In the latest show from “Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan, the crime genre gives way to a bewildering mix of science fiction and noir. Soaked in obvious inspirations from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” to less obvious expressions of James Ward Byrkit’s “Coherence,” Gilligan’s new Apple TV+ series begins with Best-Selling author Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) reading the latest novel of her best-selling book series to a crowd of fans. She dutifully signs and takes photos, but after the signing is over, she tells her driver her work is “mindless crap.”
Away from fans and cloaked in the darkness of a car, she looks despondent, not as if she hated the fans she spent the night with, but as if she hated the facade she had to put on when reading passages of her own work.
Somewhere else in the world, a scientist is bitten by a rat. As she begins disinfecting her hands, her body seizes violently, and a childlike yet uncanny smile takes over her face. When Carol and her partner Helen (Miriam Shor) stop at a bar for a drink on their way home from Carol’s book tour, the bodies of the other patrons seize up in the same way…except for Carol’s. As the city beyond them becomes set ablaze and a massive blackout occurs across the world, it becomes clear that an outbreak of some kind is affecting the earth’s inhabitants. But instead of a typical zombie virus or plague, Gilligan offers us a refreshingly different type of outbreak: a virus that makes everyone on earth happy.
The problem is that Carol may be the unhappiest person in the world. Beyond her dissatisfaction with the world-renowned book series she’s created, there’s a deep-rooted discontent that lies within her, eyes squinting with suspicion and jabs falling out of her mouth before she can even think of stopping them. But it’s not all roses around the world either, and Carol may not be as alone as she thinks she is. As the days tick on, Carol is visited by Zosia (Karolina Wydra), who remains her guide and chaperone to Carol’s displeasure, and who reveals to Carol that she’s not the only one whose body wasn’t co-opted by this virus.
Here is where the noir inspirations begin. Desperate to understand what makes her and a select few different from the rest of the world, Carol starts scouring the city for clues about anything outside the new normal in which she’s found herself. She spends her nights barking at the sounds of wolves in the distance, breaking into various buildings, and drinking her sorrows away. These moments, though they come towards the back half of the series, are cloaked in harsh neon lights, unlike the sunny backdrop present when Carol’s moves are being surveilled in the daytime. It’s a welcome change from the sterile environment she’s been forced to inhabit, where the hue of the sky appears too blue and the houses in her neighbourhood blend to create a mimicry of each other.
In her search for answers, Carol wears herself to the bone in an attempt to find a way to put the world back the way it was, before she inevitably becomes an unwilling participant in this new version. While there are a handful of other characters in “Pluribus,” it is mostly a one-woman show, run by a phenomenally sharp Seehorn. As Carol buckles under the new information she receives each day, her eyes strain under an invisible yet present weight. With each day, her resolve wavers even further, breaths harshly, heaving her chest like she’s trying to keep a wild animal buried inside her.
Carol’s unhappiness began long before the outbreak, and we get small hints that she’s been plagued by darkness for decades, which has since spawned into a harsh outlook on the world and the people that inhabit it. Each time she leaves the house, a resounding “Hi Carol!” is cheered from the mouths of each person she encounters. Yet Carol takes this greeting as a threat, jumping away from the people who seem as if they want to help her, and sneering whenever their sickly sweet voices offer her help.
While Seehorn undeniably commands the screen on her own, Carol’s relationship with her chaperone is one of the series’ many highlights. The former’s hard shell is impossible to crack, yet Zosia is persistent, as are all of the newly infected people on earth. Her smile never wavers, and her soft voice never grows cold despite Carol’s increasing paranoia and verbal abuse. There’s a push-and-pull present between them that is fascinating to watch, and slowly, it becomes clear that although Zosia represents everything Carol is supposed to hate, there’s something about the woman that feels familiar, as if a piece of the old world can still exist within this new one.
With all conflict gone from the world, it becomes clear that Carol’s hatred for her work, its consumers, and even for herself was fueling her to go on in life, and with all of that gone, she no longer has a purpose. At the end of the world, with the desolate Albuquerque desert staring back at her, Carol must come to terms with her new reality. Instead, she creates a new one—one steeped in conspiracy and filled with villains out to get her. For some time, it feels like all is well, but as she dives deeper into the outbreak and its origins, perhaps her paranoia isn’t so misguided after all.
As the story unfolds, “Pluribus” quickly shapes up to be one of this year’s most complicated and thrilling television series, which, with a second season already in the works, has the potential to define this decade like Gilligan’s previous series defined the beginning of the century.
Seven episodes were screened for review. “Pluribus” premieres on Apple TV+ on November 7th.
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