Pluribus (Apple TV show) discussion

Parent Cafe
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Question: in Episode 3, do you think the Alprazolam/Vodka cocktail is a “F it”/ 1st suicide attempt?
It’s only the 4th day after her wife’s death, 2 days after being completely rejected by other humans and losing hope of saving humanity, 1 day after realizing shed royally messed up/gotten drunk on the wrong occasion and 1 day after choosing to save Zosia with the ultimate grand gesture (could be considered suicide attempt #1 actually but I think she trusted they’d stop the plane).

Although in that scene it really looked like Zosia was waiting for Carol and hesitating before getting on AF1 so is Zosia a bit less hived than the others from the get-go?

Anyway, so the hand grenade is suicide attempt #2?#3?

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DO YOU LIKE CAROL?
(Why/why not)

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Upon reflection and usage, it looks like spoiler warnings are impossible to implement.
I’ve changed the OG post.

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I liked her up until she treated Manousos so terribly.

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I actually thought the way they treated each other at first made a lot of sense. She doesn’t know anything about Manousos - we know what he’s been through to get to her but she doesn’t.
She sees a guy with a machete who tells her to get into the back of an ambulance with him. I would go “no way” too.
In addition, interestingly, they’re both misanthropic and fairly inflexible so their personalities are going to clash. Add the language barrier…

Although, before that episode, I did expect they’d be happy to find each other – but it’d be too easy and not very realistic imho.

Then I add the trauma of absolute solitary confinement that the others inflicted upon her. I had a lot of trouble and had to stop many times because it was SO difficult for me to watch as it brought back 2020-2021 (more horrible was yet to come but even knowing that today, I still feel scarred from that time. So I can’t imagine for Carol, mourning all alone, faced with the wolves, the absolute quiet, no telephone contact, no internet, etc.)

I was surprised to learn many people don’t like Carol. So, you did?
(And why did her behavior towards Manousos change your mind?)

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I liked her idealism and fierce independence. My admiration started to wane when she, essentially, fell in love with a robot. She knew better but didn’t care. Then, when Manousos, who embodied her best independent traits, came along, she went to the dark side. Or the sunny side, as the hive would see it.

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I’d have to rewatch eps 3 to really see what was going on. My initial reaction is Carol is not someone who would even consider suicide as an option.

Let’s put it this way. Carol and I would never be friends in real life. She is a very guarded person who would be very hard to know–not sure I’d have the patience to make her a close friend or even want to. However…if the world were ending I would immediately team up with her. She’s smart and willing to take chances which are two much needed qualities.

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I like Carol and I think I might be friends with her IRL.

I didn’t feel like the Hive people inflicted “solitary confinement” on Carol at all. She asked them to “leave me alone” so they left. When she asks them to “come back” they came back. She was in control of this the whole time. It was not a punishment.

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A guy shows up with a machete that he won’t put down. That I can’t easily communicate with. Sorry, he ain’t coming near me. I’m not getting in a car with him or standing out in a field with him. At that point the hive has kept Carol safe despite her wanting to get rid of them–who to trust?

They know next to nothing about one another. They need to convince one another of the value each can give to their end goal–and convince one another that the end goal is the same.

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It may have been self-inflicted punishment but the psychological effects of what amounts to solitary confinement remains the same. She is lonely for human contact and Zosia returns but Zosia is not really human anymore. So she’s still in a solitary situation until Manousos shows up–a man who she can’t talk to easily and is as obstinate and guarded as she is.

So two choices: tell him to get lost or decide to trust in someone despite all the red flags and gut instincts you feel. (however, it is the end of the world so how many true options do you have available?)

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So what do you think her plans are for the bomb? Is it insurance for her so she is not made to join?

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I don’t think she has actual plans for the bomb. But hey! she’s got one. Nicer to have one than not I suppose.

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Oh, I saw her as miserably uncooperative. She knew about him. She had tried to recruit him via the tapes. He manages to transport himself a bazillion miles toher doorstep and she doesn’t understand why he wants to stay out of the earshot of the hive? She has to be difficult for the sake of…what, exactly? She’s almost completely lacking in empathy. (As you can tell, we ended up not really liking the show all that much, but we finished just to see what happens)

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And he is carrying a machete.
She has NO idea about his travels and if she does know–the hive said they’d take him to her straight up free and clear. He didn’t accept. In her eyes (if she does know about his travels) he appears pretty stupid. But she knows more about the hive than he does at this point. But the hive knows less about him. It’s a tradeoff.

And he hung up over and over. Who is the uncooperative one here?

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That interaction when he hung up on her twice is the only information she has about him, except that the Hive has told her they know nothing about him. She didn’t even know he’d received the tapes.
The machete and snapping were probably not conducive to open communication but she gets under the umbrella and they end up looking for bugs.
But ultimately @sherpa, was leaving Manousos for 2 weeks the straw that broke the camel’s back for you or was it her initial reaction when he got there (after what we knew to be a tremendously dangerous journey)?

Wow, good point wrt the Atom Bomb. Assuming that, like the heroin and the hand grenade, it’s real, did she ask it because they’d said in “Hand Grenade” that it’d displease them or with a further motive?
@newpreironic : wow I hadn’t thought of it as insurance. And it’s the kind of show where they might just as well find a way to save the world as detonate the A Bomb. :face_with_spiral_eyes::scream:

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There was mention of the hive building a tower to send the message on. I thought maybe she’s going to bomb that.

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Good point. If they can’t project into space, do they die out? Are they using all their energy for that task? Although perhaps an ABomb is overkill?

Sidenote: just rewatched Carol single-mindedly eating avocado toast in her unique way at the Westgate hotel; Koumba’s taking it in, looking surprised and trying what Carol is doing :smiling_face: That gives me hope Koumba will tire of the cosplaying. (Koumba also models “how to express disagreement without anger or cuss words”).

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An in-depth interview by someone who seems to know both Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn well. Highlights to me were in the middle, ~30 about grief; :36 about Art; ~45 a little bit about alone time vs. loneliness.

Apparently some people think Carol is a monster/want to slap her because she’s not 100% in “save humanity” mode and that really surprised me. She’s VERY relatable to me.

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just saw this in HuffPost: What 'Pluribus' Reveals About AI And Our Future | HuffPost Entertainment

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She asked them to “leave me alone” so they left.

Ooh I see - not when she asked them to go away then said “Pirate lady can come back “but the whole period that covers Episode 5, 6, and 7, basically one third of the show - starting at the moment in Episode 5, after Carol injected truth serum into Zosia and the double bind of having to tell the truth but not being able to for internal reasons (probably vital imperative: speaking about reversing the joining when the joining is clearly everything they are) gave Zosia a heart attack. That’s when I realized the others may be smiling, but they are not nice.

(I’ve been thinking about this a lot after the remarks upthread :pleading_face::sneezing_face:)

We’re in the hospital after the truth serum experiment. As a time marker, we can see Carol’s arms are still covered in scars from the hand grenade but she no longer has the bandaids or the scabs on her hands from digging Helen’s grave. Carol is nervously squeezing a stress toy, clearly distressed about Zosia, and Others are milling about. They look at her and ignore her. When she gets into Zosia’s room they’re curt.At that point I’m thinking, they’re giving her the silent treatment, fair. Because Carol keeps hurting them, involuntarily at first then voluntarily!

But that’s not all: After eying a chair to stay in Zosia’s room, she decides to lay down in the corridor or hallway.There’s a long red hair bearded Hive guy observing her and as soon as she falls asleep they start moving everyone out (there’s that beautiful, haunting a cappella song and walking choreography). At any point during this, they could have said “Carol, we don’t feel safe around you, we need some distance for a few days/weeks/until we can be sure this won’t happen again.” They choose not to.

So they deliberately choose to let her wake up, go to Zosia’s room to find her gone (dead??), freak out (because we’re literally 8 days after her wife’s death and the end of the world), realize NO ONE is around and she has no idea why/when they vanished.

So she calls the landline and that’s #2 on my clues they are not nice: no one is responding. Not only are there no Hive puppets around but she doesn’t even have someone’s voice to talk to. They have a recording, always nice and pleasant, repeating the exact same thing (including “our feelings for you haven’t changed” which, you know, wouldn’t be recorded if they hadn’t, or ???) It’s genius from Vince Gilligan and his team actually, because that recording staying the same and being played in its entirety over and over and over drives a point too.

But anyway, Carol listens to the recording that states they’ll still respond to her needs but no contact. She takes that as a rebuke.

She has no answers so, clever and determined, she looks for one. She climbs to the roof of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. And from there she sees ALL the vehicles departing together, like a giant exodus. She’s aghast, stunned, furious.

Again, really, there was no need for them to leave the entire city (though from a viewer’s perspective the scene is incredible in its banality and oppressive impact, at least to me. Apparently it took them 2 months to plan the logistics of that scene??)

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