A place to discuss the Pluribus series created by Vince Gilligan.
Rules:
Carol we wish You a great day, and remember, we will move heaven and Earth to make you happy.
I don't know what hurt Carol more. Zosia revealing that they found a new way to Plurb her, or Zosia saying that she loved Manousos just as much as she loved Carol. Probably the second one. I think Carol could live in a fantasy as long as Zosia loved her uniquely. They probably could have convinced her to willingly join, eventually.
Also Chekhov's atom bomb.
Yeah you could see how crushed Carol was when Zosia dropped that bombshell. No matter how much Carol coached Zosia to say "I" instead of "we," Zosia is still a member of the hivemind and their "relationship" will always reflect that.
I've enjoyed the little piecemeal details we've gotten about Zosia's past so far. I'm really looking forward to meeting the real Zosia. Hopefully next season Manousos' faraday cage pluribus signal jammer can make that happen. I've been wondering about the real Zosia's sexuality and if she'd even still have feelings for Carol without the hivemind's influence.
It would be cool if real Zosia felt disgust at Carol, maybe for having sex with her body, or she would just detest her behaviour. Basically I would like real Zosia to have personality opposite to the "Zosia" persona created for Carol.
Are you kind of assuming the old person is still "in there", like Manuso seems to believe (based on what he said to Rick).
If we took the others at face value, they love the connection they have and would probably be devastated if separated off. The experience of bonding to everyone might take away old preferences and prejudices.
I think that's what they're going for, that the person is still there and can be revived from the hivemind by jamming the signal. My guess for season 2 is that they do get Carol into the hivemind and it'll be up to Manousos to bring her back.
Not sure why she asked for an atom bomb and didn’t ask for her eggs.
They wouldn’t give her her eggs. We know this.
How do we know this?
Their imperative to join others > all else.
It’s an assumption. If this is true I would want to see it on camera.
It’s been stated multiple times. It was the motivating factor for the cliffhanger.
Absent some sort of secret, we have no reason to believe Pluribus is lying when they say their biological imperative they join everybody is anything less than they say it is.
Don’t do harm > join people (including rebroadcasting the signal) > make other life “happy” > everything else. That’s it.
I see what you’re saying. I would have liked the show to explicitly decline her request and give that reason.
Up to now they have only denied giving her information, but have not denied any of her requests for things. It seems reasonable to at least ask for the eggs back and then let the hive respond.
The fact that this wasn’t put on camera makes me think the writers would have felt obligated to have the hive give her the eggs and they still need those eggs as a plot device for future seasons.
I’m probably wrong, but we wont really know until season 2 whenever that may be.
They previously gave us enough exposition to be certain the answer would be no.
That was the third or fourth time Carol had a conversation with Pluribus about how it’s a foregone conclusion they would join her. There was the conversation where Pluribus told Carol joining somebody is like saving them from drowning, and the multiple conversations where Carol asked and Pluribus explained why she didn’t have a choice.
You’re not alone…a lot of people seem to be mistakenly under the belief that Pluribus will always give Carol what she wants. I don’t know what to say, other than to explain the show as I understand it.
I don’t exactly disagree with anything you’re saying. I just wanted this to be explicit. It’s such an important plot hole that they should have put it on camera.
As of now it looks like Carol just didn’t think of asking for it.
Missing exposition isn’t a plot hole…not that I agree the exposition was missing.
I gave you all the evidence as to why I understood they wouldn’t stop using her stem cells. Additionally, Pluribus tries not to answer when they can’t give/tell Carol what she wants…and they tried to avoid telling her about the eggs.
This isn’t a show that spoonfeeds the viewer.
Just gonna have to agree to disagree. I don’t think it is being spoonfed to expect the obvious question to be at least asked on camera. As of now we don’t know if it was asked and answered, or if Carol was too dumb to even think about asking.
You’re fine with that, I’m not.
It was obvious and we didn’t need to be told.
There’s no huge mystery as to if Pluribus would have abandoned its biological imperative or not. You’re being silly.
lol, ok. We just don’t agree. It’s fine. I’m not being silly, I have a different perspective than you. It’s what is great about communities built around tv shows. You get a wide range of takes.
Hell just ask for her eggs to be destroyed or it will hurt her. She doesn't need them herself. Also ask for them to destroy any research related to her eggs specifically or it will hurt her. You'd have to phrase it like a damn monkey paw wish though because the Others will use any loophole.
I feel like they'd refuse.
Probably the "biological imperative" would be stronger in this case, and they would refuse her request. Nonetheless I think such scene would be good addition, because it would shed more light on how the Others thought process, and Carol wouldn't look stupid.
I’d like to see her try. Knowing Vince Gilligan I could see Season 2 starting with the hive delivering her eggs to her. Just to close up the loose end.
Do we know for sure that she didn't ask? We only know that she didn't get her eggs.
It's a good show. Nothing spectacular IMO. A solid 7. I didn't have an issue with the slow pace, but I do have an issue with this slow place + having to wait 2-3 years for a new season. Watching an entire season for nothing to happen and now I have to wait 2-3 years for plot to continue inching forward again? I'll likely have lost almost all interest in this show when season 2 comes out.
The best part was the cold open. Any semblance of society only existing in the proximity of an immune. The goat was heartbreaking.
The goat thing was the element my wife and I discussed more than anything else.
Last week we learned that they don't keep pets, but they told Carol that if a pet wants to maintain a relationship with their individual then they'll honour that. We also know that they can't willingly hurt anything that lives. So with that in mind, why did they abandon the goats?
Evidently they don't need goats for anything, but that one in particular was obviously a pet, with an attachment. And they've just left it for dead knowing that it has essentially no survival skills.
Which led me on to pondering whether they still farm livestock. Do they still maintain sheep herds in order to harvest wool? Do they eat eggs?
I didn't consider the goat/dog parallel. I wonder if it was a conscious choice or a slight oversight on the writers' part.
Well… I think a dog would follow its owner for days, thus making it clear it wants/needs the closeness. The goat(s) didn’t really follow that far, and I guess just won’t behave like a dog.
If there's something I've learned from the work of Vince Gilligan it's that there are rarely oversights on the part of the writing. Everything has a meaning.
😮💨 🚁 ☢️ 🫢
The finale was definitely a roller coaster, and I loved the callbacks.
Can't wait to see where season 2 goes, and I hope this series isn't going to suffer from the 2 year gap between seasons that's becoming sadly common with streaming shows.
- Why only landlines? They explicitly stated cell phones would no longer work, but why? They seem to be keeping all the rest of the infrastructure up and running (water, sewer, power, landlines, etc).
Cell phones operate in the RF spectrum. Manousos confirmed this episode that the Hive also operates in the RF spectrum. It's a huuuuuge spectrum, so the fact that Manousos found anything is surprising, but at the same time there is likely less interference at the moment.
Also in the first episode we see Carol doesn't use a cellphone, which may be a parallel to Carol not speaking/using radio frequencies aka not being part of the Hive.
I caught that the hive used RF spectrum but didn't make the connection to that being why they likely shut down cell towers. I need to re-watch the last episode when I have more time to see what the frequency was that he found. Would be interested to see if it's within the cellular bands (mostly out of curiosity).
Also in the first episode we see Carol doesn't use a cellphone
I must've missed that completely.
The radio frequency is 8.613 MHz (or 8613 KHz) and is designated as "maritime mobile". There are some mobile frequencies nearby, but I don't know if they're in use or just allocated.
They don't need phones or radio. Only the unconverted use phones. (When the helicopter took off, she pushed the mic up because she doesn't need it, that was a fun little detail.) It's easy to know who is calling, they're watching from the sky, they know they walked to the other house, they know the phone number of that house, they know Carol left, etc.
I don’t understand how Carol suddenly became so trusting toward the Hive. Why does she think she’s talking to Zosia directly just because she told her to say “I” instead of “we”? She was clearly deeply hurt when Zosia said she loved Manosous just as much as she loved Carol. But really, that shouldn’t have surprised her. By now, Carol knows a lot about how the Hive works.
And why did she request an atomic bomb instead of her eggs? I was pretty sure it was her eggs until she mentioned it to Manosous.
I really liked the episode, though. The live-translator joke was genuinely funny. I just hope season two doesn’t take too long to come out.
Remember what’s happened in the show: Carol was first traumatized by loss…then abandoned…then “fell in love” with Zosia.
At the best of times a person would believe that time spent means intimacy gained…even in the context of the collective Pluribus. It’s one of the oldest flaws in human nature: we believe effort expended equals value.
I’m not sure what question she could have asked or how she could have known that Pluribus has a “static” emotional state…especially given what she was going through and that she was only interacting with Zosia.
Maybe it just goes to show how manipulative they really are. They give someone a person based solely on looks and force her to mimic the memories of a lost loved one, only to abandon her and later return to 'simulate' a relationship. I can see how that would completely destroy someone's mental state.
I mean…you have to know that’s a selective assessment of what happened on the show:
Pluribus was never traditionally “manipulative” about what they were doing…they were up front about who they chose, why they said what they said, and what they’re objective is. Pluribus also couldn’t have foreseen that Carol was going to kill thousands on thousands of them and force them to withdraw. They would have preferred to stay with Carol and convince her organically.
She asked them to come back and that episode ended with an emotional hug. I think she got desperate alone and got carried away with this illusion that Zosia was her girlfriend.
And why did she request an atomic bomb instead of her eggs?
I'm sure there is an in-universe explanations, but wouldn't that be lame? An atomic bomb makes a more interesting story. It can be used to destroy the giant antenna that controls the hive.
Only if you drop it on the antenna and detonate it — which given the size, weight and location of that crate doesn’t seem likely?
Honestly, this was the weakest episode for me. What happened to Carol during the 40-day solitude period? Why did she suddenly become protective of the Hive? She was anti-Hive for seven episodes, telling fellow munies that the people around them weren’t their family. Then after the 40-day breakup and sleeping with Zosia, she’s suddenly all protective. I expected her to call the Hive back and try to get closer to Zosia to explore ways of freeing people from the Hive. Remember that moment in episode 8 when Carol asked Zosia something personal and she stuttered, as if briefly disconnected from the Hive? Nothing came of that?
Some viewers haven’t loved the show’s pacing, but this episode moved so fast I feel like we missed crucial pieces—what actually happened to Carol, and why has she changed so suddenly?
And why didn’t she forbid them from developing the personalized virus? Or take the eggs back? All that “You wouldn’t do this if you loved me” dialogue feels completely unlike the Carol we’ve seen all season. At this point, we need a spin-off just to explain what happened during those 40 days of solitude.
Also, it’s impossible to produce stem cells from eggs alone. Eggs only carry half of Carol’s DNA. It seems more feasible to clone her using her full DNA from hair, skin, saliva—basically any somatic cell—than to derive stem cells from just half her genetic material. We’d need a biologist to clarify, but this feels like total bullcrap to me.
Why did she suddenly become protective of the Hive?
She had always been protective of people and felt bad if they collapsed after she got angry. 40 days is quite a long time to be completely isolated and if Zosia hadn’t come back, Carol probably would have killed herself. Also, notice how she confronts Manousos with similar arguments she was initially confronted with by the other humans: “Have you even tried talking to them? You could learn a thing or two.” She wants to be the one who knows better than others even if that means switching sides depending on who she’s talking to.
Like I get that she's a selfish person who immediately lost interest in saving the world now that she wasn't in danger but I agree with you, it's absolutely crazy that the show is trying to convince us she ate the blue pill so hard that she gets mad at the one person in the entire world that wants to save it. Why is she so dismissive and rude to him? Isn't this literally what she was preaching? All of this because she had sex? Lol.
And why didn’t she forbid them from developing the personalized virus? Or take the eggs back?
I guess it's implied that they can't honor requests to not turn her, but this indeed still a big plot hole. Why can't she just fly over to where they're doing the testing and steal the eggs back? They can't do anything to stop her. I don't understand how owning an atom bomb and saving the world is somehow easier than arguing with the hive to stop doing research.
I'm probably not going to be back for season 2 whenever that releases. Happy for the people in the community that are having fun but this felt like a big waste of time.
Has Carol ever flat out asked The Others† to sever their connection? That it would make her happy to return the human race to autonomy? I suddenly don't recall them ever telling her "No" at any point.
† "The Others" is how Vince & co refer to the hive (ref).
It’s been reinforced through exposition that Pluribus won’t deviate from it’s imperative to join everybody.
(I’m not calling Pluribus “The Others”, primarily because what they should be called is really obvious to me…and because “The Others” refers to to many collectives from sci fi and elsewhere…some of them terrible. F*ck Lost. F*ck that terrible Nicole Kidman movie).