Episode 1 of Pluribus opens with a bunch of astronomers, at what seems like the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, analyzing an extraterrestrial microwave coming from the great beyond. It’s a Morse-code-like message that’s being repeated every 78 seconds, and it’s supposedly coming from 600 light-years away. The astronomers think that it’s an encrypted message, but one of them figures out that it’s actually an RNA sequence. So, they decide to turn the RNA sequence into DNA, via some version of the reverse transcriptase procedure, in order to ascertain what mysteries that “message” entails. This is when a timer starts flashing on the screen, which states that there are 71 days, 13 hours, and 21 minutes left for something to happen (I’ll come to this in a bit). Then that DNA solution (I don’t know the scientific term) is injected into rats, and they are kept under observation to see what changes they exhibit. As all this is going on, we are introduced to a novelist, Carol, who is attending a book-reading and signing session in Dallas with her manager and partner, Helen. Carol takes her time to listen to her readers’ opinions and takes pictures with them. However, when her Uber arrives, the mask drops, and she reveals her love-hate relationship with her work and her fans. I might be wrong, but this whole scene does feel like a snippet of Vince Gilligan’s thoughts on everything he has heard from fans of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul over the past few decades. Anyway, how do these two plots collide? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
The Infection Begins
The timer flashes 29 days, 23 hours, and 49 minutes before taking us to the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which is in Maryland, where we meet Jenn and D, who clock in and have a chat with the receptionist, Mel, about the fact that their research on that RNA sequence they received from outer space has gone nowhere. So, they have to kill all the mice in the lab and maybe start afresh. Now, before they can begin that process, Jenn and D notice that one of the mice is already dead. So, Jenn takes it out and checks its vitals. She notices that even though the animal is immobile, its heart is beating pretty fast. And then suddenly it comes to life and bites Jenn’s hand. She should’ve been wearing two layers of gloves while handling the mice, but since she wasn’t, the mouse’s bite punctures the glove, and it draws blood.
While Jenn goes off to disinfect her hand, D puts the mouse back in the box. That’s when he notices that Jenn is convulsing. D tries to drag her outside and get help, but when they are in the disinfecting chamber, Jenn’s convulsions come to a stop. Soon after that, Jenn goes to Mel and kisses him, while D goes to the janitor and kisses him. Mel and the janitor begin convulsing too, thereby indicating the mouse bite has done something to Jenn, and now she’s sharing that mind virus with everyone. A few moments later, we see a bunch of people, including Jenn, D, Mel, and the janitor, filling up petri dishes with their saliva, probably to mass-produce whatever mind-controlling disease has them in their thrall. As if that’s not disgusting enough, Jenn goes ahead and licks the free-for-all donuts that are kept on the reception counter of the facility, thereby ensuring that everyone who eats them becomes a kissing zombie.
Helen and Carol Reach Albuquerque
We see that timer again—which reads 3 hours, 6 minutes, and 37 seconds—as Carol and Helen return to Albuquerque. Yes, yes, I know, both Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were set in Albuquerque, and I am pretty sure that you’d like to know if those two shows and Pluribus are set in the same universe. Well, no, because Rhea Seehorn played Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, and here she is, Carol. If this is a multiverse scenario where Seehorn’s character was born as Carol and she became a novelist, and there are alternate versions of Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Saul Goodman, based on what happens in this episode, I can assure you that their identities have been erased. They are being puppeteered by that mind-virus.
Or, you know, this show is not connected to that franchise at all, and the setting being Albuquerque is a sweet Easter egg, and it’s possible that Gilligan gets a huge tax incentive from the state of New Mexico for all the work he has done there previously. Anyway, coming back to the plot, after taking their luggage and rearranging the book racks so that Carol’s work is on the top and more noticeable, Carol and Helen head over to a bar for some drinks. Well, Carol gets a drink, but Helen stays sober because she needs to drive, and the self-driving rental car doesn’t start unless you pass the breathalyzer test. They chat about what Carol’s next project is going to be. And then they go out to have a smoke. As they are walking out of the bar, the TV on the counter displays the news that the airport has been shut down. But everyone is so busy drinking that they don’t pay attention to it.
Helen Is Dead
While Carol and Helen are having a smoke, the former notices the parallel patterns that the planes in the sky have created. Before they can make head or tail of it, a customer exiting the bar in his pickup truck crashes into a car in the parking lot and loses consciousness. Carol rushes over to see what’s going on while Helen stays put. When Carol calls out Helen, hoping that she’ll help her with this guy who has just been in a car crash, Helen goes limp and takes a nasty fall. Since Carol’s phone has broken from the impact of Helen’s fall, she rushes into the bar for assistance and is shocked to see everyone in there convulsing like anything. She manages to pry the phone out of the hand of the bartender, only to find that the emergency services are unavailable.
So, Carol realizes that she has to drive Helen to the nearest hospital, but that’s when a problem arises: she has consumed alcohol, which is why she won’t pass the breathalyzer test of the rental car. Therefore, she hijacks that unconscious guy’s pickup truck while he’s still in there, loads Helen into the bed of the truck, and takes off. She spots a cop car on the highway and thinks that they’ll be able to help her, but as she approaches it, she notices that it has crashed and the cop is probably dead. After that, she looks at the horizon and notices that the entire cityscape is on fire, which means that the incident at the bar isn’t an isolated event. She reaches a hospital and notices all the staff and the patients convulsing. She gets the stretcher herself, and when she is about to transfer Helen from the bed of the pickup truck onto it, Helen dies. She is gone, and she’s not coming back.
Carol Gets Home
As Carol is processing Helen’s death, she glances at the hospital lounge and sees that everyone has finally stopped convulsing and is coming out onto the streets. So, she approaches one of the orderlies, Dr. Nyugen, and gets his attention. But in addition to Nyugen, everyone else that’s out there turns in Carol’s direction, and then Nyugen kisses her on the mouth, because that’s the way to spread the mind-virus. This understandably freaks out Carol, and as she begins making her way to the pickup truck, she notices two people trying to take Helen’s body. She shoos them away and then exclaims, “What’s wrong with you?” The crowd that’s gathered around Carol speaks in unison and says that they just want to help her. Without wasting another second, Carol boards the pickup truck and begins driving back home. A portion of this journey takes place in a single unbroken shot, and we see that the townsfolk have been infected as well. Carol reaches her home and begins searching for the key to the front door. When she fails to find it, the children of her neighbor tell Carol where the key is.
Of course, that freaks her out, but she takes their suggestion, procures the key, tells the kids to leave her alone, and then proceeds to drag Helen’s lifeless body into the house. As she is doing that, she witnesses another weird phenomenon: not just those 2 kids, but their family as well as the whole block is “leaving Carol alone.” She even spots a couple of people dragging out a dead body from one of the houses. Hence, she locks the front door, secures any potential entry points, and then switches on the television to see if there’s any news on what’s going on. After surfing through a bunch of channels, she reaches C-Span, which is showing a live feed of the White House press briefing room, where a guy is standing there. Since he isn’t saying anything, Carol notices the ticker that’s running, and she is shocked that it is directly addressing her and telling her to dial the number that’s on display so that he can answer all the questions that are definitely on her mind. Carol takes her chances and rings up the man on the TV.
The Hive Didn’t Kill Helen
So, based on the conversation between Carol and “Davis Taffler,” a bunch of things become somewhat clear. For starters, Helen didn’t die because of the virus. When she was convulsing, she fell down, and she took a nasty hit to her head. Therefore, it’s possible that she suffered from some kind of internal hemorrhage and passed away before she could turn into one of those zombies. Secondly, Carol is somehow immune to the mind virus. It’s obviously transferred via saliva, and even though she was kissed, she didn’t turn. And news of this anomaly has apparently been shared across the hive that connects the minds of all the “humans.” Hence, this creature wants to protect Carol and give her everything she wants until they find a way to convert her and make her a part of the hive. Thirdly, it’s not an alien invasion. The aforementioned information about the RNA could have come from an alien species (a homage to Contact), or it could be an Interstellar situation where humans from the future are trying to contact humans in the present (which is the past for them). It does feel like an Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The World’s End kind of affair, though, where someone has turned humans into a hive mind species because it’s the only way to achieve equality and peace.
It’s evident that the virus spreads via saliva, but the way everyone got triggered at the same time means that, over the last few days, the hive mind might have found a way to transfer the virus first, maybe through drinking water, and then activate it later. The approach is clearly not a robust one, because the takeover has led to accidental deaths, much like Helen’s, and there are 12 people in the world, including Carol, who haven’t transformed. And the issue with 12 people thinking independently in a world full of hivemind zombies is that it can lead to anarchy. So, by hook or by crook, the hive is going to collate all the information that’s available to it from all the minds they have captured, especially the bright ones, and they are going to subjugate people like Carol. By the way, the hive can’t read minds. They absorb the memories of the people they are transforming and upload them to the hive cloud, I guess. Even though Helen died mid-transformation, the hive got her memories, which is why it knows everything that Helen knew about Carol. Now, before cutting to the credits, the timer reappears. It says 1 hour, but instead of counting down, it’s counting up. So, what the hell is up with that? Well, the first time that we see the timer is when the scientists begin testing the RNA sequence, and that was the first step towards the end of humanity. Hence, it was counting down to the moment the species lost all sense of autonomy. When the timer starts counting up, it signifies the commencement of the era of the new humans who are connected to a hive mind. That said, the timer reflects the hive’s arrogance. It’s so sure that there’s no way these 12 humans are going to find a way to undo what it has done that they have announced the end of the human race and the start of the hivemind human race. Well, I hope Carol proves them wrong.
