‘Pluribus’ Episode 6: The Tricky Balance of Koumba

Hello, welcome back to the Press Siege TV podcast feed. I'm Joyda Robinson.
And we are Rob Mahoney. Oh, we are.
We are. We are.

We also are, I don't know, the world's number one pigeon hater.

Listen, I don't know if you guys heard the origin story of Rob's fight with pigeons, but I want to say that recently our listeners have started sending in pigeon merch

for Rob to consider purchasing. So, this has become a full-fledged bit now, and I'm really into it.
So, Rob, where can folks send their suggestions for pigeon merch for you?

Always to prestige TV at spotify.com, but especially to lickingthedonut d-o-n-ut-t at gmail.com. And Joe, it's gotten so bad that now I am getting Instagram ads for pigeon merch.
So, are you?

Thanks, everybody, slash, I hate you. But at some point, me and the pigeons are going to have to get together and hash this out because this is just not sustainable.

Listen, I think everyone in the world except for you is team pigeon. So I wish you luck in this fight.
It's just simply not true.

I'm sorry. It's absolutely not the true.
I have yet to hear from a fellow pigeon hater. Everyone else is, everyone seems indignant over your pigeon slander.
So, Sarah Paulson included, apparently.

Sarah Paulson, number one, Rob Mahoney enemy. Okay, so listen, we're here to talk about Pluribus episode six, HDP,

written by Vera Blassey and directed by Ganja Montero.

And

HTP human-derived protein. No mystery about what this episode title means.

Rob Mahoney. Oh, actually, before we get into that, I did really quickly want to say we're in the thick of Spotify rapped season.

And I just wanted to thank everyone who had us on your Spotify rap list, tagged us. Like,

thank you so much. It's like, thank you in the first place for listening to us for so many minutes of your year that we wound up on your rap list.
And thanks for letting us know.

And everyone's just really sweet about it. So thank you guys so much.
It's been amazing.

I think especially hearing from the people who are like, I jumped in for severance, I jumped in for slow horses, and I just kind of kept along for the ride.

I mean, that's, there's no better thing for people in our profession to hear than you just want to be here and hang out with with us as we talk about good and sometimes very bad TV shows.

But thankfully, Joe, right now the TV's been quite good. It's true.
It's true. We, you know, this week we did a West Wing episode that folks seem to really dig.
So that's great.

Rob and Jodi covered the chair company.

Maybe it's, is it just chair company? No, the I think it is the chair company. Okay, the chair company.

And then we will have

an episode on heated rivalry that will drop

next week.

So that's the ongoing stuff. And then we have one more of our sort of like best episodes of the century episodes coming next week.
So there's a lot going on.

A lot of minutes for you to consume so we can wind up on next year's Spotify wrapped as well. But I was talking.

Just wanted to thank everyone. Okay, so Rob Mahoney, what did you think of this episode of television? I quite liked it.

And I would say in particular, this idea of taking a reveal that we assumed and was kind of the only place that plot line could go and turning it into something surprising and kind of fun and ultimately very dark.

And

like just taking something that you were so sure you knew the answer to and transforming it into rather than like a plot reveal, I think a really great character moment for Carol.

Like turning the fact that she is the last to know basically about the human and the in the human protein.

Like how I didn't think we could make Carol a more lonely character, but we certainly did this week. Very sad.
Yeah, Kumba being

like, oh, you mean about the meeting people thing? Yeah.

Troubling, disturbing.

You know, and then that's a great segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you, which is that we get a John Cena cameo in this episode.

We had been discussing in previous episodes, like, would it be interesting for them to have celebrities as part of the hive mind? And we could see, you know.

Noah Wiley from

The Pit or whatever deliver news. And here we have John Cena.
So what did you, how did this, our first celebrity cameo land for you? I loved it.

I mean, it's kind of the plurivist version of Margot Robbie in a bathtub. It's like, let's just get John Cena on screen and we love John Cena.

We want to believe John Cena and we want to spend time with him just like Kumba does.

I also just thought like when I saw that John Cena was on Bill's pod this week, I did not anticipate this enormous crossover event for people in our little world, Joe. This is tremendous news.

It's true. It's true.
Yeah, I thought this was a really good use of him. And something, something that's really fun to know is that on the

official podcast,

they mentioned that they did not have the John Cena footage the day that they shot this. So Vince Gilligan just did it and didn't tell the cast.
So they like pulled up this video.

And then it's just like Vince in full-blown, like, aweshucks, Vince mode, doing this whole speech about why it's okay to eat people. First of all, release the tapes.
Yeah.

We're really going to need to see that. I demand to see it.

I also wanted to mention that Ganja Montero, the director of this episode,

also directed, I don't know, three great episodes of Agatha all along and has just been like doing some great TV directing work.

On the official podcast, Vince compared her to Michelle McLaren, who if folks

don't know aren't weirdos who look at, you know, the name on who directed every episode of television. Michelle McLaren, an all-time-breaking bad director.

She directed many episodes, including Four Days Out, Salud, Gliding Overall, and Tahli. And it's just like very

innovative visually. And there are some fun innovations inside of this episode.

But I thought that, you know, as you might expect, Ganja Montero on that episode, the podcast episode was like, oh, Michelle McLaren, I will take it. Thank you so much.

Biggest compliment. But did you have any sort of top level thoughts on the direction of this episode? I mean, first of all, just how many.

different stories and types of storytelling are embedded here, right? You have like almost like a full-blown horror movie found footage style in terms of the open and seeing kind of Carol's videotape.

I thought that was a really smart way again to tap us into something we already thought we understood.

And frankly, even though we knew or suspected it was going to be human bodies under there, individually shrink-wrapped parts of human bodies was somehow so much worse. Tough, really tough.

And then that transitions into, I mean, basically, like a Bond movie for 10-15 minutes with Kumba and kind of reenacting his dreams of high-stakes poker glory.

And then from there, I mean, we go into like a pretty tense confrontation. We get this whole kind of sub-story, you know, in the flashback with Manuso.

So, like, I love, of course, some of the individual flourishes in terms of shots, like the slow rise of the TV out of the dresser is like an incredible moment as Carol kind of susses out the HDMI of it all.

But just the variety, and I think that's what Pluribus kind of lends itself to.

We talked about this with some of the other shows we've covered, Joe, like Poker Face, where it's just you can sort of reinvent the style of story you want to tell from episode to episode because the world is empty.

You can drive into Vegas and it is dead and frozen, and there is no, like, there is no one out there. And when that's the canvas, you can kind of do whatever you want with this world.

I don't want to beat the dead horse of, of the official podcast because we have a lot of like listener stuff to get to and a lot of our own thoughts to get to.

But a couple of things I want to mention is that the head that she pulls up in the

facility

is a model of Vince Gilligan's head. So Vince Gilligan is like, this is my Alfred Hitchcock camo.
He's like, I've never appeared in any of my stuff. So this is like my first version of that.

And then I was so curious how they got empty Vegas because, you know, we got an email from a listener about the rooftop shot that we talked about last week. And we'll talk about that in a second.

But Empty Vegas, I was like, Vegas is never empty. How did they do that? And so I was fascinated to learn that basically they drove the route that Carol took.

with several, I believe, cameras mounted, like sort of like the like Google Maps car, if you've ever seen that driving around or whatever like several cameras mounted around and just drove the route over and over and over and over again in the sort of wee small hours of the morning where there's like as few people as possible so that you could sort of like

match shots and as soon as like a person shows up in one shot you have other coverage of it that you can use totally to to convey this emptiness and i just thought it was really effective and really eerie to see a place like Vegas completely emptied out.

So it's completely haunting. I mean, especially the juxtaposition of this

extravagant party that Kumba has staged. Right.
Basically, like puppeteering all of these people into the roles that I guess he wants them to play for his little fantasy. Into this place is just dead.

Like, there's just nothing happening here. And even Carol's criticisms on her way out.
I mean, look, wherever she goes, everything kind of hollows out.

But her criticisms of Vegas on her way out about like the neon-lit ashtray part of it. It's like, it's not even really true anymore.

Like, there are the lights, but ultimately, like, this is barely even recognizable as Vegas without the people. It's so sad.
Carol, Carol sort of covering how heartbroken she is is devastating.

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you mentioned kumba has sort of orchestrated this this James Bond, you know, fantasy for himself. Yeah.

You know, a point that you raised initially and we've been returning to over and over again is this idea of like, could you actually even enjoy a game of winning a game of poker with a royal flush if everyone there is just humoring you and you're clearly being dealt like, yes, you know, the right cards and all that sort of stuff like that, if you didn't have to work for it, if you didn't have to work for the royal flush, if you didn't have to like actually have whatever it takes to get a room full of women to like get into a hot tub with you or whatever it is, does it really mean anything?

And I would say in the case of Kumba, like it does.

He's having a good time. He's going to be enjoying himself.
So

do you think there's like an upper limit to that? Or is there just some kind of personalities where it's just like, actually, this is great. And I don't need to worry.
I don't need to over

complicate a good thing. You know what I mean? I think it's both, right?

If we play out the story of Pleuribus with Kumba and Vegas for 10 years, like there are clearly diminishing returns to the royal flesh you know you have been dealt in all of these situations.

It's just not going to hit the same. That said,

as human beings, we are simple creatures. And you flip over the cards and everyone applauds for you.
There's just that part of your brain that lights up, right?

There is that kind of natural organic feedback. I think what's interesting about the world that Pluribus creates is...

All of those feedback loops, all of those like very human responses to things would get warped over time and sanded down over time.

And you would just evolve into a different kind of person who's not responding to the applause of your puppets in the same way anymore because it would be empty.

Now, as far as the personality types, Joe, like I think there's like a big messy conversation to have here about consent.

I have a huge consent section inside of this episode.

So let's save that part of it,

especially as it relates to ladies in the hot tub. Sure.
But even in just like, I'm going to dress up this guy as Elvis.

I'm going to put this lady in the full breakfast at Tiffany's, and they're going to do the exact thing that I want them to do. Yeah.
It is weird and messy.

And I do think it kind of requires a certain type of person who can put that at the back of their mind and

go through the motions and enjoy that kind of setup. I felt,

and you know, I'm

very anti-hive mine, but I felt sad for these people when he walks out of the room and they just drop everything and then go into like robotically cleaning everything up.

That was harrowing, I think, to look at. And something, you know, again, they talked about in the official pod was like the casting of this role was one of the hardest ones to cast because

Kumba on his on the surface all of his actions are so sleazy but they didn't want him to read as sleazy because he is a genuine very sincere guy and he is very kind to Carol and that moment on the phone when he just says like but she's so lonely you know what I mean like he's advocating for her to a certain degree and so how can we get a performance where you're seeing this guy do this stuff that is should make you uncomfortable, but I like him at the same time.

So it's really tricky balance, yeah. I mean, even with all of these weird, thorny, and ethical questions we're sort of raising, and just like human questions,

I really like him and I really love this scene. Like, I love the collective gasp at the bets at the poker table.

I love the like very bond score, the eye patch guy hamming it up until he like is two out of character and has to be kind of put in his place.

Yeah, like it, it really is an amazing thing that they've been able to do with this character so far, where you don't feel judgmental of him necessarily, but you do feel judgmental of the world and the situation this puts everybody in in a way.

Yeah, it's interesting. Okay, let's let's do some listener emails that will sort of touch on some of the big themes that I want to talk about today.
Really quickly, sort of like

detail stuff. A lot of people emailed us.
They were wolf dogs, actually.

So they were not

wolf wolves, but they were wolf dogs. And so is that close enough to a wolf to satisfy you, animal critic Rob Mahoney? I'm cool with it.
I'm cool with the wolf dog.

I have no beef with the wolf dog community.

John,

who is the listener who I mentioned is a location manager, was explaining why they probably did not do an actual film on the shot on the top of that roof.

Had all these really interesting things to say about how hard it is to get equipment up on the rooftop, the insurance that's required, and why very often they do sort of trickery to

deliver a rooftop shot. A lot of stuff that I didn't know.
But John also gets really salty at the end about the VFX here, and I thought it was funny, so I'm going to share it.

John wrote, This scene also highlights how modern VFX technology is still just plain ass, despite what AI bros or post houses will tell you compared to actually filming something practically on a show that does so much practically.

I know. The difference is quite stark.
Probably the only true VFX stage shot of the entire season so far, honestly, and it sucked.

This is why filmmakers should consider going organic because the volume is ass. Green screen is ass.
TV slash film isn't a commercial or a TikTok. The audience has standards.

So that's from John, once again, a location manager. So he's like, let's go out in the world.
This is my job to find you cool places to shoot.

So he has a vested interest in this, but I thought that was a great email. So it's also true.
Like, is there no alternative to a weird VFX shop on the roof?

Like, if all those considerations are true about how difficult and complicated and expensive it would be, maybe just shoot somewhere else? Like, there's lots of ways to show Albuquerque empty.

I, yeah, and does it have to be that roof? Can you find a roof with like larger door access so that you could get the camera equipment up there?

But listen, we are not making this show, so I don't know. Our problem is not our problem to solve.
Something we love to talk about on this show,

overanalyzers that we are, color theory. Okay.
Yes. So we got, we got a couple emails about the use of blue on the show.

And

Because we got a couple of those this week specifically, I was really noticing like the blue and yellow chips on the table,

you know, where blue was used inside, like coming out of Manuso's fridge and also the facility where all the bodies are. The light is so blue.

So our listener, Riley, mentioned blue and orange, right? The blue and orange tones that are so prevalent in Albuquerque's landscape are being used to divide the survivors and the joined.

The hospital is blue from top to bottom and most of the clothes being worn in the Great Exodus sequence are also shades of blue.

There's blue recycling bin and blue dumpster, both filled with milk cartons, and the cool blue light that permeates both their manufacturing locations in last week's episode.

On the other hand, when Carol wants to emphasize her individuality in her recording, she throws on a sandy blazer.

All the lights in her home are warm, her drinks are dark, and when she finishes her protection of Helen's grave, the sunset shines a bright orange against her silhouette.

Um, that was really compelling to me. And after

I rewatched the pilot last night for reasons I'll get into in a second, but

worth noting that what Carol is wearing when this all happens is this like very bright yellow jacket

as part of her sort of escape from the zombies outfit.

Anything you want to say about the yellow-blue and

what it does to have such a

repetition of such a distinct color palette? Yellow, of course, was like the clear marketing color for this show. So what do you think of that?

And I mean, not only is it the clear marketing color, but the clear marketing color in association, I would say, with Carol specifically.

It's all Carol screaming into the void, backgrounded by yellow.

And so, look, the idea of vivid individual color being the standout for a person among a crowd, like a tale as old as time in terms of filmmaking.

And it's just like such an easy and natural way to draw your eye, to draw the contrast.

And especially as you're seeing on a practical level, if you had a well-oiled machine restocking a sprouts or running a hospital and everyone was wearing orange, it would be a little weird.

And so blue, I think, is not just visually compatible with this type of story, but also is like really seamless in terms of the palettes you see in the world and ultimately what your eye registers as almost like background.

Yeah, that's interesting. A very calming color that's not going to stand out to you the way the yellow or orange would.

It's worth noting that Carol has worn blue occasionally. So it's not sort of like necessarily a one-to-one, but I think it's, let's all track the blues and the yellows going forward.

I think that'll be really interesting and rewarding for us.

And then, of course, you know, as several of our listeners mentioned in emails, if you are a veteran of the Gilligan verse, like the use of that light blue specifically for the meth and breaking bad was very key.

And thinking about the yellow, yellow boiler suits on like Walt and Jesse,

also that green and breaking bad. So like, you know, they're no,

it's not new, the blue and the yellow inside of this universe, but how is it it being used here?

And I like that idea that it reflects sort of like the blue sky and the sandy ground of Albuquerque. Like it just sort of blends into everything.
So it's interesting.

And who, like, who has used that landscape and that palette better than Vince Gilligan over the years in terms of understanding its power and what it can represent?

And I'll also say, Joe, in terms of the party sequence,

I mean, among the most vivid color palettes we've seen so far, wide ranging, a lot of jewel tones. It's kind of all over the map in a way that I think does fit what is being orchestrated there, right?

If it is this kind of technicolor fantasy and it is Kumba sort of, again, like attributing people into these roles based off of what he thinks should be there, it's not going to be as orderly as everything we see going on with the Hive Mind overall.

It's going to look a little more hodgepodge, but in its way, like quite beautiful. Again, I'm disturbed by this whole setup, but, you know, if you're going to go

Bondian, he really did it.

My question is:

did he tell everyone exactly what to wear? Or did he just give them an AI-esque prompt of like, you know, come in your finest James Bond at the casino fantasy clothing? You know?

All right, this is where I want to talk about consent and consent as it pertains

to perhaps frozen eggs. We got a lot of emails about this this morning.

This is like, I think the thing that was the number one on our listener's mind coming out of this episode. For sure.

Kyle, our listener Kyle wrote, just wanted to note that Carol's eggs are sitting somewhere in an Albuquerque freezer and they've got to be why they said they wouldn't take any stem cells from her body, right?

And Mary, who is a lawyer, wrote in to say, I believe is a lawyer, works in the legal profession, wrote in to say specifically the language around consent inside of this episode really tripped something for her, right?

When Carol said she didn't consent and told the Hive Minds, quote, you won't lay a finger on me, they responded, quote, no stem cells would be collected from your body, end quote.

But they made no promise not to use already gathered material.

The subtle caveats in the hive mind's response felt extremely familiar to the kind of writing I see attorneys use every day to appease an opponent while leaving their options open.

And in her anger, Carol might be overlooking it and lots of other things her compatriots have learned by keeping the hive mind close.

I thought it was interesting that Mary flags this sort of like tricksy legal language inside of an episode where Carol herself is like, oh, all the lawyers survived, right?

Also, we had, and we mentioned this at the time, we had a lot of listeners flag the Carol freezing her eggs comment that came inside of that Ice Hotel sequence. Definitely.

And I kind of brushed it off as I was like, I think this is more of a character moment. I'm perfectly willing to be incorrect about that, as it seems like I might be.

Also, we had a listener point out when.

Carol was in the pharmacy a couple episodes ago and the pharmacist was saying something about like, it's been a while since you injected yourself.

And I'm like, what are we saying about Carol and Needles? Someone pointed out, if you're undergoing fertility treatment, you are constantly injecting yourself.

So that might have been been another sort of like, remember, this person has eggs frozen somewhere. Absolutely.

What do you, and so I do want to talk a little bit more about consent after this, but like, let's focus in on the egg stuff. Like, what do you, what do you think about this?

Well, yeah, the, the, the, we will not be collecting stem cells from your body like might as well have been in italics, like all caps.

Let's just underline the from your body bit. With an asterisk.
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We also got a fascinating email from Haley who said, this is a quote from her email, can the others get around Carol's lack of consent for gathering stem cells by doing something with the eggs she froze, as you said, Joe?

I don't know how stem cells work or if it would require fertilizing an embryo to gather stem cells and then harvesting the fertilized embryo, which I guess would force the others to have an answer to the question, does life begin at conception?

I mean, look, I look forward to what's going to be a very fun episode for us, Joe. Really uncomplicated.
Very uncomplicated. Easy black and white answers to all of this.
Fascinating.

But all this stuff does kind of get to the questions of what the hive mind is allowed to do based on its own programming and admission.

And it's not an accident that these two conversations are happening at the same time of like, oh, we need the consent to gather this personalized DNA, like

biological data. And also, we're telling you that we can't harvest wheat or harvest rice.
We don't want to hurt a fly or even a plant. We can't inflict harm on anyone at any time.

And what is a frozen egg? And like, would they even be able to extract the DNA or the stem cells from the egg itself, depending on how they're classifying what that egg is?

Like, there's just a lot happening here in a way that I, I really appreciate, and I'm very eager to see how they untangle. Yeah, it's fascinating.

What was really interesting to me, and I think this consent question

feeds into this larger debate we seem to be having with our listeners in our email inbox, which is like,

uh, some people are like, hey, why are you so down on the hive mind? And I know this is baffling. I continue to be surprised, but listen, we can have this conversation.

I was watching this episode, this current episode last night. And

my friend Diana was like sort of background in the room. And then she was like drawn in.
I was like, hey, do you want to, she hadn't watched the episode. So she was asking me questions.

She's like, what's going on? Who's this? What's happening? And I was like, do you want to watch the pilot? The pilot's so good. Let's like, we'll just re-watch the pilot.
Yeah.

So we're, we were, you know, we watched the pilot and she was like, oh, so this started with no consent.

And that's really important to remember that when you see the scientist, you know, like the rat biting the scientists one thing, but when you see the scientists leave their lab and go smooch two people who are randomly working there without informing them what's about to happen to them, not to mention, so I think the fact that it is kissing, you know, because we've been talking about like the way it's spread and you can lick a donut or you can.

you know, drop droplets from a chemtrail or whatever it is, but the like the kissing, the like sort of assault nature of those first two infection points or the third and the fourth infection points, I thought was really interesting because it's like when you talk about the hive mind and the listeners that we have that are like, hey, man, it would be cruel to rip these people from their pleasant existence inside of the hive mind.

And I'm like, but the hive mind,

let's leave aside all the people that they killed in

this joining moment. Let's leave aside Helen for a moment and all the other Helens.

They have effectively, and this is what Carol keeps saying, killed John Cena, Lakshmi's son, all these other people who have been absorbed, the original Zoja, like all this sort of stuff like that, and actually not quite killed, are occupying them because if there's a way to undo it.

would you not you know like if if everyone had signed a consent form and said i want to join the high mind it sounds great to be at peace and uh in harmony and all these other things that's one thing but that's not what what we're dealing with here not even close and so i i

i think people are forgetting that when they talk about the hive mind they're forgetting that these are hostile occupiers yes of of these other people so anyway what do you what do you think about that i mean ostensibly these they're prisoners in their own bodies right i think it's not just a question of is it unethical to rip them from that like as you say joe they didn't opt into it in the first place and they're really being forced to accept an entire framework of what is happiness or what is satisfaction based on something that is not their own in the first place.

So everything is being superimposed on top of them. They've been brought into this larger machine.
And within that larger machine, I think you'd have a hard time making the ethical argument that like

being somebody's puppet in a James Bond dream is really like the great fulfillment of your life.

And frankly, like it is gross, the idea that you could manipulate and use these people as one of the remaining unlicked in whatever fashion you want. And they have no capacity to refuse you, right?

Like, how would that be a satisfying or happy or pleasing existence for anyone, even if your brain, because it has been biologically tripped by this alien virus, believes it to be so? Right.

Again, listen, I support all points of view, and I want everyone to keep emailing us, but I continue to be like quite surprised by the Hive of Mind Defenders.

They just want to join the harem, you know? Like, I get it. Like, maybe you just want to have a good time and hang out in the hot tub, but I don't know.

But that's the thing is, like, he asked, like, anyone else want to join me. There was a consent moment there, right? You know, like, was there? No, but like, the illusion of consent, right? Yes.

Our listener, Bobby, also on the consent front, in terms of this like violation of your innermost self, our listener Bobby wrote in with, with, uh, with a therapy background. Um,

to say this, um, I continue thinking most is the, is based on a phrase I often have to tell parents and family therapy.

It doesn't matter what you know, it matters what someone is feels safe to share with you.

I think the hive is somehow void in connection and it's most human because they may know a lot about everyone they are merged with, but they don't have the hard work of it being shared with them by building relationship, connection, and love.

I think that this captures how violating it was that they knew about Carol through the eyes of Helen.

To make Helen off limits is in some ways saying that Helen was the person who warranted Carol's intimacy. Helen did the hard work of knowing Carol and making it safe for Carol to be known by her.

And so that's like, you know, this idea of like, I don't consent to you knowing these things about me because I shared them with like Carol being a very private person, sharing it with one person in all the world and them knowing that about you.

That's, that's, as we've already talked about, but like, I like the way this is articulated, just like hugely violating. So absolutely.
So hugely violating.

And not just that, but contradictory to everything as you outlined, Joe, that makes human experience rewarding.

All of those deep bonds, all those deep connections, whatever it is that you're like endeavoring to do in your life and trying to build in terms of your relationships to other people, it's not the same when you just say, hey, I want John Cena to come over.

Like it's just not fundamentally the same thing. Yeah.

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I want to talk about,

this is a zag, but I want to talk about Minusos and like

his section here in this sort of related to this because I love the reveal that this woman, you know, this woman who's calling him son is like, oh, is that literally his mother?

And then he says, you're not my mother, right? So like,

that is the body of the woman who was his mother.

And so you have this reaction when he says, you're not my mother.

And you think, oh, he's saying that because like, how dare you occupy the body of my mother? And then he's like, she was a bitch.

And so that's like even more violating.

How dare you take the body of the woman who was supposed to nurture me and have her bring me like delicious home cooked meals, the thing that you think a mother should do for someone

and mock me with this thing that I never had,

you know, growing up in my life. I mean, I

just because she's a bitch doesn't mean she never made him food, but like

standing in for the nurturing of

a motherly presence. I thought that was a brilliant sort of moment in this episode.
What did you think?

I think there's a lot of little twists within, you know, a fairly brief minuso section, but ultimately the reveal with his mom, his, his like finally getting Carol's tape, and I think the show kind of flipping tonally what that tape represents.

Like he's looking at her inspired, right?

Like it's amazing how you take the same tape we saw recorded that we felt a certain way in the moment and you put a rousing score underneath it and it just feels like a call to action in a totally different way that obviously he would receive differently from the rest of the unlicked who have already met Carol and experienced her in like different contexts.

And I'm sure he will soon. But it feels like the whole show is about to change.

And it feels like the whole show is about to change because of Minusos' kind of insertion into the main story in all these ways.

And so the more we're learning about that relationship with his mother, the more honestly, like there's kind of a parallel for him with the hive mind itself in this episode in terms of like

their relationship to rules and sustenance, right? It's like he is drawn this line that he will not accept the home cooked meal from his pseudo mom.

Like that is not something he is willing to do to the point of like starving himself, eating sugar packets and dog food and whatever he has to do.

He is that distrustful of everything that is happening that he does not want a part of it. And that we also learn in this episode that because, you know, as Carol puts it, like

the hive mind refuses to pick a damn apple. And that, and in doing so,

I mean, look, I'm completely on the same page.

We ban with Carol, but like, I'm especially with her on this one. Yeah.
Totally.

And so it's like they have this clear line, and in doing so, are articulating articulating, like true or not this is the stance at this point that

they because they cannot consume like you know kill plants kill animals humanity is basically on a 10-year starvation course and so like there is a weird kind of parallel in that i think for minusos's plot of like again like a weird kind of principle and it's sort of biological versus ideological but there is something in the water there what do you think he was eating out of that fridge that tasted good after nine

in the fridge? I think things can last nine days, depending.

Not much.

I'd be wary of most nine-day-old leftovers, but if I eat- You're not eating a lot of canned. Yeah,

the line is low. To be honest with you, Rob, I'm eating zero dog food.
So,

really? Yeah, just it's a dog food-free existence for me, honestly. Okay, um, different strokes, I guess.
Yeah,

to go back to like what we can eat, I wrote in my notes as John Cena was talking, they're fucking fruitarians.

Hashtag not all fruitarians, but the definition of someone who will not eat anything unless it falls off the tree

is a sort of extreme version of fruitarianism. And I was just like, oh, we can't, we can't do this.

We have an email from our listener, Danny. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I have it under this subheading that says, is it okay to eat people actually?

And this is sort of a question Danny's asking about like,

the way in which this show, and I've been talking about this a lot when, you know, I think you and I discussed this last week, that I enjoy talking to you about the show even more than I enjoy watching the show.

And I enjoy likewise, Joe. Like, listening.

That's both a compliment to you and also just a compliment to the show because it is posing questions that are really fun for us to discuss and answer, right?

And consider. And so Danny being like, this show is forcing you to ask questions.

I mean, I don't think it's okay to eat people, actually.

I'm really glad you got on the record about that. That's just where I was.
I was concerned. Yeah.
I don't eat dog food. I don't eat people.
That's how I feel about things. Okay.
But Danny's like,

is it forcing an ethical conversation we never thought we would have? Which is, is it okay to eat people actually?

So, like, what do you think about that, about the questions that the show is asking us to confront? And did John Cena win your vote at any point?

I'm still against eating people. Yeah.
So you and I are aligned on this particular issue. I mean,

John Cena is very persuasive.

He's got his diagrams. He's got his testimonials.
He's up there.

It's a little like he's hawking eugenics, but I'm able to push past it and ultimately understand kind of where he's coming from in the biological hive mind sense.

Eating people is a further optimization of what the hive mind has been doing this entire time.

Like it tracks with their general approach to how they are, you know, endeavoring to kind of conquer planet Earth.

It's an efficient use of resources, but there's a reason why we just never fucking do it basically under any circumstances, unless you're in a Donner party scenario.

Or we simply have to note, Joe, you are Craig Horlbeck on what is one of the most famous episodes of the Hottest Take podcast, in which he kind of sort of floated this idea.

I did not know that Craig did that. I would encourage everyone to go listen to it.
It's just top shelf podcasting. Just really incredible stuff from Craig.
Okay.

I

shout out Yellow Jackets, which also, I mean, obviously this.

I don't know.

one time when Mallory and I were podcasting about yellow jackets, and I asked her like, what body part of a friend she would eat, and I said, which body part I would eat, and she said, I simply would not eat the body part of a friend.

She like high-roaded me in a way that like

forever

blew some trust inside of our podcasting relationship.

Rob, what part of a body of a friend would you eat if you were in a frozen tundra, donner party, yellow jacket sort of situation? That's a great question.

I mean, look, in that kind of desperation, I think you are optimizing right then you're looking for like where can i get simply like the most caloric bang for your buck like a haunch something like that it feels like a ham situation for sure uh

for the record i don't i don't want to engage in that particularly so i'm hoping to avoid all donner party slash yellow jacket scenarios but can we like honestly engage with this question for one second like yeah

of why we do not eat humans, even though theoretically we could eat humans. I think the answer, at least as I see it, Joe, is quite simple, which is we we decided not to.

Like, it is beyond the pale of what we are willing to consider as far as keeping ourselves alive.

Something I'm curious about, because they mentioned it inside of this episode, and I don't know this since I'm not

an animal expert like Rob Mahoney, but like,

how many animals eat their own?

You know what I mean? Like,

a lion out on, you know,

the African plains or whatever will eat dead antelope and dead whatever.

But will they eat a dead lion? I don't think they do. Like, we don't eat our own is a thing we don't do, right?

I'm sure there's some animals in

place. I mean, definitely.
There's like definitely certain insects and stuff like that. But like, lookinthonutgmail.com.
If this is like a cross-species, sort of,

we as a planet have largely decided not to eat our own.

Also, what I'm learning about this larger debate and apparently many of our listeners, Joe, is like, if Hannibal Lecter had just made it a sustainability question, like it would have been cool you know

people seem pretty interested we got a couple emails about the breakfast that uh kumba and carol share when he's like here's your hat what's your hurry um

have this breakfast and then go please our listener mikhal was like Where are they getting such good avocados if they're like have such high standards?

And I agree because avocados are like the first thing to go, right?

Yes and no. Like sometimes you buy a green avocado and it just stays green for, I don't know, a fucking month for some reason.
Where do you store your avocados? Countertop. Countertop.
Okay, yeah.

I mean, if I'm trying to accelerate the process, if I'm trying to, you know, again, it's very fickle. Like you're trying to control it at all times.
But I've had some that just never seem to turn.

But there's a narrow window. You'll have like a green one that won't turn on the countertop and then and then like it's ready and then next day it's too late.
It's already over.

This is like a perfect isn't that life, Joe? You know, we're just all aiming for that Goldilocks zone. The other thing I want to say though is that I loved this moment because it was like a real

him watching her make her breakfast in a way that he doesn't usually, he wouldn't think to eat that breakfast. Like she makes avocado toast, essentially.
And he's like, oh.

And so that he starts to like imitate her and do it.

And it's like the kind of experience you can't have inside of a hive mind, right?

Well, for one, avocado toast is an invention only a human could come up with. Like an open-faced sandwich, a hive mind would never.
I'm a huge fan of an avocado toast, personally.

I'm a fan, but it's like the idea. You live in LA now, Rob.
You gotta be. You gotta be into an avocado toast.
I'm drafted into it.

I mean, I like all the component parts, but there is something about it that's like, I want bread, but not that much bread. That is a very human instinct.

I just, I loved that, that him just like silently watching her and being like, oh. Oh, okay.
And then like seeming, seeming to enjoy the concoction that she puts together in his own version of it.

And it just like, it's just like one of those human pleasures that the high mind who know everything all the time would only eat those.

And in contrast to John Cena being like, this is the most efficient way to deliver caloric value versus I'm going to enjoy this yummy breakfast in a way that I've never enjoyed these combination of ingredients before because someone sitting across from me eats it a different way and I'm going to do what she did.

Like, I just thought that that was a really, like, a really nice, uh,

unarticulated human moment inside of the episode. And yet, he is waiting counting the minutes until Carol hits the the road and gleefully waiting for his harem and John Cena to return.
It's true.

It's true.

I mean, I just, I really liked all of his conversation with her where he's like, I did too. We meet twice a week on Zoom.
It wasn't a unanimous vote. Like, I would have voted for you to be part of it.

He makes a good point when he's like, people are kind of offended that you didn't invite the non-English speakers. It's fair on that front.
It's really fair, you know? Totally valid.

I think we know that when that vote happened, Lakshmi was really, really just like, you know, stumping for her. She was whipping votes.
Yeah, she was whipping votes. There's no doubt.
Exactly.

But there is something, Joe, about, you know, Carol's been lonely this whole series.

Like, you've seen her operating on her own, like desperate for human interaction to the point that she's like inviting Zosha in for a drink.

Like, she just wants people and can't find them anywhere and can't find support, certainly, from any of the unlicked who are not Kumba.

It's one thing, though, for Carol to be isolated by bizarre, like, extraterrestrial circumstances. And it's like, it's such a different gut punch to be voted out of the Zoom.
Absolutely.

You know, like there, there is, there are only a dozen or so people left in the world, and they have determined that you are so tough a hang. Right.

That they just want nothing to do with you to the point that you don't, you're the last person to figure out the big, like, world-changing secret.

Nobody thought to tell her that they're eating people. Nobody invited her to a single Zoom.
Like, nobody emailed her back when she sent out these videos to be like, babe, we already know what this is.

Honestly, devastating. And what's even more devastating is there is one person out there who is really excited to meet Carol.
And she doesn't know.

She drives home thinking she's the loneliest girl in Albuquerque. And she doesn't know that there is someone out there for her.

You know, a lid for every pot. So,

yeah, I'm excited. I mean, we don't know when or if

this season they will unite. He is, I looked it up.
It's over 4,000 miles from Paraguay to Albuquerque. So So we got some time.
And that's just like, I just put Paraguay in.

I didn't put a specific city in, which is not very accurate mapping of me. But

how long does it take to drive? It's like 3,000-ish from California to New York. Yeah.

And that's, I have never done the cross-country drive, but that's like, what, a week, right? Thereabouts. I mean, this seems like something we should actually Google maps.

So we don't receive 50 emails on this exact same thing. It depends how motivated you are.
Manusas is very motivated.

He does only seem to to have one giant tank of gas, though, and a very unreliable car. So I'm a little worried about this plan to drive all the way up through South America to get to Albuquerque.

So LA to New York, I'm seeing on Google Maps as 41 hours. And that's assuming traffic patterns and whatnot.

And I was thinking about this, too, when Carol was driving from Albuquerque to Vegas, which I think you'll see lists as like an eight-ish hour drive, basically.

But under these road conditions, I think you could cut it to six. You know, I think you could easily shave some time basically driving as fast as you are comfortable driving on an open road.

Okay, so 41 hours for 3,000 plus miles. Yeah.
So let's say it's, I can't do math and I'm not going to, but like, let's say it's 60 hours to get from Paraguay to, and like he's motivated.

So let's say he does that in like four days? Or is he not stopping to sleep at all? Is he, is Manuso so. I mean, he's got it.
You got us. If you're driving that fast, you simply have to sleep.

I'm sorry. I think he's got four days to get to Albuquerque is what I would guess.
Okay.

And based on the timeline of the show, we have flashed back, we should say, a few days earlier than everything that's going on in Vegas. Day nine into the whole thing.
Okay, that's true.

Anything you want to say about the frequency number that he that, so it's 8.613.0 is the one frequency that he has found any kind of chatter on. Yeah.

And Vince Gilligan said on the official pod that they they took they really labored over that sound effect and that Dave Porter, who was the composer for like Breaking Bad, et cetera, et cetera, engineered that sound.

Of course, they're not saying what that sound is, but that they really tried to engineer that sound. So, so what do you, any thoughts on this? Were you excited to see numbers?

I'm ready to be heard again. I'm ready for numerology.
Yeah. Like, of course, was I checking to see if they coincided with the lost numbers, Joe? My brain is just now broken in that way.

So, thank you very much.

It did just sound kind of like a trip-hop beat to me. It was like somebody could turn this into actual music.
So, it does not surprise me to hear that a composer concocted it.

But yeah, there is something kind of unidentifiably alien about it. So I guess mission accomplished, frankly.
Yeah, it's really fun. Anything else you want to say

about this episode

as a whole? One last thing, Joe. I am fascinated at this point, the way that this show has turned rules into drama.
Like all of these guidelines around what the Hive Mind can and can't do.

Like I am feeling pulled along, wanting to know what is true and what isn't, where the lines are.

You know, we already dug into some of kind of what's allowed and what's not in terms of the consent and the eggs and the potential to like harvest all these stem cells, but even just all this kind of questions and sub-questions around the food supply, I just find myself endlessly captivated by for some reason.

I love the way that Minuso's like sat, like his eyes kind of lit up when she's like, they can't lie. And he was just like, oh, interesting information, you know?

Yeah, I'm curious if our Hive Mind Defender listeners, and we welcome you,

If they harvest, and again, I don't know if one can harvest stem cells from a frozen embryo, but if one can, and if they do, is that a violation so egregious that people will be like, everyone will agree, hive mind bad, actually?

I'm already there, but like, you know, somehow I'm not so optimistic about some of the holdouts, Joe. I hope that that's the case.

But even like, even from the food supply aspect, like what we got a really interesting email from Michael who asked,

John Cena mentions on the tape that there are all these established milk farms and cows that need milking and they're able to kind of use that to complement the human protein and the remaining produce and all that stuff into their little protein shakes that they're drinking.

Yeah. But is there a reason why the hive mind wouldn't be allowed to run a chicken farm?

And especially if you operate from the perspective of like the apple dropping off the tree, does an egg not dropping out of a chicken not qualify as the same kind of thing?

Especially if it's unfertilized. Does this go back to your point of like,

where does life begin?

Joe, we're going to get there. And maybe this is the resolution point as far as like, how do we turn Zosha into a real girl again?

Maybe she needs to have so many fundamental human dilemmas. She needs to have, she needs to speed run every human argument.
Okay.

And then all of a sudden she'll be like, yeah, a hot dog is a sandwich and I'm a person again. Okay, a hot dog is not a sandwich.

Did you have anything written down for the sort of like Gilligan verse shot inside of this episode? I think it's it's the TV shot for me. Again, the very slow crawl of the TV out of the desk.

What was yours? There's a really cool shot when as we see Carol goes to sleep cradling a champagne flute, goals.

Kumba sort of pries it out of her hand and puts it on the table next to her. So when she wakes up, the camera's behind her and it's

what's called a rack shot, which is.

It like focuses on her and then it focuses on to the champagne flute where we're like looking at the room through the champagne flute that's sort of like in frame with her.

And I was, I was wondering why it was pinging so much for me. And so then I just started like googling videos on rack shots and movies and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's used a lot in Casino Royale, and it's especially used in a certain shot where Bond realizes there's something wrong with his martini and it's incredible rack shots over to the martini glass from Daniel Craig's face.

So I'm hoping that's why that's there or what a fun connection inside of this very like Bondy sort of

homage. But champagne flute, casino royale, shout out.
Anything else? I mean, money shot, I was just like empty Vegas, but like it seems that's more like a tech

solve, but still that seems very difficult to me. Oh, and I will say, kind of both ultimately.

Like the process you described, like that is quite practical and just kind of repetition until you can get the exact moment you need. Yeah.
The Westgate,

I will say I was quite proud of myself.

Shout out, I guess, Basil Mann's Elvis, where I was like, that's definitely the hotel. As soon as I saw the exterior, I was like, that's definitely the hotel that Elvis lived in.
And it is.

So, and they actually got to shoot there. So that's very cool.

And we do have to at least notice, or at least note, Kumba replacing, I'm sure, what were Elvis' portraits with giant portraits of himself, including in a resplendent neon green suit.

What room in the house, is there a room in the house that you would not put a portrait in? And would you draw the line at the bathroom?

Kumba did not, but you know, would you draw the line anywhere of like where you wouldn't put a resplendent portrait of yourself, Ramahoni? I would never put a portrait of myself in my own home.

I'm hesitant to even put like a small framed photo of myself in my own home. It's like I'm here, I know what's going on.
Like, why do I need a especially a posed portrait? What about like a family?

It's like you, your wife, your dog, like the fam, the fam, you know, that makes that makes sense. And if it's like a

representative memory in your life, I get it. If it's just you posing for a photographer

or

a portraitist of some kind, I support you. I simply cannot get on that level of self-assurance.
So if that's how you're living your life as Kumba is, then you know what? I aspire to that.

If you have giant portraits of yourself somewhere in your house, we want to know where. Lickingthedonut at gmail.com, press ETH.
Bonus points for photos. Like I would love to see them.

Absolutely, please.

I guess here's what I will say.

I would also abhor to have a portrait of myself up in the house unless, unless let's say someone i love someone who like is close to me painted like a portrait of me and i did not find it like repugnant then it would be like more

this is how someone i care about views me and i would want to have that i don't think i would put it anywhere like very obvious but i would i wouldn't like hide it in a closet i think uh that's the one So I was thinking about like

in the Last of Us episode long, long time, you know, there's like, you know, portraits you paint of your loved one or something like that. That's beautiful.

It is a very sweet gesture. And if you are a longtime listener of Joanna Robinson and would like to paint her, email us at lickingthedonut at gmail.com and I will send you her home address.

That's not what I said.

Please don't do that. All right.
Um, thank you so much to Donnie Beacham. Thanks to Justin Sales, always for his work on this feed.
Thanks to you, Rob Mahoney. Thanks, Joe.

Uh, thanks to the Clash at Demon Head, uh, repping on Rob's shirt this week. Absolutely, And we will see you all next time.
Bye.

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