No big action set pieces, no new global catastrophe. Just a woman, a whiteboard, a syringe, and a planet of people who will not lie to her, even as they beg her to stop.
We start far away from Albuquerque, in a storage facility office in Paraguay. Manousos, previously just a crackly voice at the end of Carol’s unanswered phone calls, becomes an actual person: a grumpy, survivalist caretaker living off whatever he can scrounge from abandoned lockers while the Joined hover politely outside with steaming plates of food and relentless concern.
We start far away from Albuquerque, in a storage facility office in Paraguay. Manousos, previously just a crackly voice at the end of Carol’s unanswered phone calls, becomes an actual person: a grumpy, survivalist caretaker living off whatever he can scrounge from abandoned lockers while the Joined hover politely outside with steaming plates of food and relentless concern.
He treats the hive like an alien occupation, records radio traffic, refuses gifts, and licks dinner off tin lids instead. When Carol’s third call finally reaches him, it hits like a signal from another universe. Humanity may be theoretically united, but this cold open quietly insists that the real story of Pluribus is about the fringe: the holdouts, the ones who say no.
Cut back to Carol, still rattling around in the haunted politeness of post-Joining Albuquerque. She returns home from the hospital after the grenade incident, riding in a police cruiser she has essentially commandeered.
Cut back to Carol, still rattling around in the haunted politeness of post-Joining Albuquerque. She returns home from the hospital after the grenade incident, riding in a police cruiser she has essentially commandeered.
Outside her house, the Others are already sweeping up glass, fixing the yard, erasing evidence of her latest disaster with unnerving efficiency. It is the world’s tidiest aftermath of an explosion. Inside, Carol stares at her whiteboard, wipes away the Wycaro plotting notes, and writes a new title: “What I Know About Them.” That list becomes the spine of the episode. Somewhere below “they feel everything” and “they want me happy” sits an almost petty, crucial entry: “weirdly honest?”
What follows is one of the funniest, most quietly vicious interrogation scenes Vince Gilligan’s universe has produced. Carol calls in Larry, a cheerful Joined guy in bike shorts, the sort of aggressively wholesome man you would expect to hand you orange slices after a community fun run. Larry is not a character so much as a delivery system for the hive, and the show knows it. She asks him the simplest question in the world: do they like her books.
What follows is one of the funniest, most quietly vicious interrogation scenes Vince Gilligan’s universe has produced. Carol calls in Larry, a cheerful Joined guy in bike shorts, the sort of aggressively wholesome man you would expect to hand you orange slices after a community fun run. Larry is not a character so much as a delivery system for the hive, and the show knows it. She asks him the simplest question in the world: do they like her books.
The answer she gets is not simple at all.
Larry talks in circles about how her novels are an expression of her, and how they love her, therefore they love the books. Pressed, the hive gushes about her plot twists and romantic arcs, then casually recites a gown description from one of the Wycaro novels like a Goodreads review that has been tattooed onto a server farm.
Larry talks in circles about how her novels are an expression of her, and how they love her, therefore they love the books. Pressed, the hive gushes about her plot twists and romantic arcs, then casually recites a gown description from one of the Wycaro novels like a Goodreads review that has been tattooed onto a server farm.
When Carol forces them to compare Wycaro to Shakespeare, they rate them “equally” because both made people happy. It is ludicrous, and exactly the point. In the hive mind’s value system, emotional utility beats craft every time. Your pulpy fantasy romance is as “good” as Romeo and Juliet if it gets someone through a bad week.
This is where Larry becomes a deliberate echo of the Wycaro fan group from the pilot. Back then, Carol’s readers were messy, awkward humans, projecting their own lives into her paperbacks, clinging to the books because they meant something private.
This is where Larry becomes a deliberate echo of the Wycaro fan group from the pilot. Back then, Carol’s readers were messy, awkward humans, projecting their own lives into her paperbacks, clinging to the books because they meant something private.
Larry is that same devotion, scrubbed clean and run through an algorithm. He imitates fandom the way an AI imitates passion, repeating all the right sentiments without ever quite sounding like he feels them. The scene is funny, but the laugh has a metallic edge.
Carol does something incredibly brave and incredibly stupid next.
Carol does something incredibly brave and incredibly stupid next.
She gives Larry special permission to tell her what Helen really thought of her work. The hive has been holding back, honoring Helen’s old instinct to protect Carol’s ego. Now they quote her instead. Her hit series is “harmless,” like cotton candy. The serious novel she poured herself into is, at best, “meh.” It is devastating. It is also exactly what Carol asked for.
If the Others are trapped in radical honesty, she will be too. In a single beat, the episode folds critical self-loathing into the sci fi machinery and makes it hurt.
Threaded through all this is the aftershock of “Grenade.” Carol knows now that her anger does not just dent feelings. It can trigger seizures across the network, and at least ten million deaths already sit on her conscience like a second gravity well, as explored in The Astromech’s own Episode 3 breakdown of “Grenade”. She is the last unjoined human and, effectively, a weapons platform, and that horror makes her more determined than ever to find a way to undo the Joining before she hurts anyone else again.
So she takes her new data point, “they cannot lie,” and runs a courtroom test.
Threaded through all this is the aftershock of “Grenade.” Carol knows now that her anger does not just dent feelings. It can trigger seizures across the network, and at least ten million deaths already sit on her conscience like a second gravity well, as explored in The Astromech’s own Episode 3 breakdown of “Grenade”. She is the last unjoined human and, effectively, a weapons platform, and that horror makes her more determined than ever to find a way to undo the Joining before she hurts anyone else again.
So she takes her new data point, “they cannot lie,” and runs a courtroom test.
Back at the hospital, Carol asks Zosia the golden question: is there a way to reverse the formula. Zosia cannot say no. She also cannot say yes. The hive simply refuses to answer. The limit snaps into focus. The Others are honest, but not transparent. Truth is not their problem. Obedience is.
At this point the hour quietly shifts into heist mode. Carol raids the hospital pharmacy with the weary confidence of a Gilligan antihero, throwing out misdirection about heroin in order to walk away with sodium thiopental instead. She goes home, draws the curtains, and does the dirtbag scientist thing: she injects herself first.
At this point the hour quietly shifts into heist mode. Carol raids the hospital pharmacy with the weary confidence of a Gilligan antihero, throwing out misdirection about heroin in order to walk away with sodium thiopental instead. She goes home, draws the curtains, and does the dirtbag scientist thing: she injects herself first.
The resulting footage, which she later watches back on her laptop, is half comedy reel, half confession booth. She slurs, rambles, sobs about Helen, and then blurts out that she is attracted to Zosia. This is the key proof she was looking for. If the drug can pull that kind of truth out of her, maybe it can force the hive to articulate what their compulsion will not let them say.
There is a grim moral joke buried here.
There is a grim moral joke buried here.
Carol has spent three episodes raging about consent. The hive violated her mind by stealing Helen’s memories. It rearranged the planet without permission. It wants to fold her into its smiling ocean whether she wants that or not.
She has staked her entire identity on the right to say no. Yet her grand plan to save humanity is to drug another person’s body and override their ability to choose what they reveal. She will not surrender her agency, but she will borrow (?-Ed.) Zosia’s.
Pluribus does not let her off the hook. The episode plays the second hospital visit like a thriller and a tragedy at once. Carol wheels Zosia outside under the pretext of getting fresh air, sliding the liquid truth into her IV drip like a spy slipping poison into a drink.
Pluribus does not let her off the hook. The episode plays the second hospital visit like a thriller and a tragedy at once. Carol wheels Zosia outside under the pretext of getting fresh air, sliding the liquid truth into her IV drip like a spy slipping poison into a drink.
The camera lingers on the tubing, the slow feed of clear serum, the slight blur in Zosia’s eyes as the hive’s composure begins to melt. Rhea Seehorn plays Carol’s face as a stormfront: guilt, resolve, panic, all flickering at once as she tries to coax one forbidden answer out of a woman who has only ever tried to help her.
Surrounding them, the Others arrive in waves. Orderlies, patients, bystanders, all drifting in, blue shimmer in their eyes catching the light. Their mantra is simple and terrifying: “Please, Carol.” They are begging her to stop hurting Zosia, begging her to stop hurting them, begging her to stop being the one broken string in their perfect chord. The sequence is claustrophobic without ever raising its voice. By the time Zosia arrests and collapses, the whole crowd is in tears, still pleading.
Surrounding them, the Others arrive in waves. Orderlies, patients, bystanders, all drifting in, blue shimmer in their eyes catching the light. Their mantra is simple and terrifying: “Please, Carol.” They are begging her to stop hurting Zosia, begging her to stop hurting them, begging her to stop being the one broken string in their perfect chord. The sequence is claustrophobic without ever raising its voice. By the time Zosia arrests and collapses, the whole crowd is in tears, still pleading.
This is an intervention staged by an entire species, please Carol indeed.
What makes “Please, Carol” so unnerving is how calmly it keeps expanding the moral frame. On one level, this is a classic Gilligan puzzle episode.
We watch a stubborn protagonist build a plan out of scraps, test a hypothesis, and push right up against a limit she does not fully understand. On another level, the show is gently savaging her blind spots.
Carol insists she is fighting for the principle that no one should be forced into a mind they never chose..
The hour agrees that her resistance matters. It also shows her replicating some of the same violations she fears. Heroism, here, looks a lot like hypocrisy you can live with.
The episode keeps baiting us with the old science fiction equation of “needs of the many” versus “needs of the one,” then refuses to solve it cleanly. If Zosia is right and the Joining really did end war, hunger, and loneliness for billions, how much suffering is acceptable to keep Carol and the other eleven holdouts separate.
The episode keeps baiting us with the old science fiction equation of “needs of the many” versus “needs of the one,” then refuses to solve it cleanly. If Zosia is right and the Joining really did end war, hunger, and loneliness for billions, how much suffering is acceptable to keep Carol and the other eleven holdouts separate.
If Carol is right and free will matters more than bliss, how many more people have to die while she searches for a cure. The tension slots neatly beside the questions raised in The Astromech’s “Needs of the Few” essay, but “Please, Carol” wisely keeps it to a low boil.
Nobody delivers a speech.
The paradox just hangs there, between a syringe and a collapsing heart monitor.
There is also the lingering question of what, exactly, the hive represents. Critics have already pointed out how easily the Joined can be read as a metaphor for generative AI: a placid system designed to keep users emotionally regulated, constantly smoothing over friction and serving up tailored responses that mimic warmth. Episode 3 played that angle pretty broadly with the DHL guy’s willingness to fetch anything, even a nuclear weapon, if it kept Carol happy.
There is also the lingering question of what, exactly, the hive represents. Critics have already pointed out how easily the Joined can be read as a metaphor for generative AI: a placid system designed to keep users emotionally regulated, constantly smoothing over friction and serving up tailored responses that mimic warmth. Episode 3 played that angle pretty broadly with the DHL guy’s willingness to fetch anything, even a nuclear weapon, if it kept Carol happy.
“Please, Carol” refines it. Larry’s feedback on her novels feels exactly like a brand-safe AI assistant answering “Do you like my book.” All vibes, no taste, and a built in refusal to cause distress, even when distress would be honest. The showrunner has already said he thinks making the series “about AI” too explicitly would flatten it, and he is right, but the resonance is hard to ignore.
In terms of sheer craft, this might be the most confident hour of Pluribus yet. Director Zetna Fuentes leans into stillness and negative space.
In terms of sheer craft, this might be the most confident hour of Pluribus yet. Director Zetna Fuentes leans into stillness and negative space.
Manousos shuffling through dusty lockers, Carol cycling through whiteboard theories, Zosia breathing carefully through bruised ribs, all of it plays almost like a stage piece. Alison Tatlock’s script trusts the audience to connect dots: we are not spoon-fed Carol’s plan, we infer it from glances, props, and the sick logic of a person who has spent her life being told to “let go” for her own good.
The episode’s most important turn is not when the serum goes into Zosia’s line. It is the moment prior Carol realizes she can live with what that means.
Rhea Seehorn is, once again, the engine.
Rhea Seehorn is, once again, the engine.
Watch her reaction as Larry parrots Helen’s opinion of her books. There is no big breakdown, just the subtle collapse of a woman who has built her personality on the idea that she is smarter than the world, suddenly hearing that the person she loved most thought she was fine, not great. Watch her when Zosia says “you will understand when you are one of us,” and the memory of Camp Freedom Falls flashes across her face like a bad slide in a projector.
Pluribus keeps tying Carol’s queer history to her present resistance, and Seehorn is charting that line with surgical precision.
What “Please, Carol” really accomplishes is a shift in perspective.
What “Please, Carol” really accomplishes is a shift in perspective.
After “Grenade,” it might have been tempting to treat Carol as a dangerous outlier the show would eventually have to tame or punish. This episode does something more interesting. It lets her be wrong. Wrong about how far she can push Zosia without consequences. Wrong about what the hive is willing to do to protect its own. Wrong, maybe, about the idea that there is a clean victory available here at all.
But it never treats her as delusional. Her fear of assimilation remains justified. Her grief still feels volcanic. Her stubborn insistence on staying herself, even when that self is a planetary hazard, continues to be the emotional anchor of the series.
By the time the credits roll, nothing gigantic has changed.
By the time the credits roll, nothing gigantic has changed.
The Joining is still in place.
The Outstanding Twelve are still scattered. Manousos is still hiding in his storage fortress, now with confirmation that the angry American novelist on his radio is very real. Zosia is somewhere between life and death, and the hive has yet another reason to view Carol as both priceless and catastrophic.
Yet “Please, Carol” feels like a breaking point. The truth serum has done its job. It has not given Carol the formula she wanted. It has shown her, and us, how far she is willing to go, and how fragile this “weirdly honest” utopia becomes the second someone decides that honesty is not enough.
0 comments:
Post a Comment