'PLUR1BUS' is my idea of a good time
Rhea Seehorn just can't have nice things.
Vince Gilligan seems like a really good friend. He's obviously a fantastic showrunner and creator of television – his latest, PLUR1BUS, follows on the heels of the iconic Breaking Bad and the possibly-somehow-even-better Better Call Saul. After every fan and critic in the world was calling for Rhea Seehorn to get Emmy recognition for her role as Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul to no avail – sorry, but there are Sarahs Snook to consider, after all – he has crafted an all-new show to serve as a starring vehicle for Seehorn. The hope is that she'll fare better with awards voters in the lead category rather than the supporting one (and of course, Succession is finished, and if they choose to category-tamper by submitting the shockingly funny PLUR1BUS as a comedy, it's clear the bloom is off the definitely-for-sure-a-comedy The Bear).
Gilligan, who got his start on The X-Files and its spinoff, The Lone Gunmen, returns to the world of science fiction with Apple TV+'s PLUR1BUS. The premise is that an extraterrestrial virus has infected the Earth, turning all humans into a hivemind where every living soul is bound together in a collection of shared experiences and knowledge. Well – all humans except for a baker's dozen individuals who are somehow resistant to infection, leaving them with their own autonomy and individuality. The hivemind-bound alien-infected humans cannot lie, claim to hate harming any living being with agency – thus they do not eat meat, do not kill livestock, and take care to step around any stray bugs – and are doing all they can to accommodate and please the uninfected few, while they search for a way to include these stray unfortunates in The Joining.
One of the uninfected is Seehorn's character, Carol Sturka, a bestselling romantasy author whose partner, Helen, is one of the unfortunate humans who died as a result of the infection. Carol is understandably traumatized by the events in the pilot episode, where things are at their most chaotic and she is dealing with the raw emotion of Helen's death. As the episodes unfurl, we learn that Carol is a deeply unhappy and wounded person, who has a long history of reasons why she cannot find joy, solace or comfort in her life. She lashes out at the infected repeatedly, but she learns that the hivemind, focused on harmony, is unprepared for intense anger or hatred, and an extra-large lashing out will short-circuit the entire collective for several minutes. Since (very nearly) every human on Earth is bound together, when the hivemind goes down, people die – cars are being driven, planes are in the air, machinery is being operated; it's kind of a big deal.
Carol arranges a meeting of every uninfected human who can speak English, and the hivemind cooperates, flying them to an opulent locale, hosting them lavishly and giving them their hearts' desires. Carol, completely untrusting of the hivemind, is relentless is her attempts to uncover whether they're up to anything nefarious, and insists the uninfected must find some way to reverse the Joining. All of the other infected, who have living family members and/or (as in the case of one self-centered climber) love the new situation in which they now find themselves, think Carol must be crazy. When the uninfected learn at this gathering that the Joining ended up killing 800 million people (who, as in Helen's case, died of complications), Carol learns that she herself killed over one million when she screamed at the infected and forced the hivemind to shut down.
I feel as if we're at the precipice now (in anticipation of Friday's sixth episode) that the show is about to reveal some manner of Soylent Green situation regarding the infected, and that they may actually have some nefarious bent to them. As the season goes on, it's become much more understandable, given Carol's past, why she pushes back so intensely on being catered to, and why she is unable to accept herself, or others, or happiness, but what I've kept returning to so often in the course of the first five episodes is how much I would absolutely love being in a PLUR1BUS situation – either from the perspective of being Joined, or from the perspective of being uninfected. I don't know if you guys have seen the current state of the world, but it's pretty bad!
A world where currency or status or caste or class or level of need is obsolete sounds good! A world where everyone understands one another and can draw on the entire knowledge of everyone alive sounds great! Being able to fully, completely, intimately understand what it is like to be and to have been and to experience someone else sounds incredible! I'm happy to eliminate meat from my diet to live in a complete utopia. But of course, I'm not Carol. Most of the other uninfected seem to think she's crazy, too. For the moment, things she says are right, but things other people say are right, too. That seems to be the biggest Big Idea here: is individuality and agency worth endless suffering? Maybe not! Vince Gilligan is good at this!
As mentioned, and as with Gilligan's other shows, PLUR1BUS is expertly crafted and frequently hilarious. (Episode 5 features some of the best physical comedy I've ever seen – and it's from a drone.) Seehorn is incredible, as are the other cast members (notably Karolina Wydra as Carol's assigned hivemind chaperone, Zosia). I'm waiting for the inevitable series of horrifying reveals, but for the time being I'll just keep pining wistfully for a PLUR1BUS of my own, and feeling bad that Carol can't just enjoy a small slice of paradise before it's too late.
