OK. So, my wife and I just finished watching S1.
I haven’t looked at this thread, since I didn’t want to risk getting spoiled.
We were talking about how S1 ended, and I mentioned that Carol and Koumba Diabaté (the Las Vegas guy) are basically driven by the same thinking. Even though the show plays up how selfish and hedonistic Koumba is, Carol wants essentially the same thing - to have “agency” and independent thought, but be surrounded by people who only want to make her happy, and let her live in a fantasy world.
Exactly, her fantasy dates are no better than his Bond fantasy. The only difference is the class markers of her fantasies being those of a wealthy white woman and are no more meaningful than a photo spread in a glossy magazine.
The funny thing is Diabate was already at the “tummy ache” stage of “you can eat all the candy you want!”. Last time we saw him he was asking the older janitor lady to join in the hot tub with his cadre of super models.
I think what Carol wants is a do-over that will reset her life to a time well before the Joining. The Others can only give her the illusion of that. Mr. Vegas (whom I suspect comes from very humble and joyless circumstances) is probably happier than he has ever been in his life. Joining holds even less appeal to him than Carol.
Carol seems to be very slowly coming to understand this. She dressed her fantasy up as a series of romantic dates, but they are every bit as much fantasy as the books she wrote and if every one is unjoined, it’s likely that Zosia would not be interested in her and quite likely feel violated.
That’s why Their loving Manu the same as they love her hurts so much. Their love is not based on who she is, on what she and They have experienced together. At best it is akin to a church member claiming to love all sinners and to desire to save them. Or a parent unconditionally loving all their children in an unearned way.
It is an unwelcome reality check that it is a manipulative fantasy.
Exactly and who is manipulating whom is murky. On the one hand, they are manipulating her by finding an ideal love interest for her, on the other, she is having sex with someone infected by a virus that strips her free of will.
Sex with someone who looks like her fantasy hero, the real female one, and who has all the knowledge of her past lover(s) about what works best for her, physically and emotionally, and of all the greatest lovers alive. And who only wants to please her.
And again, this dream lover has no free will. She is essentially being trafficked by the collective and Carol knows that. Manousos knows it too and, while not the best communicator, hasn’t lost his moral compass.
She is much less in a relationship with OG Zosia than with the complete Hive, as expressed by a very small part of its total consciousness in one teeny bit of its complete physical self. That being has, within the limits granted to it by its biological imperatives, Free Will. But as I write that, those imperatives are so constrained that maybe not.
That seems an appropriate metaphor; the hive mind thinks of the unjoined as its minor children. It wants them to be happy but will punish them when they misbehave. Carol was put in a forty-day time out and now Manousos is similarly in time out.
Well, if your child was Edward Scissorhands, maybe. Carol and other immunes are a very real potential physical threat to the hive. “Needing space” is more about self defense than punishment.
But the addiction allegory still holds. As long as you recognize We as a distinct individual. One of only… well, 13 now in the world (12 remaining immunes, plus We). We just can’t stop itself from (1) wanting to satisfy Carol’s wishes and (2) wanting to share its addiction with Carol.
And we are of course reminded once more that Carol has had, and likely to still does have, a serious alcohol problem.
That wasn’t punishment. That was We engaging in self-care. Taking a break from a toxic relationship. I mean, if your lover gets so mad at you that she sends you into a seizure, even if she didn’t mean to, is it really love? Oh, sure. Carol will insist “You made me do it,” but that’s just more evidence of how toxic she is, right? That which We loves destroys it (and is in fact actively working to literally do that). I mean, who really is the victim, here?