“The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness,” captures the essence of Vince Gilligan’s latest stellar addition to his hit TV shows: Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and The X-Files. This tagline, used by Apple TV+ to summarize the series, is ripe with irony, staying true to Gilligan’s signature aesthetic of bizarre storytelling. The show has received widespread critical acclaim, with a mind-blowing 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The running theme in Gilligan’s cinematic enterprise seems to be his fixation on the corruption of human nature by external forces of contemporary society. Breaking Bad depicts a high school chemistry teacher’s appalling double life as a drug overlord, and Better Call Saul instead explores the moral degeneration of a public defense attorney into an egocentric and flamboyant criminal defense attorney. These common human complexities share resemblances to Pluribus’s paradoxical question about whether constant happiness is truly the greater good of the world, or a silent killer instead.
Pluribus, however, is an odd one out as it shifts from the crime genre that characterized most of his works to centering on an apocalyptic thriller. Pluribus begins as science fiction, revolving around an alien virus that has caused all humans to embrace an optimistic hive mind. Only thirteen people are immune to this persistent state of bliss, otherwise known as ‘the Joining,’ one of whom is the eternally cynical American romantasy author Carol Sturka, played by Rhea Seehorn. Seehorn is no newcomer to the Gilligan world.
Her portrayal of the hilariously pessimistic Carol, whose dry wit serves as her means of navigating her discontent with the world, represents a significant transformation from the fierce and driven Kim Wexler of Better Call Saul. This versatility of hers is evident in her deliberate acting style, which balances the show’s dark humor with moments of genuine terror, confusion, and despair. This portrayal establishes her as the everyman in this storyline – torn between preserving her individuality by resisting the collective identity embraced by the majority, or cleansing her unresolved trauma through the hope for betterment that the hive mind provides
What makes the show stand out, however, is the unfolding of the plot in a way that each episode provides gradual clues and questions, evoking suspense that is bound to hold your attention. Gilligan’s emphasis on prolonged moments of silence over excessive music or continuous dialogue not only emboldens its undertones of mystery, it also cements Carol’s pandemic-like isolation, which is in juxtaposition to the cheery yet monotonous choruses of the infected people. The automated nature of the infected characters, as they act endlessly content and agreeable, mirrors the curated reality of AI bots, which filter content online to present a positive image. These underlying concerns of modern technology that are exposed in Pluribus will encourage healthy discussion on its influence in our lives, forcing us to reassess the extent to which it is slowly eating away at our authenticity and free will.
Steaming on Apple TV+ with episodes released weekly, Pluribus’s exciting combination of originality, realism, and the outlandish to weave a thought-provoking tale makes it worth watching.
