Multiple buses

So there’s this new TV series I was curious about and since I finally found the time to watch it, I just thought I would share some thoughts. Mind you, it’s by the creator of Breaking Bad, but that is not the reason I was interested; its more because I had an idea for a story that involved a ‘hive mind’ so I just wanted to check out other interpretations on the theme.

Overall, I think Pluribus is a decent series with some interesting world building ideas and dynamics; it is however excessively slow in certain points (which I usually don’t mind, but these ones don’t add much of anything) and by the end of the first season I was left with no sense of any real progression.

For those who haven’t seen it, the premise is that a type of virus (of extraterrestrial origin) reaches Earth as a DNA sequence; upon being replicated, it ends up infecting almost all of humanity (except 13 people) and making everyone part of a collective mind. This hive mind however acts with the utmost efficiency, making humanity behave like a perfect machine. There would be a lot to talk about here, especially considering that on the one hand there is the loss of individuality but on the other there is the representation of true unity. I however think that this would be much more interesting as a conversation point than just me rambling on about it.

I will say that I tend to overanalyze everything and saw in several moments of the series a certain satire directed towards the use of AI in general. Hints of this can be seen in how certain characters of those who kept their individuality interact with what is now seemingly a soulless version of humanity and just want to be told their version of the truth. But that may be just me.

So why did I start writing this in the first place? Well, I wanted to rant – not much, mind you – but there are some things that I just had to say. Regardless, this comes from a certain degree of appreciation since I do think that Pluribus had so much more potential than the mere nuances it explored.    

          To get one thing off my chest, Carol, the main protagonist, is simply obnoxious. I mean, I get that the entirety of humanity as she knew it has pretty much just vanished and she is dealing with a lot, but damn, get a grip. The characterization is just all over the place: she is meant to be both independent as well as show signs of either empathy or weakness and her choices don’t make a lot of sense. She never admits to being wrong and says thank you only once in episode 8. Furthermore, her ‘love story’ just seems placed in the series as a ‘just because’.

What truly bugs me is that Carol is a writer and almost never actually asks the collective hive mind for any relevant information. The question of agency is never truly pushed forward, she never inquires how reproduction works for the collective – or if they need/want to reproduce – or how they perceive entertainment. The question of feelings is only addressed towards the end and is limited by a vague notion of them ‘feeling everything’ but also having to compartmentalize because all at once would be ultimately unbearable. There are so many things this concept could have portrayed, but the series just doesn’t seem to care. And I am sorry, but as a writer, having the literal embodiment of otherness in front of you and not being a tad more curious, is just out of my comprehension (I get that the plot is meant to go in a specific direction, but still).

All in all, we’ll just have to see if a second season will actually use the building blocks of the first one to make a more compelling narrative.