Transcription
Is humanity worth saving? It's not a question that necessarily screams as the natural progression one would expect from the minds that brought you the Breaking Bad universe. When Apple TV Plus released the first episode of Pluribus, it had been 17 years, 9 months, 16 days, and 23 hours since the original show's debut and 3 years, 2 months, and 22 days since the Better Call Saul finale aired. That's 6,499 days and 23 hours between the two premieres.
A significant duration during which much has changed, not only in our world, but certainly in the world of TV, an industry directly influenced by Walder White and Jimmy McIll's stories. While there was no question that it was time for something new, even the biggest fans of the Breaking Bad universe had to wonder if Vince Gilligan and his team could strike gold for the third consecutive time in the current TV landscape. If the show's first two episodes are any indication, just like the film school kids in Jimmy's crew, it looks like they've nailed the shot once again.
Thanks to a mysterious marketing campaign that focused on building anticipation rather than explaining the premise, viewers couldn't be sure what to expect. Beyond a swerve from crime drama into sci-fi territory. To be honest, Pluribus sounds like a show made in a lab with me in mind. Vince Gilligan, check. High concept sci-fi, check. A grounded drama with a philosophical bent. Check. And last but not least, Ray Seahhorn aka Better Call Saul's Kim Wexler in the lead role. Check.
Technically, this isn't uncharted territory for the showrunner, who says the Twilight Zone is his favorite TV show of all time and got his start in TV writing for the X-Files. However, considering how popular his last two shows were, it's not without risk. The other promise we had was that the world of Plurbus would change very abruptly in the first episode with something so catastrophic happening that they needed two whole episodes to establish what's going on. In a preseason interview with Screen Rant, the creator showrunner described it like this. The pilot is technically the first episode, but it doesn't really stand on its own. You really have to watch the first two together to really get what the show is. For my money, they pulled this off. And it doesn't hurt to have the person who created the show write and direct both episodes, which Gilligan did here.
And on the dramatic side of things, there's a moment halfway through the first episode that I think perfectly illustrates where its heart resides. As Carol is frantically trying to administer chest compressions to her partner as she slips away, she breaks down saying, "Somebody please help me." In 10 minutes, her world has gone from normal to an incomprehensible state, and she just wants anyone to step in and make it okay. Something that doesn't seem likely to happen. A few minutes later, when everyone at the hospital wakes back up, the first thing they say to her is, "We just want to help Carol." Granted, out of the blue, they all say this in perfect unison, which cranks the creepiness of the situation up a lot. But they are offering exactly what she wants. One of the first things they try to do is take care of Helen's body. And then when she tells them to stop, they stop.
There's a lot we can glean about the type of character Carol is from her introduction and interactions with Helen before the event. And the thing that jumps out the most is that she's successful, but she's not satisfied. She has some issues, which is to say she's not perfect. The breathalyzer lock in her car is a pretty good indication that she's encountered negative consequences surrounding her drinking, something she continues to do throughout the first two episodes. Still, at the end of the day, she seems to have all the things we aspire to as humans as we try to navigate our crazy existence. Carol's portrayal compels us to consider concepts such as happiness, satisfaction, and most importantly, contentment. What do these things mean? And what are we striving for in our relatively short time on planet Earth?
Before we start tackling those big questions, the show does a fantastic job of presenting the event that changes everything. We open on a countdown clock showing 439 days, 19 hours, 56 minutes, and 6 seconds until something happens. By the time the episode closes, it's run for 1 hour past the joining, which is also close to the episode's runtime, and we pretty much understand what happened. The mystery at the core isn't what's going on, but how Carol, as one of a tiny group of unaffected humans, will react to it.
Conceptually, this show is 100% up my alley, as I've already stated. And as a bonus, the premiere hits so many of the hallmarks I was hoping to see in its opening sequence. Breaking Bad's pilot famously open with stills of the New Mexico desert as it's establishing shots, and we see Pluribus mirror that, but rather than a cactus or rock formation, we get radio telescopes. This is a very large array which is basically located in the middle of nowhere in the New Mexico desert and part of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The super wide shot of the three dishes spread across the entire frame was the one that got me riled up and it appears about 40 seconds in. While the astronomer racing across the screen in his pickup truck might make you think of Walt in his RV, the show doesn't lean into nostalgia in a heavy-handed way. It is shot in the same place, Albuquerque, New Mexico. But in case you haven't been following the story, it's been confirmed to definitely not take place in the Breaking Bad universe.
That said, nothing tells you you're watching a Vince Gilligan production like a large cast of quirky side characters, and the opening scenes present a gang of them. These cast members don't stick around long enough to need names that we'll remember, but are injected into the story with fully formed personalities. We also get our first montage at the 5minute mark. But as I've already mentioned, we're not getting a look at the criminal underground here. These are scientists who, as an incredibly timed and delivered snort followed by an equally impressive shrug and nervous laugh would indicate, believe they're on the verge of making mankind's greatest discovery.
The scientists have picked up a signal. They've ruled out the chatty Cathy's from the Forest Service and something terrestrial bouncing off the moon. They know someone or something made it because it repeats every 78 seconds, a detail that hints at an intelligent extraterrestrial species. They establish that it's coming from 600 light-years away, which means it's not just a random radio signal. Because of the power involved with sending it that far, they reason it's got to be more than a simple greeting. They initially think it's Morse code, then realize it's spread across four frequencies, which doesn't immediately make sense because it makes it seem like whoever created the signal is deliberately making it hard to understand. They put it all together and think they know what the signal means. And that leads to our first time jump and the montage I mentioned.
Roughly 1 year later, 71 days, 13 hours, 20 minutes, and 56 seconds before the joining to be exact, we see a bunch of scientists working to develop something. We get a glimpse of the petri dishes featured in the promo images accompanying the countdown clock for the date announcement teaser, and it is all leading us to that famous doughut licking scene. There's another two-month time jump forward before that. Then we get a proper introduction to the doughnut liquor, Jen, who just showed up for her shift at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases to gas a bunch of test rats. The Sandy Pony donuts were provided by Mel, the soldier who works at the front desk, who you might recognize as the actor who played the character Nick, who was a member of Gus Frings's security team. He's one of those characters who met his end in Breaking Bad only to be resurrected in a sense and Better Call Saul because it's a prequel.
The term lysogenic virus is introduced in his back and forth with the two researchers, which is one of several scientific terms I had to look up while watching the first episode. It's a virus that can reproduce without immediately destroying its host cell. It integrates into the host cell's DNA and can remain dormant until a trigger activates it. I actually spent a while looking into this, but I don't think it's essential to understand all of the terms that you hear. What makes a good sci-fi idea work is that it's grounded in something plausible. And I think especially with Davis Taffler's explanation later, and his custom graphics, Plus's psychic glue that's capable of binding everyone together clears the bar. It seems like it could work in a way that doesn't take you out of the story.
At the Institute of Infectious Diseases, the scientists developed a lysogenic virus based on the information in the alien signal. But after eight months of animal testing, they still hadn't observed any clinical signs. That all changes when they're getting ready to euthanize their subjects and notice one looks like it's already dead. Jen takes a closer look and has to remove her heavy protective gloves to check for a heartbeat. When she finds one, the rat appears to spring back to life and bite her through her thinner gloves, breaking the skin and infecting her. She rushes over to scrub her hands, abruptly stops, and then starts shaking uncontrollably. While her shift partner tries to decontaminate her, she's mostly unresponsive, but then we see her wake back up with a strange, almost euphoric look on her face.
Then we see Mel, the guy from the front desk, trying to get a bag of stuck chips out of the vending machine. In one of the object POV shots Gilligan uses so effectively throughout the Breaking Bad universe, we look out through the inside of the vending machine to see Jen appear in the hall behind him. She comes up and kisses him on the mouth without saying anything, and he immediately starts shaking like we saw her do earlier. Then Despa walks up and kisses the janitor in a different part of the building. And the next time we see him, he's preparing some of those petri dishes that were such a big part of the promo campaign. Things escalate quickly from there.
One of my favorite scenes the first time I watched the episode is one where we see a mix of employees from the building file into a room where they swab their cheeks and prepare the petri dishes for distribution. They don't speak, but they perform their actions in total synchrony. Everyone is doing their part in the process and those doing the same jobs make every motion at exactly the same speed. It's so precise and it's not just visually pleasing, it's fun. The way it's put together really sells the idea that whatever is happening to these people, they're having a blast. Of course, they're busy setting things in motion to infect every human being on Earth with what amounts to a happiness virus that makes you a part of a high mind consciousness. And we see Jen lick those donuts from the first teaser to show they're doing this in any way they can.
While they're taking care of their business, we meet our main character, Carol, at an in-person book signing event at a chain bookstore. We hear a reading from her latest release, the fourth installment in her Winds of Waro trilogy, as a decent-sized crowd hangs on her every word. She writes speculative historical romance, a genre title that sounds so granular, I initially thought it was a joke about fandom culture before I looked into it. To my untrained ears, it sounds like fairly cheesy fantasy romance that revolves around a ship captain named Lucasia who longs for a pirate named Rabon. Proud hottie Rabon. Helen, her manager, is by her side making sure everything goes smoothly.
As I hinted at earlier, Carol is somewhat cynical about what she does and doesn't have a high opinion of her fans who, like the group of scientists at the very large array, are an interesting bunch. While everything about this book signing is a joy to behold, my favorite line being the guy with the real cutless asking when they were going to make a Wicaro movie, a real one, not on the Lifetime Network. The big thing here is that her heart's not in it. On some level, it's not hard to blame her. We all have to pay our bills, but her chosen profession provides her with more than that. It not only gives her a comfortable living, but also, I imagine, an excuse not to care. Helen calls this out later. Oh, poor me. I have to deal with all these adoring fans and make so much money. And I guess I should clarify. If you went into the show cold and didn't watch my preseason videos, I bring it up because Vince has been pretty upfront about getting tired of writing the anti-hero characters that his shows are known for. In different interviews, he said he wanted to focus on an old-fashioned hero, a reluctant hero, or a damaged hero trying to be good. So, the cynicism which serves her in her current role won't have the same utility after things change.
Either way, she reveals her true feelings when they get into the car, and the driver comments on all the fans, asking if he should know who she is. She says it depends and asks if he's a fan of Mindless Crap. While I was looking up the cast from the closing credits, I noticed this guy was credited as the transportation captain for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and he had a small role playing a car salesman in Saul's third season. His appearance sets up another time jump to about a month after the virus, which is not exactly a virus, started spreading. 3 hours 6 minutes and 35 seconds before the joining, Carol and Helen return home to Albuquerque after what the latter describes as the best book tour ever. After they land, every interaction between them seems to dole out crucial information about who Carol is.
After they collect their luggage, Carol nods towards a bookshop. And without saying anything, Helen knows what she wants her to do. She says she's going to get some gum. And we see her switch the display around so that Carol's books are on top, moving Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books to the bottom. It stands out because she calls her work mindless crap, yet still seems competitive about it. This is also the first confirmation that their relationship isn't strictly professional. We realize that they know each other so well because they're in a long-term committed relationship.
In the parking garage, Carol tries to take the driver's seat, but Helen quickly calls her out for having a drink in Salt Lake City. Carol downplays it, but then we see that it actually matters because of that breathalyzer lock I mentioned earlier. It seems the implication is that Carol is the one who got in trouble for her drinking. Yet, in the next scene, they go to a bar where she orders a Ry Manhattan and Helen orders a Diet Pepsi. There's a lot to unpack here, and it seems like this sequence, which only lasts for about five minutes of screen time, is something we'll continue to come back to as the season progresses. The bottom line is Carol's a bit of a dick before the end of the world. This is her and her significant other with no one else paying attention. And it's Helen's bit about Finnegan's wake making her miserable that's the most memorable part of their exchange. Mind you, her point that even if what you do isn't art but makes one person happy, that's something. The way she cheers her up, repeats the proud hottie Rabon line, and reveals the secret about him originally being conceived as a woman are things that are there to show us what Carol is about to lose.
When they go out to have a cigarette, something Carol hasn't done since middle school. Apparently, losing Helen is precisely what happens. As they were getting up to leave, they missed the breaking news segment that popped up on the TV at the other end of the bar. Outside, they continue their banter as Carol lights up, then joke about some of the comments left online by her more rabid fans. After one of the fans asks if Carol had a particular man in mind when she created Braon, we learn about the secret they share. And then Carol notices heavy chemtrails in the sky. While I find chemtrail cooks particularly amusing, in this instance, we can connect the dots to realize this is the natural progression of everyone who came in contact with our donutlicking patient zero trying to infect the planet as efficiently as possible.
As they talk, a pickup truck drifts into a parked car in the background of the frame. And when she goes to check it out, Carol finds the driver passed out in the driver's seat. I love the way things take off from here. It starts with her standing over this comeomaos stranger, probably thinking he's just a drunk, and asking Helen if they should call somebody. Initially, Helen appears to just be standing there looking at the comments on her phone, but we notice she's actually shaking when her phone drops from her hands. Shortly after, she falls straight down to the ground and hits her head. Her phone screen gets cracked in the process. So, Carol has to go back inside to try to get help, where she discovers that everyone is stuck in place, shaking as they're being assimilated. And just like that, it went straight from zero to 1 million. And it's here that you start to notice how well realized everything is. The show's actively shifting gears and everything looks and feels right. Nothing feels tacked on. It has a haunting look, but it's stylized in a way that almost makes you laugh, which seems odd since we're watching Carol experience the end of her world.
It's also here that it becomes apparent that no help is on the way. Not in the traditional sense. She manages to get a phone from the barmaid's hand, but no one answers when she calls the police. In desperation, she goes outside and tries to use a sandwich board to get Helen into their car, but realizes she can't drive it because of the alcohol in her breath. She opts to push the guy in the pickup truck out of the way since she knows his keys are still in it. When she pulls around, we see that her new ride comes with a Primo airbrushed unicorn on its hood. It's not easy, but she manages to get Helen in the truck's bed. Then she gets her to the nearest hospital only to find the scene there is the same as at the bar. She manages to track down a stretcher, but when she wheels it out to the truck, Helen stops shaking. We see redness under her eyes, consistent with raccoon eyes bruising, which often indicates a skull fracture. She appears to wake up and smiles, which Carol thinks is for her because she sees her after waking up from this terrible injury, but it's really an indication that she was infected and joined the hive mine. And then she dies there, likely as a result of falling and hitting her head. It's heart-wrenching. It's a defining moment for the character. And while it's an end, it's not the end. And as the realization that she can't do anything to stop what's happening all around her sets in, it's hard to imagine where she can go from here.
As she starts to mourn, Carol watches as all the shaking people wake up. We know they've all been transformed, but she has no idea what's happening. She approaches the doctor she saw inside earlier to ask him if he knows, and he immediately tries to kiss her to pass on the infection. After she tells them to leave Helen's body alone, and they do, she shouts, "What the hell is wrong with you people?" This is where they all say they just want to help at the same time, which with sparks periodically flashing from the transformer damaged by a crashed ambulance in the background is certifiably eerie. It freaks Carol out as it would, and she jumps back into the truck and speeds away. There's destruction everywhere. Just as Helen fell and cracked her skull because she happened to be standing when it hit her, plenty of people were driving and their cars just kept going until something stopped them. You see that the survivors all start acting quickly, working together to limit the damage, but the world basically just fell apart.
While this is all quite grim, there's also a series of absurd moments that bring some balance into the equation. For example, in a shot where Carol stops because the road is blocked, you see a car pull up behind her, one survivor helps someone who has only one leg get in. And then a few seconds later, you see a second Good Samaritan run up carrying the leg jump in with them. This is juxtaposed with Carol losing her mind in an extended shot that stays on her from the time she leaves the hospital until she makes it home. I already mentioned this in my trailer breakdown because part of this scene made it into the official trailer, but it's probably worth mentioning Thomas Schnz's cameo again. Just as she passes the people running with the fire extinguishers to put out the burning bus, on the other side, you see a group of guys wearing the same t-shirts. The one on the left is Schnails, and their shirts all have his face on them with the words Lordy who's 50, which I find even funnier because he's definitely not 50. Either way, the birthday shirts make him stand out from the crowd. And if you don't know why I'm talking about this, Thomas was a writer, director, and producer on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. He penned classic episodes for both shows and wrote and directed my favorite episode of Saul, Plan and Execution. His friendship with Vince Gilligan goes back to their time at NYU Film School. The story goes that the idea for Breaking Bad came from a phone call they had complaining about being unemployed after the end of the XFiles, where they'd both been writers. Having just read a news story about someone doing something similar, Schn's joked that maybe they could buy an RV and put a meth lab in the back, and you can see how things develop from there.
Carol's ride through the fractured city sets up a fantastic scene where she's standing in her driveway after reaching the safety of home. Without saying anything, while looking out at fires burning in the city in the distance, Ray Seahhorn delivers the sense that it's hard to say what safety even means at this point. When she can't get inside after leaving her keys on the dashboard of her car, which she had to leave behind, she tries to bash her way through the door with a large lawn rock. This brings out the two creepy kids next door to try to help. Shockingly, they know the exact date she last got locked out, 9 years ago, and that she hid a spare key under the flower pot. She doesn't remember putting it there, but finds it. Then she tells them to leave her alone and hilariously, they say, "Sure, Carol, just give us a couple of minutes to clear out." Then all of her neighbors in the surrounding houses leave at the same time. And you see that they're synced up as they pull out in their cars at the same time with this strange precision. They say, "We're very sorry for your loss." Together before driving off, they know things and can do things. And the idea of living in a world where everyone except you is connected kind of makes your skin crawl.
If you could try to put yourself in Carol's shoes here, which isn't that hard since the show does a fairly terrific job of sinking the reveal so that you're basically right there with her. What's your next move? She opts to check our old pal, the TV, where all the channels are off the air except one. Initially, she's relieved because she thinks it's a news report, but quickly realizes that it's broadcasting a message that's specifically for her. And the Chirons and the different titles on the screen really crack me up here. There's a guy who's just standing there waiting at a podium in the White House press room just waiting for her to take notice. This is something that was out there in the teasers. And even with a pretty good idea of what to expect, this is still one of my favorite things I've ever seen in a pilot episode. Like everything that preceded it, there's so much going on here.
In her isolation, Carol's been hoping someone would step in to take the lead and save her. This is a very human thing to do. When you live in a society, in a civilization, you expect the people in charge to be able to handle crises when they arise. At this moment, the under secretary of agriculture for farm production and conservation appears to fit the bill. The rundown of his explanation for what's happening goes like this. It's not an alien invasion because there are no aliens currently on Earth. Mankind is, however, the beneficiary of extraterrestrial technology. They don't know how long the signal the scientists discovered at the beginning has been repeating, but they do know that it's made up of four tones. Those correspond to a recipe for a nucleotide sequence. And he lists the building blocks. And again, I spent a considerable amount of time reading about the science involved, and the essential point is that sequencing this is what led us to where we are. He says it produced something akin to a virus, but it's not exactly that either. Then he defaults to calling it a psychic glue capable of binding humanity together, which I think is a workable explanation as a sci-fi enthusiast. When he says they don't know exactly how it works, it just does. It becomes indisputable in a way. The oversimplified version is that they made the sequence from the signal, put it into the rats where it changed their cells, and they passed it on to humans. Infected humans feeling connected and happy felt compelled to infect everyone else and were mostly successful. But Carol turned out to be immune, for lack of a better term.
Part of what makes me like this last part so much is that this is the show essentially answering all the questions it made us want answers for. It presented the information, let us put it all together while Carol was doing the same and then added this at the end to confirm it rather than needlessly explaining something we already picked up on by paying attention. This makes it seem like the writers trust us, that we're all in it together, and hey, confidence is sexy. Sure, it fills in the blank since it's complicated, but the confirmation frees us from having to try to solve the puzzle and focus on what's really important. Carol just lost everything. And there's a guy on her TV screen talking to her directly from what she recognizes as the seed of power in her universe, telling her everyone else on Earth is at her service and willing to get her anything she needs. Just dial Zero anytime, day or night. Of course, there's a catch. The whole hive mind deal. Nobody is really in charge or everyone's in charge because it's all one thing now. Individual agency no longer exists. And that detail is what makes any hive mind civilization so fundamentally aborant from the human perspective. Even when their motives are noble, like ending violence and war or taking away sadness and pain, their collective nature is just anathema to our core belief in self-determination. And that's why in almost every story, they become the villain by default. This is what will nod Carol and inform her decisions going forward. And to be fair, there are some red flags, but those will all become more apparent when we get into the next episode.
A key detail she learns here is that while her situation is exceedingly rare, there are 11 other people like her out there. And while the Wii that is Zus wants to figure out what makes her different so they can fix her and she can join them, they insist her life is her own. They believe she'll want what they have once she understands how wonderful it is. But when she tells them no and hangs up on the individual Davis Taffler, who was their representative because he was nearby, intact, and was wearing a suit, all they can do is leave a message on her answering machine reassuring her that they want to make her happy. And that's the point that the pilot ends on. That and the final image of the countdown clock hitting 1 hour past the joining before it cuts to the title and credits.
I feel like I'm repeating myself here because I've explained this in multiple videos at this point, but the show's name pluribus is the Latin word for more or many in the way it's used on the great seal of the United States, e- plurabus unum. That means out of many one, which makes a whole lot more sense after the hiveminds presentation. If the show definitely changed gears to navigate genre in the premiere, it almost becomes a whole different show in episode 2. Not in a jarring or unrecognizable way. It's not a bad thing. Episode one presents the situation and conflict and episode two delves into the philosophical questions it raises. It hits another hallmark with a cold open introducing a brand new character halfway around the world from Carol in Tangier. Her name is Zosa. And while her introduction is linear in that it continues past the opening credits, it still feels familiar to the teaser format Better Call Saul in Breaking Bad used because not only is she new, but it's our first time watching the hive mind operate when Carol isn't around. The change of scenery adds to it, as does the use of color, which to me feels exaggerated, but in the most natural way. There's also a tonal shift that almost feels like night to day. The first episode dragged us through the leadup and event on rails, thriving on not letting us breathe once it got going. And the second sort of flips this, giving us a chance to look around and soak up the details in the new world it created.
Zosa is removing a dead body from a car and we see others show up to assist her. The synchrony still catches you offguard and they never have to speak to each other which is pleasant but also eerie. A guy on a motorbike shows up to take her place. And as she weaves her way through the city, we see that there's a lot of collateral damage there, too. When Zosu drives onto a runway, walks right into a plane, and sits down in the cockpit, it hits you that if we is us, and everyone in the world is in there, then everyone knows how to do anything. This is hilariously illustrated later when a young woman dressed as a server from TGI Fridays is the pilot of a commercial airliner. Also, when Zosa fires up this cargo plane, there's a mountain of debris on the runway, but she appears to know precisely how much room she needs to take off and clears it without issue.
When she arrives at the airport, an entire team is assembled to get her in and make her over. We'll find out later this is so that she can go see Carol. And I don't know, it's just so funny because the people in the bathroom come off as pros at whatever they're doing, but they're really just the members of the hive that were nearby when the job needed to be done. You can basically have experts anywhere. It's just whoever is closest. The lack of inhibition about getting naked in public and the cool shot of opening the makeup case are both small details that make this work even better. Since, as I mentioned, literally anyone could be tasked with going to talk to Carol, who 11 hours after the joining comes to stretched out on her floor with the bottle of booze in Helen's body nearby. It makes you wonder why they need Zosa to fly in from so far away. Her stated purpose is to check in on Carol, who, according to every doctor on Earth, is on the verge of heat exhaustion. She's in the backyard digging a grave for Helen, and they'd really like her to hydrate. There are way too many small funny moments like the exact bottling line supervisor from the Aquafina plant where they filled the bottle that Zosa is offering Carol chiming in to tell her that to his knowledge it's nothing but good clean water. I can't really mention them all, but I think it's worth noting that they all reinforce the idea that they aren't lying about wanting to help her. It's not surprising that Carol would be suspicious and dismiss it, but I think we can mostly take them at their word.
As they're sorting that out, things take an unexpected turn when Carol realizes that Zosa looks like a female version of Rabon. Because the only two people on the planet who knew this was part of her original plan for the book series were Carol and Helen. The revelation forces Zosa to reveal that Helen joined them before she passed. This feels incredibly dirty and is obviously presented as something to win Carol over to the idea of joining them. Unsurprisingly, it backfires. And when Carol starts screaming about it, Zosa sort of glitches out and slumps to the ground. Carol calls out for help, but since she asked all her neighbors to leave her alone and made a stink about the MQ9 Reaper drone that was watching her from 40,000 ft above, no one can hear her. She takes off down the road to learn that the entire hive glitched out or froze up. And while she gave me one of my biggest laughs of the episode when she tried to rescue a worker who was hanging from a crane and inadvertently started scraping his head against the wall, the glitch ends and they all wake back up.
When she returns home, Zosa's gone, but she left a pickaxe, gloves, and the sun hat she mentioned earlier. Carol ends up tossing the hat over her fence. But before she gets back to work preparing Helen's final resting place, she dials Zero and says the pirate lady can come back if she wants to. This is surprising at first, but when Zosia arrives a few minutes later, we realize Carol wants to know whether she was the reason everyone froze and how many people got hurt as a result. Here we can tell that they don't want to answer directly, which since we already don't trust them, makes them at least liars by emission, which makes them more suspicious. But later, we'll realize that withholding the truth is more about not wanting to hurt Carol, which puts an interesting spin on things. Either way, based on her responses, Carol realizes that at least thousands died as a result of her outburst and gets sick. Temporarily, it places them on equal ground and allows Carol to be open to ideas about speeding up the burial process. They chop her in a mini excavator, which is a great bit that further showcases the resources the hive has at its disposal, and also gives you an idea of what the show's working with budget-wise. It's funny, and it also makes me think about the fact that when you do something this grand, something you don't really need to do to drive the point home to make it a memorable scene, you know that the next time you do something similar, it's got to be bigger or it'll have a diminishing return. So, I'm curious to see how they expand on this throughout the rest of the series.
Carol brings up the other people who are like her, and the number is now 12. Zosha tells her they just became aware of a gentleman in Paraguay this morning. This stands out as mysterious since they were on air broadcasting to Carol's living room less than an hour after the change happened and already knew of the initial 11 others. There's got to be a story for why this guy wasn't on their radar. So, this is one of the biggest questions I had like that coming out of the episodes. I mean, there are mysteries. Why Carol is immune? why the camera lingered on the cigarette pack when she was trying to lift Helen to get her in the truck. Things like that. For the cigarettes, I guess I should mention that I looked and it is a pack of Morleys, which is an XFiles reference. The smoking man or the cancer man in that series always smoked them. Morleys are a prop cigarette that have been in movies for a long time, but I'm not sure if that's the only reason they wanted us to take note of the pack. Regardless, by providing so many answers to questions they know we'll be asking, it feels like a deliberate choice to limit off-the-wall theorizing and point us towards the more philosophical questions the show is concerned with. This doesn't mean people won't spend hours making rabbit hole posts about every detail, but I like this approach.
Anyway, when asking about whether any of the people like her were hurt when everyone froze, there's another small lie of a mission when Zosa says there was one minor injury, which we'll realize was Lakshmi, but leaves out the part of her being in a car accident where her grandfather died. Carol learns that five of the immune people speak English as a second or third language and pushes Zosa to set a meet up right away. When she checks out to do it immediately, Carol thinks her getting upset is causing Zosa to glitch again, but she's really just waiting for an answer. They all agree and Carol and Zosa fly to Spain to meet them. While Carol's hopeful, you realize the conflict right from the beginning because they're all there with family. Family that were part of the joining. Otherwise, they're all open to meeting Carol and hearing what she says, except for Lakshmi, who is hostile from the start since she has an idea that Carol's responsible for her grandfather's death. One of the five hasn't arrived yet. And it turns out that Sambashida's character, Diaate, requested to ride on Air Force One, so he arrives late in style. It's evident the others are having a very different experience since they had people close to them turn whereas Carol after losing Helen finds herself completely alone. The Abate is there to embody the opposite point of view. He's embraced the hives offer to get him anything he needs and travels with the harum of lovely young women accompanying him.
When Carol makes her plea that it's up to them now, the future of humanity is in their hands and they need to put the world right, it mostly falls on deaf ears. While the others might agree with the idea that humanity needs saving, there isn't really anything they can do. And Diabate spins things around to ask if the world needs saving at all. He makes some good points. There's no crime, no conflict. The color of a person's skin is meaningless. While no one signed up for it, The Hive has brought about some positive changes. Even if you agree that Carol's position is the correct one, you have to admit that she doesn't do a great job of selling it. She loses some points for not even asking people who turned what it's like, which she justifies by saying she's smart enough to know not to ask a dealer what his drugs are like. If her selling point is that individuality matters and the freedom to make your own decisions is crucial, her trying to tell the Peruvian girl Kusamayu that she really doesn't want to join her family inside is a pretty big contradiction. I liked how they had her struggling to sit in the chair like a normal person while she was doing that. And her pod person invasion of the body snatchers reference connected with no one in the room because why would it? To her defense, she has a point about them losing their families, too. But good luck trying to get them to accept that when their bodies are right there, and they can talk directly to the individual whenever they want to.
Where Carol really shines is when she goes toe-to-toe with Lakshmi, pointing out that the boy sitting next to her might be her son, but he's also her prime minister, a guy she dated in high school, and her gynecologist. This doesn't win her any support and in the end the deck is stacked against her. Shumeé asks directly what can they do? What are they supposed to do? And there isn't an answer. Sadiabate tells the hive they're ready for lunch. For that, they relocate and after they present everyone with a scrumptious looking meal. The big reveal here is that they don't kill anything, not even a bug. Carol tries to point out the inherent contradiction, saying that enslaving a planet is kind of worse. Still, Zosa contends that the joining is the best thing that's ever happened to humanity. Carol pushes to find out how many people died in the process of assimilating the planet. The number turns out to be 886 million, which is a lot more than zero for a group that claims to do no killing. Zosa argues that after spreading peacefully for some time, the military found out, so they had to escalate to prevent further bloodshed. This starts to get into the ends justify the means territory, which is something that normally comes up in a hive mind story, but they don't get too far into it because Laxshmi reveals that Carol's outburst killed 11 million people, which kind of undermines anything she says for the rest of the scene.
On Air Force One, Carol turned down the champagne because she was still refusing anything that came from the hive. But after she learns her body count, she starts pounding glasses of wine. Like everything else on this trip, this doesn't end well, and she goes from trying to win the others to her side to shouting that they're traitors to the human race. She has to have her plane ready to take her home before performing a face plant in the yard, which brings the hybrid harum hive members, who are wearing very non-vegetarian looking fur outfits, running over to try to help her. And that leads to another round of screaming where the hive starts glitching out this time including the other immune people's family members who are all sitting at the table together.
The next time we see her, Carol is waking up in the morning. She has a drink then calls. When asked if she needs anything, she asks whether there's anything they can give her to stop her from doing this, referring to her outbursts. They don't. And I don't want to overlook this because I think this is important. But in this reflective moment, she learns that all the others have left except Diabate. When she goes to see him, she finds out he's getting ready to go to Las Vegas to stay in Elvis Presley's penthouse, and he's only stuck around because he wanted to ask her permission to bring Zosa with him because, you know, he's kind of interested in elevating their relationship. She's surprised and calls him out on his tendency to prioritize sex over everything considering what's going on, which is a fair point. And while this is a short exchange overall, it brings up a lot of interesting questions. There's the idea of consent, which goes back to the idea that no one initially was asked about becoming part of the hive mind. And this is also where we find out Zosa can't choose because doing so would hurt one of them. And that's something they can't do. This makes you wonder how viable their project is in the long term for several reasons. These absolute rules like we don't kill sound great, but in practice, some fundamental problems could arise. It's still early, so there's a lot we don't know about how everything works, but you can imagine some things going wrong.
Some of the ideas this episode raises feel like seeds planted for things that'll come up later. It's interesting because the show doesn't really pick a side. I think we're coded to want to see Carol come out on top, but both sides are generally reasonable given the crazy circumstances, and they make good cases for their positions. You're supposed to consider both and wonder because it's not as easy as Black and White. Ultimately, Carol decides to leave alone on her plane right up until the very end where she changes her mind after seeing Zoa boarding Air Force One, prompting her to do a last second mad dash to stop it so that they can continue to be together. It's another bit of fun that makes us question what she's trying to accomplish when the answer is probably that she doesn't know herself. Even when it's you against the world, do you really want to face it alone? Plus, these people can make stuff happen and are really trying to help.
What these first two episodes truly demonstrate is Pluribabus' incredible ambition and masterful execution. The scale and worldbuilding are impressive, but it still feels grounded in its characters. From the subtle nods to the Breaking Bad universe to the innovative ways it presents the hive mind's capabilities, every detail is meticulously crafted. We began by asking if Gilligan could strike gold a third time. And I think it's clear he has by capably navigating genre and posing profound questions without easy answers. No crime, no problem. This isn't just a swerve into sci-fi. It makes us grapple with fundamental questions. What about humanity is worth saving? And is happiness and contentment something you would sacrifice your individuality for? The mysteries surrounding Carol's immunity and the other unjoined individuals are things to consider, but the core question of how she reacts now that this unbelievable thing has happened give us so much to anticipate. I can't wait to see how these seeds planted in these two episodes bear fruit throughout the rest of the series. And I'm curious to hear what your biggest burning questions are after watching. Let me know in the comments and join us for our live streams on Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time from now until the end of the season. I'm looking forward to unpacking things further and think that is a great place to leave things. Please like this video if you enjoyed it. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and thanks for watching. and I'll talk to you soon.