Pluribus: 1x04 Please, Carol.
You can’t touch me. I have agency.
There’s an alternative version of Pluribus, one that would make for a very different show, in which the unjoined do act together to find a way to reverse what has happened. What would that form of collective decision-making look like in the absence of a synced mind, with opposing views on what actions are justifiable clashing, with consensus being found after a debate? Pluribus would be a more conventional survival show. It would arguably lose what makes it special. We’ll never know what that show would look like, because Carol has alienated everyone else who might have been an ally, and she is going at this all alone, without even a second mind to bounce ideas back on. The only person who may be on her side, who we meet at the beginning of the episode, is even more isolated than her if that’s even possible. He doesn’t communicate with the joined at all, he denies any help from them. He lives in his little compound of a storage facility, raiding it for inadequate supplies (even resorting to eating dog food). He may be scanning the radio waves for others but so far, his only contact has been through those phone calls with Carol, at the end of which he realises that she isn’t one of the collective, but he doesn’t have any way of reaching out to her if he wants to stay isolated from the unjoined. In fact, he doesn’t even know how to spell her name.
Left to her own devices, Carol approaches this project like she would a new book: the first step is research. She returns home from the hospital in a requisitioned police cruiser, finding strangers in her home trying to fix the damage from the grenade. She writes down everything she knows so far on the white board in her office and decides to test the theory that they can’t lie to her. One of the people helping to fix her house is Larry (the great Jeff Hiller who just this year won an Emmy for his outstanding work on Somebody, Somewhere, which should have gotten more seasons). Carol asks him to come into the house and asks him questions about how the joined feel about her work, and in the ego-destroying process realising that while they are not very good at critique (turns out crowd-sourcing book reviews is not a great way to arrive at a coherent picture), they are indeed incapable of lying, even to spare her feelings. The realisation that Helen thought her Wycaro books were cotton-candy is sad, but finding out that she never even finished her serious novel and thought it was harmless is soul-destroying (in a way, it mirrors how the joined treat her, trying to make her happy that never really work and undermine her agency).
Armed with this knowledge, she returns to the hospital and asks Zosia, who has recovered a bit from shielding Carol from the grenade, if there is a way to reverse the joining. Her non-answer is enough to give Carol hope. The joined may be unable to provide her an answer that would undermine and endanger the entire project, but Carol is certain that if the answer were no, Zosia would have told her straight-up.
Carol’s conversation with Zosia also reveals one of the reasons why she is so reluctant to accept the collective’s wishes for her to join them. Her mother sent her to a conversion camp when she was a teenager, and the experience of having others decide what was good for her in such a violent way reminds her of what the joined are doing now, stated good intentions or not. There is very good reason for why Carol cherishes her autonomy and agency, and it is in direct conflict with the biological imperative of the joined.
Carol quickly arrives at a potential solution for Zosia’s refusal to answer how the process can be reversed. She goes to the hospital pharmacy and gets a vial of sodium thiopental, more colloquially known as “truth serum” (although its efficacy is questionable). To cover up her tracks she asks one of the joined for heroin (“remember last time”, he cautions her, before having a baggy delivered to her). At home, she tests the sodium thiopental on herself, and realises it might be a winner when her filmed reaction to it includes the admission that she finds Zosia fuckable, the kind of statement that the joined wouldn’t have been able to torture out of her if they had tried.
It’s notable that Carol decides to use it on Zosia, when she could have picked anyone. As much as Zosia is part of the collective, Carol still seems to see her as an individual to an extent, and someone she has made a connection with. It does not work the way she intended. Instead of learning the truth, Zosia has an adverse reaction, seemingly losing the ability to access the hivemind and eventually collapsing while other unjoined assemble around her, crying, pleading with Carol to stop. Instead of doing that in perfect unison, they seem disturbingly out of sync, as if they are all suffering from the effects of the drug. This is a very different reaction to Carol’s previous trespasses, like causing the glitching through her aggression and hurting Zosia with the grenade: she is doing intentional, deliberate harm, and pursuing a goal that is detrimental to the thing the collective cares about the most. At the end of the episode, Zosia goes into cardiac arrest, and it seems to dawn on Carol that she has crossed a line.
Left to her own devices, Carol approaches this project like she would a new book: the first step is research. She returns home from the hospital in a requisitioned police cruiser, finding strangers in her home trying to fix the damage from the grenade. She writes down everything she knows so far on the white board in her office and decides to test the theory that they can’t lie to her. One of the people helping to fix her house is Larry (the great Jeff Hiller who just this year won an Emmy for his outstanding work on Somebody, Somewhere, which should have gotten more seasons). Carol asks him to come into the house and asks him questions about how the joined feel about her work, and in the ego-destroying process realising that while they are not very good at critique (turns out crowd-sourcing book reviews is not a great way to arrive at a coherent picture), they are indeed incapable of lying, even to spare her feelings. The realisation that Helen thought her Wycaro books were cotton-candy is sad, but finding out that she never even finished her serious novel and thought it was harmless is soul-destroying (in a way, it mirrors how the joined treat her, trying to make her happy that never really work and undermine her agency).
Armed with this knowledge, she returns to the hospital and asks Zosia, who has recovered a bit from shielding Carol from the grenade, if there is a way to reverse the joining. Her non-answer is enough to give Carol hope. The joined may be unable to provide her an answer that would undermine and endanger the entire project, but Carol is certain that if the answer were no, Zosia would have told her straight-up.
Carol’s conversation with Zosia also reveals one of the reasons why she is so reluctant to accept the collective’s wishes for her to join them. Her mother sent her to a conversion camp when she was a teenager, and the experience of having others decide what was good for her in such a violent way reminds her of what the joined are doing now, stated good intentions or not. There is very good reason for why Carol cherishes her autonomy and agency, and it is in direct conflict with the biological imperative of the joined.
Carol quickly arrives at a potential solution for Zosia’s refusal to answer how the process can be reversed. She goes to the hospital pharmacy and gets a vial of sodium thiopental, more colloquially known as “truth serum” (although its efficacy is questionable). To cover up her tracks she asks one of the joined for heroin (“remember last time”, he cautions her, before having a baggy delivered to her). At home, she tests the sodium thiopental on herself, and realises it might be a winner when her filmed reaction to it includes the admission that she finds Zosia fuckable, the kind of statement that the joined wouldn’t have been able to torture out of her if they had tried.
It’s notable that Carol decides to use it on Zosia, when she could have picked anyone. As much as Zosia is part of the collective, Carol still seems to see her as an individual to an extent, and someone she has made a connection with. It does not work the way she intended. Instead of learning the truth, Zosia has an adverse reaction, seemingly losing the ability to access the hivemind and eventually collapsing while other unjoined assemble around her, crying, pleading with Carol to stop. Instead of doing that in perfect unison, they seem disturbingly out of sync, as if they are all suffering from the effects of the drug. This is a very different reaction to Carol’s previous trespasses, like causing the glitching through her aggression and hurting Zosia with the grenade: she is doing intentional, deliberate harm, and pursuing a goal that is detrimental to the thing the collective cares about the most. At the end of the episode, Zosia goes into cardiac arrest, and it seems to dawn on Carol that she has crossed a line.
Random notes:
There will be more of this to come but it’s amazing to see Rhea Seehorn carry so much of these episodes by herself: the scene of her under the influence and her reaction to seeing herself on the tape is hilarious. Note the conspicuous crocheted hat as a throwback to her calling fan Moira and her hats “crazy” earlier.
Some behind-the-scenes details: Tim Keller, the mayor of Albuquerque plays the mayor of Albuquerque (showing how entangled this real-world city is with Vince Gilligan’s decades-long project of putting it on the map), and Rosa Estrada, the on-set medic who saved Bob Odenkirk’s life on Better Call Saul, is the person using the defibrillator on Zosia at the end of the episode.
It’s interesting to think about Carol’s impulse to ask Larry about what Helen thought of her books: it’s so clear that Carol is still grieving (as fun as the scene of her drugged is, the moment where she cries about Helen’s death breaks both her and the viewer), and yet she can’t stop herself from asking a question that will so obviously hurt her more. Larry tries to spare her but Carol seems set on the pain of it, choosing brutal honesty over the safety of ignorance. Not everyone would!
“Might we suggest snorting the heroin instead?”
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