Review: Pluribus (S1) – Alone with the world
Created by Vince Gilligan
Starring Rhea Seaborn, Karolina Wydra, Carlos-Manuel Vesga
8.5/10
What if you had a relationship with everyone in the world at once? This is the perplexing concept behind Pluribus, an unusual sci-fi apocalypse show, tinged with a dose of humour and plenty of anxiety, that manages to get so much out of its originality. What sets it apart so much from similar apocalyptic worlds we’ve seen is that this one appears to be one that’s resulted in world peace, a utopia characterised by no individuality.
Acclaimed romance fiction novelist Carol (Rhea Seaborn) suddenly finds herself “alone” in the world when an extraterrestrial virus spreads itself throughout all of humanity, bringing everyone together in a hive mind—all the memories and knowledge are now shared by every single person, even children. This results in a sudden utopian shift, where everyone starts working together, with all war and violence now eradicated.
This may sound like good news. But to Carol, she’s aghast by this very strange new shift in humanity, especially as millions of people died (including her wife) when it occurred. As she tries figuring out a way to reverse the process, the hive-mind population tries figuring out a way to convert her and the twelve others that remain unaffected.
And this results in one of the absolute strangest and most original relationships to be shown in a TV show—Carol with the rest of the world. The avatar they use for communication is Zosia (Karolina Wydra), modelled after the protagonist of her romance novel series. She, and everyone else in the world, gives Carol the creeps with their ‘customer service’ smiles and reassurance that they will, and can, get her whatever she desires. It’s this apocalyptic niceness that really sets the tension of the show and sustains it so damn well.
For a show with such a complex concept that’s yet so driven by its central character, the ball would’ve really been dropped if there was not a capable actress at the centre of it. Rhea Seaborn absolutely delivers, being able to hold her own against everyone else in the world. She does a terrific job with handling the many, many facets of her role: the confusion, the grief, the resentment, the crazed loneliness, and even the humour and the mild alcoholism. It was exciting to see Vince Gilligan choose to go with his Better Call Saul muse with his new show, and she delivers such a different but equally fantastic performance.
This is an entirely different beast from that show and Breaking Bad (though not in terms of quality). Those shows certainly delivered the palpable amounts of anxiety, though in a grounded setting with the intense dealings of criminals and lawyers. The anxiety in Pluribus is on the existential side, its global scenario feeling more nightmarish the friendlier it appears to be. This is a fascinating show for how it makes you think about how you yourself would act in this setting and how you’d feel about humanity if we could trade all of the world’s problems for our individuality.
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN