Transcription
Do you have to like a character to root for them? The collective of people who enjoy good TV, it just spent a few years culturally obsessed with succession. Watching a family of objectively terrible people that we somehow couldn't help but feel something for. Or to bring it a little closer to home, think about Jimmy McIll and even the sainted Kim Wexler. We couldn't always get behind their decisions, but we always understood exactly where they came from.
In the online plurabus community, the argument that Carol is too unlikable keeps coming up. And look, there's some truth in that. She's rough around the edges, and she often makes things harder than they need to be. But two things can be true at once. Carol can be a difficult person, and she can also be uniquely equipped to save us. While the Hive offers perfection, efficiency, and quiet conformity, Carol offers something different. She's messy, stubborn, and flawed. In short, she's human, and most of us would agree that humanity, with all its glaring shortcomings, is worth fighting for.
Episode 4 highlights this immediately. It opens with a moody cinematic sequence in Paraguay, where we watch a man choose to eat dog food rather than accept a gourmet meal from the hive. The message is clear. Humans would rather starve as individuals than be fed as part of the collective. Now, the show could probably have been more efficient getting us there. But honestly, anyone complaining about the intro's pacing is likely a hive mind sympathizer because the show builds real momentum on that scene, proving that what looks like being an impossible dick might be the only way to break free of the others's grip.
The 104 cold open finally puts a face to the voice we heard cursing at Carol on the plane. And since Manusos is the first immune person we've met this way besides Carol, it immediately made me think back to episode 2's opener featuring Zosa, the only member of the hive we had seen in that way. There's a stark parallel in the silence of both scenes, but the context is completely different. The silence in Zosa's sequence was a result of harmony. The hive doesn't need to speak to communicate. The silence in Manus is just isolation.
Visually, the show reinforces this gap. Morocco was bright and vivid, highlighting the creative choice to use enhanced color to represent the postjoining world. Even amidst the destruction, people were working together to clean up the mess. In Paraguay, you can't even tell it's night outside because Manusos has blacked out the windows with cardboard. It's a visual suffocating darkness to contrast Zosa's light. This helps explain the debate around how he stayed off the hive's radar for 33 hours. Seeing his living situation, that's now believable.
On the plane, Zosa mentioned he hadn't communicated with them, and we see him frantically scanning the ham radio for signs of life. It's a terrifying detail. He's looking for a voice in the static, not realizing that the airwaves are dead because the conversation has moved inside everyone's heads. And while Manusos gives off immediate doomsday prepper vibes, the details tell a different story. When he gets tipped off by flies buzzing around his garbage can and desperately licks the lid of his last tin of food, it becomes obvious that he didn't spend the pre-apocalypse stockpiling MREs. He's paranoid, sure, but he wasn't prepared. Generally, you'd want to stockpile calories and a way to protect them. beans, bullets, and bandages. But Manuso seems to have forgotten the beans at the very least.
And that lack of preparation leads us to the character defining scene. The sound of a car cuts through the silence. Manus watches through a peepphole as a hive member gets out, picks up the uneaten meal from the last drop off, and replaces it with the fresh one. Say what you will about them. If nothing else, the hive is consistent. Once she drives away, he walks to the gate and dumps what we know to be an amazing meal right on the ground. I imagine this will lead to debate about where you'd draw the line if you were this hungry. But the point is that it's an act of defiance. He's starving, but he draws his line at letting them sustain him. To him, it makes perfect sense because to accept their food would mean accepting being dependent on them. Eating the meal would be an acknowledgment that he can't survive without them. and in a way making him their pet, which is kind of funny considering that he ends up eating pet food to avoid that.
And don't get me wrong, there are echoes of Carol having the whole supermarket restock to maintain her independence. But we'll put that to the side for now because we're meant to root for humanity, right? So, instead of a square meal, we see him try to scavenge something together. He works as a manager at a self-s storage facility, so he posts a note explaining the situation to customers who will never return before opening their lockers. His booty, among other things, includes a couple of sugar packets, a single creamer, and the three previously mentioned cans of dog food.
And the performance here is incredible. We watch him try to enjoy the sugar and creamer before opening the cans, psyching himself up to eat them. He has to literally fight the urge to gag, forcing every bite down. This sets up the bridge to tie the two story lines together. On top of choking down this dog food, Carol's call from the airplane starts ringing in the background so that we see this again from his perspective. The tension here and the added context are fantastic. He's just trying to do this thing quietly. He's trying not to vomit. And this phone keeps ringing like it probably did when the hive first tried to reach out. only this time when he curses into the phone and tells them to leave him alone, Carol responds in kind.
That's the key. The Hive doesn't curse. Or at least we expect they don't have reasons to curse at anyone. They don't even ever get angry. Possibly can't get angry. When he hears rage coming through in her voice, he has to realize she's different. That revelation leads him to write her name in his book and led me to the translator for what turned out to be a bit of fun to balance out the grimness. It appears he misheard Carol Sturka and scribbled down Carol s Turka for which the literal translation is Carol is Turkish or Carol is the Turk. Seeing it from the other end I was thinking their mutual lack of kindness would draw them together and this adds to it grounding the scene in a way. While they both would likely agree on what needs to be done, one of them will have to figure out how to get out of their own way before they can come together.
Back in Albuquerque, the countdown, or I guess the count up clock now suggests Carol had a few days to sober up. At the very least, she doesn't appear to be fueling herself with vodka and Xanax currently. While the grief is clearly still there, she has a new vehicle, the cop car from the teasers, and I suppose a new sense of momentum. It looks like she's coming around. The show quickly reminds us that the situation is absurd. Over the radio, a Hive member who notably isn't Zosa offers to return her Range Rover with the alcohol interlock removed. It's another example of their persistent desire to please her. We know that this is out of necessity. When she loses her temper, they lose millions, which is why giving her an atomic bomb could be preferable to the alternative.
When she arrives home, she finds a construction crew repairing the grenade damage, led by none other than the mayor of Albuquerque. Initially, she's upset that they just let themselves inside until they remind her that she kind of gave them permission. It's a small beat, but if you tend to think the hive is more malicious than they appear, this reinforces how the others weaponized consent. In this case, they took an absent nod in a moment of duress and ran with it.
Inside, we see a spark of the old Carol. She opens her whiteboard cabinet and we get a glimpse at her notes for Waro book five. It's a moment worth pausing the episode for. There are notes like Rabond eyes again, this time for real. An elixir, an elixir, love potion, and we learn that she finds lots of reasons to punctuate ideas with a combination of exclamation and question marks. Exciting possibilities, I guess. She almost erases it, but decides to just swap boards to start a new list. What I know about them. I've seen a lot of comments complaining that Carol doesn't ask enough questions. It goes to her personality, but it's also kind of frustrating. The scene feels like the writer's addressing that she is studying them like a writer with her whiteboard sketching out an outline in character profiles.
Her list covers the basics. They're eager to please, would give me a bomb, which gets a question mark exclamation point. Can't kill, not a fly, don't play faves, likes all jerks the same. Trying to change me, and finally, weirdly honest. That last one, weirdly honest, is what she decides to test. She goes outside and calls for a volunteer, which gives us a great scene with Jeff Hiller, who you might know from somebody somewhere. He's been in a ton of stuff, but that was what I last saw him in. And I think it's worth mentioning since this terrific performance is following up on Robert Bailey Jr.'s in episode 3, I'd love to see them keep delivering these one episode scene stealing performances for the rest of the series.
Carol essentially tries to grill him to test their honesty. She asks if the hive likes her book, assuming they can't comprehend or appreciate them like humans do. If you've ever used a chatbot, you know the tone. It's cheerful, it's enthusiastic, and it is constantly validating you. The Hive appears to operate on this exact same setting. They heap on praise, praying on that deep human need to be told we're special or smart or just that we can adequately perform a task. This is why all the comparisons to AI keep popping up. And I do believe that's intentional.
But Carol's wellestablished cynicism helps her to see right through this. But then he starts quoting specific passages and mentions that her writing made several members of the hide tingle. So not only can they process the information, but they have examples of genuine human reaction stored in their mind, which complicates things. Then she tries to delve into the subjective by asking him to compare her work to Shakespeare. Surprisingly, or maybe not all that surprisingly, he says they like them equally. Now, on the surface, this sounds insane and sounds like AI logic where input A equals input B. He asks her if she remembers a specific crazy fan who they reveal was so depressed that she became suicidal and says Carol's books gave her a reason to live. In that scenario, the quality of the writing is irrelevant. If Shakespeare saved a life and the Smutty Pirate book saved a life, data-wise, they're equal because they share memories. The Hive doesn't just know about the data, they felt it. They felt the woman's despair and her relief. The emotional impact is a factor, which may be really important if the show ever gets around to answering one of its biggest questions.
Are these things still human? Physically, yes. and they do have access to profound human experiences, but the way they deliver it with that relentless, cheery customer service tone feels completely artificial. Jeff Hiller's character keeps calling everything wonderful until Carol finally forbids him from using the word. It underlines just how weird the reality Carol finds herself in has become. They look like humans. They remember being humans, but they don't act like humans. That's enough for Carol, who I think relies on that disconnect. She needs to believe they're not fully human, that they're not really people anymore. Because if she did, then what she's about to do would be a lot harder to justify. If they're just big computers made out of flesh, then her options are open.
Then Carol takes things in a dangerous direction. She asks what her dead wife Helen actually thought of her books. This goes back to something I talked about in last week's live stream. If you could know exactly what people think of you without a filter, would you really want to? It's tempting, but this scene is a perfect argument for why ignorance can be bliss. Jeff Hiller's character tries to dodge the question twice. First telling her Helen loved her, then reminding her she said Helen was off limits, but Carol pushes until he gives her the truth. Helen thought the Wicaro books were harmless. Her internal categorization for them was cotton candy. And like harmless, this has never sounded so devastating. He tries to soften it by saying Helen enjoyed the life the novels provided, which isn't really a band-aid in that situation.
Then Carol makes the mistake of asking about her unpublished serious novel, Bitter Chrysalis. The hive guy clearly doesn't want to answer. He hesitates, but eventually admits Helen thought it was fine. And not good fine, meh fine. When Carol asks about the last 200 pages, he says Helen actually stopped reading on page 137, which is harsh considering Carol tells us it was 489 pages long. The only reason Helen encouraged her to publish it was because she and Val decided it wouldn't hurt her career and it would make Carol happy. Brutal. Carol realizes that while her wife was supportive of her career, she was managing her emotions as part of her job. She throws the guy and his biking suit out immediately. But even while she's processing that hit to her ego, she manages to clock the important piece of the puzzle. He tried to evade the question, but when she forced him, he couldn't lie.
Carol heads back to the whiteboard to amend point number five, adding can't lie after weirdly honest. She takes this new knowledge straight to the hospital to see Zosa. And again, the contrast here is wild. Zosa is beaming. She looks genuinely happy that Carol came to visit. She even makes small talk about the cop car, mentioning that a relative of the officer who used to drive it was a charter member of the Wicaro fan club. Carol does apologize in her own way and asks if Zosa can answer some questions. This lights Zosa right up thinking it's a breakthrough. Carol mentions that back in episode 1, the hive didn't really understand how the joining worked and wants to know what about now. Zosa gushes that they have a lot more insight into it and looks poised to deliver the lore dump that everyone's been waiting for.
But Carol, who let me remind you, writes in a genre that includes speculative and fantasy in its title, doesn't care about the lore. She doesn't want to understand them. She just wants to make it stop. She wants to end them. She skips right past the how it works and asks if there's a way to reverse it. When Zosa hesitates, Carol uses a smart trick, asking, "Is there not a way to reverse it?" She realizes if Zosa stays silent, it's because answering no would be a lie. So, the non-answer confirms it. The joining can be undone. The hive knows how to do it, but disclosing the information creates more dissonance than the atomic bond quandry did in the last episode.
And this leads to the most important reveal we've had about Carol's character. She brings up a place called Freedom Falls. It turns out when Carol was a teenager, her mother sent her to a conversion therapy camp when she realized Carol was gay. Carol says the counselors at Freedom Falls were some of the worst people she ever knew, and they smiled constantly, just like the Hive. This basically recontextualizes everything. Carol's hatred of the Hive isn't just because she has an unpleasant disposition. It's because she has specific deep-seated trauma regarding groups of smiling people trying to fix her for her own good. She never forgave her mother. And the same goes for the Hive.
Zosa tries to reassure, saying, "The Hive loves everyone equally." And Carol snaps back, "If you love everyone equally, why are you trying to change me?" It's a great point, but Zosa is able to hit her with the perfect counterargument. You want to change us, too? Zosa contends that they aren't the brainwashed victims Carol described them as before the grenade incident. And then she drops the heaviest line of the episode. "We've been you. We know what it's like. You've never been us." The hive remembers being human. They remember the loneliness and the pain. And they're telling Carol to her face that they prefer things the way they are. Carol has no comeback for that. She can't argue with what they've experienced. So, she just stops listening.
And this is where that humanity is worth saving argument gets really complicated. To do what she needs to do next, Carol has to dehumanize Zosa. Because if Zosa is a person who chooses this life, Carol is a villain. But if she's just a broken node in a network, then Carol is a hero. And you'd imagine Carol would prefer to feel like a hero. The road to heroism takes a weird detour to a pharmacy. At first, it's hard to figure out what she's doing. We see her check a dosage book and grab some vials of theopental sodium. I had to look it up. It's the generic name for sodium pentathol, which is a name I recognize from reading books or watching TV. She's building a homemade truth serum. And of course, she's trying to keep it a secret. So, in a scheme that would feel right at home in Breaking Bad, she covers her tracks by asking the pharmacist for heroin. Which is just so funny. She claims she just wants to get high. And when the Hive member asks her to remember the last time she used it, she responds, "Sophomore year was tough." This is probably more about explaining how she knows how to shoot up than it is to hint at something darker going on. But the high pharmacist tries to pivot her in a harm reduction direction, offering her alternative opioids before admitting that the closest heroin is 8 miles away before ultimately having someone bring it to her. When she asks for needles, he suggests snorting it, keeping with the harm reduction theme. And Carol shoots back that she's going to sid vicious this like the Chelsea Hotel. It's a great line, but it's just a bluff. The heroine is just an excuse to get the needles so she can try out the truth serum.
Back home, she sets up a camera to test it on herself, and that gives us a onewoman show sequence where Ray Seahhorn just kills it. The drug works by lowering inhibitions to zero. And we watch her cycle through grief, absurdity, and confession. She cries over Helen. She reads her own book in a funny voice. She wears a towel on her head and insists she's not that bad. But the biggest reveal comes when she brings up Zosa. She calls her that pirate lady they sent and complains about how annoying she is before dropping the hammer and why she got to be so goddamn It confirms that the hive knows exactly what they're doing. Zosa was the right choice because she is exactly Carol's type.
Satisfied the drug works, she flushes the heroin and heads back to the hospital where we see her slide a pair of handcuffs into her waistband, which tips us off that something's about to happen. She offers to wheel Zosa outside for some air, and the Hive member tragically is grateful for the gesture. In the elevator, Carol asks for some music, which turns out to be Arthur's theme, to distract from her injecting the serum right into Zosa's IV line. As Christopher Cross is singing about getting lost between the moon and New York City fades, Zosa follows suit.
Carol wastes no time. She starts in with the questions, "How do I reverse this? How do I end it?" But the reaction isn't what she expected. She struggles in a way we haven't seen before. And we can't tell in the moment, but she starts dying, which causes the Hive members to swarm in. Carol handcuffs herself to Zosa and then screams at them to back away, which they do, terrified of causing an outburst from her. But for the first time, we see the Hive not smiling. They're crying, all of them. They start chanting, "Please, Carol," in unison, but the fun tone that usually accompanies that gag is gone. They're begging because, as we find out, Zosa's going into cardiac arrest. The others tell Carol she's dying and ask for permission to save her. Carol, realizing she pushed it too far, lets them do what they have to do. The hive moves in with their trademark efficiency. Someone cuts the cuffs with bolt cutters. Others start CPR. And the episode ends with this incredible overhead shot where we see the Hive members swarming over Zosa's body. And from that angle, they don't look like people. They look like cells. They look like an infection closing a wound or a virus consuming its host. And standing right in the middle of it, completely alone, is Carol. The only human there if you believe what she believes, listening to the automatic defibrillator's robotic voice as the screen cuts to black.
Which brings us back to where we started, the idea that two things can be true at the same time. I've been trying to focus on how this episode and the series play with duality. We saw Manus choose starvation over comfort. We saw Carol choose unlikability over conformity. But this ending forces us to take it one step further. Carol is fighting for the survival of the human race. That is true. But to do it, she just tortured and nearly killed a woman who believes she has her best interest in mind. That is also true. We spent the episode rooting for Carol to find the answer to be the hero. But the show flips this around by showing us the cost. To save humanity, Carol had to dehumanize the only person. And I guess I have to say that while making air quotes because their humanity is up for debate, but the pickings are slim and this is the only thing that looks like a human who is connecting with her. When she made her move in the elevator, she certainly didn't see Zosa as a person. She saw her as a tool she could use to get what she thinks she needs. The hive, for all its creepiness, showed genuine grief. They showed care. Carol showed a desire to get results. We're leaving episode 4 in a very different place than we started. The plot didn't advance much. We still don't know how to reverse the joining. We still don't really know what's going on with the people who are in the hive, but the morality involved has become more complicated. We know now that the hive can feel pain, and we know that Carol is willing to inflict it. Humanity might be worth saving, but after watching Carol standing alone in that crowd, you have to wonder what we're supposed to be rooting for.
And I guess I should clarify that I don't think the show is trying to craft a prohive mind narrative, but I do think it's doing a good job of making us think about these things. I don't really know where things go next. I feel like this is a turning point in how the Hive handles Carol, but I can't really think of how they can do that differently. They still can't risk making her have an outburst, so their hands are tied to a certain extent. At the same time, I can't see things just going back to how they were before she moved the world to crying and broke the hive's heart with her deception. Let me know what you guys think in the comments. Did Carol go too far, or is she just doing what every red-blooded human should do? And I think that's a great place to leave things. Please like this video if you enjoyed it. Join us for the live stream on Sunday night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time where I'll be discussing the episode in more detail with some of my friends. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already, and thanks for watching. I'll talk to you soon.