Pluribus – I am not one of them.

Pluribus: 1x07 The Gap.

Nothing on this planet is yours. Nothing. You cannot give me anything because all you have is stolen. You don’t belong here. 

My name is Manousos Oviedo. I am not one of them. I wish to save the world. 

Before Pluribus came out, I hadn’t thought about Douglas Coupland’s 1998 novel Girlfriend in a Coma in a while. It was one of those books that I read at exactly the right moment, and there are entire years in my mid- to late teens where Coupland’s descriptions of the suburban life of his protagonists merged with my perception of suburban Vienna. Girlfriend in a Coma is an end-of-the-world novel: at the halfway point or so, everyone but the protagonists disappears, leaving the world empty. It’s not a survival horror novel in the traditional sense, there’s no physical threats or lack of supplies, but the impact of that scale of loss causes psychological trauma, trapping the heroes of the story in amber as they are finding (frequently, maladaptive) ways of coping with their new, arrested lives. The other novel that I kept thinking about while watching The Gap was Marlen Haushofer’s The Wall, a seminal 1963 Austrian novel in which a woman becomes separated from the rest of the world by a transparent wall that traps her in a mountain hunting lodge – as far as she can tell, the rest of the world has disappeared entirely, and she has to find ways to survive with the limited supplies available her, with nothing but a cat, a cow and a dog to keep her company. The two separate stories that unfold in The Gap feel like they exist on the same continuum between empty suburban malaise and survival in the wilderness. 

They are both tales of existential loneliness. Carol’s is also another exploration of grief, as she has to find ways to fill her days without ever interacting with another person. The only other voice she hears is Patrick Fabian’s, again and again, as she hears his answering machine message over and over whenever she makes requests of the Others. In the beginning, as she is making her way back from Vegas to Albuquerque, she makes petulant requests, both furious and frustrated by her abandonment. She requests an ice-cold red Gatorade and then complains about it being lukewarm after the drone delivery. It’s the kind of powerless “can I speak to the manager” complaint that doesn’t provide with the one thing she desperately needs, human contact, but at least gives her a feeling of control. She stocks up on all the fireworks available (in my mind, fireworks and petrol stations shouldn’t mix, but what do I know) and returns home, living her own version of Koumba’s life without the ability to use the Others as props. She goes golfing and finds her golf course reclaimed by nature – it’s hard not to feel awed by the presence of a bison, munching away at the manicured grass. She replaces her police cruiser with a Rolls-Royce she repossesses from a country club – a car ironically sporting a Just Married message and balloons – and loads it up with her golf bag, which now includes the gun she’s taken from the police car. After a day trip to Jemez Springs, she visits the Georgia O’Keeffe museum in Santa Fe, and the way she looks at the paintings showcases how important the artist is to her. It’s a moment of quiet contemplation, and laden with memories, maybe implying that this is something else she shared with Helen. Then she takes O’Keeffe’s 1939 painting Bella Donna (another reminder how beautiful deadly flowers can be) home with her to replace a print of it, an act that stands in beautiful contrast to all the over-the-top things that Koumba has committed with his seemingly unlimited freedom. It’s not like the Others would still appreciate original art the way that she can, so she might as well be able to look at it whenever she wants. 

Throughout these scenes, Pluribus comes as close to a musical episode as Vince Gilligan will likely ever come in his travails. The silence of an empty world is oppressive, and so Carol fills it by singing her favourite songs, chosen, deliberately, to focus on still being fine at the end of the world (the opening scene cuts off just before she sings that word in R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World). Carol is of course not fine, and she has also turned out to be the kind of character that doesn’t sit comfortably in solitude and quietude. In all of her acts – setting off the fireworks, howling along with wolves (not coyotes, sorry) to the point where even they go quiet on her, requesting a lavish dinner filled with all the nostalgic dishes she has previously denied herself, dressing up for the occasion, going to a restaurant where she and Carol shared an anniversary – she is trying to prove to herself that she can exist like this, in complete loneliness. She is putting on an act witnessed only by herself. None of it is meaningful if it isn’t shared with another person, and none of it assuages her loneliness. Carol is not in any physical danger. She has plenty of food, she is not in danger of running out water, the power is on wherever she goes, if the golf course becomes overgrown she can request it to be curated back into playability: but existentially, mentally, she is just as close to death and Manousos will be at the end of his journey in this episode. 

How will Manousos judge her decisions, if he ever does reach her? His refusal to engage with the Others in any way is heroic, and he voices his ideological reasons for that refusal in the episode. They cannot give him anything because all they have is stolen. Manousos refuses to partake in that plunder in any way. He drives his old car, he uses a paper map, he harvests rain water and catches fish. Whenever the Others approach him to remind him to hydrate like a wellness app on a phone, he doesn’t engage. When he takes petrol from stranded cars, he pays by leaving money under the windshield wipers. It’s rare to see a character who is so staunch in his convictions, so ready to rather die than give in. On the literal way to bridge the gap between himself and the woman who has given him hope (kudos to everyone who pointed out the parallel between Helen’s speech about making a difference in one person’s life and what Carol has inadvertently done for him), he is also learning to bridge the language gap by learning English from Books on Tape. He is a man on a mission – to save the world – and he is willing to do whatever it takes to fulfil that mission. Before he enters the most perilous part of his journey, the Darién Gap, the Others once again warn him against going on: this foot-journey undertaken by migrants from South America to Central America features dangerous flora and fauna, from venomous snakes to the chunga palms and their bacteria-covered sharp spines. Before even entering, Manousos is met with the discarded luggage of those who have previously undertaken the journey, a haunting image that reverberates beyond the confines of the show. 
What really captures Manousos undertaking is the contrast between him, a lone man making his way through the impenetrable rain forest, and the absolute awe-inspiring spectacle of nature around him. He seems lost in it, and it seems impossible that he will ever find his way through it. This place seems utterly indifferent to him, which is an effective and stark contrast to the Others up to that point, following him around to tempt him into giving him. As much as humanity has radically changed, this place feels untouched by either humans or time itself. His failure to make his way through on his own feels inevitable: eventually he does grow weaker, and stumble into the horrifying spines of the palm (and later cauterises his wounds with a heated machete – his physical suffering in the episode vs Carol’s spiritual one). He falls down, ready to die, before a helicopter appears overhead and someone rappels down just before he loses consciousness. It turns out that even this inhospitable place, so far removed from civilisation, can be penetrated by the Others. 

In the end, we come back to Carol and her fireworks. More than a month has passed, and nothing she does distracts from her loneliness anymore. When one of the fireworks falls and threatens to explode right into her face, she seems willing to accept her own death. She survives – but drives to a hardware store the next day to pick up some paint, in another gruelling Carol home-improvement project. She paints a message on the drive-way big enough to be seen by the drones that are surely overhead and monitoring her: and sure enough, a while later, a car drives up. Zosia, fully recovered, gets out, and Carol hugs her, sobbing. As the camera zooms out, the writing becomes legible: come back. 

Random notes: 

Carlos Manuel Vesgas is amazing in this episode. 

Other comments have pointed out that Manousos journey of suffering, of sticking to his ideals, of refusing temptations, is Christ-like. 

It says a lot about Carol’s feelings for Zosia that she writes a message instead of going the usual route of the telephone. As much as she keeps insisting that nobody is themselves anymore, or one specific person, she has a relationship with her, even if it is just an imagined one.

The scenes of Carol contemplating O’Keeffe’s art were genuinely moving to me, they felt like the only moments where her solitude was somewhat quieted, or where she could still find meaning in something she was doing by herself. Rhea Seehorn!

That being said, Carol smashing golf balls into downtown office buildings looked like a lot of fun, and of course one of Carol’s way of letting off steam would be destructive in that specific way. 

My partner and I have been joking about the fact that the main things we watch at the moment are Pluribus and Thai GLs, two things that have barely anything in common, but this episode was particularly funny for its blatant product placement and grand over-the-top gesture.