What’s All the Fuss About Pluribus?
So I’ve been watching Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus on Apple TV and this review from Inkoo Kang resonated with me (emphasis mine):
Millions of offscreen casualties aside, it’s clear that Gilligan is aiming for a lighter — and stranger — outing than his two previous series. (For all that “Pluribus” delights in eerie atmospherics, the Southwestern sunniness keeps things from getting too dark.) The uncanny scenarios he conjures are a source of humor, intrigue, and genuine unease. But the show never adds up to more than the sum of its parts. Carol makes for a maddeningly tunnel-visioned protagonist — one with a shocking lack of curiosity about the entity that’s overtaken the Earth, or even about what the infected do all day when they’re not offering to cater to her whims. Her one-note sullenness means that Seehorn, who was heartbreaking as the repressed Kim on “Saul,” is squandered as the lead of her own show. The contentment and coöperativeness of the hive mind are similarly tough to dramatize.
It was somewhere around the middle of episode two when I started asking myself if I was supposed to care about Carol and what was going to happen to her, which is never a good sign. I like plenty of shows with unlikable protagonists (like Succession & Seinfeld) but I often can’t get past stubborn & incurious ones — it just seems fake to me and breaks my willing suspension of disbelief.
The show has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Pluribus fans, what am I missing here? The premise is good and I want to like it. Presumably many of the critics have seen the whole season and so maybe it picks up as it goes on?
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I feel like the show is slow rolling everything and that's ok with me. I'll concede that maybe the main character isn't pursuing a fix or "the truth" quickly or emphatically enough, but it's an 8 episode season and we've only seen 3 of them so hopefully by episode 5 or 6 everything will make more sense?
I'm being patient but I definitely identify with her as someone skeptical of the Borg mind and am pulling for her character to triumph here. I've heard it's already green-lit for season 2 so I have no idea how to continue an end of the world show if the hero thwarts the world ending each season.
Yeah, I feel like he speed ran over a lot of sci-fi conceits to get to the nitty-gritty: what does the world look like when people aren't sovereigns of one, forced to work together. When Carol and the other English-speaking oddballs get together, they find her lack of curiosity bizarre, but I feel like she's skipped ahead a bunch of steps.
Carol is grieving in episodes 2-3. The show does us a favor by not doing sad music and weeping to tell us that.
Yes! I see this much more as a small story about grief (so far) than a world-size story about an alien invasion. It reminds me of the Leftovers -- I think it matters a lot less what happened/why and more how Carol and her fellow immune folks choose to move forward in the new world in which they find themselves.
And not only is Carol's grief understandably overshadowing the curiosity she no doubt has about the hive mind, but she's also a queer person dealing with complex trauma around conversion (and, it would seem, substance abuse).
Mostly, I think we've been asked many, many times to deal with unlikable, difficult male protagonists. Let's show a little patience for a woman for a change!
Exactly! What if the most (only?) important person in your life died, and any expression of your anger and pain killed 11 million people?
I agree that Carol doesn't ask the questions I would ask, but she is probing and trying to figure it out, just not in the same way I'd go about it.
I think the virus (or whatever it is) is terrified of her (and the other immunes) and trying to placate her. I think they are working feverishly in the background to solve the problem of the "immunes" before they unlock what's happening.
I also find it odd that the net sum of all of the world population would be this tranquil, cooperative lot, and not a giant tug-of-war of personalities. This might become a thing later in the storyline.
I think I'd be snooping around, observing people all the time.
Has the term "free will" been mentioned yet?
“Agency” definitely has been
From what I've gathered it's not so much a sum of all personalities as everyone fully understands each other intellectually and emotionally. They recognize Earth has enough resources for everyone. Exploitation can't exist with universal empathy, and war can't function in a world where every victim would know the full strategy of those trying to take advantage, and experience the complete and true pain of the victims suffering.
Also, since everyone shares the same mind, there's no reason (or no way) to lie and all sensing/communication among the Borg is instant. There's no tug of war because it's all one mind.
It is early in the timeline yet. I appreciate the lines of inquiry she does have as she is clearly very different than I would be and I think the show is better for not having someone like me as the protagonist! The show has done a good job of hiding exposition in what may seem like a throwaway line or act. I know several folks did not even realize Zosia was the woman from the desert who came/was brought all the way across the world because she looked like the pirate. I can barely watch Carol, but only because she is the type of miserable person I would not want as the last step before the destruction of humanity, so well played! I like that they have turned the story telling on its end similar to Station 11 which I think was underrated.
I see her as deeply wounded by some trauma in her past and as a result built a super narcissism to protect herself. The elimination of civilization impacts her first in terms of how does she live her life - thus the whole supermarket thing in ep3. She seems to be breaking out of that a bit with her list. But hey, maybe I'm being charitable? It gets two more episodes from me before I give up.
I think she’s deeply wounded by the death of her life partner in Episode 1, too, for what it’s worth.
There must also be a back story to her issues with alcohol. I forget the bar scene in Ep1. Was it Carol or Helen who was only drinking Pepsi?
I share the concerns about the protagonist's irritating self-centered singlemindedness -- my guess is that she's going to keep pulling at a thread that will unravel something more interesting. Given Gilligan's credentials, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that there's a slow-burn bigger picture that will reveal itself.
I just like it because of all the conversations I'm having with my kids about the pros and cons of the collective and whether we'd join it or fight it. What it means to be human, and whether that's worth giving up to have peace and everybody working together. Even if the show isn't answering the questions we want answered, it sparks a lot of interesting conversations. It's such a fascinating question.
I had this frustration with Carol at the beginning as well, though the show was compelling enough otherwise to keep me watching. Not to give anything away, but in Episode 4 my attitude toward her changed big time and I am much more sympathetic to her.
We are all the Bitter Chrysalis
I'm in agreement re: Carol's "unlikability" but I guess I'm hoping one of the shows emphasis is her development. She's relatively one dimensional in ep 1 and 2 but there's a change she's undergoing in 3 and 4. I'm hooked enough in her and interested enough in how VG is going to explain this world he's created. I find it to be a really clever take on the alien invasion/end of the world. Yup, I'm in.
I'm loving the show so far because it's a unique premise and it's well-paced, but I can see how it's frustratingly slow (for sciency/nerdy types like us) to answer basic questions about how the hive operates, how they collectively make decisions, and what they want besides cleaning up the mess, efficiently distributing resources, and joining the remaining 12 uninfected while trying to make them as happy as possible.
I understand we're only four episodes in, but there are so many unanswered questions. Does the hive do anything besides work and rest? Does recreation/play/pleasure of any kind exist, beyond their perpetual state of contentment? Can a hive mind make art or music, or does that require individuality? Can a hive mind meaningfully "consent" or are they biologically forced to please the unjoined people? Does the hive have any long-term goals to pursue besides joining the last remaining 12 people on earth? Are they restructuring society to ease the comfort of the former individuals who were suffering, or is everyone just happy where they are now? Does their "biological imperative" include finding the source of the message, and are they headed to the stars to try to spread it to other planets? What are their values? Can a hive mind even have values?
But I also understand that's not really what the show's about. The main character is still in a state of deep grief, distrust, and anger, having lost any reason for living, including her partner, career, and artistic future. The first four episodes only covers about seven days since the big joining event that killed her partner and absorbed or killed everyone else on the planet, which is not very much time to adjust to!
So I don't think it's too unrealistic that Carol is uninterested in larger questions about their social structures and goals, though I'd love to see additional stories/lore from this expanded universe that answers explores some of these questions because I think it's an interesting scenario to play in.
I wish the show would clearly distinguish between “this is a show about the mystery” and “this is a show about Carol.” Currently, my mind is fixated on the mystery, making it difficult to process Carol’s emotions. Either we need more backstory or reasoning about Carol, or we need more of the mystery to unravel so that we can focus on Carol.
The Others don't need to head to the stars to spread the virus. It can continue spreading the same way it got to Earth. They can repeat the same broadcast from Earth to boost the signal.
As a thought experiment, I'm loving this show so far even its languid pacing. Most future-dystopian shows are about conflict and how either other beings or other humans are out to kill or control each other. This show explores the "what if we all go along" premise even if it seems so improbable to our brains. It may be the ultimate co-op experiment with a few stragglers whom the co-op is trying to win over with love and understanding. I doubt it's all sunflowers and rainbows in the end so I'm waiting for that reveal. Perhaps it may not even come. But that keeps me watching.
There are thirteen "survivors" in Pluribus. Eleven seem content to not fight what's going on. How many unwilling survivors do you think there would there need to be in one location to have a traditional dystopian kill/control plot?
By the middle of episode two, Carol is only one or two days removed from losing her life partner. It would feel stranger if she suddenly turned into a detective before she had processed any of that shock. People do not jump into analytical mode right after a major trauma. Episodes one and two are about her grief. Episode three shifts her out of that state, and episode four moves into the mystery-driven storytelling people expect.
I trust that Pluribus, like Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, aims for believable human behavior. And – spoiler alert – major deaths on those shows like Jane, Hank, Chuck and Mike’s son all lead to a few episodes where characters are trying to cope before they can think clearly again.
I think it's a case of poor narrative choices then to make so many people feel completely disconnected from Carol's point of view. I agree that it does make sense, but does it make for good storytelling to have the story develop this way? I find the show compelling but I lack much connection to its characters.
Breaking Bad moved too slow for me. I loved the arcs of each season but felt there were too many episodes that strayed away from the main thread.
I've decided to stop watching and wait until the season finishes, then watch the remaining episodes over my holiday break. I have a feeling that I am going to enjoy binge-watching this show.
I do wonder if Breaking Bad succeeded in part because it was on the cusp of the Binge TV era. It got a lot of good press early on, but once early seasons became streamable on Netflix I felt the show really gained audience because people could get hooked. I am not a fan of full-season dumps, especially for a show with so much mystery, but I do wonder if it would have performed better in the true Binge TV era.
Something tells me that the twist coming up in this great show is the message hidden in the title. It is about the 'pluribus', not the 'unum'. In other words: the 'We' is the main character, not that rather unpleasant single entity called 'Carol'.
How can one dislike a society where everything is in harmony. Without conflict, without inequality, without racism, without all these bad traits that have caused humanity and every other species on Earth and that habitat itself so much pain and horror?
I am rooting for the 'We' and am hoping that Carol will see the light and eventually embrace the Good that being One brings.
(BTW She is the only really nasty person amongst the dozen or so unaffected persons in the world.)
(BTW 2 How sad is that poor Latin guy locked away in the cardboard-blinded shed refusing the food offered him and eventually eating dogfood?)
I think the "1" in "Plur1bus" is closer to the hidden message and I don't think the show will end up siding with the delusional characters Carol met with. My take is, the hive's relentless positivity and simplistic decision-making will lead to unfathomable horrors as they mature from their current infantile state. The high-integrity dude won't eat their food because he believes they're trying to infect him; we already know his suspicions are correct.
I understand this show not appealing to everyone, but also art isn't ever for everyone (as I bet most readers of this fine blog would agree!). So if it's not your thing, cool! There's plenty of good stuff out there.
Stylistically, I love that the show takes beats to breathe. I can look at a whole scene and pay attention to the details. It's soothing direction while being a tense story.
That said, listening to the Crazy Stupid Podcast reviews of the first 3 episodes totally got me hooked, because that pod described different perspectives on the stories (and privilege, being unlikable, AI, and grief).
On a personal note, I was absolutely slammed back into my couch when watching the scene where Carol shared lunch with others like her (and their loved ones). It was wild that everyone else at that table had lost someone(s) they loved, yet still had them in a way that allowed them to not acutely feel that loss. But Carol didn't have the luxury of that illusion.
It was an astounding scene that actually told at least two stories: One story was told verbally about how the hive wouldn't - no couldn't - hurt or kill anything, and one story told visually about everyone who had been directly hurt right in front of everyone's eyes.
What if the entire world was frozen in its grief at the Bargaining stage? Who wouldn't make that deal to have at least some part of your loved one still there with you?
And wouldn't that feel completely bonkers if you were sitting outside that grief-bargaining framework?
I don't know if this show will land the plane in 8 eps, but I'm 100% on board for finding out.
I adore Carol as a character - she’s resisting global-scale peer pressure to just give in and accept what has happened. Every tiny comfort and convenience is a concession, so she only accepts what she absolutely has to - she’ll fly but only in coach, she’ll take food but only shopping herself, she’s fighting a war of inches.
OK, I’m not crazy.
In Carol think we're seeing the response of a self-centered person who has been immersed in self pity and anger about her literary career. She's clearly a heavy drinker and perhaps an alcoholic.
I also think there's a level at which Carol is a metaphor for a modern culture that's self-obsessed, full of confidence of its own correctness, and lacking curiosity about how our world actually functions. In support of that, I see the early episodes as a really intriguing meditation on the illusion of self reliance (think of her "I can fend for myself" line that sets off the Sprouts scene).
As we exit Episode 5, we're clearly seeing the smoke rise from the slow burn. This is getting very interesting, and she is anything but lacking in curiosity.
*spoilers*
I can't read the linked review, but the excerpts quoted don't resonate with me at all. Carol was clearly established as a bit of a grump in the first episode. Moreover it seems to me that she is grieving immense loss, both on a personal level with her partner and globally with pretty much everyone else. Explains the one-note sullenness to me.
She's operating from the perspective that the hive is a violation of what it means to be human... couldn't have made that clearer during the summit on AF1. She is acting curious about the phenomenon in the sense that she's doing everything she can to derail it and undo the damage.
I can certainly see criticisms of the show's pacing. I don't share them... every time I see one of Gilligan's signature unusually composed shots I'm reminded of how much I loved Better Call Saul and I'm happy to take my time with it. I was delighted to hear Patrick Fabian recording Carol's messages in EP5, can't wait to see what's next.
I find that the show is about grief and not about an alien invasion (until the last episode). Carol has just lost her life partner in a traumatic world event and is processing that trauma before processing what the alien invasion is all about. I feel the placing the pavers over the grave in the last episode was a metaphor that she is figuratively and literally sealing the death of her partner, and the cliff hanger of her figuring out what the aliens eat is her turning into the investigator.
I thought it was brilliant that the metaphor of the whole world (aliens) asking her if she is okay and how they can help is exactly what it feels like when you lose someone close. You just want to crawl into a whole and grieve, yet all these people keep asking you if they can help. You just want them to shut up. When Carol does this, people die which is amazingly traumatic on top of the original trauma.
I also found it funny that of course the first thing a man does in this situation is to create a harem of alien hotties and is living out a self-serving bacchanalian fantasy.
100%
One of the things the struck me, especially in the first ep, is how much screen time is given to Carol and Helen that is just silent understanding between them (in the car after the book reading, at the shop in the airport, sharing gum on the escalator, etc). To lose such deep intimacy at the same moment as a disorienting global trauma just piles grief upon grief.
(Carol and Helen's unspoken communication also a gripping pre-echo of the silence that permeates the Others.)
I often find myself thinking that this show is born out of a world that suffered a global pandemic that included literal forced isolation, broad and complex grief, catastrophic loses across whole communities, and denial by many that there is even a problem.
Spooling things forward, a virus that is too successful at converting its host kills the host before it can spread to others; I keep wondering if the ~7 billion Others are busily building an "antenna the size of Africa" so that it can propagate before burning through the resources on Earth.
I don’t think Carol is unlikeable? Can someone explain that perspective to me?
I think she's labeled "unlikeable" because she is rude to her fellow survivors and to all of the Others - basically rude to everyone on the planet - but I can understand where she's coming from. I like her as a character.
- Her motivations and "unlikeable" behaviors are established in the very first episode
- The inability or unwillingness to extend empathy: across nearly every episode thus far she's shown as demonstrably, canonically incurious by nature, as established by very specific, explicit actions
- Was only moved towards a change in behavior by personal loss
- She's willing to act on her cynical views to the extent that it will knowingly cause harm and seems unable to concetualize alternatives until the harmful options have reached the point of being ineffectual or are proven fruitless
I haven't had a chance to watch Pluribus yet, but I just wanted to take a moment to say that I really love it when the site's comment section becomes a Town Hall of sorts and pulls a million comments — and this definitely has. Now I'm looking forward to watching the show and coming back to read what everyone said…
One of the biggest ongoing hindrances for me in being able to fully suspend my disbelief when watching sci-fi shows is the traumas left by Firefly and Lost. It's even creeping into my movie-watching enjoyment with the trend towards "franchises", reboots, and revivals. Like, let me have closure!
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