Vince Gilligan’s science-fiction series makes compulsory happiness an unsettling prospect, with Rhea Seehorn giving its questions a stubborn human centre. We recommend it, though the slow pace sometimes outlasts the pleasure of thinking things through.
Pluribus is worth the patience it asks for, though it asks for more than it needs. Vince Gilligan’s science-fiction series imagines a virus joining humanity into a peaceful shared mind, then puts a miserable novelist outside it. Carol Sturka is immune, and the collective would like to make her happy. There is plenty to dislike about that prospect without deciding that misery is a virtue. The series makes a persuasive case for taking Carol’s objections seriously even when she is difficult company.
Rhea Seehorn makes Carol’s resistance funny, exhausting and painful, often within the same stretch of performance. She can give the anger enough force to dominate our attention, then let the unhappiness behind it become harder to ignore. The humour does not tidy her up into a lovable grump, and Seehorn lets her be abrasive without asking us to approve of every objection. That movement between comedy and distress gives us a reason to care about what might otherwise become a lengthy discussion of personal freedom.
The collective is unsettling because its wish to please Carol seems so reasonable to those making the offer. We felt hemmed in by that eagerness to make her happy: even her discontent becomes something for other people to put right. Gilligan and fellow writer Gordon Smith get useful drama from the possibility that help can be unwanted. They also leave us with an awkward question about Carol, whose immunity does not automatically make her a sound judge of everyone else.
Paul Donachie and Marshall Adams’s cinematography gives this premise the patience it needs. We have time to consider the changed world and Carol’s place in it, which matters when the threat is so difficult to point at. Denise Pizzini’s production design makes the promised utopia credible enough to be troubling. Dave Porter’s music helps sustain the unease without becoming the main reason for it. The wish to please is already disturbing, and the craft works best when it lets that remain the thing we notice.
The pace is the reservation. Editors Skip Macdonald, Chris McCaleb and Joey Liew allow the story to develop slowly, sometimes too slowly. Once we have understood the disagreement between Carol and the collective, further time spent weighing it does not always deepen it. The early episodes can leave us waiting for the story to develop while the central idea receives another patient inspection. We wanted a firmer cut in those stretches, without losing the time Seehorn needs to make Carol more than a position in a debate.
As science fiction, the series benefits from refusing the comfort of an easily identifiable villain. A peaceful collective presents a harder problem than an enemy whose bad intentions announce themselves. The premise invites us to weigh what people might gain from belonging, as well as what Carol stands to lose. The writing occasionally struggles to find enough for its characters to do while those questions remain open.
We recommend it for Seehorn and for the uncomfortable seriousness with which it considers a supposedly happy outcome. The slowness will test anyone looking for regular jolts or swift answers. There is black humour here, but little interest in making Carol easy company. Start it when there is no need to hurry.
