Adding to Vince Gilligan’s genius, the voice in the recording is actor Patrick Fabian, who was in Better Call Saul with Rhea Seehorn. They kept that a surprise from Rhea Seehorn so she discovered it on camera and had to try not to break character when she realized it.
I love your detailed analysis of this show! I’m going to re-watch some episodes after reading the insights shared here.
Adding to Vince Gilligan’s genius, the voice in the recording is actor Patrick Fabian, who was in Better Call Saul with Rhea Seehorn. They kept that a surprise from Rhea Seehorn so she discovered it on camera and had to try not to break character when she realized it.
Wow, that’s AMAZING 
More on the solitary confinement/how long would you last if you were absolutely alone - no communication, no connection - potentially forever. Episode 7 (the confinement started in Episode 5).
At first, I figure Carol is okay.
She has her mission to figure out who the Others are, she is like a dogged detective. And it’s only a couple days till she visits Koumba in Las Vegas - human contact. Also, the way I interpret the Gatorade is that she’s trying to annoy the Hive as per her usual MO, requesting the ice-cold red Gatorade which must be terribly difficult to locate, especially the cold part since it wouldn’t be stored in the HDP fridges, and *then* knowing it inflicts a little wound since their biological imperative is to please her, she calls back to complain. Brat. But also good for her to try and register her opposition to their conditions in any way she can.
However Koumba makes it clear that one day is enough for him - he wants to return to his “lovelies” and his James Bond cosplaying (Nota bene: Koumba, you’ve willingly provided lots of DNA to the Hive. No need for them to extract it from your bone marrow. When that fact hits, you might be more conciliatory toward Carol and perhaps even abandon your harem to live in one of those houses in Albuquerque.)
He gave her a couple hours of company then she can’t hang out with him. And she realizes (we? realize?) that as misanthropic as she thought herself and as opposite to her as a jovial Casanova can be, she’d planned to spend some time there, with him. She’d planned on staying at the hotel a couple days- she’d packed a bag, she says she’s going to find a suite and return after a shower.
Carol’s smart and has that porcupine exterior because she’s sensitive (the shock of learning she killed “a dozen people” causes her to throw up, she hides in the bathroom to cry when she’s told others are hanging out without her even though there are only 12 of them left in the world….) so when she sees him drink his juice without looking at her, she switches seamlessly to some sort of “just kidding”. It impressed me, I would not have pulled that off.
More heartbreakingly, she has learned the Immune have been hanging out all together or on Zoom, WITHOUT HER. So the Immune have their substitute humans (pretend child, pretend spouse) and real humans (each other), when she’s doubly excluded, from human company and from Others substitute company. That exclusion must bring back horrible memories from her teen years, in addition to being unbelievably petty and cruel. Come on if Laxmi or someone else is worried Carol’s starting to kill the vibe, nothing’s easier than kicking s.o out of a zoom call.
In that episode, we see that Koumba gets it, which may be why he stayed rather than ran away when the Hive told him, well ahead of time in case he’d want to leave, that he had a visitor. While Carol is crying in the bathroom, Koumba has called his harem aka the Hive to plead Carol’s case and have them return - he says “but she’s SO lonely” and we understand the Lovelies-Hive say NOPE.
So, again, they choose to prolong Carol’s misery - they say they want her to be happy but here, they know she’s unhappy, andw being human and needing connection, can only get even unhappier, but they don’t budge. So I question their whole schtick about “making Carol happy” as evidence of their benevolence towards the Immune. It’s quite possible their biological imperative to absorb and process all individualities tells them acting benevolent is the way to go, regardless of the end goal, even if they are not benevolent - and they sure aren’t being benevolent to Carol at that point.
Anyway, just before she leaves, Koumba explains (based on his conversation the day before, I suppose??) that they (Hive) want to come back, even adding the emotional blackmail (??) “Zosia misses you”, but he specifies: only if you’ve changed. We know Carol has written in the middle of six stars on her board THEY WANT TO CHANGE ME a worse even sin in her book than “they eat people”, so that’s not going to fly, especially since it’d bring back the nightmare of conversion “therapy”.
She still gives the living alone a go.
By Day 12, about a week after being in contact with a human, she discovers she can have wolves respond if she howls like an alpha wolf. You could think she’s losing it a little.
Next day she’s on the golf course and chooses herself a Rolls Royce, YAY, good day, no need for others - that scene golfing with the bison has quite the surrealist quality and reminded me that the Others let ALL ZOO ANIMALS OUT. (At some point the lions, tigers, and bears will be eating the other animals and might try to eat Others).
The following day she goes to Jemez Springs. It looks amazing BTW. She then goes to the Georgia O’Keefe museum. Since there’s no more radio, she provides the music by singing (again). Btw on her return from Las Vegas, does anyone have the impression she’s not going to sing “fine” for “It’s the end of the world and I feel F”? Anyway Carol can’t stand the silence and fills it by singing nonstop. She only stops, standing with her hands behind her back, when she’s enraptured by the real painting of that poster she’s got at home representing two entertwined flowers. Nature and art and beauty fill us and give us something nothing else could - Her floating in the natural spring and her admiring art are the two genuine smiles we see from Carol. And since no one’s there to see the art beside her, she brings the Georgia O’Keefe painting home to enjoy and have joy every day.
It’s been her best day and she looks herself again - perhaps she can make it. So she asks the Hive to reproduce her anniversary dinner and all her loneliness, the absolute-ness of it, devastates her again.
For about 15mn Rhea Seehorn has virtually no line of dialogue btw yet we know exactly what Carol is thinking and feeling. 
When she’s in the police car and looks at the cars on the parking lot, her hairline does something, I have no idea what it is but look at it (around 9:30), do you see it change or is it me and if you can see it how does someone do that?