last episode, though, when the minute Carol expresses how happy she is, the combined wits and smarts of seven billion people including tens of thousands of international diplomats, hostage negotiators and veterans of however many seasons of Survivor blurt out "gonna be even better when you're absorbed into the hive!" Kind of a dumb unforced error.

Also, picking an apple harms the tree no more than clipping a fingernail harms the person. WTF, hive, your logic is shitty.

Also, VG and FGTI enjoyably otm throughout the thread.

Xpost, been thinking about why it seemed strange to me that the joined don’t appear perfectly happy and contented when the unjoined aren’t around. Maybe the joined aren’t joyless automatons but to an outside observer, when the joined are on their own, they don’t look like joyful humans. They are something different - pretty obvious given they were all zapped with the mind virus. The joined have to tell Carol how happy they are because she wouldn’t be able to know otherwise. IMO, Carol is rightfully skeptical and values her independence too much. I agree with WmC the joined were trying too hard in the last episode. Anyway now Carol and Manosous have an atomic bomb so things should really kick off when we resume the story in 1- 2 years

Kind of a dumb unforced error.

they literally cannot help themselves, need to tell everyone the good news

I feel like it's pretty well established that the hive will withhold info to protect itself and its reproductive imperative ("can this be reversed?" ".....umm...") and also withhold info that might make the Unturnt unhappy. All they had to do was keep their planet-sized yap shut and they could have kept Carol as happy as she'd ever been in her life AND contained one of the 2 biggest threats to their existence (along w/ Manousos). I love the show, but having the Hand of Vince reach down and touch Carol in the waning minutes of the season is a weak spot imo.

only just watched the first episode but i *very* much enjoyed jack abbott from the Y and the R being the televised avatar of Us

just finished the first season. someone upthread said gilligan could shoot paint drying and make it interesting. I agree, I just wish he wouldn’t take that as such a challenge! overall interesting premise, beautifully shot, but painfully slow and repetitive, and just not enough genuine humanity to carry 7 hours or whenever of runtime. one of the most compelling readings is it’s an allegory for AI, so in a sense maybe thats fitting

Seehorn won Critics Choice Award for Best Actress In A Drama, and explains relationship of Pluribus and The Left Hand of Darkness:https://mashable.com/article/pluribus-finale-the-left-hand-of-darkness-rhea-seehorn