Pluribus (New Vince Gilligan show on AppleTV)

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921

Was she berating her on the basis that he was not an individual anymore, or not her son anymore? My sense was/is the latter.

Pluribus, itself, as a collective may be thought of as a single individual and I don’t think Carol ever would have argued otherwise. I think what changed is she finally, for a time, learned to stop worrying and love the Plurb.

IDK about an “epiphany” moment. Perhaps Manousos simply helped her to see what extreme antagonism to the collective, unchecked by any respect for it as a distinct intelligent being (even if only a single being, not billions of them), could lead to. Not merely its defeat and (hopefully) the restoration of humanity to its prior state, but to the complete obliteration of the collective and the extermination of its constituent elements (you know, all the infected people) along with it. That was a price Manousos was willing to (have others) pay. But not Carol. Until, of course, she realized they were coming for her after all.

Uh, not to me it wasn’t. It was obviously a delivery mechanism for the individualized infection to me. I was expecting a thermos containing a bottle of something to drink or inject rather than an inhalant, but… how could you possibly get bomb? Although it was a bit harder to discern (because, again, they set it in a small, isolated area where a close-nit community might have been expected even pre-infection, and they continued to act as one might have expected regardless), once the young woman or girl locked that animal in a pen, it was obvious she was immune and that what they were talking about was the mechanism for her to join the collective and become even closer to the community than she had been before (presumably, something she would have aspired to anyway, pre-infection).

That’s a nice way of setting up the potential conflicts. And I do hope that we see some more factions develop (I honestly don’t know which side Vegas guy might come down on, but I would be surprised if someone didn’t turn militant anti-Carolist and ask We to arm them so that they could save We, similar to how the group bad been trying to talk through how they might help solve the food shortage for We).

Byt the way, does that do it for anyone else? Using “We” as a proper noun for the collective? It’s how the collective instinctively self-identifies. As good a candidate for a name as any other…

922

Golly. On your initial watch, right? (just kidding).

The show had been playing into Manuosos religion and honesty so much, that I was surprised that his “plan” to save the world was wiping the Plurbs out. Carol said 'No, they can be saved [ or a similar word ]

It’'d have been interesting if she asked him how he planned to accomplish that. After all, Carol’s greatest accomplishment might be she feels a connection to Zosia and knows there exists in every Plurb she met, some semblance of prior identity.

Manu could have stated en espanol whatever “confirmation bias” is, even before Zosia told him the todos. And it would have been funny if he said he had a HAM, which, if said" in Spanish, is jamón.

Yet Carol didn’t know Manu would dial zero for “another one” and knowingly enrage him, twice, before Carol arrived with the shotgun.

There’s little science talk in this show, yet I will presume that Manu showed her his handheld HAM and how this frequency connects to the seizures. and since it’s always on, perhaps to see how the Plurbs operate. And can you get me some HAM gear, por favor?

I presume he’ll accept experimentation and kill millions each time rather than activate the “kill them all” feature if he figures that out. There’s a whole other season (announced so far), and Carol has as little as a month, yet perhaps two or three more months, before the Plurbs come to convert her.

Carol, in this episode, went from “save them” to being agnostic. Thus, “Atom Bomb”, a bit of an idiom that I reckon Manu will figure out.

ETA: just squeezing in, Manu needs to see Carol’s whiteboard and know that for a day, the Plurbs didn’t know of him.

923

I saw an interview with Vince Gilligan and he was talking about Carol’s atom bomb as if it was a real atom bomb and not a transmitter or anything. . FWIW.

924

Huh. My take is just different.

“Charm Offensive” last bits were first Carol saying that this is psychosis, unsustainable, and she won’t stop even if it means she is all alone again, followed by sex, followed by her finishing a chapter of her book to share and connecting with a piece of OG Zosia, then told about a visitor coming.

Then of course this ep starting off showing that conversion of a willing immune works.

Carol is by then considering not even meeting with Manu. It wasn’t the conversation with him that convinced her of anything. Apparently is was just real good sex with someone who has the memories of what she likes best and all the sexual knowledge of the world.

No more of interest in saving humanity or other worlds. Because playing Bond, even playing nostalgia Diner, isn’t the ticket, orgasms the way Helen did it, that’s the ticket.

Yeah we know Carol is desperately lonely but this is too much Sean Connery Bond where all the Plurb need do is wow the woman with amazing sex and she will switch sides. She don’t worry be happy. Not even conflicted about it until it is clear that she will be assimilated unless she and Manu prevail and quickly.

Sorry but even though I am confident that the Hive can provide the best sex possible it is still not consistent with the damaged Carol we’ve gotten to know.

925

It would seem like poor storytelling to me if all this happened off screen but it’s what led up to the big finale with The Box.

926

I think it’s a bomb: but not Chekhov’s bomb. It’s half joke; half just to emphasize how serious Carol is about not being assimilated.

927

I liked the recent episode.

People are complicated, and sometimes wishful thinkers. Manousos was an unknown quantity, and might have been interpreted by Carol as possibly dangerous or unstable. Carol did not have much time to consider “whether she was going to save the world or get the girl”, and she was thinking with emotions and not just logic. She was upset Zosia loved Manousos and Carol equally, but the stem cell discussion reestablished her priorities. I don’t see it as inconsistent; Carol did ask Zosia to come back. People under stress sometimes use more emotion than logic.

928

Carol and Manousos are cut from the same cloth, he drives an ambulance and she drives a cop car. Their both acerbic and angry, of course they don’t get along.

929

Not sure in which way you’re just kidding, and not speaking for ASL, but yes - for me it was absolutely clear after about a minute into the show, when Whatsername asks „This it it, right?“ or similar, that she was about to be converted. Not sure where you would get „bomb“ or how one could read the situation any other way.

930

With Vince Gilligan, it’s usually about the journey, not the destination, and he’s really big on „Show, don’t tell.“ This episode’s opening is a great example - spend 10 minutes with people we have no connection with, and don’t explicitly tell us what’s going on but let us try to figure it out by ourselves.

But if you like the style of the show, definitely check out Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, even though they’re obviously very different thematically.

931

Nah. Just Better Call Saul. Breaking Bad is a joyless death march. The entire series lives its life on double secret probation: no fun of any kind.

932

Breaking Bad: no, definitely not except for one single episode in the third season. But by that time you’ll be hooked anyway.

Better Call Saul: I would say this one is more of a slow burn but that is not a bug, it’s a feature. Fantastic show and better than the parent show if you ask me. Just make sure you watch Breaking Bad First.

There’s also a movie called El Camino, watch that after Breaking Bad. It does not spoil anything in Better Call Saul.

933

Nope, for both yours and ASL’s info, I was certainly thinking this dude was delivering a very high explosive device ("Would you like am Atom Bomb?)

With all the careful handling, I did not expect it to be one whiff away from Plurby-bliss.

934

Same here.

935

One technical issue that jumped at me and which hasn’t been addressed yet here: with today’s tech, could Carol really translate real-time with her phone, in airplane mode? I know it’s not the biggest weirdness in a show about an alien mind virus, but it did make me wonder.

936

Apparently yes.

937

It was obvious, they were treating the day like it was her first communion and we had seen her before as one of the immune. It never occurred to me it was anything but her being turned into one of them.

938

I assumed it was a the stem cel “cure” from the get go, but a bomb would have been a great subversion of expectations and would have been a clever bookend match for the bomb at the end.

939

I think having seen “Chekhov’s nuke” before you saw the show is why you thought anything other than “cure” …

940

It would have been funny if the Peruvian girl opened that canister and said, “Hey! This isn’t the hand grenade I asked for!” just before seizing and joining.