Pluribus (New Vince Gilligan show on AppleTV)

Thus two theories:

  • The Others left town to allow Carol to do her sleuthing and at least make a video saying this amber-colored stuff is what they drink. She may now make a third video, stating misleading information, that, at the very least, discredits her. A win for The Others, and Carol won’t even know unless she asks a direct question, “All this dairy stuff was bullshit?”
  • If we’re supposed to assume whatever Carol saw and was horrified at was a MacGuffin, what did she see that was so horrifying? The inside of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase (Pulp Fiction ref)? Certainly something grotesque.

Maybe next episode is a good time for that “bottle episode” that shows A Day In the Life of The Others and only them. Keep that Carol suspense going.


Who says it isn’t real
?

Can they bullshit though? If they are incapable of lying, then I would assume they’re incapable of any other forms of deceit. Even deceit by omission seems to be a struggle for them.

I’m wracking my brain too, trying to think of what else she could have discovered besides humans. I’m hoping it’s not humans and something really surprising, but at the same time, it only makes sense. All the billions that died, being processed into some sort of Soylent Yellow.

And it’s funny, because my first instinct was that it was their ultra-efficient form of nourishing themselves, but then I started to wonder if it’s a maintenance elixir. Like, if they don’t keep consuming this, they become individuals again? Or something like that?

Anyhow, that drone scene was one of the funniest pieces of comedy so far. Classic Gilligan gag. I was already laughing out loud, then it hit the lamp post and I lost it. Chef’s kiss.

If it’s not human remains in some form, it could be something alien, like extraterrestrial spores or fungus or eggs, but Carol’s horrified reaction doesn’t show any confusion by my reading - it looks like something that she might need a second to recognize (perhaps a pile of bones?), but once she does, instills horror in her.

Agreed that it was primarily shock. A few seconds of her processing what she was looking at, it dawns on her, then gasp! Not even disgust so much as shock and horror. I can’t really think of anything else that would elicit that reaction.

I’m not thinking it’s anything alien. I really don’t think the show is taking that road down anything explicitly alien / xeno-biological. I get the feeling that the extraterrestrial signal and its resultant virus will be the only thing truly sci-fi, just to get the plot rolling and set this new world up.

Besides that, I think humans are on their own.

I’m trying to think of something the show has set up that Carol could now be seeing and reacting to with total shock and horror.

So, I don’t necessarily think it’s this but maybe just to spark further speculation - could she be looking at Helen or something Helen-related?

That would seem oddly specific. This is a facility they’re now using to mass produce whatever this juice is. I’m sure they never had any inkling Carol would put all these pieces together, out of happenstance, and stumble into one of their plants. It just wasn’t on their bingo card. Also, they didn’t really have much access to Helen’s body, especially unobserved by Carol.

Interesting line of thinking though…

Maybe it was Jimmy McGill.

Yep, and we even see Carol weigh it in her hands and decide WTF, good enough. If you know the limit is 14 lbs, make a tensioner that would know it’s too heavy. The comic humor was practically Bustor Keaton or anyone who tries to go through a doorway holding something sideways.

Yet again, we don’t know what the Collective Mass of Great Thinkers are up to. Like: Why build just a million of these radio dishes to infect the rest of the galaxy on Earth when we could build a billion of them, solar powered, orbiting the Sun?

Or let’s start with building a better drone than Amazon did?

Right now it’s one woman and potentially one man who will save the planet and 8 billion or so. If they fail we’ve got the Sun Radio Dishes ruining things for up to 200,000 star systems (YMMV) in the next 600 years. I’m reckoning that Vince Gilligan has a bleak ending in mind. Carol may have different ideas.

How do you do you know they aren’t?

It’s been a week. You expect them to have invented every possible thing they could find use for? Why would they be designing and building better drones? The situation with Carol was unforseen, and the drone they did send would’ve been adequate if she had given instructions. They’re just using whatever is available on hand.

I think there are a lot of assumptions in this thread about how the hive works and what they’re up to that are unjustified based on what we’ve seen.

FWIW, Zosia and Others were loading bodies into a dairy truck in episode 2 (2:45 in the video)

Misdirection if you ask me…

I reckon they will, and they’ve got the best rocket scientists and astrophysicists on call. So maybe not just yet. In the scheme of things, A year or two doesn’t matter. Why the immune people matter is not yet known. Just be nice to them, and don’t change your opinion of them.

The Amazon drone thing was total comic VG humor. I will make a simile to what AlsoNamedBort said, “It’s like Pizza on the roof” in Breaking Bad.

And if Carol and Mano win, within the timeline to build a billion solar-powered satellite dishes, they can turn it off. If they figure out an “antidote” broadcast that.

I keep meaning to keep track of the time. So they’ve gained control of all the electric grids, selective telephone lines (not so big), can en masse stock a large grocery store, and en masse head out on the highway, looking for adventure.

Just out of curiosity, Carol looks left - trucks and such leaving. Looks right, trucks and stuff are leaving. Jokes are allowed about which direction one should take from Albuquerque.

Yet the Others need some room.

I do not know my drones as well as the Collective, Amazon drones have a measly 5 pound limit.

I don’t know what drones can get you to 14 pounds (quite a lot if you’ve the money) yet maybe the Others got right on the drone lift issue, though can we not do better than 14 pounds? And not wrangle with streetlights. Maybe at 14d 12h 30m. A most excellent drone: 100 kilos (225 pounds) that has streetlight avoidance built in.

I believe it was Day 8 at the start of this episode, and then two more days passed.

17 pounds.

Yes, 17 lbs if memory serves.

it’s hard for me to imagine what else other than Soylent Yellow Carol discovered that would elicit that shocked reaction other than human bodies, but it’s a strange place to store them, with other food in a refrigerator. Maybe I‘m old fashioned. Fun Fact: For what it’s worth, there IS an actual Soylent nutritional drink on the market. https://soylent.com

I did enjoy the Patrick Fabian cameo. Apparently they didn’t tell Rhea Seehorn about it beforehand and she didn’t break character, but asked excitedly after the take if it was him.

I enjoy the Vince Gilligan preoccupation with machinery and photographing it from unusual angles, whether it be floor polishers, vending machines, airplane cockpits, grocery store restocking, or delivery/retrieval drones. Things most of us encounter in our lives but take for granted.

The Hive Mind has the collective knowledge of humanity but that is it. They can do research but I don’t think they can invent anything new. That’s horror of the situation people are in. There will never be a new song,; there will never be a new joke and there won’t be space antennas using technology that doesn’t already exist.

They are like the parasite that makes ants run to the top of grass so they can get eaten so the parasite can reproduce. They will make their signal to spread and be done with us.

I’m sure art is out of the question, but I don’t see why they can’t do science. If anything they’d create things a lot faster than we do currently.

The car that delivers the food to Manousos is a US spec Super Beetle, not a Brazilian made regular Beetle, like you’d expect to find in Paraguay. What does this mean?

Perhaps the scene was filmed in the United States and not in Paraguay?