Pluribus (New Vince Gilligan show on AppleTV)

[WalterBishop]

Apologies if someone’s already mentioned this, but I just noticed that if you google Pluribus, the Google search results will say ‘What are you searching for, Carol?’ at the top. Thought that was neat

[Gyrate]

Just binged the first four episodes. Personally I’m rather glad they fast-forwarded through the usual “Outbreak” tropes, the bad lab protocols notwithstanding. Apologies if any of the following is addressed or contradicted in the new episode drop.

@iiandyiiii

First episode was terrific and very promising. Lots of horror vibes but no horror feel, IMO, but somehow it still worked. The bits that should have been horrific were mostly just absurdly funny. The chiron on the TV “CAROL PLEASE CALL US WHEN YOU’RE READY” made me bust a gut laughing.

“NO PRESSURE”

The other thing that got me in that scene was “And he was wearing a suit”.

@DSeid

I gotta say though - I wouldn’t have pegged Carol or even Helen as people to have the DVD collections of The Golden Girls?

Carol? Unlikely. But Helen? Quite possibly.

@Dewey_Finn

Thinking more about the Bilbao summit held by the English-speaking unjoined, Carol was, I think, the only one bothered by the change. I think most of the others had family members with them. Certainly Lakshmi did with her nine-year-old son. So she could, perhaps, pretend that he’s still there with her and all is normal. Until Carol upset all of that by quizzing the kid about gynecologic exams. Would she, perhaps, be less miserable if Helen was still with her?

I was thinking about that. Carol should have asked her why Lakshmi was upset about her son hearing curse words. Her son is now one with all the streetwalkers and pimps and porn stars and child molesters and worse of the world. He literally knows the vilest obscenities in every language on Earth. And he is privy to the past and present experiences of everyone having sex, including the current AF1 ménage à sept parties going on.

But I guess the ob/gyn questions were a more polite way of getting the same point across, that Lakshmi’s “little boy” ain’t just a little boy anymore.

@Coriolanus

Carol operated that syringe like a nurse (history?)

Or someone with a history of heroin use?

@Meltdown

On this subject, I was wondering what the hive mind does for fun. They’ve seen all the movies that have ever been made, watched all the TV, listened to all the music, read all the books, etc. (I’m sure there are some books out there that no one alive at the time of the joining had ever read, but they’re probably not the best, you know?). They can’t play any games against each other involving strategy. They could play games of chance but that gets boring fast. And while it’s possible that they can have sex with each other, given that the hive mind doesn’t register the physical feelings of individual members (I’m inferring this based on comments they’ve made about when a joined member gets drunk, and the pain that Zosia is in doesn’t seem to impact everyone) – then there’s really no point to that either.

This was something that occurred to me after Carol’s conversation with Joel Larry about her books.

Art is dead. The hivemind aren’t interested in or moved by Carol’s stories except to the extent that they assimilate the good vibes their members once got from reading them. Oh, and because Carol’s writing “tells them about Carol”, which sounds like a parent putting a small child’s artwork up on the fridge. Storytelling is dead - everyone knows the whole story the minute it’s conceived. This includes all humor - everyone already knows every punchline. And while they’re happy to take the non-hive people to the Guggenheim, it seems to be more to appreciate their reaction to the art. The hive people don’t seem interested in art for art’s sake, except in the context of historical artifacts of a now-dead culture. The only people still capable of creating new art of any kind are the few unassimilated, and I suspect anything the hivemind generated would be like (a better version of) ChatGPT - an amalgam of existing material synthesized depending on the audience prompt.

Speaking of which: I don’t know whether the “biological imperative” of the hivemind is to assimilate and then reproduce by broadcasting the signal onward (cordyceps style) but the whole concept strikes me as an immediate evolutionary dead end. Monocultures tend to be more vulnerable than diverse ecosystems, and given that Carol can currently kill millions just by throwing a tantrum, this seems to be a rather fragile one.

@Dewey_Finn

We haven’t heard if any of the Joined are planning to make babies, but if not, the entire world will die off. Meanwhile, Carol’s eggs along with contributions from Manousos would allow for a gradual repopulation of un-joined people.

I would assume they would reproduce for the purposes of maintaining an optimal population. You know, with global planning for where and when and how many, and using the best genetic couplings, like a perfectly normal civilization.

Speaking of the Paraguay guy - I was wondering whether he’d somehow escaped the initial airdrop of the “virus” in his container offices and thence was sufficiently isolated to avoid later infection. Which would mean he was still vulnerable. But that seems like a long shot (although Carol ending up getting him ‘turned’ would be ironic in a Gilliganesque style).