‘Pluribus’ Episode 3: Negative Nancy at the Ice Hotel

Speaker 1 Happy Friday, you donut liquors. We're back for Pluribus episode three.
This is the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 1 We're here to talk to you about the episode titled Grenade,

Speaker 1 written and directed by Gordon Smith,

Speaker 1 who I just want to mention really quickly because I love this about what Vince Gilligan does with the folks that have worked with him for years. Gordon Smith started as

Speaker 1 an assistant on Breaking Bad, sort of rose up the ranks, wrote one of the best episodes of Better Call Saul, Chicanery, and is here directing now, writing and directing for Pluribus.

Speaker 1 And I just really love how loyal Vince Gilligan is to his people and how he sort of like loves to teach the people around him and sort of promote them as they go.

Speaker 1 So just a shout out to Vince Gilligan as one one of the one of the great showrunners that we have so i mean it's fits like the cottage industry thing that he does in turning albuquerque into a company town like the whole operation feels so inclusive in a way that i mean it's a little warm and fuzzy joe i gotta say uh listen he just wants us all to be happy he does truly and what could possibly go wrong in this episode grenade A literal grenade goes off.

Speaker 1 But as we love to sort of over analyze episode titles, Rob, first of all, I want to know what you thought of this episode. And secondly, do you have any alternative,

Speaker 1 what other kinds of grenades might have gone off in this episode of television?

Speaker 2 I really like this episode. I think we were stepping away from like the big picture existential questions of episode two.

Speaker 2 We're certainly getting some distance from the world-altering events of episode one, but you can feel all of these like supposedly benevolent means of control that are starting to constrict Carol and her movement and the life that she is hoping to live as, you know, one of the last few true humans on Earth.

Speaker 2 As for other grenades, I mean, there's emotional grenades all over this episode, or I guess maybe landmines, maybe claymores. I don't know exactly what the explosive mechanism is, but

Speaker 2 things are going off left and right internally for Carol, I would say.

Speaker 1 I would say that right before the literal grenade goes off,

Speaker 1 is when Zoja hits Carol with the Ice Hotel memory, which we got at the beginning of the episode. And we'll talk about all of that.
We're going to go through the episode, of course.

Speaker 1 But I like audibly gasped. It felt like such a violation.

Speaker 2 The fucking gall of it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 2 Like, she has to know what she's doing on some level. I know we're going to get into it.

Speaker 2 And honestly, that moment too fits what probably should be a recurring prompt for us, which is the like, holy shit, Racy Horn moment of the week, because her like slow, indignantly tearing up and trying to even not give Zosha the satisfaction of that, just A-plus.

Speaker 2 Peak acting TV, as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 I think it's really interesting listening to the the official podcast, listening to them talk about sort of the emotional intelligence journey that these beings are on, if you want to call them humans.

Speaker 1 And I think that's a question we can ask throughout this entire season series of television. What makes a human a human is obviously something that's on the plate here.
Are these people humans?

Speaker 1 I saw a lot of people ask the question of like, hey, if they're, if they're bonded to everyone in the world and that includes all the psychiatrists that ever were, all the diplomats that ever were, all the, like, why are they so fumble-bumbly with like context sometimes?

Speaker 1 And so, there's something that the writers are trying to get at when it comes to like, there are ways in which the reprogramming of these people sort of rebooted their emotional intelligence to a certain degree.

Speaker 1 So, there are ways in which they are very emotionally intelligent and there are ways in which they are learning. And it seems to be like it's across

Speaker 1 the organism because they talked about in the official pod, they talked about Zoja on an emotional intelligence journey, what what she learns, is learning inside of this episode.

Speaker 1 And then they talked about the DHL guy, uh, played by Robert Bailey, who I thought was so funny at the end of the episode, like, really, really good.

Speaker 1 But they were like, he's continuing the emotional journey that we saw Zoja on.

Speaker 1 So it's like a group growth, I guess, that they're on, which I think I hadn't thought about and I thought was really interesting. So something to consider.

Speaker 2 I think all those elements too serve the story as an allegory for AI element of like, it's one thing to have all this information and it's another thing to understand how to process and use it.

Speaker 2 And, you know, some prompts are going to be more effective than others, I suspect, for whatever this hive mind is.

Speaker 1 And something we should say in terms of like this episode specifically,

Speaker 1 it comes in around 43 minutes, which is considerably shorter than the first two episodes, which were closer to an hour.

Speaker 1 And it seems like the rest of the season is going to be in that sort of like 45-ish minute range. So this is going to be the standard going forward.

Speaker 2 I do love that model of like, you know, whether it's a double premiere or not, but like event premiere. Yes.
And then, you know, then we get into normal TV cadence.

Speaker 2 I think it serves, especially a show like this, really, really well.

Speaker 1 There's so much to chew over.

Speaker 1 I did see,

Speaker 1 you know, I love to trawl a Reddit. I did see kind of what I expected to see on the Reddit, which was like plenty of people saying, A, nothing happened.
I mean, a house blew up.

Speaker 1 I don't know what more you want, but we can talk about that. And entire Sprouts got restocked, guys.
Yeah. An entire season of Golden Girls was watched.

Speaker 2 Nothing happened. Are you kidding me? Are you joking me?

Speaker 1 We bade farewell to your favorite character, the unicorn truck. Like a lot, a lot of things happened inside of this episode.

Speaker 1 But also, like, this is what a Vince Gilligan show does. It slow rolls things.

Speaker 1 It really asks you to sort of marinate with the characters. So

Speaker 1 I think patience is the watchword, but I don't find it. I personally don't find it like unentertaining as we're sort of really moving step by step forward on this journey.

Speaker 2 So I mean, if you're just here for a plot delivery mechanism, like those beats will come, but a character-heavy episode in which we get flashback, in which we learn a lot about Carol, in which we're learning in real time about how this hive mind processes and operates, like, again, there's a ton to chew on.

Speaker 2 I just don't like fundamentally don't understand that perspective of watching TV.

Speaker 1 I think it's just people want different, they want something else from their television. And

Speaker 1 I don't think this is a show for them, and that's okay, but it's a show for plenty of people, and plenty of people are super stoked about what they saw.

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Speaker 1 Speaking of those plenty of people, we got literally hundreds of emails.

Speaker 1 We were talking to our guy, Justin Sales, about this, and we were like, I don't think we've gotten this many emails since I asked a question on the severance finale that a bunch of people put into chat GPT and send us back Adjustment Bureau as the answer.

Speaker 1 This is the second most,

Speaker 1 like the second biggest haul of emails I think we've gotten for a single episode of the podcast.

Speaker 1 Astonishing stuff from you guys. Really good.

Speaker 2 So many people licking donuts out there, Joe. And very thoughtfully and entertaining lots of different ideas and theories and proposals for everything that we asked for in the first pod.

Speaker 2 Like I was overwhelmed by the amount of donut licking happening.

Speaker 1 I was literally overwhelmed. So here's the deal.

Speaker 1 If you're just tuning in and you missed our first podcast, the email for the show that we're doing

Speaker 1 this time around is

Speaker 1 lickingthedonut at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 You simply must take a bow again.

Speaker 2 This is among the greatest things that you have ever done in a long and storied professional career. New York Times bestseller, Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 1 Whether or not that's true,

Speaker 1 I suspect that a lot of people just wanted to type lickingthedonut at gmail.com into an

Speaker 1 address to line.

Speaker 1 To clarify, and I really regret that I didn't do this last time, we're spelling donut D-O-N-U-T, the dumb, dumb American way, not D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. So D-O-N-U-T.

Speaker 1 At the last minute, I tried to scoop up the other one because I saw that some people were like making that mistake. And I was like, oh, we'll just own both.

Speaker 1 Like many other donut-licking email addresses, it was already taken. And Rob, we found out why from, thanks to our listeners, why are all so many donut-licking email addresses already taken?

Speaker 2 So this was a huge pop culture blind spot for me. Was it also for you? Yes.

Speaker 1 Revelation.

Speaker 2 Apparently, Ariana Grande was involved in a donut-licking incident, controversy. We have now seen the tape of her licking a donut

Speaker 2 on display in a shop and cackling with her friends. It was very upsetting behavior, I have to say.

Speaker 2 But at the same time, clearly it lives on in the minds of the people. Like, this is something that is a touch point.

Speaker 1 Ariana Grande is currently, it's so early but currently like one of the front runners to perhaps win an oscar this year for her work in wicked for good yeah but when will she apologize for the donut licking uh if if not a single journalist asks her about this on the road to oscar they are derelict in their duty okay that is paging sean and amando in the big picture you have to get arianna to interview and you have to you have to put her feet to the fire or her her tongue to the fire whatever you prefer uh prefer not to anyway so ariana grande uh donut liquor in chief um but lickingthedonut at gmail.com or press cheese tv at spotify.com uh to reach us we we're just gonna go through a couple things uh

Speaker 1 honestly we could spend nine hours talking about all the emails you guys sent us we're gonna do our best but our scientist listeners had a lot of nits to pick about this episode uh

Speaker 1 both about how viruses are spread about bacteria about how you would get it to a space station like all this stuff so um i i think we're all just going to have to suspend some like scientific belief when watching this, but I appreciate all the expertise we got about how viruses are spread.

Speaker 1 So thank you. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 And I assume the space station sub stuff was just like, we know you're going to wonder about this.

Speaker 2 So let's just talk about it, even though it's like logistically impossible, but let's take it off the board.

Speaker 1 I do like the future season possibility of constantly discovering new people who they...

Speaker 1 didn't they accidentally didn't reach you know what i mean i mean this is very lost of you exactly i mean 100 you got to have some like other characters in the tank somewhere in the world, you know?

Speaker 1 So, yeah.

Speaker 1 And then we got, we asked and you answered. We asked for

Speaker 1 with love and respect to Vince Gilligan and his crew. We did not particularly fancy the fact that they decided to call

Speaker 1 Carol and her cohort the old schools.

Speaker 1 and the other people the others with love and respect to lost. So I couldn't collect them all, but I'm going to rapid fire my sort of faves to you, Rob.

Speaker 1 okay and you let me know what you think i've divided them between the sort of the collective and and and the singular unless it's a duo that needs to be read together in which case i've paired them so we're just gonna speed run this okay yes and i will say many people send in many very funny and very creative suggestions that are more text-based yes that are a little difficult to parse said out loud so we acknowledge them we love them all the same but it's like we got to find something punchy we can say that makes sense the number one suggestion and it's one that i like i kind of have already glummed onto in my own mind is hive mind right like that's that's uh the joined right because they talked about the joining the collective the glued versus the unglued the stuck versus the unstuck the terminally online really cracked me up that's good the donut liquors the swarm the merged the mergered and the divested the bound versus the unbound are any of those sticking out to you as as hot faves i just don't think we're going to do better than hive mind yeah it's simple it's evocative like we reach for it for a reason.

Speaker 2 It just makes a lot of sense. I did like, we got one from Lucas that was the chorus that I could do.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I like it. I like the construction of that, but also it has like a one step removed lack of simplicity, maybe that Hive Mind really zeroes in on.

Speaker 1 I think if we say Hive Mind and someone is like hopping into the podcast like halfway through the season, they'll know what we're talking about.

Speaker 1 If we say the chorus, they'll be like, what is this phrase you've invented? I am compelled by the donut liquors, of course. But

Speaker 1 then we get to the other groups. Free willies just made me laugh.
They have free wills, so someone suggested free willies. Indies, it's in terms of their independent.

Speaker 1 We can cover, we can continue the severance ideas. The uncollected, the originals, which is very CW, the unplugged, the dirty dozen,

Speaker 1 the egg cartons, or even the donuts. And that is based on the fact that we have a baker's dozen of these people so far, right? 13.

Speaker 1 You missed two of my favorites, though, Joe.

Speaker 2 One of them I love, but I simply cannot say out loud, potentially hundreds of times on this podcast. Uh, the plurbies, or

Speaker 2 what were the plurbies supposed to describe the hive mind, whichever?

Speaker 1 The plurbies. I love it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I love the word, but I simply cannot be saying it that many times. Um, Roxy recommended for Carol and her cohort the homies, which I just thought was great.

Speaker 2 I also liked that, but I'm not in love with any of these. Is there one that you're gravitating to that feels natural?

Speaker 1 Um, I don't know. The not

Speaker 1 yet. Um, let's feel it.
the thinking. Let's keep it.

Speaker 2 Let's be human beings who don't have to have everything pre-planned and pre-ordained. And we're going to browse the shelves of sprouts and pick out exactly what we want when the time is right.

Speaker 1 And I guess it's going to be a shitty frozen meal, even though there's all this delicious produce. Okay.

Speaker 2 I think we know who cooked in that household. You know, I don't get the sense that Carol was really like putting things together.

Speaker 1 That's true. Helen held it all down.
Okay. And then you guys responded in depth when we asked, what would you do if you had the hive mind at at your beck and call? I've put them in buckets.

Speaker 1 We've got what I'm calling the adventure bucket.

Speaker 1 And that is like Russ, who says, who loves F1 and is like, you know, basically the Autobahn will be free and clear and I can drive cars as fast as I want.

Speaker 1 Tim, who is a surfer and is like, I could, he's like, what did he say? You could endless summer your way around the world. Like all, all of the brakes are yours.

Speaker 1 So that's one.

Speaker 2 But let me ask you on that front, like if you ride the gnarliest wave and no one sees it, did it happen?

Speaker 1 Crush?

Speaker 2 Like, I, you know, I worry about these things as far as like the satisfaction of the thing you think you want.

Speaker 1 Well, that's that, this goes to a lot of our listeners, and I didn't know we hit this demographic, but love to have you here, are golfers, and they talked about going to the greatest golf courses around the world.

Speaker 1 But again, if you're only really competing against yourself, because like you could play with Tiger Woods, I guess, if you wanted to or something like that, but like, then you're just going to lose very badly.

Speaker 1 So you can't play with someone who's like close to you and your ability.

Speaker 1 This is the ongoing problem of you know being all alone in the world as as carol is or you can hope that one of the other 12 is an avid and roughly your level of golfer like i think because if it is someone who's part of the hive mind that's just not like that's not your buddy anymore and that's not even tiger woods anymore exactly okay um and then molly said she wanted to go to sentinel island the one uncontacted island on earth to see what's going on with the structures and paths seen on google earth and i'm like oh yeah sounds great um on that front we got another bucket I'm calling secrets, right?

Speaker 1 Reagan says he wanted to go to Area 51, Fort Knox, the Vatican archives.

Speaker 1 Gabrielle says she wanted to know all the secret files that every president is given when they, you know, about like Area 51, Fort Knox, like et cetera, et cetera. What's JFK in the corner?

Speaker 2 The phrase, let me touch the Gutenberg Bible was in here, which is a very donut-looking mentality, I have to say.

Speaker 1 A step further, the Vatican archives. I know there are centuries of secrets in there just waiting to be revealed.

Speaker 1 And then last but not least, Doug took this idea to like a more of our time tabloid era and says he wants to know who killed Jean Bonnet Ramsey or who the Zodiac killer was.

Speaker 1 So I thought all of that stuff was really good.

Speaker 1 Two more buckets. Sports.
I'm going to read some things that I don't understand, but perhaps you do, Rob.

Speaker 2 Please.

Speaker 1 How about NBA 4K oops all point guards? It raises the question, could you do a real-life FIFA oops all messy versus oops all Ronaldo? I understand that.

Speaker 1 How much of those players' excellence is due to what's in their brain? I thought this was really interesting, and this comes up a couple of times, versus their physical attributes.

Speaker 1 I don't think it breaks the rules of Pluribus if you draft 45,000 to root for Messi and 45,000 to root for Ronaldo and stage the whole thing at Wumbley Stadium, right?

Speaker 1 So that's what Trevor wants to do. But Ian gets even a little more creative and is

Speaker 1 putting elite athletes from one sport into another sport, right? Can

Speaker 2 how familiar are you with this?

Speaker 1 Because this is a classic like sports off-season filler type conversation of like, what if lebron played football right this is ian's like main main question uh lebron as a tight end on the cleveland browns right can otani browns don't exist like this is the thing is there is no context to evaluate what you think you want can otani hit some threes on the knicks can tom brady return a serve from serena williams opportunities are endless and i i would love to see tom brady get his ass handed to him by serena williams in a game of tennis i would that we could all take joy in i think and then this is this is sort of like

Speaker 1 the last

Speaker 1 on the sort of like Jacob, Rob, how could you not want to go to Madison Square Garden sort of a question?

Speaker 1 Jacob is asking, can the children of Cordon neighbors run a Stefan Draymond two-man game? Can Zoja do a dream shake? Does the Undersecretary of Agriculture have Harden Step Back 3 in his bag? Right.

Speaker 1 So like they know.

Speaker 1 They know everything.

Speaker 1 Yes. But if, but if they have not trained physically to do so,

Speaker 1 you know, like Zoja has the muscle memory to fly any plane, but can she perform like an elite athlete can?

Speaker 1 Obviously, there's a lot I do and don't understand about this prompt, but I figured we should represent the ringer listeners in this regard.

Speaker 1 Is there anything you, a genuine sports enthusiast, want to say about this section of responses that we got?

Speaker 2 I think the Hive Mind doesn't want that smoke. That's a lot of torn ACLs that are happening if Zoja is trying to do the dream shake.

Speaker 2 You know, like to your point, they're physically not prepared necessarily for the rigors of what you're asking them to do.

Speaker 2 I do think it would be fun in a one-time basis to do some of the experimentation we're talking about.

Speaker 2 Like put these people out there, see if they have the collective mind and understanding of how to run the perfect pick and roll. But they either do or they don't.

Speaker 2 And so they're either perfect optimized basketball machines or they're a bunch of dumb dumbs out there who don't know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 And neither of those results is honestly that interesting to watch.

Speaker 1 I think, well, what I think is interesting about this prompt and the next, the final bucket, which I'm calling the arts, this is more, more my speed,

Speaker 1 of like this idea that everyone's the same, everyone is one.

Speaker 1 But like, if you can

Speaker 1 sink a certain shot in basketball and I can't, uh,

Speaker 1 or if you can paint something that I can't, the idea of like, I can cook any meal because I know the technical

Speaker 1 proficiencies of a kitchen or whatever, but there has to be some other things. And certainly when it comes to art, yes.
And this is like, we got a lot of emails about this. Like, um,

Speaker 1 Kelsey was like, I'd ask right away for the finishing of a song of ice and fire, right? Like, I would want George R.

Speaker 1 Martin to finish a song of ice and fire, but is it really a song of ice and fire if George is like the hive mind and not George R.R. Martin? Raj says, What is Chris Nolan doing?

Speaker 1 Has he stopped making the Odyssey and I don't know, driving an ambulance? I mean, that would be devastating. What if Carol asked for Nolan's Odyssey? Would the Hive Mind restart the whole production?

Speaker 1 Would love to hear your thoughts about this. And even if Carol asked for the Odyssey, is Chris Nolan still Chris Nolan? Can he still finish the Odyssey, right? This is the existential question.

Speaker 1 Like, what makes you you? What makes you unique? And so, like, there are ways in which we have to have certain experiences. We got a lot of questions about like love.

Speaker 1 Can you fall in love if you're part of a hive mind? We quote unquote love everyone. Yes.
But can you like fall? And I'm certainly that's a question maybe Carol will be asking about Zoja going forward.

Speaker 1 Like, can this person care about me in a way that feels individual from the collective? All this stuff is really fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 And not just that feels individual from the collective, but feels flawed. And I think this is the part of like, can you even create art if you are a hive mind?

Speaker 2 If you have all this information, like if you have the collective knowledge of the entire world and all of the resources at your disposal, I would argue that you are just...

Speaker 2 incapable of making great art. Like those are not circumstances that make art because it can't be infinite in scope or nature.
It removes all of the imagination that makes the thing the thing.

Speaker 1 It's imagination and distinct point of view and distinct experience, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, when we talk about going to the Guggenheim or a lot of our listeners are like, I would go to the Louvre and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 Like seeing those great works of art, which were created by individuals.

Speaker 1 And if we don't have the individual minds, we got some interesting emails from people who are like, Carol's selfish to not want to join the hive mind.

Speaker 1 Since the hive mind is so interested in the benefit of the entire species,

Speaker 1 what is the holdout hoping for? Just their own individual glory.

Speaker 1 But I would argue, and I think the show is arguing, that Carol is holding out for the individual of humanity, which makes a human a human and makes the world interesting.

Speaker 1 And if everyone is just smooth-brained hive mind,

Speaker 1 where you don't even have to talk to each other because you can all just like know what each other is thinking all the time.

Speaker 1 One of our listeners, and I have this email later, I'll shout them out sort of later as we get to it in context, was just basically saying, like.

Speaker 1 The hive minds are kind of fun to watch as they bump up against Carol. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But if you take away the Carols and the, and the others like her, and it's just the collective silently worker being around, as Carol says, and like, you know, removing stock from the shelves of

Speaker 1 a sprout silently yet efficiently,

Speaker 1 that's not, that's not cool, man. That's not interesting at all.
So I think that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 Yeah, optimization just isn't that interesting.

Speaker 2 And it looks with Carol, clearly the show is interested in the the worst person you know just made a great point sort of formula here like carol's version of humanity is complicated and incredibly messy.

Speaker 2 And she is no one's idea of if we were going to put up our best and finest and most like fully actualized humans, Carol is not among them.

Speaker 2 But that's kind of what makes it interesting is that we're fighting for a flawed version of who we are against something that we should say.

Speaker 2 The hive mind says that they have the interests of humanity at heart. We have no idea if that's true.
We have no idea what their actual motivations are, but that is the supposed confrontation, right?

Speaker 2 Is this like the all of the machinery and then the wrench in the works of the machinery? And at some point, you do have to pick and choose which one you would prefer.

Speaker 1 I was talking to a pal about the show on your point about Carol not being the best that humanity has to offer. We're not sending our best necessarily.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 I was talking to someone and they were like, I find Carol so, and they sort of like trailed off.

Speaker 1 And I said, relatable at the same time, they said insufferable. And I was like, oh no.
But that's the whole bag right there. Okay.
There are several moments in this episode.

Speaker 1 I regret to him for you, Rob Mahoney, where I i was like oh that's me i'm carol um okay please isolate those for us where did you see yourself joe uh my love of a sprouts um

Speaker 1 yucking your own yum of getting on the new york times bestseller list

Speaker 1 and saying oh i only came in at this number it does it's not doesn't really count i was like i understand that that's not a broadly relatable experience but i was like that's a hundred percent what i did in my own brain because i was like oh

Speaker 1 what number though um anyway so uh i'll i'll talk about some more but like i think as like uh a white woman who makes her living doing something artistic adjacent yeah um

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 has given to the Sierra Club perhaps twice in her life, you know, like has these pretensions of the Sprouts thing is

Speaker 1 incredible for a million different reasons, but the specific brand of Sprout, like that, that it's a Sprouts is so

Speaker 1 hilarious to me, again, as

Speaker 1 a Sprouts shopper myself, because

Speaker 1 it's such a like

Speaker 1 because Sprouts propose, like, pretends to be like a farmer's market, quote unquote. And it's just sort of like this facsimile of farmer.
It's this, um,

Speaker 1 I'm telling myself that I'm not shopping in Whole Foods, I'm shopping organic, I'm doing all these things, and it's just like,

Speaker 1 are you? You know, that's, that's a, that's a, with love and respect to Sprouts, Sprouts sponsor us. I love your store, but also I don't love what it says about me necessarily.

Speaker 2 So they might be sponsoring this show. You know, we're not at like nobody wants this levels of product integration, but like Farragun and Sprouts are plot points in this episode.

Speaker 2 So I don't know what's happening with that. They both fit like a glove.
Like what they represent, I totally understand.

Speaker 2 And the read makes it feel like a little bit more organic if we want to, you know, fall into the Sprouts mold.

Speaker 2 But they are front and center. Like we are, we are spending a lot of time seeing that marquee at Sprouts.

Speaker 1 I hope DHL is proud of the way they were represented in this episode. Quite hope.
They should be. They should be.
Okay, we're going to get into the episode itself.

Speaker 1 And then at the end, if we have time, we're running short on time, but if we have time, I want to get to like a bunch of listener comps that they brought up of other shows and books that this reminded them of.

Speaker 1 If I don't get to it this week, we'll definitely do it next week.

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Speaker 1 Let's start with the Ice Hotel. So, as we mentioned in last week's pod, we've got this clock that's counting down and then counting up.

Speaker 1 And if the seconds and minutes and whatever are going down, we know it's before. And if they're going up, it's after.

Speaker 1 I still think if it were me, I would color them differently or something like that. But that's okay.
I'm not confused

Speaker 1 at all.

Speaker 2 We know where and when we are.

Speaker 1 I'm not confused. I just, I don't know.
Um, I think it's so we're 2,617 days and some hours and minutes and seconds before. That's seven years ago.

Speaker 1 And among other things, what this tells us is like how long Carol and Helen were together.

Speaker 1 Like seven years ago, they were not only going on, you know, big vacations together.

Speaker 1 Carol was like freezing her eggs. They were talking about starting a family together.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So like, this is, this is such a, um, has been such a huge part of Carol's life for so long, her relationship with Helen.

Speaker 1 a couple things on that front a listener a listener chris was asking like why it was count why that what that zero is the zero is like mass infection but i think also crucially for our pov character it's helen dying right

Speaker 1 like this is before

Speaker 1 helen's death and after helen's death is carol's sort of unique experience of this whole thing But on the Helen and Carol front, we did get some listener emails that were like, Rob, buddy, can't believe you missed that they were together.

Speaker 1 And that's fine. Like,

Speaker 1 we don't want to dwell on that, but I did think this email from Lillian, who was like, hey, Rob, what does this do to your understanding of who Carol is or the story when you realize who Helen was to her when she lost her?

Speaker 2 I mean, it intensifies so much on the first two episodes, which, yeah, like, I have zero idea how that went straight over my head to the degree that it did.

Speaker 2 And especially when you see episode three and it's like, they're going to see the indigo girls and staying at a BNB.

Speaker 1 it's like, okay, yeah.

Speaker 2 The signs are here, frankly.

Speaker 1 The closet is glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 But also, I love that we're getting not just like recontextualizing as idiots like me realize what's actually happening in the show, but getting these flashbacks to spend more time with Helen in particular, who I was just worried she was going to be gone and it was all going to be retrospective.

Speaker 2 It was all going to be talking about memories or like little bits and shreds, but to actually see them together.

Speaker 2 And I think most crucially and maybe most heartbreakingly, see that like Carol has been this way for a long time.

Speaker 2 Like there is a part of her that has been a negative Nancy at the ice hotel and is like complaining about all the things while Helen is wide-eyed and feeling alive in a totally different way.

Speaker 2 And the way that those two people work off of each other and complete each other and form a pair is like clearly an instructive part of the show and something that makes everything that we're seeing with Carol in sort of the present day that much more devastating.

Speaker 2 Like that is a character who is five days removed from losing her partner for life and now has to pick up all the pieces.

Speaker 2 And so like, yeah, she's a little bit of a mess and she can be a little bit shitty in the same ways that she was, but also in new ways that represent everything that she's lost.

Speaker 1 I think also thinking about,

Speaker 1 I love that point. And I love, I love watching Helen in this scene sort of like be the one person who could get her to enjoy something, right? Sort of like jolly her out of her.

Speaker 1 She's like, you love being miserable. Not in like a, you're ruining our vacation sort of way, just sort of like, this is you.
Come sit with me. Come put this fur on your lap.
Look at the sky.

Speaker 1 You're going to like it.

Speaker 2 I mean, I got to say, boo-hooing the ice window showing you the northern lights. Come on.
Like,

Speaker 2 this is a pretty cool hotel.

Speaker 1 It's a very cool hotel. Rob, you could not catch me dead staying at an ice hotel.

Speaker 1 I would stay at a different hotel and look at the northern lights in Norway, but I would not stay on a bed made of ice. I don't like being cold.
It would not be for me.

Speaker 1 So, but if I had agreed to go with my partner, I wouldn't be shitty about it once I was there. Okay.

Speaker 1 But also, I would say for someone like Carol, who hid something so fundamental about herself, that like her queerness that she hid

Speaker 1 from her audience,

Speaker 1 the idea of everyone knowing everything about her might be so much scarier for someone like her who kept such a big part of herself so secret and so intimate.

Speaker 1 She's been outed by like the fact that Helen has joined the collective consciousness before she dies means that everything about her is now on display to all of these people.

Speaker 1 And the fact that, like, you know, maybe it's healing that the hive mind, the collective is like, and that's great. And we love love and, you know, love wins and we're into it or whatever.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's healing. But right now, it's exposing and vulnerable

Speaker 1 to someone like her. And

Speaker 1 then I think also

Speaker 1 thinking about like the ways in which Zoja is accessing Helen inside of of this episode,

Speaker 1 which we already talked about a little bit, but like

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 way in which

Speaker 1 that forces Carol to understand that the last like

Speaker 1 minutes, seconds that she shared with the love of her life

Speaker 1 was not really with the love of her life, was with like a pod person, essentially. Right.
And so it's just like.

Speaker 1 That final memory she has of her is not, is not even real because she was already like plugged into the Ethernet. And that's just like equally devastating to me.

Speaker 2 So I mean not only does it make her feel like a pod person in those moments it makes Helen again this person that she loved feel like fodder like like food for a larger machine like there is an element as far as this larger conversation of are these still people right like it is it's so dehumanizing in all the ways we've already talked about of like what makes a human a human um to just be like part of this thing that is facilitating memories for now a woman who has been like engineered to be attractive to you to spout back at you Like it, it's all really gross.

Speaker 1 But also, like, there are moments like when

Speaker 1 it is gross, so gross. When Zoja is on the phone talking about the Theragun, like why Helen bought the Theragun for her.

Speaker 1 Um, or so, like, the last gift she'll ever receive from Helen, right, is this thing.

Speaker 1 Um, the way they put it on the official podcast is like, also, this is the last piece of mail she'll ever receive, right? Like, that's that, that experience of being a human is over.

Speaker 1 The last bills she'll ever receive, like, all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 2 But uh, I did did think for a moment, Joe, that the pod people had ordered her the Theragun as like a spectacular bit of passion, like passive aggression.

Speaker 1 Relax. Like, please stop yelling.

Speaker 1 I wrote in my notes, like, methadone Helen, right? Like, this is just sort of like, she's like, she's got like...

Speaker 1 fumes of the person that she like loves so much and it is painful but also like is there something about that that is also compelling you have access to this person I don't have access to anymore.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And, and that, I don't know.
There's something about that that is,

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 2 And is there like a tipping point for that of where, where Carol goes, like, look, clearly the events of this episode, and I think specifically the guilt of Zosha getting injured because of the grenade are going to bond these characters.

Speaker 2 Like, we're seeing them come closer and closer together in exactly the way the Hive Mind frankly seems to want.

Speaker 2 But will there be a tipping point where Carol wants to know

Speaker 2 like that thing that I always wondered about Helen, like, how did she really feel about this?

Speaker 2 She could know it if she wants to, in the same way that as our emailers have been entertaining the ideas of like wondering the secrets of the universe, you could also know what your friends thought about you, what your loved ones thought about you, what were their deepest, sometimes darkest feelings

Speaker 2 about something that, oh, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 But someone like Carol, given the vulnerable state that she's in, where she is like post-water chugging vodka, I could see her going into all kinds of dark tunnels.

Speaker 1 You don't chase your Xanax with vodka, Rob? That's not.

Speaker 2 No, I mean, look, at least she didn't dry swallow that thing.

Speaker 1 So like

Speaker 2 there's levels to this, but that's not my preferred pill delivery method. No.

Speaker 1 I was really, I was struck by the, I could have saved that 100 grand and frozen my eggs here, yolks and all. Like, so this idea that Carol

Speaker 1 had frozen her eggs with the idea that they would have kids someday, potentially. So like what happened there? That was seven years ago.
So what happened there was the plan, we'll get to it someday.

Speaker 1 Did they try and it didn't succeed. Like, what was going on there? But that's like a pain point for Carol for sure.

Speaker 1 And I saw a lot of people on the Reddit, as Reddit brains often do, and I love the Reddit brain, but like, uh, were like, oh, well, if there's some of her DNA frozen somewhere, is that like a hint to a future cure?

Speaker 1 And maybe, like, who knows? Could be.

Speaker 1 But I thought it was more like character-based of sort of like, this is tells us something about their relationship and also some of the pain in Carol's past that we have yet to unearth.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 and then

Speaker 1 on the look front, something I think that's really interesting that I didn't realize is that they color graded the show differently in episode two and in episode three. Basically, the before

Speaker 1 is more muted tones, and then the after,

Speaker 1 they're calling it kodachrome, like these saturated colors.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, like, this idea that, like, so that's something maybe to watch for like future flashbacks of like, what does the before look like?

Speaker 1 And the now is this, like, you know, that bright yellow of the world. You know, I think that's.

Speaker 2 And it kind of fits the canon, too. Like, if all the cars just stopped, wouldn't the air feel a little less smoggy?

Speaker 2 Like, in this optimization engine, there's a lot that's appealing in terms of saving humanity from itself.

Speaker 2 It's not all good, but there are certain things that I think would look a little more hyper-saturated.

Speaker 1 That's like the whole COVID. The animals are returning.

Speaker 1 Also, our listener, Andrew,

Speaker 1 I want to see this little Matrix thing here. Matrix is one of the comps that a lot of people brought up.
But this, this,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 line from from Agent Smith about, did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster.

Speaker 1 No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost.
Human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.

Speaker 2 We sure do, Joe.

Speaker 1 You know, you were talking so perfectly last week about this idea of like, are any of these benefits worth anything if you didn't have to like strive for them, struggle for them, et cetera.

Speaker 1 So this idea, but this idea of like to be human is to suffer.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Interesting.
I probably agree, but I just think.

Speaker 2 I don't know whether it is to suffer, but it's certainly the way we make sense of things. And so like whether it is true for us like on a biological level that we need to suffer, who's to say?

Speaker 2 But culturally and psychologically, we are oriented to like organizing our lives based on the hardest moments and the hardest spots.

Speaker 2 It's really one of the only thing that things that like propels most people to actually grow is is going through something incredibly painful.

Speaker 2 And so if you remove all of that pain, is there any kind of progress? Or is it just, as you said, in watching the like ant colony nature of filling out a grocery store, just a constant flow of stuff?

Speaker 2 Right. But it's all so flat.

Speaker 1 Right. It's, it's a, it's an emotional stasis.

Speaker 1 And this is why I think it's interesting that, that, that we have these friction points with Carol of emotional growth for the Zojias and the DHL guys of the world. Okay,

Speaker 1 Carol on the plane. Last time we didn't get get a chance to talk about Carol's seat choice on the plane, but do you want to talk about this, Rob, and this scene in general?

Speaker 2 I know she's like just trying to stay away from everybody, so she's going to the back, but simply why?

Speaker 1 Well, she's making a point. I will take the worst seat on the plane because fuck you and your seduction of convenience or pleasure or whatever it is.

Speaker 2 The point is just not worth the lack of legroom, you know? Like you sit in first class and make Zoja sit at the back of the plane.

Speaker 2 That feels like there's other ways to keep your distance from the other people who are on here.

Speaker 1 This reminds me of our severance pod and the fact that you and I are tall people and it's different. It's different to fly when you're as tall as we are.

Speaker 2 That's extremely true.

Speaker 1 I thought the pilot co-pilot thing was really funny.

Speaker 2 Super funny.

Speaker 1 Really good. And also the fact that

Speaker 1 like when she waits for Zoja to go all the way back to her seat before ringing the like

Speaker 1 the button. Also, a pronunciation update.
I feel like last week we might have mispronounced, or at least I did. It's Carolina Vidra is the actress who plays Zoja.

Speaker 1 I think we said Wydra because we're not Polish ourselves. Okay.

Speaker 1 Anything you want to say about the other, I don't know, originals, let's call them, the other people that we find out are seated around the world.

Speaker 1 Any of these stick out to you?

Speaker 2 I mean, we don't learn a lot. I mean, we do learn a lot about them biographically.
We get their bio blast kind of information dump, and we learn that they are a mix of,

Speaker 2 you know, tenors and contortionists and literal children and a lot of cat lovers in the mix.

Speaker 1 A lot of cat lovers.

Speaker 2 Power to them. The cat lovers shall inherit the earth.

Speaker 1 It's a win. It's a win for us, Rob.
Sorry.

Speaker 2 You know what? You can have this one. Thank you.
Thanks.

Speaker 2 Obviously, there's the exception to that group being the one that Carol actually interacts with, which is this guy, Manusos, who's this dude from Paraguay. I don't know, like, he's going to come back.

Speaker 2 Like, that's too dangly of a thread for him not to be a presence in this show on some level. I would be shocked if they do not meet in person now that Carol can just jet-set wherever she wants.

Speaker 2 But I do want to just put a very very specific spotlight on the Ray Corn line delivery on Cabron, where she like really, really puts some spice on that thing in a way that I appreciated.

Speaker 1 This is where I want to offer an apology and say I fucked up a little bit last week on the pod.

Speaker 1 I had been talking to someone who had seen this episode and I like referenced this scene in last week's pod. And I do apologize if people were confused.
They're like, I don't remember that happening.

Speaker 1 It's because it happens in episode three. I'm not watching head.
This will not come up again, but that is something I did last week.

Speaker 1 I will say that the actor who's playing Minusos is the only other actor besides Ray and Carolina who is in the main cast of this show. So I have to imagine that he will be coming back.

Speaker 2 This was a moment for me, Joe, where I did see myself in Carol in one very specific way.

Speaker 2 I, like Carol, am a phone pacer. If I am on the phone, are you? Trotting around a room, I'm covering ground.
Like, I cannot sit still and be on a phone.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's good to know. I don't think we've ever spoken on the phone, but if we ever do, I will keep that in mind.

Speaker 2 Joe, this is simply not true.

Speaker 1 Really? We text. I don't think we talk on the phone.

Speaker 2 We definitely have before talking through some planning things for this or that, but it is infrequent for us. You're absolutely right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Carol gets the mail. We already talked about this, right?

Speaker 1 This is her last mail ever. There's a bill with Helen's name on it that is upsetting that I will be coming back to

Speaker 1 for a later point. And then the Theragun.

Speaker 2 Well, also something really crucial that you're glossing over, which is the takeout menu for Mr. Burger kebab.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Would you love to frequent Mr.
Burger kebab? Are you interested?

Speaker 2 Based on these prices, I absolutely am.

Speaker 2 $5.99 for kebab with fries or rice and Shirazi salad, which I love Shirazi salad.

Speaker 2 I simply can't beat that. $5.99? I go there every day for lunch.
Come on.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, Mr.
Kebab Burger, we also welcome. If Sprouts and Mr.
Kebab Burger want to sponsor the podcast.

Speaker 2 Be respectful. It's Mr.
Burger Kebab.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 Some people on this podcast, Joe, are dedicated to getting the details right. You know, this is the important stuff.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say about this Theragun moment that we haven't already covered?

Speaker 2 I mean, coding it as Theragun specifically, which is an exorbitantly expensive percussion massager, I have to say,

Speaker 2 does make it a very sweet gesture. Like finding the thing your partner would not buy for themselves and indulging them with that thing.

Speaker 2 It makes it very sad and very sweet to open that kind of last gift from Helen. I think it's really funny.

Speaker 1 Someone, one of our our listeners was like,

Speaker 1 Carol is a best-selling author. Isn't she swanning around in first class on her book tour? Like, why is she sitting in the back?

Speaker 1 Wouldn't she be used to first class?

Speaker 1 I think you have a misunderstanding of

Speaker 1 how much money.

Speaker 1 Your lead child, maybe, you know, how much money best-selling authors make.

Speaker 1 You can afford a nice house in Albuquerque, but like, you know, which is great, but like you're not, she's not living in that house in a place where the real estate market is through the roof and she's not flying first class everywhere and she's not buying their guns left and right.

Speaker 1 It's just simply not the life she's living. Um, this all ends, of course, with her looking at

Speaker 1 the orchid on Helen's grave, and it's very,

Speaker 1 very sad.

Speaker 2 Um, that shot, too, of like the in-focus, out-of-focus shift to the orchid. Really, really elegant stuff.

Speaker 1 Really good stuff.

Speaker 1 Carol is watching the Golden Girls.

Speaker 1 Shout out physical media. She's got the Golden Girls on DVD.
Do you think this is

Speaker 1 the only thing she has on DVD?

Speaker 2 Or do you you think it's her favorite thing is there another reason she would turn to the comfort of betty white and the golden girls well who among us would not frankly really agree i'm gonna guess that based on her treatment of the discs themselves that carol was not the physical medium

Speaker 1 maybe this is a chance to get into our gilligan shot of the week of course it is a great nominee of course it is and of course it's the only reason a dvd would be completely weirdly upturned on its side on the table but they did talk talk about this on the official pod about like how he really wanted to get the shot.

Speaker 1 And they're like, we could just do it in post. He's like, no, I want to do it.

Speaker 1 The director of this episode was like, I want to do it. And they did it.
So yeah, Betty White reflected in the upturned DVDs.

Speaker 2 It's fucking good. Like, it's like, I'm here for it.
I'm here for doing it. But the reality of that moment is a human has propped up a disc on their table in a way that no other human would.

Speaker 2 Disrespectful. So thank you to whoever was buying the physical media in that house.
But I don't think Carol was the primary customer.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you a couple of other nominees for the Gilliganverse shot. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Extreme close-up of airplane instruments.

Speaker 1 Carol reflected in the gleaming silver cloche that is over the breakfast that is left at her front doorstep. And the pouring water turning into vodka shot, which I thought was

Speaker 1 very Gilligan-coated.

Speaker 1 Okay, so we're binging the Golden Girls. We're not showering and we're not really doing well, I would say.

Speaker 1 And then a steaming hot breakfast from your favorite BNB in Provincetown is dropped off at your front door. Rob,

Speaker 1 are you eating the sorghum flour pancakes and poached eggs and the microgreens?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's very tempting to me personally.

Speaker 1 Same.

Speaker 2 But again, when it's presented as like, here's this intimate memory of this person who you are trying to keep private, and this hive mind keeps insisting on like shoving down your throat, that's what makes it feel gross.

Speaker 2 And maybe you would lose your appetite.

Speaker 2 It looks like a beautiful breakfast.

Speaker 1 It really does.

Speaker 2 But this is kind of the combination combination of, I would say, Carol is like starting to set her boundaries in this episode.

Speaker 2 She is trying to create a wall between her and the hive mind on two different fronts. One, like she doesn't want to be taken care of.

Speaker 2 And I want to dig into that more specifically because there's a lot to unpack with that. And then also Helen is just hard off limits.

Speaker 2 And the breakfast on the doorstep in the cloche is just like an embodiment of all of that stuff

Speaker 2 swaddled together.

Speaker 1 By a lot to impact, do you mean several trucks full of food in the sprouts let's talk about this okay so she goes to sprouts still driving the unicorn truck which is not long for this world and this is genuinely okay i wrote peak white lady bullshit and again i say that as someone who can deeply relate to what carol is doing here but the insistence on being quote unquote independent i must take care of myself yep and in doing so

Speaker 1 forces all of these people, not forces, but it results in all of these people stalking the store so she can quote unquote independently get food food for herself versus the one person who showed up to put the breakfast on her doorstep.

Speaker 1 Yes. I think it is so

Speaker 1 funny. All those bulk bins had to be restocked.
Now, the hive mind did it in an hour and eight minutes, which is incredible. Astounding work.

Speaker 1 But Carol, may we sneak past you here to get like the entirety of the sprouts restocked so she can be a quote-unquote independent person is like genuinely, extremely funny to me. I really liked it.

Speaker 2 It's really great.

Speaker 2 And especially we've already established in this world, like, there might be a very short, like, there's not a lot of meat that's going to be out there or hunted or harvested in the foreseeable future.

Speaker 1 Did they restock the butcher counter?

Speaker 2 Like, it kind of looked like they did. And so it's like, ma'am, you need to freeze this meat if you want a hamburger in the next six months.

Speaker 1 Like, Burger Kebab is not going to do it for you.

Speaker 2 Simply, I mean, look, they're not open for business anymore. Although the Hive Mind has tapped into Mr.

Speaker 2 Burger Kebab himself and is like harnessing all that information, including his expert pricing strategies. So maybe there's something to work with there, but you're right.

Speaker 2 Like, this is where I sit with the Sprout stuff and ultimately this larger conversation about like being an independent person.

Speaker 2 Carol like clearly does not want to be treated like a guest in her own life or frankly, like on her own fucking planet. Like, you just got here and you're going to take care of me.
How dare you?

Speaker 2 Which that part I understand. The ways in which she goes about it are incredibly wasteful and frankly ridiculous.

Speaker 2 And she's, she is turning her nose up at gestures on principle that I understand, but in ways that are very human.

Speaker 2 And I think ultimately digging into this thing of like having the piping hot breakfast delivered to your door and this very specific kind of control that happens when you have all of your needs met and you don't have to provide for yourself, right?

Speaker 2 Like, I think this is something where Carol is finding herself where.

Speaker 2 If you give over all of the ways that you take care of yourself, you become reliant in a way where you are then subservient to the people who are providing your needs.

Speaker 2 And so that is something that if you were in Carol's position, and it's specifically if you're digging in your heels in the way that she is resisting and wanting to maintain who she is, and like the hive mind is straight up saying, like, yeah, we're trying to turn you into a pod person in the next two weeks to six months.

Speaker 2 Like that's an expressed interest of what they are trying to do. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I know. And I like, I support what she wants.
And if she had like walked out her backyard, found a stream and like. caught herself a fish out of a stream.
That's one thing.

Speaker 1 To insist on restocking the sprouts just for her is a completely different thing. It's It's so ridiculous.
And it's so good. It's really good.

Speaker 1 What do you make? We had talked about this last week. We talked about like what, what are,

Speaker 1 what are, what is, what is the hive mind doing when we don't see them? Are they just donalgating themselves in a corner, et cetera? But we've got a couple things that we know, right?

Speaker 1 They are consolidating food, resources, medicine, all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 1 And they are consolidating, they are turning off the power grid because people don't work at night and there's no crime. And

Speaker 1 is this the future liberals want? That's my question for you, Ramon. Ramoni.

Speaker 2 You know, all we want are, you know, 15-minute walkable cities, you know, we want working public transit. Yeah.
I don't need to be part of a beehive. No.

Speaker 1 Okay, fair enough.

Speaker 2 But, you know, maybe this is the only way to achieve it.

Speaker 2 Like, maybe some of what this show is suggesting is that in order to reach this level of optimization, we do have to deny a lot of what makes us individuals, certainly, but even just fundamentally human.

Speaker 1 This is where I want to mention this. email we got from our listener,

Speaker 1 Elise,

Speaker 1 who says, in terms of no crime at night, she wrote this previous to this episode, but in terms of no crime at night, she wrote, What happened to all the sociopaths and deeply evil people who have committed atrocities?

Speaker 1 If everyone knows how to do open-heart surgery, does everyone know how to professionally torture someone to death?

Speaker 1 Were most of the people who died and then joining rejected because of what they were like, most of the people in the upper levels of government were dead.

Speaker 1 It's not a stretch to believe that most of them could have fallen into that category. Anger, I love this part.
Anger is a base human/slash-animal response.

Speaker 1 If that's been scrubbed, have any of the other difficult, messy emotions made it? Being in love causes just as much difficulty as anger, if not more.

Speaker 1 So yeah, are you human if you can't be angry, messy? And also

Speaker 1 the hive mind absorbed everything, but... not everything if sort of like evil is not here, if ill will is not here, if et cetera, et cetera.
Any thoughts on that, Rob, Mahoney?

Speaker 2 I think it goes back to what we were talking about, about the difference between having information versus having the totality of a person.

Speaker 2 Like you can have, you can have all their memories written down, but that doesn't make you them. Yeah, yeah.
And

Speaker 2 this show just begs all of these questions about what exactly is contained within the hive mind.

Speaker 2 Like we got another email from Kevin who was wondering, like, what does it mean to share consciousness with a newborn baby?

Speaker 1 Like, are you

Speaker 2 like, you are a newborn baby, you are a toddler, you are an elderly person. Like, you have this wealth of experience that has no way of really reconciling, to be honest with you.

Speaker 2 Like, our capacity as humans for just like understanding each other's situations is fairly limited and if your brain if you just went full galaxy brain and like i have to relearn object permanence for the first time like no wonder they don't understand sarcasm you know like there's a lot that's going on also like the the children of the corn who lived next door are creepy enough right but like um you know in in in the show station 11 uh which i loved and i think in the book as well you have this idea of the of the the post pans the kids who were born after the pandemic.

Speaker 1 So what is it like to just have always been part of the hive mind versus assimilated into the hive mind? Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Well, in order to be part of the hive mind post-pan,

Speaker 2 does the hive mind have to have sex with itself? And if in doing so, like,

Speaker 2 does it care about its own habit? Is that like a purely biological drive of like procreate?

Speaker 2 Or is there anything else involving there now that you have the sexual experience and information of the entire planet?

Speaker 2 Like, I can't even imagine the tantric shenanigans that could happen if it were interested in such things, Joe.

Speaker 1 Some of them are contortionists. What are you going to do? Like, I think that, like...

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I had this written down. Are we just breeding? Are we just fulfilling a biological imperative?

Speaker 1 So we're back, you know, we're back watching the Golden Girls. We did get this

Speaker 1 great email from Natania, one of our listeners, who was talking about the way in which Carol's experience is very much like depression, which I thought was really interesting. I love that.

Speaker 1 I thought it was a really, really good email. But like, I think this idea that like

Speaker 1 this, the isolation,

Speaker 1 the sense that everyone around you is happy and having a frictionless existence and you're the problem, all this sort of stuff. I thought was really interesting.

Speaker 1 Anything you want to say on the on the Golden Girls specifically front or

Speaker 1 anything else?

Speaker 2 I mean, first, thank you for being a friend, Joe.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Travel down the road and back again.

Speaker 2 Of course. Yeah.
I mean, your heart is true. You are a pal and a confidant.

Speaker 2 Knowing what Carol's Comfort Show is is nice in and of itself. Like, I just love this beat for this character, but also I thought it was interesting in the scenes that we get, specifically,

Speaker 2 they're all like Rosen Island St. Olaf stories, which are one of the great parts about Golden Girls, to be honest.

Speaker 2 The story that's like interrupted at the end, it's like a scene break, is her, Rose telling the story about there were some men who claimed to be druid priests who said they could stop a volcano from erupting if the quote dumbest virgin in the town would basically do what they said.

Speaker 2 And it cuts off at this point before Rose reveals, it turns out they weren't druid priests at all. They were just like a bunch of people looking for a good time.

Speaker 2 I thought it was interesting that we left that part out. You know, like maybe that's a nothing thing.

Speaker 2 Maybe that's like, I don't know, a bunch of like supposing do-gooders just showed up on the planet saying they wanted to make humanity better.

Speaker 2 Maybe they're not do-gooders trying to make humanity better.

Speaker 1 On the official podcast, they talked about the fact that they essentially had like some folks on staff like scrub through to find like what what pieces they would want to put on and i don't know if they this is not contradicting what you're saying i was just saying imagine your job is to like as a pa it's your job to scrub through and find like the funniest rosen island stories to like just clip out for for a second or two on pluribus uh vince or any other showrunners if you're hiring for that specific job i will take it we volunteer

Speaker 1 I'm going to return to this. You donated twice to Sierra Club, and I just want to say Pluribus, stop reading me to film this instant.

Speaker 2 I would really appreciate it um okay so it would be unsettling we should say if only your cul-de-sac was lit and everything else was pure darkness and like this is the other thing about the optimization and the sort of ant colony nature of it is there is something about watching it unfold that is appealing and and like nice in a fluid and and like everything is working correctly kind of way and it's also so unnerving to see absolutely

Speaker 2 if you were in carol's position how would you not be constantly on edge by a chain of people coming saying one word at a time on their way out of the grocery store?

Speaker 1 Like, it's horrifying. That was tough.
And again,

Speaker 1 on this idea of we're learning as a collective, I would say

Speaker 1 if you want Carol not to freak out,

Speaker 1 put some pilot uniforms on your pilots and don't speak as one in that way that you did at the end of the Sprouts montage, I would say.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is the direct quote from the official pod about this idea of emotional intelligent, right?

Speaker 1 Like Zoja shows up with a hand grenade because she doesn't understand that Carol's like dripping with sarcasm when she says this. Great emotional intelligence, but they're humans.

Speaker 1 So they'll get things wrong and they'll learn and they'll evolve. I thought that was really interesting.
They're humans. And I was like, are they?

Speaker 1 You know, like that's, that's the question we're asking.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's an intergalactic virus, but it is working with human hardware. Right.

Speaker 2 And so clearly, like, it's going to be limited by, in some ways, what the human brain can do, although it's also tapping into abilities that the human brain could never dream of.

Speaker 2 So it's like, how human are they? I still don't understand, even knowing all that.

Speaker 1 And this might sound like nitpicking. I don't mean it this way.
I just think it's, I think it's just philosophically interesting to explore.

Speaker 1 If Zoja can get drunk having vodka

Speaker 1 with Carol and the hive mind doesn't get drunk also, then she's having a unique experience. And so that does not, does that not make the Zoja-shaped person

Speaker 1 different from the hive mind? Because she had this experience of getting drunk. I was thinking about this, like, on a very basic level.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about you and I, as tall people, like, if my experience is I can reach anything on any shelf I want, and then there are some people who can't do that, then my experience is distinct from their experience.

Speaker 1 And so that's a very, very like minor sort of thing, but like.

Speaker 1 extrapolate that out and out and out and out. Like

Speaker 1 the weather is different here than it is here. Like, you know, like there's just all these ways in which we're having different experiences in life.

Speaker 1 And so, how can we claim to be like one if we're having these little?

Speaker 1 And so, is that baked into the concept? Like, are we going to see the collective,

Speaker 1 you know, my, I'm weirdly, bizarrely kind of rooting for Zoja and Carol. I don't, I don't know what to tell you.
They've got great chemistry. And apparently, this

Speaker 1 scene, the, the vodka scene, the Aquavit sort of speech was Carolina's chemistry read with Ray. Like, this is what they did in their audition to sort of like see if they connected.

Speaker 2 It's very endearing. Like, it can be.

Speaker 1 Zoja's etymology corner.

Speaker 2 Like, I would subscribe. Yeah.
I enjoyed it a lot. Full of fun facts.
Like, the chemistry is undeniable.

Speaker 1 Right. So I'm rooting for it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I don't know if I'm rooting for it.

Speaker 1 I like watching it. Well,

Speaker 1 here's the way in which I'm rooting for it. I'm rooting for Zoja to like

Speaker 1 wake up. Grow beyond.

Speaker 1 Well, no, because if she wakes up, then she's not true.

Speaker 1 That's very true. So Zoja isn't real.
Right.

Speaker 2 But that's what, like, so what are we rooted for?

Speaker 2 Because to root for Zoja to have any kind of progress is to root for this construction, again, that has been like engineered to be attractive to Carol.

Speaker 2 And even though Carol is trying to keep everything at arm's length, like she clearly is susceptible to it, right? Like she stops the plane not to get on.

Speaker 2 to join the harem and go party on Air Force One, but she wants the space pirate for herself, right? Like she is pulling Zoja off the plane. Come with me.
She shows up with the hand grenade.

Speaker 2 Can you like, come in and have a drink with me? Like, she is trying her damnedest to not do this. And you can feel her doing it because the chemistry is there and it is real.

Speaker 2 It's undeniable and yet it is gross.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 On the costume front, I want to say really quickly, I really love that like Zoja had changed into this like flowy dress to join the harem, which she's still wearing at the beginning of this episode, but she's back in like a smart blazer when she comes over with a grenade for Carol.

Speaker 1 I love that. We get some information about the biological imperative.
We get some information about, like, when Carol says, How long do I have left before you turn me into a worker bee?

Speaker 1 And Zoja does not contradict the characterization of worker bee.

Speaker 1 Tough, I would say. That's not how I would sell join us.
Join us, be a worker bee is not what I would say, but I don't have Mr. Burger kebab's level of marketing at my fingertips.
So how do I know?

Speaker 1 Also, we had a lot of listeners ask a question

Speaker 1 about this idea that they can't, the they, the hive mind can't kill.

Speaker 1 How, what are you extrapolating from this? Like, what, what does this mean to you?

Speaker 2 It all feels like terribly convenient. And again, something that has been like focus grouped to be non-threatening, right?

Speaker 2 This idea, like, oh, we couldn't possibly kill not just you, but any animal on earth. Like, it is not in our nature.

Speaker 2 And so, all of this talk about the biological imperative, on the one hand, like, that's true of a virus, right?

Speaker 2 Like, viruses operate in a way that is like they are trying to spread they are trying to protect themselves like they are they are programmed to do very specific things and kind of can't go outside that programming yeah but it feels like the thing you would say like it gives you a lot of cover to say we have a biological imperative to not harm anybody and then have the cover to do basically whatever the hell you want on on that level that's true and then also on an like a in the writer's room level you have to solve the problem of like why don't they just kill the people who are not part of the hive mind and it's like, we can't kill.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 1 I did think it was interesting. Our listener, Liz, was like, if human, if the implications of never being able to kill or cause harm to any living thing,

Speaker 1 because they mentioned in last week's episode that there several people were mauled when the lions were let out of the zoo, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 If humans can't protect themselves against lions with their lives on the line, what else does that extend to? Do viruses or bacteria count?

Speaker 1 And if all these other living things start killing people, is there a chance that this hive mind could be the end of humanity entirely, whether that is intended or not?

Speaker 1 A bit depressing depressing to think that violence or animosity could be inherent to humanity and necessary to survival.

Speaker 2 I think it probably would be the end of humanity in certain ways, like including just very literally.

Speaker 2 And the fact that the hive mind supposedly has this code, but also does not really seem to give a shit about hundreds of million of millions of people dying in the takeover.

Speaker 2 The contradiction of that is very juicy and very interesting. And like, I don't know how you could square it in a way that makes this all feel above board.

Speaker 2 Like, there's just no way we're getting the Odyssey because Matt Damon was on a horse and spazzed out and like went straight into the ocean. So it's like all of these things cannot be true.

Speaker 2 Like the art will not continue. Humanity will not continue in its current form.

Speaker 2 And these people or the hive mind or whatever they are don't seem like terribly, like they want to make people happy, supposedly. But I just don't buy the biological imperative line.

Speaker 1 Can I say how much I want to start getting these stories about like Matt Damon fell off a horse into the ocean or whatever?

Speaker 1 Because not you, Matt Damon, but like in that leftovers, like specific pop culture mark lynn baker sort of way like

Speaker 1 who died in in the the pluribusing of the world we need to we want to know give us names give us specific names um okay we already mentioned the sort of violation of of zoja talking about the ice hotel uh really hurt my feelings when she did that i i

Speaker 1 really tough and then the grenade uh blows up the house so i guess now we know why they wanted to build their own cul-de-sac because they were gonna blow up a house uh inside of of the cul-de-sac.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to say about that?

Speaker 2 Well, that seems to be like where the money is this episode, Joe, is not just building, but demolishing your own house in your own cul-de-sac.

Speaker 2 Like, that's a flex if you have the budget to do that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 And what I love that they were talking about on the official pod is that they knew that when they were building the house, so they built the house just so that we could blow it up with sort of like minimal long-term repercussions or whatever.

Speaker 2 To be fair, that's the way many houses and apartments are built these days without any thought for what might happen beyond six months from now.

Speaker 1 Fair, fair, fair.

Speaker 1 When I said my like, where's the money in this episode? Where's the $15 million? For me, it's emptying out an entire sprouts and then restocking it.

Speaker 1 Seems expensive. They had, I guess they had access to that sprouts for three days only.

Speaker 1 They had to film all the exteriors in a different parking lot because they didn't have enough access to sprouts to get everything done.

Speaker 1 And they wanted like that sort of the way that the director described it was like a Busby, Berkeley-esque sort of coordinated ballet. They wanted to do that.

Speaker 1 They wanted, in Vince Gilligan style, to show us them restocking everything.

Speaker 1 And they simply did not have enough time in the sprouts to do that. So they sort of did it in the parking lot instead with all the crates and hand trucks.
But I thought that was really interesting.

Speaker 2 I mean, you do get sufficient like label turning and positioning of various produce. Again, it's like the OCD in me is singing watching this stuff.

Speaker 1 Olive's a real star of this episode, honestly.

Speaker 1 Why didn't you make...

Speaker 2 Look, first of all, when zoja is kind of like reading carol uh the what's in her fridge ingredients in her fridge um

Speaker 1 red olives i like i assume that's like a cal i mean i guess a calamata could be a red olive i guess a like a cherignola is is a red olive but like who has a jar of cherignola olives just like sitting in their fridge um who even knows what a cherignola olive is they're not all red but they can be red only ramahoni love that uh would you call like a pimento a red olive because it has like red in it.

Speaker 2 That's a filling.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait, you're talking about separate pimentos, not pimento in the olive.

Speaker 1 Well, I am talking about a pimento in the olive.

Speaker 2 That's a green olive, usually.

Speaker 1 I agree. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to answer your prompt.
I don't know. I will say this.
I do have olives in my fridge at all times. Same.

Speaker 1 But that's for martini purposes and no other real reason.

Speaker 2 See, I love an olive.

Speaker 2 And frankly, I thought dropping off the cloche with the breakfast is a little disrespectful because we see the fridge and she has what looks to be like a pretty decent like wheel of brie cheese in there or something like that.

Speaker 2 It's like, you got the cheese and the olives. There's probably some bread in here.
Like you are halfway to a spread, you know, if not further. You're telling me she couldn't make a meal of this?

Speaker 2 I simply don't believe it.

Speaker 1 Charquirie, but no meat because we're not, we're not curing meat anymore in this

Speaker 1 new world. Okay, Carol's in the hospital.
We get extreme close-up on

Speaker 1 Carol. Oh, sorry, Carol's in the hospital waiting for Zoja, right?

Speaker 1 I really love the moment when Zoja comes out, she collapses. She's like, don't worry, help's on the way.
And that's when the sirens turn on.

Speaker 1 And I really like that as an idea of like the sirens are just for Carol, right? They're so Carol knows that help is on the way, right? Helen already like called them via the Ethernet.

Speaker 1 So it's, it's, and it's not to get like traffic out of the way because all the hive mind knows the ambulance is coming. So

Speaker 1 the sirens are for Carol. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Both in the sirens coming up for Carol and also Zoja rolling up to the house as thank you for being a a friend plays. Again, it's just like the little things with this show.

Speaker 1 Thank you for being a friend. Blaring into the empty cul-de-sac is pretty phenomenal.
Turns out like you should not mix hand grenades with Xanax and vodka. That's just like not the cocktail you want.

Speaker 1 It will land you in the hospital. We get an extreme close-up on Carol's hands as she's waiting

Speaker 1 to hear news of Zoja. And then here comes our DHL guy played by Robert Bailey Jr.
Just an all-timer. Phenomenal.
Like episode stealer.

Speaker 1 Like they got to bring this guy back please have to please bring him back uh for free we'll order whatever we need to order for the dhl guy to show up but bring him back please um i i i wanted a moment to talk about people still being in their various uniforms like the tgi fridays person the pilots the dhl guy this idea that like a uniform marks you as part of a collective right like um

Speaker 1 but also in this case it makes you stick out a bit from the you know like we could say the dhl guy the tgi fridays girl like et et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 Why do we think a DHL guy still dresses in uniform? And are we headed towards a future hive mind reality where like everyone is just wearing like matching hemp jumpsuits or something like that?

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? Like, why is fashion? What is style? What is uniform? What is what is any of this stuff still doing here? How much of is it for Carol's benefit?

Speaker 1 And how much of it is something else entirely, you know?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think a lot of it is for Carol's benefit. Right.
Right.

Speaker 2 It's the idea of having your pilot not be the woman from TGI Fridays and instead be wearing a pilot's uniform, even though they're technically the same thing at this point.

Speaker 2 Like, who really cares, but it feels a way. Yeah.
And I wonder at this point, it is just more about the projection of normalcy, right?

Speaker 2 Of like you're used to seeing people working out in the world, and it would be kind of weird if everyone was just in plain clothes, right?

Speaker 2 If no one was in uniform, that would be upsetting and in like a visually different way.

Speaker 2 That said, it's a little odd too that, like, for example, the DHL guy gets conscripted into being the one to come talk to Carol, who's like, he's kind of Zoja and kind of not, when everything about Zoja is so tailored, right?

Speaker 2 Like, her appearance, what she wears, how she is styled, all very specific. They could have put this guy in a tuxedo.
They could have put him in anything. They could have made him a police officer.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 put him in scrubs.

Speaker 1 They could have made him anything. Make him look like Noah Wiley from the pit.
Why not? Why not get Noah Wiley to come deliver this? This is something, right? Dr. Robinson.

Speaker 1 What happened to Noah Wiley? This is what we want to know. Noah Wiley, okay in the Pluribus universe.

Speaker 1 I need him to be okay.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 We should say on that front, like one of the one of the things that was flagged to us over email, too, is like the plane that Carol is on is a Wayfarer Airlines plane, which is an airline that is referenced very specifically in a plane crash in Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 I guess spoiler alert for Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 So it's not in the Breaking Bad universe.

Speaker 1 This is my detail, my like super detail that I want to mention, which is not Wayfarer Airlines, though that's on my list. But Fiona Com, which is the bill for Helen that she sort of lingers on.

Speaker 1 This is a, this is a better call saw. We saw like Fiona Com billboards and vans and like ads and stuff like that.
So we are, yes, this is the same. There is a Kim Wexler out there somewhere.

Speaker 1 She has a perky ponytail. And I don't know what she would make of Carol with her greasy, unwashed hair, Bob, but this is a, this is the same universe.
And I, I love that, honestly. Incredible.

Speaker 1 Did you have a detail you want to shout out specifically?

Speaker 2 For me, it's a very simple one, which is when the hive mind calls Carol on the caller ID and and says, It's us, Carol.

Speaker 2 Every bit of text and Chiron in this show is so good and so funny.

Speaker 2 And like, again, having all of this stuff is what makes this show feel so watchable because, yeah, they're throwing all of these heavy, huge questions about it, like to us, and all of these very perilous circumstances.

Speaker 2 And like, what Carol is dealing with is as big and as serious as it gets. And that this show can still just be so funny all the time.

Speaker 2 Really a miracle, and really what a Vince Gilligan show does so well.

Speaker 1 Anything inspired by this idea that, like, Carol asks about an Adam bomb, and our favorite character, DHL guy, is like,

Speaker 1 would you like an Adam bomb? Like, that they would give her an Adam Bomb. To go back to the grenade moment, um,

Speaker 1 on the official pod, they were like, they would have let her blow herself up if she insisted on it. Like, when Zoja takes the grenade, she says, like, basically, may we? Can we take care of it?

Speaker 1 If we may. If we may, right?

Speaker 1 So, like, like which is funny and it's sort of like and her delivery is so good but also it's a consent like Carol has to like give her the grenade otherwise they would have let Carol not only Carol blow herself up but Carol blow Zoja up like they would have let that happen so in terms of like what will the hive mind do or not do an atom bomb is is fascinating you know as a as a player on the board here.

Speaker 2 So well the nuclear football is back in play Joe. You know, it's Carol is like right there for the taking.
I would say I had two takeaways from the sequence.

Speaker 2 First, like, one of the clearest signs of somebody in captivity is the way that they test the limits on what they're allowed to do. And so, the idea of asking, could I have another grenade?

Speaker 2 Could I have a bazooka? Could I have a nuke if I asked for it? Like, this is Carol.

Speaker 2 You can obviously see the gears turning for her as far as what she is allowed to ask for and what that might allow her to do in liberating humanity or whatever it is that she hopes to accomplish.

Speaker 2 I also thought it was really interesting the way that even though DHO guy is impeccably acted and super helpful like on face,

Speaker 2 the way that he is talking to her is really patronizing too, right? It's also like, it is very like,

Speaker 2 we would need to have a talk. We'll explain to you all the pros and cons of you having a nuke.

Speaker 2 And if you still really, really want it, we'll go get you that nuke.

Speaker 2 It very much is like, you know, your daughter wants an ice cream cone.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, Carolina said this on the official pod that like

Speaker 1 as a mother, she channeled some of her, like, dealing patiently with a cantankerous child sort of energy that she's

Speaker 1 harnessed over the years in her scenes with Carol, with Ray as Carol. And so, like, that idea of thinking of Carol as a child, an unruly child,

Speaker 1 ties into sort of that idea also of Zoja saying to Carol, if you saw a drowning person, right? They think humanity as it exists is drowning and we want to save you. You're a child.

Speaker 1 You don't know what you're doing. You throw a tantrum and we restock a sprouts for you.
Like you don't quite know what you're doing.

Speaker 1 And there are ways in which that's aggravating because it is so patronizing. And there are ways in which it's like, oh, but is it a little like, are they a more evolved?

Speaker 1 Are they? Yes. That's the ongoing question of the show.

Speaker 1 If they're not suffering, if they're not like falling in love, if they're not having sex for pleasure, if they're not doing this, that, or the other thing, like, are they actually more evolved or do they just think they are?

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 2 It's a great question. I thought that whole conversation about Carol drowning and the idea of throwing the life preserver, because on a species level, Zoja is correct.

Speaker 2 Like we as a species are drowning. Like we, we do not have a handle on what we're doing, on how to navigate being people in the world and cultures in the world.

Speaker 2 And on a Carol level, I also don't think she's wrong. Carol is clearly drowning in a bunch of different ways, in part, to be fair, because the takeover killed her wife.

Speaker 2 So, you know, like let's take a little accountability, Zoja and the hive mind for that.

Speaker 2 The thing that gets stuck for Carol and I think would get stuck for almost any of us is like what gives you the alien virus the right not just are you more evolved because even if you are more evolved

Speaker 2 you like what makes you the arbiter of all of human existence and there are ways in which that's like

Speaker 1 true of all humanity. There are ways in which that is true of like Americans that is way that is true of white Americans that is true.
Oh yeah. Blonde white lady Americans like all this sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 So like that's a key demographic blonde white lady Americans.

Speaker 1 Listen, we we we matter. Do we? I don't know.
It's a good question to ask. Okay.
So, um,

Speaker 1 I do not think we have time to get all to all the uh comps that our listeners emailed in, but there's like a bunch of them. We'll talk about them.
There's Twilight Zone, there's Star Trek.

Speaker 1 There's an Octavia Butler story. Like, there's all this stuff that people wrote in about that I really want to get into next week.
Lickingthedonut at gmail.com. That's D-O-N-U-T at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 Please keep them coming. Your emails are amazing.
Just because we couldn't get to them all didn't mean we loved, like, didn't love reading them all. They were fantastic.

Speaker 1 Rob, anything anything else you want to mention before we go?

Speaker 2 I would love to know, just on a personal level, if people want to email us at lickingthedonut at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 If you were in a post-apocalyptic alien virus-led world and you needed your personal cozy time with the Golden Girls,

Speaker 2 what is the appeal of the loose knit blanket? Like, I just have never understood it, a big holy blanket, and I would like to get it other than it's clearly feeling cozy-coated.

Speaker 1 I feel like Afghans are usually like inherited, like passed down, but I couldn't be wrong. I don't know.

Speaker 2 I feel like they're pottery barned.

Speaker 1 Oh, unpleasant to contemplate. Licking thedonit at gmail.com if you have some sort of uh loose woven Afghan thoughts.
Um, also,

Speaker 1 what would be under your cloch outside your front door? I would like to know. Lickingthedona at gmail.com.
We'll see you next week. Thanks so much to Donnie Beech and thanks to Justin Sales.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Rob Mahoney, and thanks to Pluribus. What a great show.
And we'll see you soon. Bye.

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