Episodes 1 & 2, \u201cWe Is Us\u201d and \u201cPirate Lady,\u201d which are available now on Apple TV.<\/strong><\/p>\nVince Gilligan is best known for creating Breaking Bad and its spin-off Better Call Saul, but the writer-producer-director actually got his start in TV back in the \u201990s in the pulpier sci-fi\/horror trenches of The X-Files. In addition to co-creating that show\u2019s short-lived spin-off, The Lone Gunmen, and working on other genre projects, Gilligan has also made it clear over the years that he\u2019s a sci-fi fan himself, with Star Trek in particular being near and dear to his heart<\/u>.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s really no surprise that Pluribus, his new series for Apple TV, would have a science fiction bent. And while Gilligan is back in the world of weird and other-worldly concepts, he\u2019s not surprisingly bringing his distinctly dark yet humorous tone with him for what is, based on the first two episodes, a unique spin on an age-old sci-fi notion.<\/p>\n
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Better Call Saul\u2019s Rhea Seehorn teams up with her old showrunner again, starring in Pluribus as Carol Sturka, a popular Diana Gabaldon-type romance novelist who\u2019s great at interacting with her fans at book signings and the such, but who, once she\u2019s safely ensconced in her black car on the way home from such events, unleashes her real feelings about her work. \u201cShould I know who you are?\u201d her driver innocently asks. Carol responds, \u201cThat depends. Are you a big fan of mindless crap?\u201d<\/p>\n
And while her life partner and manager Helen (Miriam Shor) encourages Carol to finally finish the passion project she\u2019s been working on for years \u2013 her \u201cserious book\u201d \u2013 the problem is the entire world is about to change in a big way\u2026<\/p>\n
The first episode of Pluribus takes its time in establishing the premise of the show, which involves \u2013 reminder, this is a full spoiler review of the first two episodes \u2013 a mysterious transmission from deep space which provides humankind with an RNA formula. Long story short, the formula leads to a virus of sorts and eventually causes the minds of every person on the planet to merge into a single consciousness via a sort of \u201cpsychic glue.\u201d So yeah, it\u2019s a lot, and some viewers might find the road to get there circuitous, as we follow random astronomers and scientists as this discovery goes from strange anomaly to, essentially, an invasion of the planet.<\/p>\n
So it\u2019s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but the pod people have already won by the time our hero character even figures out what\u2019s going on.<\/div>\n
And oh, when I say every person on the planet, I have to amend that because it\u2019s actually everyone on the planet who is now part of a hive mind except<\/em> for Carol and, we\u2019re told, 12 other people from around the globe who for some unknown reason are immune to the effects of the virus.<\/p>\nSo it\u2019s Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but the pod people have already won by the time our hero character even figures out what\u2019s going on. (Resistance is futile, don\u2019t you know?) This all sets up a very interesting dynamic for the show; not only is Carol confronted with the question of how she can move forward in this strange new world, but there\u2019s also the matter of how the \u201cjoined\u201d rest of humanity will deal with her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s here that Gilligan really freshens up this take on the pod people\/Borg\/what have you. For while the Joined did cause horrific damage to the world and mass casualties (886 million dead, give or take) when they hurried up the joining process by seeding the atmosphere with the alien RNA (the military was on to them), they seemingly are a happy, go-lucky people (person?) who want nothing but the best for Carol and the other folks who are immune to its effects. As Episode 1 nears its conclusion, there\u2019s a great scene involving the Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation, who is live on C-Span just standing at a podium, quietly waiting for her to call him so they can talk. Why the Under-Secretary of Agriculture for Farm Production and Conservation? Well, because he was \u201cnearby, and intact, and he was wearing a suit.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nSeehorn is great in these moments, somehow depicting Carol as she digests not just the insanity that has erupted around her, but also the tragedy \u2013 which includes Helen dying after falling and hitting her head during the Joining. And yet there\u2019s a slightly comedic vibe at times as well, as if the preposterous nature of the situation can\u2019t wait to come out and play in future episodes.<\/p>\n
By Episode 2, Gilligan (who wrote and directed both segments) is fully embracing both the (literally) out-of-this-world concept while also having fun with it all. In an extended opening sequence, Karolina Wydra makes her debut as Zosia, a woman from the Middle East who is chosen to be a spokesperson for the Joined because she kinda looks like the hunky (male) character from Carol\u2019s romance novels (the Pirate Lady of the episode\u2019s title). Not a bad idea!<\/p>\n
In this sequence, we start to get a sense of how the Joined work, with every individual act serving a greater need. As Zosia moves from being yet another faceless participant in the clean-up effort the entire world is currently conducting, to modifying her look to be more Pirate Lady-ish, to piloting a cargo plane herself to the United States in order to meet Carol, it becomes clear that the Joined have literally every resource<\/em>, human, mechanical, and otherwise, at their disposal. And yet they just seem to want to help Carol and the 12 like her.<\/p>\nOr do they? Carol feels an obligation to restore the world, somehow, to its former self. But when she requests, and is granted, a meeting with the English-speaking members of the 12 who are immune, she is surprised to find that most of them are either in denial about the true nature of the situation, or they just don\u2019t care enough to resist the Joined. They\u2019re complacent, and as a result, complicit.<\/p>\n
Seehorn\u2019s anger and sadness as Carol really add weight to the crazy idea at the center of this show.<\/div>\n
Certainly, the Joined\u2019s constant fawning over Carol is meant to evoke how her fans once treated her, and while she was very patient with that lot, she\u2019s way less forgiving of her new fan club. Seehorn\u2019s anger and sadness as Carol really add weight to the crazy idea at the center of this show, even while Carol\u2019s biting wit and constant booze-guzzling keep us from going too far down the well of despair.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Wydra has a very difficult task as well as Zosia, a character who \u2013 as a member of the Joined \u2013 is basically a cypher, but one who we are already starting to care about all the same. As Episode 2 comes to a close and we see Zosia going off with one of the immune Others after Carol rejects her, her simple look back \u2013 in extreme wide shot, through an airplane window! \u2013 is kind of heartbreaking.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t wait to see where Gilligan goes next with this show.<\/p>\n
Questions and Notes From Kepler-22b<\/strong><\/p>\n\nPause at 51 minutes and 47 seconds and you\u2019ll see that the radio signal seemed to come from the vicinity of Kepler-22b, an exoplanet which orbits the star Kepler-22 and is some 640 light-years away.<\/li>\n I was surprised that we already met some of the other 12 immune Others in Episode 2. The question now is what\u2019s up with the ones who Carol didn\u2019t meet yet?<\/li>\n Will we get some flashbacks here or there to the before times? Certainly Gilligan has done that with past projects. I\u2019d like to see more of Miriam Shor as Helen for one thing.<\/li>\n Speaking of which, what a cruel twist that not only did Helen die because of the Joining, but she also joined <\/em>herself right before passing.<\/li>\nI may continue to review Pluribus on a weekly basis if you guys seem to want it (and the show remains interesting). So let me know in the comments!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\nRead Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Full spoilers follow for Pluribus Episodes 1 & 2, \u201cWe Is Us\u201d and \u201cPirate Lady,\u201d which are available now on Apple TV. Vince Gilligan is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1419,8514,669,28,318],"class_list":["post-9599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech-gadgets-reviews","tag-ign","tag-pluribus","tag-premiere","tag-review","tag-series","wpcat-32-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}