Pluribus has a funny way of slipping in and out of the themes it wants to explore without us noticing it too early in the episode. Like the 4th one, for instance. Under the garb of the general investigative nature of characters in this genre, this week’s episode of Pluribus became all about the pros and cons of experiments run outside controlled environments, lack of faith in a questionable system trusted by experts, and the very idea of experts itself. Oh, and how could I forget. It’s about agency. The agency to mess things up beyond repair.
Spoiler Alert
Manousos Oviedo hates the hive mind more than Carol ever did
The scene with Manousos Oviedo and his trusty set-up to read radio signals isn’t set in the present. We’re likely a day before the timeline of the 3rd episode, and we’ll be led to the point of Carol’s first contact with Manousos in the process of getting to know him a little bit. He’s an odd guy alright. Tough, maybe even a little harsh, but values and integrity for days. The board with the rules to rent a unit in the storage facility he used to run before the “turning” says that this is probably a man who kept track of each penny. But that doesn’t mean that Manousos would’ve been a wealth hoarder even if he had the chance. Hell, he’s so full of principles that he can tame his starving stomach with a few licks of the bottom of the last can of food he has, but he still doesn’t accept food from the hive mind. The radio set-up with the timer, the one where he sits for long hours and notes down frequencies, is probably his way of trying to figure out what the hell is up. But it’s hard to do that on an empty stomach. So he finally breaks and crosses a line I bet he’s never crossed before, not even in the days he’s spent starving, mind you. And that too he does with the sweetest bit of neurotic touch. He can’t actually survive on principles. But he’d do just about anything before he accepts help from the people who want to make him “everyone.” So he breaks into the storage units looking for food, but not before he writes an apology note to the renters. You see, this isn’t a grumpy man. I mean, that may be his demeanor. But what I see in that note is a man who still believes that the world will go back to normal. He wants to hold on to that hope so bad that he powers through the gag reflex as he takes disgusting bites out of the can of dog food he’s found in one of the storage units. Couldn’t have been worse timing for him to receive the first call from Carol, don’t you think? And Carol tries so hard to speak his language and is so overly nice that he’s bound to think she’s one of them. That’s why I’m glad she calls him back to cuss at him. Like I said last week, this is the moment where Manousos actually gets the message. It won’t be easy for him to track down Carol unless he takes “their” help. But I bet he’s jumping around in his mind because he’s just found out that there’s someone like him out there.
Can the hive mind actually not lie?
“Genie in the Bottle” may be a banger to me, but it’s poison to Carol’s overwhelmed head when she gets into a car to get home from the hospital. Well, it’s hardly even a whole car, so Carol’s lucky it’s still playing music. It won’t run though. So a stolen cop car it is. Although stealing isn’t even a concept in Carol’s world anymore, because almost nothing is privately owned. A landlord’s nightmare. Among the many things that have changed for the better in the world of Pluribus are politicians. So while Carol is shocked to see her mayor among the crowd of people cleaning up the aftermath of the grenade that went off at her home, it’s always nice when a politician does deliver on the promises. And Carol voted for him. So shouldn’t she be happy he’s doing something useful? She would’ve been if this mayor guy was even a singular person. But that’s not the case. And Carol’s starting to think of ways to beat this thing. What’s the first step to that? Jotting down what she knows about them on the whiteboard. There’s just one thing that she isn’t totally ready to believe yet. They’ve seemed to be honest to a fault so far. But Carol needs to verify this before she can remove the question mark from the end of that thought. Not too difficult a job considering they’re always happy to help. So this individual, whose many friends used to call him Larry, is now a part of Carol’s experiment. See, from this point on, the confusion is triggered only because it’s hilarious. From the very start, Larry says things that can be difficult to verify. And don’t you come at me for this because, let’s remember, I don’t write the show. But here’s the thing. When Larry says he had a lot of friends, Pluribus wants you to doubt that bit, because Larry doesn’t fit the stereotypical “popular” profile. And then, Carol has just the right set of questions to ask him, only escalating the confusion. Larry is awfully general with his compliments when Carol asks him if the hive likes her books. Larry does prove that the hive mind knows her works through and through with recitations that make Carol cringe. See, Carol feels a duality about her own work. She claims to hate them herself, and a part of her actually knows that her books are hardly works of art, but she’s also kind of proud of them and wants them to be well-received. You can imagine why she feels this way. You never want people to hate what you make even if you know it’s trash. But the funny and oddly profound thing is, Larry, who’s basically everyone, actually doesn’t think Carol’s books are bad. He absolutely means it when he says that the Wycaro series is just as good as Shakespeare’s best work. Are you kidding Carol with this? How’s she supposed to believe him after that? Luckily, the hive mind has a perfectly good explanation for their love for Carol’s work. The alien-virus-infected world is able to appreciate anything that makes things better. What makes Carol’s books masterpieces to them is the fact that they’ve helped a lot of doomed people find a little bit of warmth in the cold, lonely world. Carol’s “crazy Moira from Kansas City” was almost on the verge of killing herself before she found her books, and they brought her enough joy to hold on for a little longer. Moira is a part of the hive now. So that’s how much the hive mind actually loves Carol’s Wycaro series. That’s great, then. Carol’s changed the world for the better. But what’s more important to her is how her late wife felt about her work. You can judge Carol for violating the privacy of Helen’s personal thoughts when she asks Larry how her wife felt about the Wycaro series, but who wouldn’t want to know? But just because I understand, that doesn’t make it any less ironic that Carol doesn’t see how big an ethical breach this is. She only cares when her agency is threatened, huh? Larry really doesn’t want to tell Carol that Helen found Carol’s work strictly “harmless.” That was the least mean Helen could be in her thoughts about Carol’s books, I guess. It’s hurtful for Carol, even though she always talked down about her own books to Helen. It’s hurtful for Carol because Helen lied to her about the quality of her work to keep her happy. And yeah, Helen kind of went out of her way to trick Carol into being happy. Helen might’ve found Carol’s unpublished book, Bitter Chrysalis (God help me,) very cotton candy, but she meant no harm when she pushed Carol to publish it. It couldn’t make things any worse. What a way for Carol to confirm that the hive mind is incapable of lying even when the truth is harsh.
What does Carol do to Zosia?
Carol’s nice enough to pay Zosia a visit. Of course, she is the one who sent Zosia to the hospital in the first place. But she isn’t just here to apologize to the woman who’s still sweet to her even though she’s caused her a lot of physical pain. Carol’s here to find out even more about the hive mind. It’s normal that that’s her first instinct right after reaffirming her faith in their words. And since they’re so smart, they must’ve somewhat figured out their situation by now. When they were first infected, Carol was told that they didn’t quite understand the purpose or the nature of the change, which she now knows was true. And Zosia has no wish to hide the fact that they’ve actually made progress in understanding what’s happened to them. In that case, do they know any way to reverse the infection or stop an immune person from joining them? That’s all that Carol cares about. Now, it’s not that the hive mind doesn’t want to preserve this change that’s made them happier beyond their wildest dreams. Of course they want to continue being happy. So Zosia isn’t at liberty to tell Carol how to reverse this shift. But because she can’t lie, her silence is enough for Carol. There absolutely is a way for the world to go back to the way it was. That’s what Carol wants. And that’s only fair considering Carol still has no wish to join the smile club. How can she even begin to be okay with the idea that they want her to be someone she’s not? It’s especially triggering for a woman who was once a helpless sixteen-year-old at a conversion camp her mother had forced her to go to. But even then, Zosia kind of has a point when she says that the singular mind of the entire world knows what it’s talking about when it’s preaching their way, because they’ve experienced both kinds of existence, before and after the infection. So Zosia’s point is that they’re making an informed decision whereas Carol is rejecting something she hasn’t even experienced before. Fair. But this won’t sway Carol. If anything, finding out that there might be a way to “fix” things has got her all excited. She walks straight into the pharmacy and picks up some Sodium Thiopental from the shelves because she can. It’s adorable how the hive-mind-pharmacist offers her the opioids they have available at the facility when she asks for some heroin. Why not? Why not have a hoopla or even some shoot something up her vein as long as she’s free to do whatever she wants? I like how this makes fun of Big Pharma and their “controlled” addictive drugs. But at the same time, Pluribus acknowledges that it’s relatively safer to take opioids under the guidance of experts. Safety is the last thought on Carol’s mind, though. She flushes the very pure heroin they’re nice enough to get her down the toilet. But she is not too scared to inject herself with Sodium Thiopental, infamously known as the truth serum, and record herself while she’s under the influence of the drug. She’s trying to find out two things. The first thing she needs to be sure of is if the drug actually works like a magic potion that makes people tell the truth. The second thing she needs to find out is what she actually wants underneath her layers of defence. Lo and behold. A truth-telling Carol is a sight to see, even for Carol herself when she goes through the clip later. A completely uninhibited Carol hates the constantly smiling people and their precious virus. She also absolutely doesn’t like Zosia beyond the obvious sexual chemistry, of course. And she misses Helen like crazy. It’s wretched, and wonderful, and refreshingly human to watch Carol all drugged up. This is what she’s trying to protect. She’d take being human, thorns and all, over an alien bed of roses. But that doesn’t mean that you go ahead and drug Zosia up, does it, Carol? Can this woman stop hurting people, for crying out loud! Under the pretense of taking her out for some sun and fresh air, Carol sneakily drugs Zosia with Sodium Thiopental and brings her out of the hospital. Carol is hoping that the drug’s effect will make it impossible for Zosia to keep the truth about the antidote from her anymore. But all it serves to do when Carol keeps forcing Zosia to reveal the secret is distress her. The hive mind has the most pure, harmless heart that is very sensitive to negativity. Carol should’ve known that after causing a genocide by simply yelling at Zosia. I don’t know what she’s thinking putting Zosia through this when she’s trying to recover from the last horrible accident courtesy of Carol. But more than anything else, Carol should’ve known better than to expect that a drug would have the same effect on two people. She doesn’t even know what drugs Zosia is on now that she’s in the hospital. So it might even be a disastrous reaction caused by the wrong drugs being combined in Zosia’s system that sends her into a cardiac arrest.
It’s a terribly tragic betrayal of the very meaning of the word “agency” when, in the ending of the 4th episode of Pluribus, Carol screams for her agency and uses the handcuff from the police car to attach herself to Zosia. She’s only doing this because other people of the hive mind have flocked around them. They’ve sensed Zosia’s agony and gathered around to save her. But while Carol is scared that they’ll take Zosia away from her, and that she’ll lose her one chance to find out how to keep herself human, they’re only here to save Zosia because they know she’s having a heart attack. Carol does let them help Zosia when she sees that they’ll just allow Zosia to die if that pleases her. But it may just be too late for Zosia. She’s been put through too much. And it’s possible that she may not make it this time. Carol has devised way too many painful accidents for them to even be considered accidents anymore. As of now, it’s fair to say that Carol cares more about herself than anyone else. Do what you must with that bit of information.
