Vince Gilligan’s ‘Pluribus’: Episodes 1-2 Breakdown

Speaker 1 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.
I'm Rob Mahoney. And it is Pleuribus Friday,

Speaker 1 the first of many

Speaker 1 Pluribus Fridays we will be sharing together. Rob and I are here to cover the Apple TV Plus show, Pleuribus, from start

Speaker 1 to bitter end.

Speaker 2 It can only be bitter, I imagine.

Speaker 1 Doesn't think that's sweet.

Speaker 1 Oh, I've seen this movie. You've seen this movie.
We've all seen this movie.

Speaker 1 We are today going to talk about specifically episodes one and two because they dropped as a double premiere last night, Thursday night.

Speaker 1 So if you have not seen episode one, We is Us, written and directed by Vince Gilligan.

Speaker 2 Or as I prefer, We As Y'all.

Speaker 1 We is Y'all, as we said before we started recording and in Rob's local dialect. And then episode episode two, Pirate Lady, written and directed by a Vince Gilligan.

Speaker 1 So we will be talking about those two episodes. So spoilers for those episodes, but go watch the show.
We should say,

Speaker 1 you know, before we start everything,

Speaker 1 this premiere, I don't know if it was correlation or causality. Yeah.
But when this premiere dropped last night, Apple TV crashed for like hundreds and thousands of users.

Speaker 1 Now, what I like to to believe is because everyone was eagerly tuning in to this Vince Gilligan show, I would like to believe that, but Rob, any thoughts about that?

Speaker 2 I mean, you can't pay for press that coincidental. Yeah, to the point that, you know, like my I'm starting to wonder, you know, is this choreographed? Is this plant?

Speaker 2 Is this show that is about the mass manipulation and choreography around the world?

Speaker 2 Like, it would not surprise me if Apple TV Plus all of a sudden had all of its ducks in a row to shut down at just the perfect time.

Speaker 2 So, either congratulations or congratulations, whichever way it it went.

Speaker 1 The last time I remember this happening, I mean, I know it happened with Thrones a couple times, and I remember it happened with the True Detective Season 1 finale for the old HBO Go days.

Speaker 2 Well, Thrones was just a rendering issue, right? Like they just couldn't get the blacks black enough on screen. And so, you know, we all suffered together.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we really did. We really did.

Speaker 1 Anyway, I would love for a

Speaker 1 monoculture shaking, groundbreaking premiere to have crashed Apple TV. I don't know if that's the case, but Pluribus is here.
We've talked about it a little bit in our anticipation of it.

Speaker 1 It is from Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

Speaker 1 It is a hugely expensive show,

Speaker 1 surprise, surprise, from Apple TV.

Speaker 1 And we're going to talk about sort of some where we see those dollars because it's not in the usual place you see on an Apple TV Plus show, which is in the cast, right?

Speaker 2 We don't have well, Jennifer Anderson could show up in episode three. We don't know.

Speaker 1 I can't wait to see her eerie smile.

Speaker 1 Like, so Ray C. Horn is the star of the show,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 that's it. I mean, you know,

Speaker 1 we get Miriam Shore as her sort of scene partner for half of season one, episode one,

Speaker 1 and then Carolina Wydra shows up as Zoja, who seems like she's the co-lead of the show, maybe going forward.

Speaker 1 But there are no huge movie stars in this, which is something we've kind of come to expect from an Apple TV Plus show.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this is, this is the sort of like hand-wringing so many people have done at the top of their Pluribus like reviews or articles or whatever is like, are people going to care about a non-IP show that doesn't have a star in it in 2025?

Speaker 1 And that the and the sort of like the biggest hook they have is from the creator of Breaking Bad, Better Call Salt, Not Too Shabby.

Speaker 1 What do you think, Rob?

Speaker 2 I think it has about as good of a shot as a show with those parameters has.

Speaker 2 And like, you know, you were talking about how it would be great if we had this sort of monocultural moment around a show again. Like, this feels special.

Speaker 2 This feels like something that, yeah, there's familiar beats. There's obviously familiar filmmaking, but the subject matter, the pacing, like it feels grabby in a way that is really exciting.

Speaker 2 And once it grabs hold of you, it just begs you to want to ask questions, to like have a deeper understanding of what's happening, to look inward as far as it's a classic, like, what would you do in this situation kind of show that I could see it like really having a moment and getting some momentum but it is an uphill battle when you don't have that kind of star power it is an uphill battle when you know when you are putting the money on screen in impressive ways it's still not like action set pieces right like this this is not not only do you not have idris elba you don't even have the hijack like what is one to do uh but air force one is here rough i guess we did hijack you know what you're right um

Speaker 1 that's that's a great point leads me in sort of my first talking point which is you put up this question about like the questions we want to have answered but this is and isn't a theory show.

Speaker 1 Like in the way that like what is happening question mark, what is the nature of this epidemic or whatever you want to call it question mark, there are so many answers that come at the end of episode one and in episode two.

Speaker 1 Whether or not we want to believe what we're being told is a question we can ask. But were you surprised by how many answers we got in just these first two episodes?

Speaker 2 You know what? I'm actually not. And some of that is because it is a Vince Gilligan show where the pacing and like these, his shows do just kind of move.
Like they are plot machines.

Speaker 1 You know what they don't because he takes his time with these sequences in a way where I love them, but then I get anxious.

Speaker 1 Like, are people going to want to watch this lady go from Morocco to Albuquerque, not even knowing why with like

Speaker 1 for 12 minutes with no score behind it? Like, is that something people are excited about? I think it's really cool, but I have questions about that.

Speaker 2 It is a completely fair question. But I do think in his shows, generally speaking, there's a lot of like, okay, that happened.
So what's next? Like, the big thing is out of the way.

Speaker 2 Like, sometimes very quickly, yes. Sometimes it's like you wait season upon season until you have an epiphany on the toilet.
Like, yeah, that is a thing that can happen in these shows.

Speaker 2 But ultimately, like, his projects are very interested in like the very sometimes grounded and real repercussions of the things that happened.

Speaker 2 And it's like how you pick up the pieces, how you reckon with everything that's, that's transpiring. And so, in order to do all the reckoning, there's got to be a lot of transpiring.

Speaker 2 And so I didn't think this was going to be a show where everything would be teased out until the end.

Speaker 2 That said, we're just kind of getting the first turn and there could be, I don't know, other viruses or alien species.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, there's so many possibilities as to where a story like this could go that it's okay to reveal some stuff right out of the gate. And

Speaker 2 like. It really only kind of adds to the baiting of the hook in a lot of senses.

Speaker 1 Rob,

Speaker 1 I don't know if you know this, but they told us we are not aliens. So,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 2 but they're an RNA programmed strand sent from space. Right.

Speaker 1 Alien enhanced.

Speaker 2 Is an alien virus an alien?

Speaker 1 This is a great existential question that we should ask ourselves. What makes a human a human? Like, I actually genuinely think that's the question that the show wants us to ask, right?

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Speaker 1 Okay, so to get back to the sort of Gilligan core idea, what makes a Vince Gilligan show? Because this is what Apple is banking on.

Speaker 1 Apple is banking on the fact that we will be excited about a Vince Gilligan show from the creators of Breaking Bad and Better Call Sol,

Speaker 1 that we will be thirsty for something that feels more Severance-esque, you know, except again, unlike Severance

Speaker 1 or some other mystery box shows, this is not trying to hide the ball from us in a meaningful way unless it is and we're being duped.

Speaker 1 And I think that's interesting. I saw a lot of comps to Severance from people's reactions to the first few episodes.

Speaker 1 The Last of Us, of course, got called out, especially like when we're watching Racy Horn drive in a truck through like murder of mayhem in the first episode in order to try and fail to save the person who's most important to her.

Speaker 1 That's very season one episode one of The Last of Us. The Leftovers.
Definitely.

Speaker 1 You know, I saw Gilligan Goes Linda Off is like sort of a

Speaker 1 thing I saw. So, so what makes this a Gilligan, a Vince Gilligan show? And what makes this not a Vince Gilligan show, in your view?

Speaker 2 Before we even get to that, John, I'm curious with all that, all those shows kind of in the sauce here.

Speaker 2 I was getting like some last man on earth. Did you get any of that? The like Will Forte series?

Speaker 1 Wow, I have not thought about that in a very, very long time. But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I hadn't either. And then all of a sudden, it's like...

Speaker 2 like over-the-top doofus flies it on air force one and it's like oh yeah like there is just something about the opportunity that a world like this provides that's tapping into all of these different properties And so it's, it's, it is post-apocalyptic and it is existential.

Speaker 2 And it's also like having its fun with some of these ideas too.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I mean, that, so a couple of things I want to say about that.

Speaker 1 First of all, on the official pod, which I always recommend an official pod around a Vince Gilligan show, they've been doing it like before podcasts were a thing on Breaking Bad, and I've listened to every single one of them.

Speaker 1 And they have like all of the behind the scenes people on it. And like, not that I love to advertise for other podcasts on our podcasts.
You should listen to us too. But

Speaker 1 the Gilligan verse official podcasts are always extremely good.

Speaker 1 And on the episode about episode one, he talked about his inspiration for this, which was years and years ago. They were working on Butterculf Sal, and he was taking a walk.
He was like,

Speaker 1 What if

Speaker 1 you were the last person on earth, and suddenly everyone around you was really solicitous to your needs? And he's like, And I started thinking about it.

Speaker 1 And his original concept, the main character was a male. And he was like, Then it got really porny really quickly.
Yes, is what he said. So I think that that's what Samba's character

Speaker 1 is supposed to represent in episode two.

Speaker 1 And so he's like, okay, well, what if it's a woman? And then he was thinking about I Dream of Genie and Bewitched and sort of like what makes those stories work.

Speaker 1 And it's someone who's resistant to there's someone here, be it your wife who's a witch or a genie that you're your girlfriend who is like, I will do anything you want.

Speaker 1 And you're like, I don't want that. That's where there's like good dramatic tension.
So those are some of the bones that are here.

Speaker 1 And then also, before he did Breaking Bad, a Better Call Sol, of course, Vince Gilligan worked on x-files and he cited darren morgan who's my favorite x-files writer as um an inspiration here for that comedy that you're talking about darren morgan wrote the episodes humbug war the copperphages jose chungs from outer space claid bruckman's final repose a couple different like bangers classics classics that are weird and and most even by x-files standards very weird and most specifically very funny and so that is like a tone that he's reaching for in this and i think when he said darren Morgan, I was like, yeah, that's, that's a lot of what we're dealing with here, which is really exciting to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think like the Vince Gilligan formula does include all of those kind of fundamental things. And you could even see it in like supposedly more serious fare.

Speaker 2 Like the humor can't help but creep out. The weirdness can't help but infiltrate a lot of the characters and beats and things like that.

Speaker 2 And his shows are also great premise shows, like especially Breaking Bad very famously, like the Mr. Chips to Scarface model.
Right. And then how do you get there?

Speaker 2 And like, this is a different inversion of that, where it's like, we, we don't know where we're going.

Speaker 2 And so we don't have the reverse engineering of trying to guess ahead of the plot to your point about how this isn't like the most theory-friendly show.

Speaker 2 But I think it will be theory-friendly in the open-endedness of it.

Speaker 2 And that's kind of what feels like a new frontier for Gilligan is like, we don't have, you know, characters we're familiar with, like Saw Goodman, and kind of know where he ends up more or less.

Speaker 2 And we don't have the scarface endpoint kind of plotted out for us in interviews. This could be anything.
It could be about anything. It could take us anywhere in the world.

Speaker 2 Like the possibilities from a filmmaking perspective, I think are kind of dazzling. And that

Speaker 2 for an audience member, I think opens up a lot too.

Speaker 1 I think that I love I love that point. And I think something that I

Speaker 1 something that felt so Gilligan to me in watching this was, again, those slow patient, he's so interested in procedure and process.

Speaker 2 This appeals to me, Joe, I have to say. Just like the OCD in me watching everything slide into place.

Speaker 2 I want to come back to it, but it's very appealing.

Speaker 1 The cook montages in Breaking Bad, of course, were sort of like the most famous example of this, but he loves a sort of establishing montage. This is something he built up to.

Speaker 1 You know, you and I just recently watched the Breaking Bad pilot.

Speaker 1 It's not really there, but eventually he will get to this point where it's like, you know, you're watching a symphony of a sort of like quotidian, like a car wash or something. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It's just something like, let's take this ordinary thing and show you sort of the way in which the pieces of it are rhythmically, balletically sort of working around each other um and give you some like visual eye candy to go with it and it's just sort of mesmerizing these these and very patient yes and um i was really excited to see a lot of that uh especially in episode two but also in episode one when we see the like the scientists in their sort of candy colored uh you know protective suits sort of like working with the peachy dishes in in concert with each other and stuff like that like that's so very Gilligan.

Speaker 1 Completely.

Speaker 2 And, you know,

Speaker 1 in

Speaker 2 conversation with those other pilots we watch, not just Breaking Bad, but I think this also has some in common with the lost pilot as well, in that very like throw these people into the heat of something that they have no means of understanding.

Speaker 2 And it is first the initial rush, right? Of like, how do we get out of the situation? How do I get my friend who's in peril to the hospital?

Speaker 2 Like, how do we put out the fires that are engulfing Albuquerque into

Speaker 2 okay, like you get past the first fire? And then it's like, what is, what is life like now? Like, what do we do on the next day?

Speaker 2 and that's that's such a great formula for a double pilot and I think a situation that completely merits it like this pairing of episodes I think is such a great way to kind of catapult us into the season um

Speaker 1 I love that you invoked lost, not just because personally, it thrills me to have you have a working understanding of lost,

Speaker 1 Rob Mahoney, who's watched all of Lost now.

Speaker 2 It really was a, you know, a toilet style revelation for me, finishing lost and then replaying in my head all of the conversations and podcasts I have had with you in which you have attempted to compare things to lost while I stare at you blankly, nodding along, pretending that I understand what you're talking about, or at least, you know, pretending to continue the conversation.

Speaker 2 And now it's all just clicking into place. I feel like my whole life has been recontextualized, Joe.

Speaker 1 Oh, a real Joanna listens to Rob talk about the NBA moment for you anytime I talked about lost.

Speaker 1 But on the lost front,

Speaker 1 let's talk about a little bit of terminology. On the official pod, they said this is what they are calling the us

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the 12 people who are not the us.

Speaker 1 And they're calling the us the others, which is a classic lost terminology. You didn't like that.
What do you want to go with?

Speaker 2 I don't have a better solution. Like, this is the problem at this point: we don't know enough about who they are or what their aims are to give them, like, a really evocative term.

Speaker 2 And they don't seem too interested in PR themselves, hence, the joining. You know, it's like they, they're just going to kind of roll with the low-hanging fruit with this stuff.

Speaker 1 That's the best they came up with, the joining.

Speaker 1 Maybe the joined is like, you know, if that's a little better.

Speaker 1 The others, the joined, if you have a suggestion, press ETV at spotify.com or Rob and I will have an episode, a show-specific email for you before this episode is over.

Speaker 2 I do have one proposal for you, Joe, regarding the name of this virus. You know, again, we don't know a lot about it or what its aims are or exactly.

Speaker 2 I mean, it clearly can affect humans and also rats at the very least. Maybe other animals animals we'll see over time.
Babies.

Speaker 2 Communicated very critically by saliva. You know, you can lick a donut or, as we see over and over, just people making out left and right.
I propose to you the smooch virus.

Speaker 2 What do you, how do you feel about the smooch virus?

Speaker 1 I don't hate it. You know, I don't.

Speaker 1 But like, do you think Mono will get upset because isn't it like the kissing disease? Isn't Mono like

Speaker 1 that's mono?

Speaker 2 Mono's going to be suing Apple immediately. Like, this is critical.

Speaker 1 This is all Mono has. All Mono has been kissing to see.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 All right. So they're calling the us, the others.
And then Carol and the rest. And this is the others I can roll with.
This is the one where I'm having some issues with, but

Speaker 1 they're calling the 12 the old school.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 Ms. Gilligan is simply not.
Vince Gilligan, we think you're an actual genius, but Rob and I don't like this. So

Speaker 1 the what do you want to call them? Do you have any thoughts?

Speaker 2 I mean, the leftovers right there.

Speaker 2 The immune, like, again, something.

Speaker 1 Something. Okay.

Speaker 2 This is one that I think we very crucially do need to crowdsource, Joe.

Speaker 2 As you said, please email us at prestige TV at spotify.com or our show-specific email to be announced at any point during this podcast. Who's to say?

Speaker 2 But we need help.

Speaker 1 Do you want to do it right now?

Speaker 2 Let's do it. Let's battle it out.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Rob and I have dueling ideas. I really only have one idea.
Rob has several. Rob, what do you have?

Speaker 2 So, my initial idea was your life is your own at gmail.com. That's obviously taken by some Instagram guru.
Like, that was never going to be in the cards.

Speaker 2 I did consider proud, haughty, Raban, but the spelling on Raban is like maybe could trick some people. I don't want anyone's emails to get lost out in the ether.
I came down to two. Okay.

Speaker 2 One, psychicglue at gmail.com, which I like, but I much prefer lightningbolts unicorn at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 Very good. The hood decoration on the truck that Carol would drive that truck for the record.
Fantastic stuff.

Speaker 1 Here's my one and only, and I'll tell you this, I had to workshop it because versions of it were taken, but I settled on. Okay.

Speaker 1 I wanted to do donut liquor at gmail.com, but that is how did I miss donut liquor? Disturbingly taken right there.

Speaker 1 So I got licking the donut at gmail.com.

Speaker 2 That's very good.

Speaker 1 Do you like that?

Speaker 2 I think we have to go with lickingthedonut at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 It's licking the donut at gmail. Thank you, Rob, for letting me have this.

Speaker 2 I am slightly terrified to see what emails we receive at lickingthedonut at gmail.com, but that's part of the fun.

Speaker 1 That is the risk you take.

Speaker 1 I want to hear, however, from donutlicker at gmail.com. Who are you? There were several iterations that I had to go through.
So like this theme of licking donuts has been

Speaker 1 taken by several Gmail users. I'm curious if they're related to Pluribus or this is a long-established, I love to lick donuts sort of things.

Speaker 2 Anyway, if you're out there and squatting on it, I will pay $5 for donut liquor at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 I'll throw it another five. That's $10.

Speaker 1 That's a match right there.

Speaker 2 Let's get a GoFundMe going for donut liquor at gmail.com.

Speaker 1 But in the meantime, licking the donut at gmail.com is not licking donuts. Licking the singular donut at gmail.com is diabolical joke.
Phrasingly, what we have here for this particular podcast.

Speaker 1 Okay, to go back to

Speaker 1 the others versus old school, or please send your other suggestions to us at linkthenote.gbl.com.

Speaker 1 Something they talked about on the official pod that I really was fascinated by. First of all, they hired a choreographer to work with all the background, you know, actors in all of these scenes.

Speaker 1 Welcome.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 at first, they had everyone moving exactly the same and speaking in precise unison. And they decided that the effect was too creepy, that they're not trying to go for like that creepy.

Speaker 1 We do get some like children of the corn energy from the neighbor kids and stuff like that, but for the most part, they were really trying to calibrate.

Speaker 1 And Vince Gilligan said things on the pod, like, we still don't know what makes the others tick or other things like that, which is classic Gilligan. Like, I haven't figured it out yet.

Speaker 1 I'll figure it out. But calibrating the level of the smile.
That's something they talked about a lot. Like, they were like, How do we convey pleasant and not menacing? And

Speaker 1 so not overtly menacing, but still

Speaker 1 disquieting to us at home. Do you know what I mean? Like that, that sort of thing is something that they really, really worked to

Speaker 1 get exactly right. And especially with Carolina, who plays Zoja, like that is something that, you know, and I think she's fantastic.
She has lived on episode two, really, really good.

Speaker 1 But she has to really nail it because she's the one who's going to be here and has to be like

Speaker 1 aggravating to Carol, but also someone that Carol will run and stand in front of Air Force One for by the end of episode two. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I can tell that they got that calibration right just based on my like physical response to watching these episodes.

Speaker 2 Like, well, there are those like children of the corn moments and the synergy of just like the slow walking of all of these extras in the background.

Speaker 2 And I think one of the joys of the first episode in particular is as everything is going to absolute shit, including when everyone is just kind of seizing, watching everything that is happening in the background, like all of the, you know, these singers who are frozen in place and the band members and the waitresses and the people in the hospital waiting room.

Speaker 2 It's like everyone is so perfectly mid-something and in a way that is kind of frozen in time, but obviously not and incredibly eerie. And then once they do start moving in unison, it is unsettling.

Speaker 2 And yet, like intellectually, I do go through the paces with these two episodes of being like, you know what, does the virus have a point?

Speaker 2 Like we, we, I wouldn't say we had a good run as a species, but we did have a run. Uh, I don't know that we made the best of it at all times.
Like,

Speaker 2 this is where I come down to with this show and why I'm so impressed with like where and when it is happening.

Speaker 2 Everything right now in real life is so fundamentally broken that I am very open to the virus's pitch.

Speaker 1 Okay, your team locks me. Your team like, Carol, stop ruining it for the rest of us.

Speaker 2 I'm just saying, I'm, I'm here for the presentation. I'm not buying the timeshare yet, but I'm, I'm open.

Speaker 1 Okay, so this feeds into the next thing I want to ask, which is, what is this show about? You know, and

Speaker 1 I've seen a lot of people wonder how much this show is about artificial intelligence, the way in which Zoja and the rest of them have access to all this information, can kind of scrape information and sort of feed it back to you in the sort of like most pleasant, ingratiating way that they could possibly how can I help you?

Speaker 1 How can I be of service to you? I have access to all the information in the world, and how can I do this for you? But also, did we get this wrong? Did we, in literally trying to serve your needs,

Speaker 1 mess this up somehow? Or what are the fundamental ways in which this is

Speaker 1 not the human experience?

Speaker 1 Like, I was thinking specifically in episode two, when we get the contrast of when we first see Zoja in Morocco, she's wandering out of, you know, grubby and wandering out of, you know, not the desert, but sort of the countryside, to pull a crisp-burned body out of a car.

Speaker 1 And and a guy rolls up in a in a bakery truck to with a burlap sort of body bag so there's that approach and then there's Carol finding a quilt and lovingly wrapping Helen up in a quilt that means something to both of them that is like sort of the human uh emotionally connective experience and so there's this sort of like pleasant solicitous

Speaker 1 We're here to remove the bodies. We do want to remove the bodies.
The bodies are unpleasant. We want to remove them, but we're not going to to lovingly,

Speaker 1 we're not callously tossing them around, but we're not going to lovingly take care of them the way that a human would. So completely.

Speaker 1 You know, and Vince Gilligan has talked in various interviews around the show about, not about this is a show about AI, but about how he specifically is like in a very anti-AI headspace right now, as I think are most original thinkers.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 How does that AI metaphor work for you? What do you think about that?

Speaker 2 You know, I hadn't put it in those terms for myself, but now that you're explaining it, it makes a, it makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 2 And I think one of the sort of philosophical things that I was left with after these two episodes is, is a life without friction really life? Right.

Speaker 2 You know, like if everything, like there is an appeal to the like, there's an easier way to do this proposal that Zoja comes with of like, we're just going to airdrop a like a crane into your backyard, a bolt, an excavator to your backyard.

Speaker 2 And it's good, like all that pickaxing you've been doing, like, you didn't need to do that. It could have been this easy the whole time.

Speaker 2 But without the friction, without the creative process without the labor without the love like you don't get that moment with the quilt where like and and racy horn's so great in these episodes and like her taking the beat to like smell the quilt before she uses it to wrap her friend is heartbreaking stuff and that's heartbreaking stuff from a character who it's kind of hard to be on carol's side a lot can i say really quickly her her wife i believe just you know um oh is it her wife yeah yeah yeah oh see i wasn't sure if it was like a more of a business relationship no there's like a wedding photo of of them next to the phone at one point.

Speaker 2 So I'm negligent in my duties as a freeze framer, Joe. Thank you for correcting me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But yeah, like you don't get any of that if you are just optimizing.

Speaker 2 And so like this, this fundamental tension between what is human and what is efficient, I think is kind of part of where the show starts budding heads. But I love that AI comparison.

Speaker 2 I just had never really contextualized it in that way.

Speaker 1 I really agree with you in that, like, if it's too easy, if you're not sweating and getting grubby and to dig the grave,

Speaker 1 are you really engaged in this human moment of mourning? At the same time, and this is what I like, there are no easy answers. The fact that Zoja is like, you don't have to do this by yourself

Speaker 1 when Carol is such a stubbornly independent person, you know what I mean? Like.

Speaker 1 Or maybe that's unfair to Carol because she is trying to form community with the other English-speaking of the remainder, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Not well, but you know, so, but, but this idea of like, I don't need anyone or anything, I can do this myself

Speaker 1 versus accepting help when you need help. Like, I think there is a lesson for Carol to learn there as well.
Oh, the many.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. But, um,

Speaker 1 but can you do that while holding on to what makes a human a human sort of thing?

Speaker 2 So, see, this is why for me, in terms of like the what is the show about, my brain went to this is pointed right at like the these divided times sort of rhetoric and cliché.

Speaker 2 It's like, what if we weren't divided at all? Like, what if we were completely unified in functioning as a collective species? Like, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Speaker 2 Like, what is the polar opposite of division? And is there anything even remotely human in that kind of universal agreement?

Speaker 1 I love that. I think that so

Speaker 1 that tribalism idea, the us versus them, right? We get that very clearly here. But except for, you know, the other

Speaker 1 old school people that Carol meets with are like, well, we have family members who are part of the others. So for us, it's different.
You're all alone. You had one person.
She's dead. You're a

Speaker 1 slightly unpleasant person. Carol is a slightly unpleasant person.
That's great. By design, you know? And so you had the one, you're one person.
You're one person is gone because

Speaker 1 there were adoring masses who wanted to have connections with Carol and she sort of held them at bay, right? Because she's just sort of like rolling her eyes at them.

Speaker 1 So there was like people wanting to be in community with Carol already,

Speaker 1 her readers.

Speaker 1 But she had her one person, her one person's gone. And so she's like, oh, it's an us versus them.
And then the other people are like, it's. it's the us is them.

Speaker 1 These are our family members. How sad for you that you don't have any family members here to show up with you.
Like that's that's tough. And that that goes back to the leftovers

Speaker 1 comp when you have a character like Carrie Koon's character, Nora, whose entire family disappeared in the event that that instigates the leftovers versus other people lost some people, but not everyone.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 I think that's a, that's a really interesting thing.

Speaker 2 It puts you in a totally different kind of purgatory, right?

Speaker 2 Like if you are that isolated within a world that is already so isolated, but I like I love to kind of like thread these these ideas together, Joe.

Speaker 2 Like you bring up earlier, you know, the sort of like gender swapping in the script script of this initial, or the idea of this initially being a male character.

Speaker 2 And yes, we've made Carol a woman, but like she also exercises a kind of like I dream of genie wish fulfillment professionally, like anchoring this in like a romantic author who is catering to the whims of these women who she like has a lot of contempt for.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's just such a an interesting place to start this story and then have that character have to interrogate what it means to have her own wishes fulfilled and if she even wants any of that and if she wants to be a part of any of this with any of these quote-unquote people i love that i it's interesting um

Speaker 1 i i was talking to someone who had watched the episodes before they came out and he was asking me like do you think the romantic contingent will be offended by the way in which they are sort of portrayed in this episode and i was like i don't know i i think carol carol is very clearly like i think helen is a voice of reason you're bringing pleasure and happiness to these people yes that's not a bad thing to do.

Speaker 2 That line has to come back, right? Like the like, if you can make one person happy concept, that feels like it's spiritually going to be a part of the show.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. So I just think that like,

Speaker 1 I don't, I think Carol is sort of being positioned as being in the wrong there. Though the comedy of the book signing

Speaker 1 genuinely great. The guy with his like rapier while actualing like the schooners and all that sort of stuff was really, really fun.

Speaker 2 But that's how you get to have it both ways.

Speaker 2 Like you get the comedy and then you get back to the car and it's like, oh, like this woman is terrible in her treatment of like, she's putting on this facade, but like, this is what she really thinks of them.

Speaker 2 And then you have incredible empathy for even the guy with the rapier.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 the to go back to your in these divided times point, I think that's really interesting. And I think that, like,

Speaker 1 um, yeah,

Speaker 1 what is the danger? It goes back to this idea of tribalism, which came up a lot in The Last of Us. Who is the us inside of this?

Speaker 1 And the fact that, like, when

Speaker 1 Helen collapses, Carol's entire purpose from then on out is just sort of like, how do I help Helen? Right. She's not, how do I help anyone in this bar?

Speaker 1 How do I, she's just sort of like, I need to get this one person help.

Speaker 2 And that is, not only, Joe, is she like, how do I help people in this bar? She's bowling over people in the bar. She's running over people in the waiting room with a stretcher.

Speaker 2 It's like these people basically don't exist.

Speaker 1 She does say sorry, but yeah, it's uh, yeah, I guess. But yeah, that sort of like, where do you circle the wagons? And

Speaker 1 also like,

Speaker 1 can you be an us of one? Like, you can't, like, the way that episode two ends with her running after Zoja, someone who she

Speaker 1 resents and all these other. And yes, they have

Speaker 1 handpicked the person who's most likely to appeal to her.

Speaker 2 So gross.

Speaker 1 Physically. So gross.
Like all of that.

Speaker 1 But also just this idea of like, she needs someone to talk to, not just for us viewers at home um but you know just in general like you she can navigate this alone so she might as well have this person with her and it doesn't hurt that that person looks like her physical ideal of a person but you know there we are or at least her physical idea of a space pirate there you go um

Speaker 1 also shots fired at brandon sanderson i gotta say because a ship that runs on colored sand is the premise of trust of the emerald sea and i was like oh i was like is that a brando sando direct hit um did did you sense a parallel i was very curious if this was like a thing that people would have the call out for that I don't understand when we do the book swap at the airport, Diana Gabbledon, yes, the Diana Gabbledon text.

Speaker 2 Like, is that a reference I should know or could know?

Speaker 1 As Outlander, so I mean, you know, Outlander, right?

Speaker 1 Sure, time-traveling romance.

Speaker 2 I just did, I didn't even realize what the subtext of that might be.

Speaker 1 I mean, well, what I will say is that Diana Gabbledon's Outlander series is like

Speaker 1 not the first romantic, but like

Speaker 1 also she insists insists it's shelved in fiction, not a romance. Diana Gambledon's a very interesting person, but anyway, that's like,

Speaker 1 gosh, what's the comp? Uh, what's the comp in like the sci-fi section? Like, moving Michael Crichton out of the way for your book or something like that.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, that's a very dusty reference, Michael Crichton, but there we are. Okay, so back to the COVID idea, which was something that our pal Miles

Speaker 1 wrote in his review on theringer.com, what a great website. Uh,

Speaker 1 isolated, locked in your house, nobody's around.

Speaker 1 Does any of that strike you as specifically COVID or specifically interesting to you?

Speaker 2 A little bit. I think the part that struck me as COVID is the same part that, you know, you and I wanted to talk about like, where does the money show up in this show?

Speaker 2 And for me, it is the empty space. It is like, we cleared this area the fuck out.
And we, we like.

Speaker 2 not just are like descending on a, on a set to shoot there, but it's like, it has that 28 days later kind of feel of like, where are the people?

Speaker 2 and then they're all in their houses coming out in unison in a way that is like terrifying again another thing that's kind of in the in the ether and in the air with this show is like you get a lot of like stepford wives and some of that is because it is suburban and some of it is like the killing with like kindness and compliance for like like very suburban kind of conformity that is happening with this group but ultimately for me like that's where it felt most covet coded was just like looking out on a street that you're used to seeing full of life and people and there's just nothing there because it's been meticulously scrubbed clean by all of these people who are picking up the bodies and moving the cars and putting out the fires.

Speaker 2 Like they're all perfectly good little worker bees, but the result of that is something that doesn't much resemble normal human life anymore.

Speaker 1 Where do you think they sleep? And do you think they sleep? No, they don't. They don't sleep.
They just keep working.

Speaker 2 They like

Speaker 2 dono Gleason style or just like eyes open in a closet somewhere, you know?

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Speaker 1 This is something that we're going to check in with every week.

Speaker 1 I decided and Rob agreed, which is that this show has a $15 million budget per episode, which is not as big as like thrones or something like that, but it's a lot.

Speaker 2 It's massive.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 And so the question we want to ask ourselves every week, and I think we can do both episodes here, pick your moment.

Speaker 1 Like, what is the moment where you looked at this and you said, is it, is it the empty series? This costs $15 million.

Speaker 1 That's.

Speaker 2 Maybe it was. Maybe it was trickery.
I'm sure this is like a trick of cinematography too, but even seeing like the planes simultaneously pull up to five consecutive gates.

Speaker 2 Like I'm sure that is a trick or an effect of some kind, but I'm like, here's what I don't know. This feels expensive to me.

Speaker 1 Planes was initially my answer. Uh, and then I have another answer, but listening to them talk about the podcast, here's what I know.
The C-130, which is the plane that Zoja flies from

Speaker 1 Tangier to Albuquerque, the big old cargo plane, was a plane that they

Speaker 1 flew in from Malaysia. So, that's a real plane that they got.
She, uh, Carolina, who plays Zoja, learned how to taxi the plane, not fly it, but taxi it.

Speaker 1 So, that is actually her in the plane on the like tarmac of the Albuquerque airport, like taxiing the plane. Um, so that's one thing.

Speaker 1 Um, I don't remember if they talked about the other planes all sort of landing together, but as for Air Force One,

Speaker 1 they built that.

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 so they built not a whole plane, I think. When she's standing in front of the nose, that's uh, digital effects.

Speaker 1 That was like an effect for sure, but in terms of, and this is this is what we're talking about in terms of like seeing the money on the screen. Vince Gilligan wanted

Speaker 1 they're all on the ground, they see see it sort of roll into frame. He wanted that.

Speaker 1 The production designer was talking about how usually when you do something like this, you just have to build the door and we can go from there. Vince Gilligan wanted the whole thing.

Speaker 1 So they built this enormous metal. It's a, it's like a facade.
It's like a metal facade

Speaker 1 front that has set built into it. So they can walk up those stairs onto set, but like a metal facade.
So it's like

Speaker 1 they were talking about the Albuquerque winds because it's just like sheet metal, like flat sheet metal because just one side of the plane like rolling in a view and stuff like that so but that's astounding but here's what's looks amazing here's what's even more astounding Rob this is where I think I would put the I can tell this cost $15 million

Speaker 1 they built

Speaker 1 that entire cul-de-sac

Speaker 1 from scratch wow they built houses I mean, I'm not saying those houses are full or furnished, but they built houses, they poured concrete, they bought some land and they built houses on that land so that they could film there and do whatever they wanted there.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think Vince Gilligan is still scarred from like the breaking bad house becoming this like

Speaker 1 national monument that people like throw pizzas on the street. Yeah,

Speaker 1 you know, so he's like, we wanted to do whatever we wanted to do on the street there. So we just built this entire cul-de-sac.

Speaker 1 That's, if you, if you go re-watch those episodes and look at those houses, which are like, they're not tracked housing.

Speaker 1 They're like intricate, interesting houses that they built from scratch on this street.

Speaker 2 Astonishing stuff. That's like some deadwood level production happening.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really good stuff.

Speaker 1 Anything else you want to talk about in a big picture way before we maybe go through some of the episode stuff?

Speaker 2 Maybe let's iron out just like the nuts and bolts of what exactly happened in terms of the invasion itself. Like, I want to make sure we're all on the same page, namely me.

Speaker 2 And in particular, the one jump, right? Because we get the information that like this message has been transmitted through the cosmos. They're They're trying to figure out what it is.

Speaker 2 It's clearly like this formula for an RNA strand that is then tested on the rat among other animals, which I guess like fakes its own death, goes rat playing possum to get out of the cage to then bite a person.

Speaker 1 Is that what it does? I thought it was sort of like, it's the sort of like everyone's frozen version of like the rat version of everyone's frozen.

Speaker 2 Oh, you think it was having a little, a little mini rat seizure?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Maybe. It's adorable and very sad.
See, I thought it was doing it on purpose to get out because the only way it could spread would be to get out. Oh, interesting.
And if it is that cunning, you know,

Speaker 2 I have questions about, you know, the nature of this virus and what it is trying to do, but clearly it needs to spread.

Speaker 2 It needs to, you know, bite the nearest hand and then make out with somebody and then lick a donut. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then clearly the plan is accelerated by, we learn or are told, like, quote unquote, the military has found out about the spread of some issue or this virus.

Speaker 2 One of my favorite bits of choreography are like the eight simultaneous jet stream jets flying overhead which i is this the mechanism that is

Speaker 2 that is leading everyone else who has not been licked or kissed all the people you know helen all the people in the restaurant like is that what is ultimately triggering them to uh to join the others i don't know but i had that question too like is that is that actually just indicative of

Speaker 1 people are flying the plane in in concert?

Speaker 1 Like you don't see chemtrails like that because you don't usually have planes flying in formation like that outside of when the Blue Angels come to San Francisco. But like,

Speaker 1 so is it that? Or is there something? I mean, chemtrails is just sort of

Speaker 1 feeding right into the QA QNAN folks. So perhaps, but I think it's.

Speaker 1 I don't know because, yeah, because it hits everyone at once, like everyone in that bar. But my thought about the bar was sort of like, was it in everyone's drink or something like that?

Speaker 1 But it hits them all simultaneously. So is it sort of dropped somehow from the chemtrails? And if so, like,

Speaker 1 what's the smooch version of that? Like, you know, is it like droplets? Like, what do you, how do you, how do you do that? Gotta be dropped.

Speaker 2 The droplets per smooch are obviously off the charts, but the droplets by aerodrop from chemtrail, much more complicated.

Speaker 1 Okay, licking the donut at gmail.com if you are working on infectious diseases and you know how this might work.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I really love the opening.

Speaker 1 We get this sort of like contact-esque sequence, right? With first, we've got the astronomers and

Speaker 1 I love the comedy of like, it's two guys, and then it's like a group of people. And then it's like, you know, the guys playing.

Speaker 2 All the cars and trucks piling up outside as people come to check it out.

Speaker 1 Alan McLeod, who plays like the first guy, who is a real that guy for me from You're the Worst. Oh, definitely.
And then in

Speaker 1 the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which is Emrid, I think is how you pronounce that acronym.
I buy it. I I don't know.

Speaker 1 Karen Sony, who plays like the second, the guy who, the other guy in the lab, who like then sort of waltzes down the stairs to smoosh the janitor, another like actor I always love to see.

Speaker 1 And I just really loved his like whimsical approach to

Speaker 1 assaulting and assimilating the janitor here.

Speaker 2 Well, see, that one is assaulted, but then look,

Speaker 2 We already know that just like as a species, we are vulnerable to, I mean, a species-level alien invasion, an under-the-skin type of alien invasion.

Speaker 2 My main question was the speed at which we go from assaulting one janitor to now an entire squadron of military police have been smooched and brought in to, you know, to swab and box. Like,

Speaker 2 I think our smooch defenses just leave a lot to be designed.

Speaker 1 I think that's true. Or do you think they were offered donuts? That's, you know, that's a question.

Speaker 2 You just walk around the donut. I mean, who among us, simply?

Speaker 2 I would be incredibly susceptible.

Speaker 1 Be careful.

Speaker 1 Look for glistening saliva on your donuts from now on. It's not always glazed.
Sometimes it's infectious diseases.

Speaker 1 Okay. And

Speaker 1 part of what we should talk about here in terms of like this

Speaker 1 moving through various scientific disciplines into the outbreak is we have this clock that I'm actually a little confused by because it's counting down. It feels like it counts down.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And then it counts back up. Right.
So, which is fine, right? We go to like zero hour when everyone except for the 12 are infected.

Speaker 2 The takeover moment.

Speaker 1 Right. And then, and then the after.

Speaker 1 I'm just a little surprised there isn't like a BCE, like, does, you know, like before or after, or like, it's a different color or like something like that.

Speaker 1 I was just like, I guess now we're going back up.

Speaker 2 But, um, I think the thing that confused me about that was that, as Zoja tells it, like, this wasn't the exact plan.

Speaker 2 So, it's not like, you know, the hive mind itself had the countdown clock of like, we are all working to this time to take over. It's like, oh, no, we had to jump our process by eight different steps.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Which that is kind of confusing from a countdown perspective.

Speaker 1 We've already talked about the

Speaker 1 book signing scene. I don't think there's anything else.
Anything you want to say about this sort of like, so

Speaker 1 shout out Bitter Chrysalis, by the way, as like a name of an unpublished novel, Chris.

Speaker 2 Your very serious novel that you're terrified to actually publish.

Speaker 1 When Helen says, talk about Finnegan's Wake, I tried it in grad school. It's probably great.

Speaker 1 Very good stuff.

Speaker 2 This is how I feel about most fiction, Joe. That's probably great, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 It's good for you. Prop, don't remind me of your one flaw.
Okay, so like we go through all of that and then the outbreak. So anything you want to say about this outbreak sequence?

Speaker 2 I mean, I think it's incredibly thrilling television.

Speaker 2 The moment in which Carol gets clear of the initial bar and is trying to get to the hospital, and you have the overlook moment of seeing Albuquerque in flames.

Speaker 2 Like a legit goosebump situation for me of just like that kind of zoom out, I think plays perfectly there of like we know instinctively that it's obviously not just this bar, like there's going to be wider implications, but seeing just how fast everything has gone to shit and how isolated Carol already clearly is.

Speaker 2 You know, you have that. You have all of these slow moving extras in the background.
You have the jet streams, even just like the very particular way.

Speaker 2 that the cop car has flipped over in the middle of the road, like almost on its side, pinning someone underneath.

Speaker 2 Like there's just just something so evocative about so many of the visuals in these first two episodes, specifically in this takeover before the cleanup really comes in full force.

Speaker 1 I also think it's really interesting. We get a couple moments here in the escape that sort of flipped.

Speaker 1 I think it's an ambulance. It might be a cop car.
But, anyways, it's something like where

Speaker 1 when she first hears the siren, sees the light, she goes, oh, thank God. Sort of like, I think that's the cop car.
Rescue is here. And then it's like, oh, no, that's not going to help me.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, this Dr. Nguyen's not gonna help me in fact he's gonna try to smooch me this this ain't a pit joke

Speaker 1 and uh a reference i don't get and then um

Speaker 1 and then and then oh yeah like god bless america when she turns on the tv and she thinks someone authoritative is there to help her so like all these moments of like someone will come someone someone official the the system is here to come help me and save me and the the escalating realization that none of those infrastructures are in place anymore.

Speaker 1 And in fact, they all belong to the other side. So what do you have now? Only their do no harm

Speaker 1 sort of

Speaker 1 yeah, exactly. So you know what?

Speaker 2 If you have to tell people what we're doing, we promise is the antithesis of slavery. Like, I don't know.
If you have to make that pitch, it's not great. It's tough.
It's really tough.

Speaker 2 I do want to give a special shout out, Joe, to whichever pod person over at C-SPAN is updating the Chirons for the podcast. The your life Life Is Your Own.
We Are One Cycle.

Speaker 2 I just laughed every time it changed.

Speaker 1 We Are Not Aliens was just like creme de la creme. Really, really good.

Speaker 1 And the actor playing

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 tremendous. Really good stuff.
So

Speaker 1 I want to note something else. In her escape

Speaker 1 after the hospital,

Speaker 1 we are, the camera's on her.

Speaker 1 And we're seeing her react to things, but we don't get to see what she's reacting to until it's in her rear view. We see it on the back, which I thought was really cool and unusual.

Speaker 1 And this is where sort of

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 topic I thought we might do every week is like tiny detail, you loved or something like that. I'm going to go with.
The person being helped into a car was missing part of their leg.

Speaker 1 And then someone running up with the leg

Speaker 1 helpfully afterwards to like get in the car. Like she is missing part of her leg.
And he's like, here's the leg.

Speaker 2 I have it is like pretty pretty top tier visual gag in the background um the background stuff in this show is so good and yeah that's another era in which like a lot of tv even high budget tv there's just like it there is nothing happening in the background of screens it's so static like this feels like a world that is constantly shifting in again like a very alien sort of way that is alarming and is unusually helpful and compliant in a way that I think puts a twist on that whole formula.

Speaker 2 Like we have seen these movies. We have seen these stories.

Speaker 2 I don't know that I've seen one that's quite this helpful before, that is like so insistent on, like, please let us service your every need, as you alluded to with the premise.

Speaker 2 Like, it gives this basic idea a totally different kind of life.

Speaker 1 I love that. Um,

Speaker 1 anything else you want to say about this sort of like escape to the house, or and maybe anything else in episode one? Well, here's something I want to say: a little detail we get in

Speaker 1 the pre-pan

Speaker 1 is

Speaker 1 breathalyzer on

Speaker 1 Carol's Range Rover. That is not a default thing you can get on a Range Rover.
That is

Speaker 1 ignition interlogue devices required after a DUI conviction, usually.

Speaker 1 So, just a detail we get about Carol.

Speaker 1 This is something I also want to start tracking, which is alcohol consumption. Because, like, who among us

Speaker 1 would not wake up on the floor with a drink, a dripping whiskey bottle in episode two or guzzle a lot of Shabli or whatever it it is that she is enjoying.

Speaker 1 That's another place where the budget is evident. They like actually went to Basque Country for that sequence where they're outside.

Speaker 2 I mean, why not, frankly?

Speaker 1 They're like, we saw succession do it. We're just going to globetrot if we want to.

Speaker 1 So enjoy your vacation, Vince Gilligan. You've earned it.
But

Speaker 1 Carol had a drinking problem before.

Speaker 1 this. And so that's just something to know about her character, which is interesting.

Speaker 2 I mean, she has this drinking problem. Even separate from it, she's incredibly self-absorbed.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, it is called out in this episode in a way that, honestly, I'm a little on her side about, about like, maybe you don't ask the drug dealer about the heroin pitch. Yes.

Speaker 2 That part makes sense. Yeah.
But she is not someone who has a lot of questions or interest in other people other than Helen.

Speaker 2 You know, as you, as you mentioned, Joe, like her us has been ripped from us.

Speaker 1 or ripped from us, ripped from her.

Speaker 2 And all that she's left with is everything that's bouncing around in her head, this kind of contempt she has for the rest of the world, and yet she's the one trying to save the world.

Speaker 2 It's such a great juxtaposition for that character.

Speaker 1 I love that. I think that

Speaker 1 I think that's another thing that I'm really interested in in terms of like who Carol is.

Speaker 1 Something that they said on the official pod is she's the kind of person where even if she's enjoying something, she has to make it negative, right?

Speaker 1 This is something that Helen calls her out for where it's like, oh, poor you, how horrible to be surrounded by adoring people who give you a lot of money. You know, she's like, book tours are hell.

Speaker 1 And she's like, oh, poor you.

Speaker 2 So like, you get to go on a book tour in 2025, ma'am.

Speaker 1 That's pretty good.

Speaker 1 So I think that like this, this natural tendency she has to yuck her own yum, like that pre-exists this idea of this psychology of like, and, you know, Vince Gilligan has talked about this in interviews where he's like, he is famously like one of the most genial people that has, you know, if you've ever heard him talk, if you've ever talked to him or whatever it is, he's just got this very aweshucks accent.

Speaker 1 You know, he is constantly giving credit away to other people. Like he's just like a very, very genial guy.
And in interviews, he's like, actually, I'm quite dark when I'm on my own, you know?

Speaker 1 So like this, this, uh, something that he said about this show is that he wanted, he was tired of writing bad guys. And in these divided times, Rob, he wanted to write

Speaker 1 a good guy. So he sees Carol as a good guy.
And I think we all

Speaker 1 do, maybe. Lakshmi.
Lakshmi certainly doesn't. But, um,

Speaker 1 but also a good guy that reflects his inner darkness, I guess. I don't know.
That's a good thing.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, like a true author, he's reflected by all of these aspects. Like the geno part of him is Zosha, right? Like there is a part of all of us that is like wanting to be helpful and compliant.

Speaker 2 And some of us service that part and some of us quiet that part. It just like depends on what you want to channel into.
But that to me is kind of the fundamental tension of the show.

Speaker 2 I mean, we talked about this overarching, like

Speaker 2 just a way of thinking that has now descended upon the earth and is surrounding carol and these other like survivors basically and it's like that part of thinking is not human but is also maybe in the best interest of humans and one thing i also kept coming back to with this show is like the pitch from these

Speaker 2 like infected people is not like drastically different from the pitch that we ultimately get to in a movie like arrival for example which is like we want to fundamentally alter something about the human experience in a way that in this moment you need to survive And maybe that is true for us.

Speaker 2 Maybe it's not true for us, but we're just kind of pushed and pulled through them. And Carol, God knows, is pushed and pulled through them.

Speaker 1 What do you make of, what do you make of

Speaker 1 the increasing lore info that we get in episode two

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 Carol's negative outbursts have these global death toll ramifications?

Speaker 2 I mean, real, like,

Speaker 2 you're not allowed to be angry at me.

Speaker 2 Like, again, just like a very insidious form of control that I think is echoed in, you know, creating, like, bringing this woman who, as you said, is like the closest approximation of the love interest she almost created for her own novel.

Speaker 2 There's all of these aspects in which even if the intentions of this virus are pure, which who's to say, the way in which it's going about it, it's incredibly manipulative and incredibly manipulative in a way that it just like activates that like very allergic reaction in you as a human where you feel like your free will is being slowly stripped away.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm not allowed to yell. And yet another moment where I thought Race Horn was just incredible.
It's like her first explosive outburst, Carol's at Zosha, in which she yells.

Speaker 2 And then she, as a character, has that moment of like, I don't know how these people will respond to this. Like she is waiting for like the pushback and then it's just a full-on collapse.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 In a way that.

Speaker 2 Again, like it's hard to watch these first two episodes and not feel like these characters, even as they're being told, we will give you anything you want we will take you anywhere you want we we will provide for your every need but you just feel the box being closed around them well and there's the

Speaker 1 the seduction of that frictionless life you can have anything you want but now you kind of belong to us or you're distract you know talking about it's gonna take us some time to figure out how to fix you

Speaker 1 So there's there's a clock on that, right? Where Carol

Speaker 2 wants to hear.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 1 And, you know, these other people are distracted by we could go and we can go to the Guggenheim. We can go, you know, we can go to Vegas.
We can plow as many supermodels as we want.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, all this are like distractions. Shout out to the Harrow.
Yeah, distracted by these pleasures that are provided to them by these

Speaker 1 benevolent quote-unquote force. And Carol's the only one.
Carol, and it seems like perhaps one other on the other side of the phone call, like, is

Speaker 1 committed to rejecting this,

Speaker 1 which I think is interesting. But the person that she calls, the one other English language speaker that she calls,

Speaker 1 he seems like he's like.

Speaker 1 one more degree removed because he's not even like wanting to find common cause with the other survived unless he like doesn't believe thinks he's being lied to i don't know that's interesting too that's an interesting little seed to plant you know How could you not, in light of everything else that is happening, not think you are being lied to in some way?

Speaker 2 Even if it's just by little bits of omission, right?

Speaker 2 Like they don't want to tell Carol that she killed, I say she killed, they killed millions of people through the specifics and logistics of their takeover and her not being allowed to raise her voice a single time.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 1 I wanted to ask you about that because Zoja,

Speaker 1 all of them, but like Zoja's are the most time we spend with someone who's like this. There is this almost,

Speaker 1 is there any sort of individualism left in the us? Is there something in Zoja that's different from

Speaker 1 the chick from TGI Fridays who's flying the plane? You know what I mean? Like there is. She's very good at all her jobs.

Speaker 1 There is the we, there is the, we all have access to the same expertise. We're all the best at everything that we do.

Speaker 1 We all have the muscle memory of what it means to perform open heart surgery or whatever it is.

Speaker 1 But is Zoja, I think this is a question that the show wants to ask, is Zoja capable of like

Speaker 1 forming an attachment to Carol?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, like some of her reactions, there is the we care that you're okay, Carol sort of like blanket mantra, but is there room for a character like Zoja to have like an individual

Speaker 1 affinity for Carol? You know what I mean? That's something I'm interested to watch.

Speaker 2 I mean, can you have any choice at all if you are only working in service of humanity as a whole? Like, I think the answer to that fundamentally, like on a, on a black and white level, is no.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's why, like, someone like Carol would push so strongly.

Speaker 2 And not only is it good that Carol has all of the flaws that she has as a human being, but also very fitting that she's an American who's pushing back against this idea.

Speaker 2 It's like we are the most resistant to any kind of communal responsibility. And so the fact that she would give up everything that makes her her

Speaker 2 just would never happen in a million years for a character like that. I think as far as what we've been presented so far, the answer would suggest no.

Speaker 2 But because this is a TV show, I think maybe we'll see a little daylight there. And certainly, you know, I think if you are somebody like Kumba, for example, he sees something in Zoshia.

Speaker 2 He sees many things in Zosha and that he would like to be in Zosha, but I don't know that he's entirely right about it.

Speaker 1 I love that. Anything else you want to mention specifically in episode two that happens that felt particularly striking to you?

Speaker 2 I do have something, Joe. And we've actually already gotten an email, so I'm going to raid the inbox for an email we got from Sarah flagging Chekhov's nuclear football.

Speaker 1 Oh, yes.

Speaker 2 Pops up on Air Force One. Very good.
You know, anything that could change the fate of the world, you want to have that kind of heft to it. So I'm glad it has its moment.

Speaker 2 I'm glad we're introduced to it. But as we're talking about big global solutions, I kind of am with Sarah that I think this might come back into play.

Speaker 1 Are you really excited that Kumba is the one who has control of it?

Speaker 2 I mean, he, at minimum, seems to know the plot of Air Force One in and out. That's, you know, so he's he's up on, I would say, current events, but at least on pop culture.

Speaker 1 Some films.

Speaker 1 All right, anything else you want to mention? We have a couple other sort of like categories you want to get to.

Speaker 2 I mean, just one really important thing, Joe. On hands and knees, he scrubbed, his sinewy forearms stretched taut as he washed away all trace of the day's fight.

Speaker 2 With a languid nod, Lukasia bade him to follow her to her cabin. Little did this callo deckhand know that serving it as captain's pleasure might take on this sweet meaning

Speaker 1 that's it that's all i got for you that's one for the listeners thank you rom all right um

Speaker 1 let's talk about most sort of gilligan versus so so vince gilligan directed the first two episodes he's not directing every episode this season so i don't i wanted to call it like the gilligan shot but famously if you were not watching breaking bad or bad across all let you know that like the cameras inside of those shows increasingly found unusual ways to shoot things up through the bottom of a glass table.

Speaker 1 Yes. You know, famously, et cetera, et cetera.
So what is the most sort of like Gilligan versus esque shot in these first two episodes?

Speaker 2 I'm torn between two. So I'm going to try to steal an extra one in here.
The shot of Carol returning to the bar, seeing the

Speaker 2 glass, like the glasses of beer on the waitress's tray shaking.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That perspective shot, I think, is like absolutely gorgeous stuff. It's so great in that moment as we're all trying to get our bearings together.

Speaker 1 With the audio of the singer, like just breathing into the microphone.

Speaker 2 Very good. Grunting into the microphone, everyone kind of struggling to stay upright.

Speaker 2 But it's also hard not to pick the camera attached to the crane as Carol drags a dude across the side of a building while trying to save him.

Speaker 1 Wonderful. Very good.

Speaker 2 Very good. Really wonderful.

Speaker 1 I love all that.

Speaker 1 I do think, in terms of like pandemic outbreak stuff, I think the first infected, the fact that she's like in soft focus behind her fellow scientists and she's at the sort of sink that's full of water.

Speaker 1 So you hear like the, you see her shaking you hear the splashing that's very good but that's not the one that is more guilligan estimate is episode two open not opens on after some of the zoja stuff we get tight in on the whiskey dripping slowly out of the neck of the whiskey bottle as we pan out and then we see carols on the floor uh and helen's also on the floor but like that that just like we're in so close and tight on the neck of the bottle and then we we build out from there it was just like very he loves an extreme close-up of an object object.

Speaker 1 He does. He really does.

Speaker 2 But this show lends itself to it so well.

Speaker 2 You know, obviously, like someone would create the show that serves their sensibilities, but in terms of Vince Gilligan's like directorial style and visual flair, the combination of the very precise choreography that's happening with all of these people working wordlessly in unison, like the Zoja handoff that opens episode two, you talked about it of, you know,

Speaker 2 truck to motorbike to plane to landing to getting in the shower as someone prepares your makeup.

Speaker 2 It's like all of that choreography i think is so in his bag and at the same time the fact that this is a world where at any moment something could be left teetering on an edge because somebody went into a seizure it's like that object whatever got left whatever fell over yeah he's just begging for these kinds of shots i i really agree with that i also in that in that um

Speaker 1 the shower waiting for zoja moment i found

Speaker 1 You know, there's the opening of the of the makeup palette, which is just like a beautiful.

Speaker 1 I've never seen something like that, but this like eyeshadow flower thing that's like incredible, but someone is like curling extensions.

Speaker 1 The extensions were so insidious to me of like the attention to detail of like, we need her hair to be longer in order to maximize appeal is just like well, she's got to be ready for a romantic cover.

Speaker 2 Really, you know, like if it can't flow in the wind, is it even worth it?

Speaker 1 Hot pirate lady. God, I love it.
Okay. Um,

Speaker 1 the other, I will mention the shot that that Vince Gillian himself mentioned, which is the introduction of Ray Seahorn, where we get, he calls it a slider.

Speaker 1 I confess I don't know exactly what that is and how it is different from a tracking shot, but you slide across the crowd and you get the back of her head.

Speaker 1 And he called it wanting to give her a movie star entrance. And Ray Seahorn on the podcast was like, but you don't see my face.
And he's like, yeah, that's how we meet Indiana Jones.

Speaker 1 He's like, that's a really cool thing to do. He's like, you just don't like, we wait to show them the face.
And he's like, but you know that this is the person.

Speaker 1 And then Ray Seahorn was talking about how what she loves about that shot is,

Speaker 1 if you did not watch Better Call Saul, Ray Seahorn, incredible on that show. Her character Kim Wexler was like very famous for this ponytail, the Kim Wexler ponytail.

Speaker 1 And so the fact that you like open on the back of her head and it's like.

Speaker 1 This ain't your Kim Wexler. The ponytail is gone.
It's someone else here.

Speaker 2 Ponytail days are well and truly over, Joe.

Speaker 1 It's true. All right.
Another category we're going to do is most grading. I'm changing it to most grading smile.
That's what I've decided to call it.

Speaker 1 Specifically because I originally originally called it most punchable smile, but my nomination is one of the kids. And so I just feel a little like weird about saying punchable.

Speaker 1 So I would say small male child

Speaker 1 helping with

Speaker 1 the key is

Speaker 1 my most grading smile. Do you have a nomination, Rob?

Speaker 2 See, I thought this was going to be unanimous. I thought there was not going to be any conflict at all.

Speaker 2 I think it has to be Davis Taffler, the Under Secretary of Agricultural Farm Production and Conservation. Like that, that smile is plastered on in a way that demands to be punchable.

Speaker 1 I love him.

Speaker 1 I think they said that's a soap opera actor. And like, it's perfect.
It's like perfect.

Speaker 1 I love that. And then, last but not least, and this is something that I, this category kind of reminds me of when we were asking people during severance, like, what would you sever?

Speaker 1 I think this is a good prompt for our listeners. So please recall, lickingthedonut at gmail.com is where you can reach us.

Speaker 1 Rob, what would you do or where would you go if the hive mine was at your beck and call?

Speaker 2 Thank you for asking me this, Joe. You're welcome.
It really sent me down a rabbit hole

Speaker 2 because I would say the premise of this show invites what to me I personally call based on personal experience the time crisis problem. Are you familiar with the arcade video game Time Crisis? No.

Speaker 2 It's a classic like you have a little plastic gun, you point at the screen, you shoot the guys kind of game.

Speaker 2 I once went to a video arcade where it was like they had unlocked all the games, all the games are free.

Speaker 2 And you would never believe how fast the life is drained out of that game when there are no stakes or consequences for dying.

Speaker 2 It's like, you could sit and play this game for, you know, a solid 30 minutes pumping quarters into it, but as soon as you don't have to pump the quarters in, is any of it fun anymore?

Speaker 2 And I think there is part of that in a world like this where it's like, if there's no cost, does it mean anything? If there's no scarcity, does it feel special at all?

Speaker 2 And I think most importantly, if you are alone,

Speaker 2 does it register with you at all in any meaningful way? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you have an answer? I do have an answer. Sorry.
That was a lot of preamble. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 I wasn't, I like the preamble a lot. And I think, especially your point of if you don't have someone to share it with, like, does it hit? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, because I don't have those things, my brain went to two places. One, should I try to go somewhere that I wouldn't ordinarily be able to go?

Speaker 2 Everywhere kind of felt like a version of the same thing.

Speaker 2 Like, yeah, I could go to a nicer beach than the beaches I've been to, but they would be disconcertingly empty and I would be a little distraught at that.

Speaker 2 So I came back to, you know, very tangible delights. I would have a series of, you know, the infected's finest chefs

Speaker 2 with all of the the culinary knowledge on the planet prepare for me a series of meals that would draw not only from the best things I've ever eaten, as they try to do for Carol, but also the best things I've never tasted.

Speaker 2 And I think this is kind of one of the problems with living in this world:

Speaker 2 to the AI of it all, they are trying to algorithmically engineer the woman of your dreams and the meal that you wanted. But it's like, I also need to invite a little bit of like ingenuity in this.

Speaker 2 Like, how do we shake up the formula to the point that I can be surprised by what they're doing?

Speaker 1 Well, here's my question. So, you're like,

Speaker 1 you know, gather the

Speaker 1 world-class chefs, but if everyone has the same information,

Speaker 2 anyone can do it, right?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. Your assigned Zoja could cook this meal for you.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Zoja has a mastery of every cuisine across the world. Like you don't have to go very far.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 I knew your answer would be some sort of elaborate meal, and I think

Speaker 1 I feel like in terms of, I think you're right about like, I don't necessarily want to go to an empty beach, but like

Speaker 1 maybe I want to go to the top of Everest. Okay.
Like maybe that's where I want to go and just sort of like

Speaker 1 look at my works you might need in despair myself at the top of it and then call it a day. I don't know.
Just somewhere, somewhere I could never get myself.

Speaker 2 But Joe, you could go there right now if you wanted.

Speaker 1 How can I go to the top of Everest?

Speaker 2 You can climb.

Speaker 1 I don't know that I can, but thank you so much for your faith in me.

Speaker 2 Can they like hela drop you to the top of Everest?

Speaker 1 Is that a thing that can happen? No, I think you, I don't think you can.

Speaker 1 Maybe if you're like Elon Musk, you can, but I think you have to at least start at some sort of base camp and like hike your ass up there.

Speaker 2 Well, so how are you getting there in this world?

Speaker 1 Well, in this world, I do get hella dropped to the top of Everest. You do have hella dropped privileges.
I do. I am the Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Chilling thought. Or maybe, yeah, let's musk it up and go to space.
You know, why not?

Speaker 2 See, I have no interest in space.

Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 Okay. I want a view.
I want a view that I would not otherwise be able to obtain.

Speaker 2 I do like in this show, though, that we've already tied up. the loose ends.

Speaker 2 Like we've already rooted out some of the theories of like Elise Oja, you know, if we want to take her at her word, like they've already gotten to the people in the nuclear subs.

Speaker 2 They already got to the people at the International Space Station. It's like that's where they started their kind of slow encroachment into human life.

Speaker 2 And so the fact that those people are already off the board, I don't have any reason to go go to space, I don't think. I'm not looking for anything out there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, don't want to hang out with the pod people in space. That's true.

Speaker 1 All right. So lookingthedonut at gmail.com if you have a better answer, bearing in mind that you have to do it alone.
And

Speaker 1 there's no

Speaker 1 earning it. There's no sweat equity placed into this.
You're just given it. And so does it even, is it even enjoyable in Rob's arcade game con?

Speaker 2 You know, I guess you could have the sweat equity if you if you could engineer it, right? Like maybe it's something where there's a long line to get the opportunity to do something difficult.

Speaker 2 Like Everest is a good example of like, I think there's like a lottery system or like a lot of hoops you have to jump through.

Speaker 2 So maybe you could cut the red tape in a way that is satisfying to then try to do the hard thing on your own.

Speaker 1 Okay, so spend my time. Rather than like trying to fix this, I'm like, oh, I have some time before they pod person me.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I will train to climb from base camp to the peak of Everest and I will cut the line of anyone else who

Speaker 1 will meet it because they're too busy doing whatever it is these pod people do. Donald gleasing themselves in a closet.
I don't know. Okay.

Speaker 1 But this is where it's tempting.

Speaker 2 It's like, I would like to not have to like go to the DMV ever again for the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like. Now we're back in severed territory.
You're just trying to

Speaker 1 separate yourself from experience. Okay.

Speaker 1 So that is episodes one and two of Pluribus. We'll be back every Friday, you know,

Speaker 1 God willing, the Craigs Don't Rise, to bring these episodes to you.

Speaker 1 We invite, invite, it's not a, you know, there's a lot of answers, not like a classic theory show, but we invite your questions, your theories, your expert, I know how infectious diseases are transmitted,

Speaker 1 POVs, your desires of where you would go and what you would do and what meal you would consume, et cetera, et cetera,

Speaker 1 at lickythedon at EdgeyBill.com. That's lickythedon at GBL.com.
Just some of your best work. Thank you so much.
Not since John Hamm's nipple rings.

Speaker 1 Anything else, Rob, before we go?

Speaker 2 I think that's about it. I mean, if I could draw attention to one more thing I love from these episodes,

Speaker 2 before we veer off the romanticy path, which I fear we may never return to again, so if not now, when

Speaker 2 the fact that her new book is the fourth book in the Winds of Wickaro trilogy,

Speaker 2 fucking great.

Speaker 1 Winds of Wakaro is

Speaker 1 okay. Winds of Wakaro is pretty excellent.

Speaker 2 But somebody dangling that check to write the fourth book in the trilogy is just wonderful.

Speaker 1 On the Pluribus Reddit boards, which were hopping last night,

Speaker 1 someone made such a good George R. Martin joke where they were like talking about something about George R.
Martin. And then someone replies,

Speaker 1 George R. Martin will do anything other than complete wins of Wakara.

Speaker 1 So that was really good.

Speaker 2 Sorry, those Jets vlogs aren't going to write themselves, Joe.

Speaker 1 That's really true. Okay.
Thank you to Donnie Beacham for working on this episode. Thank you to Justin Sales, always.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 1 uh, Christopher Ryan, our pal, uh, has a chat with Vince Gilligan. I can't, I don't know if it's actually currently up on the watch feed or will be up on the watch feed.
I believe so.

Speaker 1 It's currently up. Okay, great.

Speaker 2 Um, and double the Vince Gilligan.

Speaker 2 Ben Lindbergh has an extensive interview on the Ringer TV YouTube channel in particular, going through the plot hole or knot hole of some of the deepest mysteries in Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 So, an incredible watch and listen.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a Taji deep dive we didn't deserve in 2025. Thank you you so much, Ben.
All right. So we'll be back next week and we'll see you soon.
And

Speaker 1 stay safe and don't eat the licked donuts. Bye.