Transcription
Plurabus is the kind of show that encourages close watching from its viewers. When I finished watching episode 8 for the first time, it hit me. There was only one big surprise, specifically that on Death's Doorstep, Manus opted to leave the Hive Hospital. Given the severity of his injuries and infection, you just sort of imagine his survival instinct would override his quest. You gave it your best shot, champ, but for the love of God, live to fight another day. So surprising, yes, but also entirely in line with what the series showed us about this character. A surprise is something you didn't see coming. And here it's not why would he do that, but wow, I guess he really is that hardcore. If you weren't sure, his insistence on leaving an IOU for the $8,27753 hospital bill, while he can barely stand, should probably clear things up.
And for a recapper like myself, that's a lot of fun because coming out of episode seven, it felt like there were a lot of either-or questions. Did Carol really break under the isolation that the hive imposed on her or was her surrender just part of her plan to reverse the joining? This is just one example, but at the end of the day, the answer turned out to be, well, actually, it's both. This is something I sorted out, which is satisfying, but also important. Yes, she did what human beings do when they're isolated too long, but no, it didn't change her perspective on wanting to undo the joining. The ending of this episode seems to flip this around. But because we don't understand the hive like we understand humans, I guess we'll have to wait and see where they're going, which leads us to the question for the rest of the episode. What do you do when life gives you lemons?
Before we tackle that one, we should talk about the key takeaways from Manus's Cold Open. The first is location. His request for a bill served as a way to confirm that he's on the other side of the Darien Gap in Panama. He can officially drive all the way to New Mexico when he gets into the ambulance at the end. As I mentioned, that part was somewhat surprising. I wasn't expecting him to get up and force his way out, especially when they showed him staring at the scalpel as the doctor was informing him that his infection was responding to antibiotics. The advice to rest and regain strength was solid. But for Manuso, staying with the hive is a deal breaker. For him, the either-or was whether he would start to come around on the hive or continue to fight while under their care. And it turned out to be neither when he refused it. His dedication to getting to Carol on his own is, as previously stated, hardcore. But the question becomes, how do you win in a game when you're going up against the entire world?
That's something that also comes up in New Mexico where Carol invites Sosa into her home right after their embrace at the end of the last episode. And she's making pink lemonade from concentrate, which is an immediate visual answer to the opening question to define the key theme of her storyline this week. The lemons are the joining, the thing she can't control. Making lemonade equated to what she can control, the way she reacts to the situation. In the short term, awkwardly is the answer. But after an exchange about returning the original Georgia O'Keeffe painting, Zosa's offer to play a board game starts to disarm her. Bringing the painting up right before a realization that she doesn't have great odds at playing the hive straight up resurfaces the ideas of authenticity and possession that her decision to bring the painting home brought up. Carol is attracted to the individual Zosa, but she despises the collective hive that she believes Zosa is merely a face for. She's drawn to this thing that makes her feel something. But what is that feeling worth if the person in front of her is also the entire world she's sworn to undo? That's the game she's playing with her metaphorical lemonade making. The twist is that when she finally starts asking all the questions about how the hive functions, the questions we've been desperate for answers for, it's a part of her new plan.
Jumping into a session of Spit is a seamless transition because essentially that's exactly what they're doing. They're players in a game. Notably, we get a mention of Carol's extended family, which serves as a reminder that even if it were her cousin Henry sitting in front of her, the interaction would be essentially the same. This is reinforced by her going back and forth between talking to her as if she were an individual and asking things like, "Is everyone back now?" and "Can you powerwash that up about the very personal cry for help painted in front of her home?" It goes back and forth, but some moments feel like a genuine human connection, like when Carol says, "Are you letting me win or do you just suck at this?" That's a pretty solid summary of this impossible interaction. And it's also similar to how she talked with Helen in the premiere, but the game is a necessary icebreaker. As Carol gets more comfortable, she starts gathering intelligence, moving from snarky comments to direct questions we've all been wondering about. Where does the hive live and where do they sleep? Zosa's answer is as pragmatic as you'd expect. They all sleep together on the floor of the Rio Rancho Event Center and in similar spaces around the world. Why? Zosa says it's more efficient. One big room is easier to heat and cool than separate smaller ones. That doesn't sound exactly right to me, but what do I know? And more importantly, I don't think it's a lie or she's misrepresenting what's happening because I still don't think they can be dishonest.
As they watch the others getting ready to bed down, Carol asked the question that at least some people were probably thinking. This isn't going to turn into that orgy scene at the end of the Matrix movie, is it? And Zosa's perfectly delivered, playful, "Not unless you want it to," would likely disarm even the most cynical among us. Woven into this intensifying will-they-or-won't-they situation is a bit of exposition that many viewers have been wondering about. There's a dog. From the beginning, people have been asking where all the pets are, and maybe to a lesser extent if the animals have been assimilated into the hive, which Zosa quickly confirms that they have not. She explains that the others don't keep pets, but if one refuses to leave its owner's side, they accommodate them. This isn't necessarily outside of their philosophy, but it somehow feels humanizing. If nothing else, Bear is a great prop when Carol doesn't know what to do with herself as everyone else starts going to sleep. She eventually decides to take Zosa up on her offer to stay. At one point, waking up in the middle of the night, smiling with her arm on Zosa. Her rolling over and starting to stare at the ceiling with a chorus of snores all around her is the moment I really started to wonder what Manus Oedo was going to find after he drags his hardcore ass the rest of the way to her doorstep.
The next morning, Zosa drives Carol home. "We had a wonderful time with you. We are very happy to be back." The "we" jumps out at you as a reminder of who is really in the car with Carol. She admits to having a nice time, too. And the awkwardness has been replaced with something closer to the general uneasiness and excitement of dating someone new. It's there, but it's also super weird. So, as soon as she gets inside, Carol opens the whiteboard to start adding to her list. Number six, they eat people. And she underlines it. The much-needed connection in the bonus flirtation with the avatar of proud hottie Rabon can't distract her from her true objective. No matter how much she likes, and no matter how much she doesn't want to be alone, she still wants to undo the joining.
She continues collecting intelligence when they go hiking. They end up looking over a valley where a train passes in the distance. Carol says, "Man, I love trains. There's just something about a train horn, you know." And surprisingly, Zosa doesn't. Carol thought they knew everything about her, but apparently she never told anyone about this. It's kind of wild to see a blip in the hive's omniscience and the wonder in Zosa's reaction and Carol's explanation that the horn is the loneliest sound in the world. As if on cue, the horn blows, leading Carol to ask how they do that. Meaning, how did the hive acting on Zosa's info know to blow the horn? How did they communicate? Zosa explains it has something to do with the body's electromagnetic field or natural electric charge, which Carol has too, but it's just unused. When Carol asks if it's like radio, Zosa says sort of, but not exactly. Radio transmission is conscious, like talking. The Hive's communication is unconscious, and she throws out the word homeostatic. This sounds like a massive reveal and certainly feels tied to the frequency Manus discovered with his radio, but there's very little time to dwell on the implications. What's important is that this goes beyond the logistics of using trains to transport dead bodies and windfall to their milk factories. It hints at actionable intelligence and something Manus may know something about. And while I prefer the making lemonade framing, the show was also asking if Carol would drink the Kool-Aid, and the answer appears to be no.
Their next stop fuses physical intimacy with existential exposition, which is the kind of thing I tune in to Pluribus for. They get a massage, which requires them to take off their clothes, and highlight Zosa's wounds from the grenade incident, a physical mark left behind from the hive's association with Carol. In full investigation mode, Carol asks how the hive handles the sensory input of billions of minds. This is something I've been thinking about quite a bit, and even though the answer is that they don't fully understand it either, it's really nice to see them addressing this. The question is, does everyone feel what you're feeling right now? Is the whole world getting a massage? And the way the multiple-person massage is choreographed and synced up is a lot of fun to watch. Zosa explains, "It's not exactly like everyone in the world is being massaged at the same time," and adds that in the last 10 minutes, there have been 1,674 deaths and 965 births, adding that just then, a man in Bulgaria had been impaled on an iron fence. To feel everything all at once would be unbearable, but they know it happens. They're aware, just as they're aware Carol just got goosebumps. So, it's not a technical explanation, but you come away with the sense that you understand it better. And imagine that's where Carol is in the moment as she cracks a smile listening to Zosa say that this massage feels good. Later, when it becomes number 10 on her list, she writes, "Individuals feel, everyone knows." She put the words "hive mind" off to the side, saying that this detail explains their mass freakouts. Again, this isn't a clear-cut explanation. By their own admission, they don't understand all the ins and outs themselves, but it gives us something to work with and puts us in the same place as the characters as they experience it.
From there, they do some stargazing, looking at the system where the signal originated. They look at the star Kepler 22 and talk about the planet Kepler 22b that orbits it. You hear her mention the constellation Cygnus, which looks like a swan, and where Kepler is located. This is significant because Kepler 22b was the first exoplanet to be located in its star's habitable zone with the liquid water necessary for life like on our planet. As we know from the signal, it's 600 light years away. So when Carol asks about the people who live there, Zosa confirms that they'll probably never know anything about them. That distance is just far too great. So the hive just knows they love them and are grateful to them. Then she says they'll pay it forward, however long that might take. And I noted to myself, a satellite the size of Africa. Zosa has all the city lights turned off to reduce light pollution so Carol can see the star. And we see another example of her smiling and having a really great time hanging out. This is what I'd call the trick of the episode because remember a few beats back I said there wasn't a lot of time to dwell on the implications of these reveals. Well, in an episode that fits in the slow-burn character-focused category, a cascade of information keeps coming. For me, this was the part where I was like, "Wait a minute. What is this episode called?" Charm offensive. Okay, they're really pouring it on and Carol is taking it all in.
The next scene shows her adding to her list. And if you freeze frame, you can see that she's added everything I've been talking about, including number 12, building a giant antenna, using up all the power in the world to send a signal to space. This is something that's come up in our weekly live discussions more than once. So again, satisfying. From the bird's-eye view, it appears that's what the hive's purpose is, to spread. And it may not be that much more complicated than that. Carol's feverish notetaking has exhausted her whiteboard marker supply, so she puts in a call for more. When Zosa drops them off, she asks if this means what they think it means. Is Carol writing more Wicaro? This puts her on the spot, and in an effort to conceal what she's really doing, Carol says, "Yeah, that's it. I got an idea and now I'm writing more Waro." What's funny is that when she goes back in and sees the Waro 5 notes, she nods her head and really does decide to write again.
Jumping ahead to the next day, they play croquet in a local football stadium. A question I saw was how they kept the golf course ready for play if they couldn't cut grass. And if you look at this field, I'm pretty sure it's astroturf. So, she probably just got to the country club before it got too overgrown. They are also exactly at midfield. And Zosa is really good at the game even though she's never played, which leads Carol to ask whether they inherit each other's muscle memory. It sounds like they kind of do. And on top of that, she has the living memory of all the best players who ever played the sport in there, but she deflects by repeating Carol's "maybe you just suck" line, which again feels like she's channeling Helen. And at the same time, they use the scoreboard to continue the gag. While the Helen stuff seems kind of dirty, it's not like they've really been keeping it a secret that they would use everything at their disposal to make Carol happy. The Hive then makes an overt emotional play. Zosa asks Carol about her best day of writing, which Carol dismisses, saying writing is something akin to having your teeth pulled. Zosa takes her to a cafe, and it turns out to be the one where Carol first started writing her Wicaro series, Longhand. Carol immediately lights up talking about it and everything seems to be going as planned. This is a manufactured memory, a staged scenario put on solely for Carol's pleasure. Not all that different from what we saw them doing in Las Vegas for Diabate. She sees the old waitress she loved, who never complained about her hogging the booth all day and always filled up her coffee, only to realize the cafe had actually burned down. That's why she misses it. That's why she never goes there anymore. The hive built it from an empty lot, bringing the waitress from Miami, where she'd moved on with her life. Carol is simultaneously touched by the memory and horrified by the manipulation. So, she speeds off in Zosa's car, leaving without saying anything.
Zosa tracks her down at home where she's having a drink on her balcony, and when they talk inside, there is a clear shift in tone. Carol asks if she wants a drink, then says, "You want a drink?" a direct reference to what she said to Helen in the bar right before the joining. When Zosa says, "We'll have one if it pleases you," Carol starts to go off asking if it would kill her to say "I" and stop with all the "we" tries, admitting it's weird for her semantically. And her stumbles lead to a pretty spicy line from Carol who says, "All the brains in the world and you can't navigate a pronoun." She mentions how they brought the waitress back to do a little play acting. And you know this hits close to home because that's also precisely what they did with Zosa. They had her fly around the world to be their ambassador because they knew Carol would find her appealing and it's working. And knowing that isn't stopping Carol from falling for her, falling for them. Carol calls it manipulative, saying they know she won't give up trying to undo the joining. Zosa, who continues the trend of the Hive answering all of her questions honestly, confirms they know everything and that she won't give up. They wish she would, but hey, it's also true that they love Wo.
It all culminates with Carol's impassioned speech. "I like you. You people, you whatever. There's a lot of things I like about you, but this, this is a train wreck. This is unsustainable. You're starving, and you can't even pick a goddamn apple off a tree. Someone has to put the world right, even if it means you all leave me again." It's incredibly raw, and the performance succeeds in conveying all the thoughts going through Carol's head. The acknowledgement, the desire, and the fear of being alone in a world that's been turned on its head that is also a world without Helen. Zosa listens, then decides to move closer to kiss her. Carol recoils for a beat, then kisses her back passionately. And I don't know what else to say other than it's paradoxical. She's condemned the hive for using manipulation, yet she gives into the intimacy. This is the moment she finally starts to fall in love with the world represented by Zosa. But the post-joining world is the thing she swore to destroy. This is also further complicated by the idea of consent. Zosa kisses her first, but Carol is the one who takes things to the next level after she acknowledges it for what it is. She criticized Mr. to Diabate for doing the same thing with his hive girlfriends. So, on some level, it's hypocritical. I wasn't really in the camp that felt it was necessary to call him a rapist because I didn't think that's what the show was trying to say about the character, but I also think what's different here is that Carol is aware of the problems her actions present. She'll feel something about it. So, it's complicated, but it's also tricky for Carol, who understands the situation, who at the same time just spent a month completely isolated after losing her wife in an apocalyptic event and is starved for connection.
In the morning, we see Zosa wake up alone in her bed. She sits up and smiles when she hears Carol in her office and looks through the window to see that she's writing. Carol prints out the first chapter of the new Wicaro novel and gives it to Zosa to read. I couldn't help but think of the earlier scene where the bike shorts hive member gushed about her work and then thinking about all the women and that one man in his cutlass from that Barnes & Noble reading. They're all part of the hive now. Not only did they just spend the night with Carol, but they're getting early access to read the unreleased first chapter of a new book. While that made me laugh possibly more than it should have, the enthusiasm Zosa shows while discussing what she read feels infectious. Rabon is a woman now and they talk nerdy details of how that could be done canonically. And the thing here is that Carol referred to her Wicaro work as mindless crap and didn't speak highly of her fans, but we see that she does get something tangible out of it and really does like the idea of making one person or people or the Hive happy with it.
There's a cut that includes the countdown clock showing it's been 60 days since the joining. And I probably wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't in the subtitles, but there's a radio station playing in the background that you'd imagine the hive is doing just for Carol's sake. She's at the sink and we see her looking at the marker she made for Helen's grave. Zosha is cooking and Carol asks if she likes omelets. She asks about the individual, whether Zosa likes omelets, and then what her favorite food was. Zosa shares a beautiful story about her childhood. As a 10-year-old, she would see these enormous ships and wonder what they were for and where they would go. And as a member of the Hive, now she knows the story of why her favorite food is mango ice cream feels like a direct connection back to the idea that the individual feels and the hive knows. And it makes you wonder how much of the individual is still in there. There's no doubt manipulation is at play in everything that transpired. But is there also something else? Is there more going on with Zosa's motivations, just like there was more with Carol's in episode 7? They share a human moment, even if we can't be entirely sure what that means anymore. And that feels completely in tune with the idea of making lemonade.
Another one of the pressing questions coming out of the ending of the last episode was how Manus would react if he arrived in New Mexico to find out that the savior he crossed continents for was shacked up with the hive in her kitchen where Carol is definitely shacked up with the hive. And as she's thanking Zosa for sharing that personal memory, she suddenly tunes out before snapping back to say, "You're going to have a visitor." From there, it cuts to Manuso struggling to clean his wounds and bandage himself up in the back of his ambulance. And then we see that he's getting ready to cross the border into the US. When you think about it now, the question is changed. I don't doubt that he would have a meltdown if he thought Carol was a hive conspirator. But everything Carol experienced in this episode highlighted how in incomprehensible circumstances, black and white thinking isn't really a great fit. She realized it's easy to say what you might do under extreme circumstances, but as she showed, you don't know until you go through it. Maybe when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade rather than burning everything to the ground. If there's one thing we know about Manus, it's that he's not very flexible in his beliefs. In her process to learn more about the hive so that she could bring it down, Carol's been softened. So, it's fascinating to think about what's going to happen when he finally does drag his hardcore ass there to knock on her front door and these two meet. And I think that's a great place to leave things. Please like this video if you enjoyed it. We do a live Plurabus discussion on Sunday at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time. So, join us for that. Please subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. And thanks for watching. I'll talk to you.