In Pluribus Episode 8, Carol Is Finally Asking The Right Questions
Spoilers for "Pluribus" episode 8 follow.
In tracking responses to and discourse around "Pluribus," it seems like many viewers are frustrated that Carol (Rhea Seehorn) isn't asking the hive-minded Others more questions about how they function. The Others are quite forthcoming; as Carol discovered in episode 6, "HDP," all the other immune survivors learned about the Others' "Soylent Green" like eating habits by just asking them, whereas Carol did grueling detective work.
Well, in episode 8, "Charm Offensive," Carol has (as the title suggests) swapped out her stick for a carrot. The last "Pluribus" episode's uneventful but excellent story hammered in the boredom Carol was feeling as literally the only person left in Albuquerque. So, she called the Others and Zosia (Karolina Wydra) in particular. She's started acting more friendly towards them and is using her time with Zosia to ask questions without seeming suspicious.
For example, Carol organizes massages for her and Zosia so she can ask how the Others feel; do they feel the physical sensations of literally everyone on Earth, simultaneously? When they're stargazing, Carol asks Zosia what the Others know of the planet the virus came from, Kepler 22-b (almost nothing, it turns out).
Throughout the episode, after getting an answer, Carol writes it on the whiteboard list of things she knows about the Others (the one she first started assembling back in episode 4, "Please, Carol"). Carol starts the episode thinking that she's gathering the information against enemies; she writes "They eat people" on her whiteboard and underlines it, as if to remind herself to see past the Others' niceness. As the episode goes on, though, it asks you to consider who's running the real charm offensive.
Has Carol been seduced by Zosia and the Others?
About halfway through the episode — after the Others recreate the long-closed diner where Carol first began writing — she's overcome with split emotions. Her personal warmth towards the Others is incompatible with her disgust at how they've changed the world. So, she surrenders and finally hooks up with Zosia. The next morning, she shares the first chapter of her next "Winds of Wycaro" book with Zosia, who loves it. (She does have all the "Wycaro" fans alive inside her head.)
Unrestrained by the need to please a market or a heteronormative world, Carol has made her pirate rogue lead Raban into a woman, the way she always wanted to. Carol has rediscovered her passion for writing, whereas in the first episode before the Joining, her success was only bringing her misery.
By the end of the episode, Carol and Zosia are playing house. Zosia even begins to speak with the pronoun "I" and recalls a specific memory of her own childhood. Carol is warming to the Others, and in turn, her individuality might be rubbing off on them, or at least Zosia. Then again, Carol is also shown looking pointedly out her window at her wife Helen's (Miriam Shor) grave; Helen's death left a void in Carol's life, and she's filling it with Zosia.
Like other hive mind-centered narratives, "Pluribus" is a story that questions whether blissful coexistence or messy individuality is preferable, and Carol is finally starting to see the former side's argument. I think Carol values her individuality too much to ever want to join the Hive, but she might be becoming more like Mr. Diabaté (Samba Schutte) and willing to enjoy the brave new world as it is.
"Pluribus" is streaming on Apple TV.