this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
37 points (100.0% liked)
Pluribus
219 readers
30 users here now
A place to discuss the Pluribus series created by Vince Gilligan.
Rules:
- Be respectful to each others
- Mark spoilers from the last episode for a week since it's official premiere, by including [SPOILER] in the post title
- Don't put spoilers in the post title
Carol we wish You a great day, and remember, we will move heaven and Earth to make you happy.
founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
In a previous episode Diabaté staged a fake poker game. When he reveals his winning hand his opponent, who is supposed to be upset, can be seen clapping and enjoying the moment. Diabaté reminds him to stay in character.
I found the moment odd, why would the Hive forget to stay in character?
Seeing now how excited they were for Carol to be writing again, reading the first chapter of her new book, and coming up with theories of how the book might continue, further reveals just how much the Hive is craving something new.
It doesn't have to be 100% original, and it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be new.
We don't see how the other, non-involved, Hive acts when one of them is obtaining new information, but I could see Carol and others creating a distraction in the future by creating something new.
It's also possible that this want and desire will grow strong enough to override their base biological imperative. The Hive has already mentioned a few times that they've learned more about themselves. They may find they are able to grow into a more complex being. (Which we may have already seen with their ability to better interact with Carol.)
I rejected the analogies hive/AI until now, mostly because I believe the idea for the story started well before the current state of AI reached mainstream awareness (or well, exist in this state at all). I still think it's not a good analogy, but the hunger for new content is reminding me of the starvation of pretraining material every big AI company is feeling.
I also wasn't confident that AI played a big role in the story until now. I do think the original idea was happiness and humanity, but when you look at those ideas and start to expand on them, especially when looking at the current state of the world, a discussion of AI and the parallels are going to come up.
Does anyone else actually like the pacing? Feel like I'm mostly alone here.
I do, it's nice to have a show that has room to breathe.
Another +1 for enjoying the pacing, although it is too slow for my wife - to the point that she’s wanted to fast forward through certain sections. 😔
I like to marinate in the worlds being shown, intentional pacing like Pluribus just scratches an itch for me that few other shows have managed to.
I truly hope Apple gives Vince enough rope to be able to complete his 4 season vision as he sees fit.
I'm with you. I find the complaints about it so weird. It sounds like "I like this show but I wish it were another show". There's plenty to discuss and dislike, but the pace is such a basic part of it.
Absolutely. And I'd go so far as to say that anyone who doesn't like it is watching the wrong show. They've clearly telegraphed from episode 2 onwards that this'll be a slow moving tale, mostly about Carol. It reminds me in a lot of ways of The Leftovers. If you want answers that was the wrong show to watch, you only watch for the crazy shit and how people respond to that. Plur1bus is a lot tamer in that regard (and gives far more actual answers), but it's a broadly similar experience.
Yes, I usually feel like it was too short, so that says a lot.
I should say I really like the pacing so far. The cinematography is excellent — the director of photography did a great job — the screenwriters are strong, and the actors give excellent performances. There aren’t big cliffhangers or frantic mysteries, and it doesn’t feel rushed.
Two things shape my perspective, tho: first, the main plot feels a bit flat to me — I’m not in a rush to discover or understand the Hive. I’d like answers, but I’m not hungry for them; the visuals and atmosphere are enough for me right now. Second, I have ADHD, and slower pacing works much better for me. Complex, fast-paced shows with many characters are hard for me to follow, so Pluribus’s small cast and more deliberate pace have been a big plus.
That said, I totally get that some people might find the pace dragging — I’m definitely not one of them. Honestly, it could be even slower and I’d be happy.
I accepted it for what it is. It's a really well made enjoyable watch, but i'm not as hyped for the finale as I was for Severance S1.
I'm already more invested in this than I am in Severance
I wouldn't say I like it, but it doesn't bother me at all
I'm also surprised to find that people found this particular episode slow. The episode was perfectly paced and set up for an excellent finale.
Do I think we could have reached the finale a different and perhaps faster way, probably. But I think the pacing has given me a lot more time to think about the show and it's characters. I don't think accepting this reality can be done in just a few episodes. You need to have Carol try and fail and explore and I think you need to do that at a slower pace.
It's not just what Carol, the Hive and others do. It's living with them and understanding their choices.
For anyone interested, the telescope scene was shot at Rio Rancho Campus Park. The structure is next door to the Events Center where they filmed the sleeping scene. Probably shot the same day, probably scouted the location at the same time.
When did the hive start to laugh? Is it just a put-on to seduce Carol?
I rarely flay out laugh alone out of something that happens to me of that I think, but I do get a chuckle out of me sometimes.
Yes. Although it's possible they can laugh independently, but absent of any non-joined lifeform to bat off - they just won't.
Maybe Hive has some flexibility with their "no killing" rule. After all they drive cars and trains, and these definitely kill multiple bugs.
Carol wants "Zosia" to behave more like Zosia would, but it's just a facade, escape from the truth, that there is only Pluribus now.
I didn't understand all the cars driving by the diner, seems very inefficient. I thought they didn't do that. I think if anything, it should have been buses, and only a handful of cars, but not nearly so many of either. (Of course, it was mostly IRL traffic going by until the end of the scene.)
That was an act, like all the diners talking to each other, to immerse Carol in the memory. They did the same sort of thing for the gross dude in the casino scene, but I find it strange that they did it of their own volition this time. Maybe they really are just trying to distract her, but it feels like there is more to it.
There has to be some flexibility because how else are the Hive going to build a device to send another signal.
It's also possible that flexibility is Carol. The Hive can't pick an apple off a tree. Carol can. Only Carol can commit that sin.
The Hive wants Carol to join, but they need an unjoined Carol in order to complete their goal.
I really want to like this show, but the pace is wearing me down. It feels like they only had 7 episodes of content that they’ve spread out.
Genuinely feels like this ~9 hour season could've been a 2 hour movie. This episode had me hammering the skip 10 seconds button, I just don't care about anything happening on screen anymore...
Yes, it would have been an amazing 2 hour movie I bet.
A movie that you would have forgotten 2 hours later. The implications of a hive mind world are mulled in the silent scenes and in the days between episodes. A 2 hour movie would have felt unbearably rushed, shallow and unsatisfactory, to me. I'm also glad they didn't drop it in one whole season. I watched the first 4 in 3 days and I regret that.
To each their own.
Cheers to that.
Still don't really know where it's going, and it's clearly not expecting us to treat the minutia of the rules ultra-seriously (like how/why exactly they can't even pick apples, etc), but I'll say one thing about this show and how slow and contemplative it is: it does make you think about very interesting things and very weird feelings. Like, thoughts and emotions that are strange and ambiguous and hard to describe, while certain scenes are happening.
I like how it doesn't necessarily feel like "commenting" or coloring a particular scene as good or bad, happy or sinister. There is some coloring obviously, but it feels like it's purposefully trying to avoid it to let you kinda sit on it. There's something hard to describe with the relief and joy that Carol feels when waking up sleeping in the middle of all those people, despite the strangeness of the situation. There's something sweet and also disgusting about the diner being reconstructed, and as Carol points the manipulative nature of it, the dubious consent of taking previously individuals and using them as actors like that, the disregard for who they are, who they were. But also, if you no longer are those individuals at all, then why would you feel a sense of shame, why would feel like respecting a kind of dignity to them?
It's not for everyone but whether or not this is going somewhere satisfying or not, regardless what the ideological angle is going to be, I do like how it's filmed, I do like how it makes me sit with these strange scenarios. Normalizing a bizarre reality of non-individuality to create a contrast with our own, to be able to point to mundane human things and say "Isn't that peculiar? Isn't it interesting?".
Like how describing a native word or concept to someone else in a different language, it forces you to conceptualize it from a vantage point of "Other". You can better define yourself when you interact with someone else, and this feels like exploring 'What actually do we mean when we say "Humanity", or "Individual", or Me' with that method.
Something I haven't seen anyone mention in this thread is when they are getting massaged, Zosia mentioned there have been x number of deaths and x number of births that day. So they are clearly still reproducing and I wonder if that is just pregnancies left over from before the joining or if they are having sex and how that is happening.
I don't remember if the last ticker said 60 days or 6 months, but it definitely feels like leftover pregnancies to me. I'd be surprised if they intentionally reproduced when they are already staring down a food crisis.
That would track with more deaths than births
Also it's 60 days
Sucks that they're likely to lose viewers because they chose to go so slowly, possibly leading to the cancellation of this otherwise very good show. Most of the episodes are twice as long as they need to be, in other words we could get twice the story in the same amount of episodes they have planned with no loss of quality, and it would be a much better show.
Every scene could have been shorter, and several could have been skipped. Did we really need massage, cards, train, and diner? No.
Oh well, I'm still happy to have something decent to watch.
Season 2 is already in the works.
I doubt it will be cancelled yet. It wouldn’t surprise me if the network tells them to pick up the pace in season 2.