‘Pluribus’ TV Review: Rhea Seehorn is the Worst Person in the World [A]
It’s been three years since Vince Gilligan’s acclaimed series Better Call Saul finished its six season run, expanding the story of Saul Goodman from his previous series, Breaking Bad. Both shows established Gilligan as a pronounced storyteller, Saul a prequel series expanding on the titular, beloved character from Breaking Bad that further allowed Gilligan’s exploration into the fictional criminal underground of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Gilligan is back with Pluribus, a genre-bending series about a woman left to her own devices when the rest of the world comes together without her.
Pluribus sees past Gilligan collaborator Rhea Seehorn (Better Call Saul) as Carol, a fantasy romance author – who’s quite popular and has garnered herself an intense group of fans – that dwells in her own misery. Her latest book tour nor her adoring partner, Helen (Miriam Shor, Younger), bring her any happiness; she moves through life with a deep malcontent. Her life is upended when a signal from space that changes nucleotides in human RNA sequencing is spread amongst humanity like a disease and makes a major change. As it quickly moves through the people around her during a night out, Carol watches everyone become incapacitated in unison before returning to normal – well, their new normal. The entire Earth has Joined together to create a unified mind that mentally bonds everyone. Carol watches in horror as the people around her refer to themselves as “we” and become a collective. Unfortunately, during the Joining, not everyone made it, including Helen, whose body seemed to shut down during the change. Carol is now alone in a world bound together.
Fortunately for Carol, the Others have made it their primary goal to make her happy. They give her any information she’s inquisitive about while also bringing her food and anything else she asks for. Through the Others, she finds out there are 12 people like her around the world that didn’t undergo the Joining for reasons unknown to the Others, which they’ve explained to Carol is at the forefront of their mind. Her hasty frustration with everything around her provides hilarious moments while speaking to the Others, who mostly speak to Carol through Zosia (Karolina Wydra, Sneaky Pete), chosen due to her physical similarity to the main character of Carol’s book series, thought to provide lightness to their messages. Small details like this one in addition to the already-searing discomfort of her new reality keep Pluribus focused on getting laughs in the midst of the novel trauma Carol is experiencing in real time. It’s a tightrope act that the series walks the entire seven episodes provided to critics for review, shifting through genre with ease. The series never weighs down the audience with too much grief at once, allowing sadness to simmer underneath the surface of every laugh without overpowering each moment.
She discovers that the severity of her emotions can stiffen the Others, incapacitating them for random amounts of time; yelling at the Hive can cause the entire Earth to shut down. She’s determined to piece everything together, to find an answer for every question she has, so she gets the Others to bring together the other English-speaking people who were not affected by the Joining. Though Carol hopes for camaraderie in this bizarre situation, everyone else seems undisturbed by the new state of the world and still believing the people they love are in control of their minds still. They haven’t lost what she has, so surely they don’t understand the gravity of the situation like Carol does. Most of their families are still intact, their loved ones close, though now fully Joined with the Others. The most frustrated woman on Earth only becomes more exasperated with the situation as each day passes.
Pluribus is perceptively curious about the depths of solitude one woman finds herself in while attempting to navigate her new circumstances. The loss of Helen is a jolt to Carol’s system that provides aftershocks of grief during her journey to figuring out how to reverse what’s been done. Perhaps the feeling of Helen’s thumb across the back of her hand was the only thing to provide her any solace in her dissociated world prior to the Joining, but she doesn’t even have that now. She fills her days with her demands being granted, no matter how silly, dangerous, or absurd the request is, but there’s no end in sight to the loneliness that has started to creep into her life. She was miserable before the Joining, unable to find happiness in anything, now condemned to live life without anyone but the Others. She makes things harder for herself, including her investigation into the truth of the situation, because of her inability to control her emotions. Seehorn commands the screen, giving a hilarious performance that gives way to a more solemn reflection on life without interaction. Even someone like Carol needs to be heard and seen.
Each episode is paced perfectly as Carol uncovers more information about the new world. There’s one other person not affected by the Joining that she hasn’t been able to get in touch with, whose own journey to find community and others might prove to be more perilous than the road traveled by Carol. Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga, The Luckiest Man in America) is in Paraguay and distrusts the Others, and while Carol has hilariously tried multiple times to communicate with him, she hasn’t had any success yet. She seeks information, but can only move as quickly as the Others will allow, especially once she finds herself distanced from them slightly more. The solitude quietly eats at her, but she’s clearly coming undone quickly. She lost the only person in the world that she felt safe with, only to be now surrounded by the rest of the world joined together at the brain. Even with them doing anything she needs, it doesn’t provide her with the comfort that the presence of another can.
With an incredible lead performance from Rhea Seehorn coupled with a hilarious premise that defies expectation, Pluribus is one of the best shows of the year. It shifts through genre with ease and only bolsters itself with each passing episode. Funny, incisive, and wildly original, it’s one of Apple’s strongest series and a great new entry into their catalogue. Out of the many shows you’ll see this year, this is the one you won’t forget.
Grade: A
The nine-episode season of Pluribus will debut globally on Apple TV with its first two episodes on Thursday, November 6, followed by new episodes every Friday through December 26.
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