*****SMILEY-FACED SPOILERS!*****

The trailer for AppleTV’s new sci-fi series “Pluribus” (Latin for many) had me hooked for several reasons; creator/producer/director Vince Gilligan (“The X-Files,” “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul”), lead actress Rhea Seehorn (“Better Call Saul”) and a not-unfamiliar sci-fi idea of a shared human consciousness. The plans to create a unique RNA molecule has been downloaded from deep space and distributed around the globe which unwittingly creates a peaceful, harmonious hive-mind for billions of people worldwide. Under this alien mental ‘glue,’ all thoughts, abilities, talents, etc are shared collectively–an involuntary biological internet. Race, gender, nationality, religion, etc all become meaningless, as humanity transforms into a single, unified consciousness. Everyone now speaks every language, and possesses all of humanity’s skillsets. There are no wars, no murders, no assaults, no crime. An act against one is an act against all.

Author Carol Sturka (Seehorn) is a successful writer of cliched romance novels who is a proud malcontent. Carol’s entire universe is changed overnight when the alien virus is unleashed. Over 886 million people can’t handle the virus, and are instantly killed–including Carol’s publicist, manager and closeted life partner, Helen (Miriam Shor). When the chaos settles, the billions of surviving humans share a single, unified consciousness–except for Carol, who seems immune. The hive reaches out to Carol by name, but she resists their outreach. Despite Carol’s fierce opposition to these “pod people,” she learns her own enraged outbursts towards them unknowingly kill millions at a time. This forces Carol to curb her outrage. Through a liaison named Zosia (Karolyne Wydra), Carol learns that eleven (known) people on Earth are also immune to the RNA transmission, and she asks to meet the five of them who speak English.

The first two episodes of “Pluribus” (“We Is Us,” “Pirate Lady”) were written and directed by creator Gilligan. For the following reviews, I used the AppleTV short synopses with my own captions and observations, followed by the ‘Summing It Up’ section.

Episode 1: “We Is Us.”

An astronomer’s discovery turns the world upside down. Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), a curmudgeonly novelist, is terrified by this strange new world.

Note: You’d think series creator-writer-director Vince Gilligan might be an Albuquerque, New Mexico native, given how it figures so prominently in “Breaking Bad,” “Better Call Saul,” and now “Pluribus.” Truth is, the city offered great tax incentives to the production of “Breaking Bad,” and Gillian (a native of Virginia) fell in love with its stark desert vistas. The opening scenes of “Pluribus” (when the alien RNA ‘recipe’ is received) take place at the radio telescopes of New Mexico’s Very Large Array (VLA), which was also used for the movies “2010: The Year We Make Contact” (1984) and “Contact” (1997). Having attended many book signing events in my lifetime, the scene with Carol ending her book tour at a Barnes & Noble rang very true, right down to the occasional cringe questions from fans.

Note: Given the current draconian rollbacks to LGBTQ+ rights during the past year here in the United States, it makes sense that Helen and Carol kept the true nature of their partnership on the down low, though it’s presented in-story for more commercial reasons, since the majority of Carol’s readership appear to be straight women vicariously living through her romance novels.

Note: The hospital scene feels right out of a zombie apocalypse movie, as patients and staff go through a seizure-like ‘reboot’ before achieving their hive-mind status. The various fires and sparking utility poles also add greatly to the chaotic feel of this scene. When the hospital staff and patients ‘recover,’ they are now part of a hive mind–which will soon make hospitals redundant, since almost every human being on Earth would be their own qualified doctor now, as Carol learns in the next episode when she questions a young boy about the correct method for a pelvic exam.

Note: After the heartbreaking death of Helen, we see a sudden transition from chaos to order among the now hive-minded locals. The transition feels like an homage to the classic Star Trek episode, “Return of the Archons,” where the computer-run residents of the planet Beta III are allowed a night of uncontrolled “festival” before returning to mind control the next morning and dutifully cleaning up after themselves. Given that creator/writer Vince Gilligan is a huge Star Trek fan, this wouldn’t surprise me at all. Even during her book tour, Carol mentions that one of her own novel’s passages reads like a bad episode of Star Trek.

Note: Carol being addressed directly through the television by the government official at the presidential lectern (Peter Bergman) is a surreal moment that feels almost like something out of Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” (1998). It’s a haunting and isolating moment, followed by an overwrought Carol curling up in a fetal position on her couch, with the body of her dead lover wrapped in a blanket on the floor only a few feet away. Rhea Seehorn is simply amazing in this pilot. She was born to lead a series.

Episode 2: “Pirate Lady.”

A curiously familiar face introduces Carol to the bizarre new normal. A gathering in Europe brings strangers together…and causes friction.

Note: The episode opens with the introduction of Zosia (Karolyne Wydra), who is an impoverished woman in a remote country who, through the cooperation of the hive mind, is able to receive her ‘orders,’ grab a scooter, and then fly an airplane to the United States. There, she strips off her filthy tunic dress and showers before changing into business attire and a fresh face to meet Carol. Zosia’s introduction is a perfect shorthand illustration of how this new cooperative hive mind works; you need a resource, someone hands it to you, or you simply borrow it until someone else needs it. As for Zosia stripping nude in public, modesty would be as obsolete as money or passports in this ‘brave new world.’ Zosia’s relationship to Carol is like a human resources manager; always helpful, while carefully avoiding unpleasant subjects, such as enumerating exactly how many people died from Carol’s rage-induced outburst.

Note: While the first season of “Pluribus” was lensed and wrapped over a year ago, the scene at a nearly empty Albuquerque airport feels strangely relevant today, as thousands of flights in the United States are being cancelled due to a lack of TSA personnel and air traffic controllers in the wake of the current government shutdown.

Note: The five immune English speakers were smartly chosen from the most populous countries on Earth, such as China and India, since sixty percent of the world’s population hails from Asia. I remember reading a news story which featured a search for the ‘most average human’ on Earth; that person turned out to be a 28-year old Chinese man, who shared his exact demographic with nine million others.

Note: Koumba Diabaté (played by Dutch-Mauritanian born actor/comedian Samba Schutte) takes advantage of the current situation almost like a “last man on Earth” scenario, as seen in movies such as “The Omega Man” (1971) or “Dawn of the Dead” (1978/2004), where a last person (or persons) alive enjoys nearly unlimited resources. Another upside is that Koumba isn’t surrounded by flesh-eating zombies, either–only a hive-mind which can provide a harem of supermodel class-women for Koumba whenever he desires. I assume switching sexualities for a hive-mind body wouldn’t matter either, since there’d be no innate sexual orientations anymore; only rented bodies used by a collective psyche with the entire spectrum of human sexuality behind it.

Note: Unlike the pod people from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the hive-minded humans of “Pluribus” are not invasive, aggressive creatures who’ve landed on our planet to steal our identities and rob our planet’s resources. They’re regular human beings, but with a “metal glue” that’s been created from RNA molecules sequenced in human laboratories. True, the signal with the RNA instructions was transmitted from 600 light-years away, but no aliens told humans to recreate it. Those instructions could’ve been archived in a NASA vault and forgotten after a few press conferences.

Note: The outdoor lunch in the hills of Bilbao, Spain (probably filmed in New Mexico somewhere) is where Carol attempts to reach Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne) by questioning her young son about the rights and wrongs of a pelvic exam. This elicits Laxmi’s outrage, as she forgets her son has all gynecological and other medical expertise of the human race whizzing through his underage cranium. Imposing age restrictions for hive-minded children would be useless.

Note: Koumba’s sudden move to take Zoshia with him to Las Vegas seems motivated only because he can. This is something I’ve read in common with people of excessive means (i.e. billionaires). Enough is never enough. Koumba’s ‘wealth’ came only through this bizarre current windfall, but he already has the compulsion to continue ‘collecting.’ Koumba has a harem of supermodels, but now he wants Zoshia too, only because he recognizes her implicit value to Carol.

Note: Carol has decided that Zosia, her admittedly useful (and potentially weaponized) liaison to the hive-mind, is better than having no companionship at all. I’m curious to see where this goes in the next episode…

Summing It Up

Given that creator Vince Gilligan is a huge Star Trek fan, it’s not much of a stretch to find the roots of “Pluribus” in such classic Trek episodes such as “This Side of Paradise” (the mind-freeing spores of Omicron Ceti 3) and “Return of the Archons” (the mind-controlling computer Landru). Or even the various versions of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1956/1978/2007), which is referenced multiple times. It’s not that “Pluribus” has the most original premise (no such thing, really). The trick lies in its clever execution. Given the sad state of our world today, with endless wars, violence, famine, etc, I sometimes wonder what it’d be like if humanity could simply shed all of that time-and-resource draining self-harm–like dirt under a hot shower. Unlike other ‘pod people’ sci-fi movies, “Pluribus” thoughtfully examines the other side of the equation.

Typically, a character like Carol–with her tenacious grip on individuality–would make her the Captain Kirk of this story. Despite the hive mind telling Carol they’re working on ‘curing’ her immunity, they do not appear otherwise hostile or forceful, just omniscient. Everyone on the planet is now a genius too, given that humanity’s collective information is spread across billions of people in a biological internet. I wonder if there are still developmental challenges, or is everyone automatically operating at a genius level? Is everyone now omnisexual as well? Modesty has also vanished, because why would anyone need privacy if they automatically knew the deepest secrets and even perversions of everyone else? Only two episodes in, and Vince Gilligan has given his audience a lot of philosophical meat to chew on… even for vegetarians.

Despite its own violent birth, this new order finds killing even an insect antithetical to their shared consciousness; with empathy for life seemingly above all else. In a way, “Pluribus” is like an exercise in mental eugenics, with uniqueness and imperfections (the essences of humanity) made insignificant and obsolete. Despite the hive mind’s outward benevolence, it’s our fear of losing those darker flecks of our identities–those spaces we prefer to keep unlit–that makes a hive mind so terrifying. Sure, it’d be great to get behind the controls of a jet and instinctively know how to fly it, but what does one lose in the bargain? Privacy, individuality, and perhaps, ultimately, our precious, cherished ability to be alone if we choose. As ‘beneficial’ as the world of “Pluribus,” might seem, it’s an introvert’s worst nightmare.

Another plus for this series is the always-brilliant Rhea Seehorn as Carol, who is perfect ambassador for all of humanity’s tormented and conflicting impulses. As the only American among the world’s few remaining immune humans, Carol is a last vestige of American exceptionalism at a time of unprecedented social upheaval. Can Americans still cling to their inherently individualistic (and often violent) nature as being the ‘best’ way forward, when that notion has been (repeatedly) proven to ring hollow?

That the first two episodes of “Pluribus” have opened with such power, self-reflection and insight makes it one of the most instantly intriguing sci-fi series offerings I’ve seen in awhile. Count me assimilated.

Where to Watch

“Pluribus” is available to stream exclusively on AppleTV.