A Review of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus
This review spoils the whole show.
A new genre of subtly post-woke cinema and television is emerging. While these works might not be nakedly reactionary or openly criticize leftism, they find ways to quietly signal that the creators hold serious concerns regarding wokeness. That is, they deny the validity of political correctness and the communistic ethic of global progressivism. Or, at the very least, the creators are willing to nod at those in the audience who do, while maintaining plausible deniability for themselves.
There are a lot of variables here. We assume that this type of politically expedient esotericism is being practiced here and there in the media industry. Still, if we can only detect this from subtle clues, it might be too easy for a reviewer to impose his own political interpretation, left or right. Furthermore, multiple screenwriters are often at work on one project, and they might have a range of political views. So the following is one plausible interpretation of this work, not necessarily provable as the authors’ intent.
Even so, it seems clear that Vince Gilligan’s latest series, Pluribus, is post-woke television. The name is brilliantly chosen, a reference to the traditional American motto e pluribus unam: one out of many. (One is also reminded about the dilemma in Platonic philosophy regarding the one and the many.) This is a show not just about the individual’s relationship with all of society, but also about America’s relationship with the entire world.
Those who have seen Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul will understand that Vince Gilligan, as a master storyteller, is not an ideologue. His narratives tend to focus on sin and its consequences. They are not about abstract political theories, but about the Outlaw. So perhaps he is better suited than most to tell stories that skewer the current state of American society.
In Pluribus, the virus begins as a signal from space. Its data is deciphered by multi-ethnic teams of scientists who realize it is an RNA code. Once they put it together, they begin injecting it into rodents, with one biting the finger of a clumsy female scientist. From then on, infected individuals spread the virus through a kiss. One scientist kisses another, then another… before long, they’re spraying it out of planes in the night, and almost every single individual on earth has been incorporated.
Once they’ve received the virus, they are now part of a telepathic hivemind.
As the story unfolds, we discover that, almost like AI, this hivemind is obsequiously obedient. It can answer almost any question, having absorbed the whole world’s knowledge; not always accurately, but never intending to lie. It is completely naive and trusting, almost to the point of being autistic, unable to pick up on social cues or understand sarcasm. It is utterly nice and wishes to give the surviving humans every possible pleasure it can – but, if questioned too harshly, it goes into shock and might give you the silent treatment. It admits it wants to cure all human individuality and find a way to bring the last remaining immune souls into the ecstatic Joining.
Because everyone is now one, an emotional disturbance to one of them affects all of them. One body being shouted at makes the entire world go into a seizure. Apart from those brief moments of extreme duress, all the drones go about their work with a breezy attitude, working in perfect superhuman synchrony with each other.
The hivemind is technically dying. It is ultra-vegan. It cannot kill a single animal for its billions of bodies to eat. It is so committed to the well-being of all living things that it cannot even bring its selves to pluck an apple from a tree. So they all live off of recycled human corpses and food reserves, but still expect to slowly grow weak and die over the next ten years. “They won’t step on a bug, but they’ll enslave an entire planet,” as our protagonist quips.
I can think of no better depiction of the leftist regime that wishes to establish itself permanently in every facet of American life – indeed, the globe. It demands omnipotence and total biological control over all mankind, while simultaneously being hyper-sensitive and suicidal.
With a singular sci-fi concept, Gilligan subtly satirizes:
- the covid era
- lab leaks
- chemtrails
- AI
- safetyism
- globalism
- communism
- World Economic Forum-style social engineering
- snowflake hypersensitivity
- therapeutic language policing
- mass surveillance
- etc
In other words, the entire planet has been infected with the ‘woke mind virus.’
Except for 13 remaining individuals who are, for some reason, immune.
These 13 people are randomly distributed over the planet, and the handful of them who are featured allow the show to get in its industry-mandated racial minority quotas. Funnily enough, the show plays right into stereotypes: the African man is living a decadent life flying around the world in Air Force One with a harem of hivemind women, the Indian mother is proud and unconcerned that her beloved son is now part of the hivemind, the other Asians are mostly indifferent as they still have their (now perfectly compliant) family members ‘with them,’ and so forth. Basically, none of them are overly concerned about the loss of individuality in mankind at all, as they get to live in peace and luxury now, carefully tended to by the hivemind.
So the joke is that only the American is upset about the end of the world. Only the American mourns the loss of individual personality. The rest of them generally enjoy how peaceful the earth has become, and don’t mind that their family members are a hivemind. The only other exception, as it turns out later, is one paranoid Paraguayan.
Imagine if the last American on earth were an ill-tempered lesbian: Carol, our main character. She’s an alcoholic, writes trashy romance novels, and doesn’t get along with anybody. But at least she’s an individualist. And she is very bitter at the hivemind for having absorbed her lover’s memories. The rest of the survivors begin to shun her for her fierce contempt for the hivemind and commitment to restoring individuality. They just want to enjoy the peace and plenty of a world that has been entirely unified. But the hivemind adores her and dotes on her, trying to keep her as safe as possible. If she spends too much time outside, she is urged to get out of the sun or drink more water. “That’s the opinion of every medical doctor on earth!” the hivemind informs her pluckily.
At the same time, the hivemind is so obsequious that it will even give her an atom bomb, no questions asked.
Manousos, meanwhile, is a self-storage business owner from Paraguay who initially refuses to leave his office for weeks due to his hatred and fear of the hivemind.
He sets out on an epic quest from Paraguay to reach Carol in New Mexico, all by himself, without relying on the help of the hivemind for anything. We trace his journey through mountains, deserts, and jungles, which allegorically parallels with the archetypal journey of the Latin American migrant to America.
“You can’t give me anything. Everything you have is stolen,” he tells the hivemind with contempt.
Manousos’s extreme respect for personal property extends to leaving bills in the windshields of cars he siphons gas from, almost as if he hopes that individuals will someday return to claim them. Yet his rugged self-reliance leads to him nearly dying in the jungle of the notoriously dangerous Darién Gap. The hivemind pleaded with him not to go, but he gets wounded and lost, until the hivemind finally helicopters in and saves him. Awakening in a hospital, he continues to ignore all of the hivemind’s concerns for his medical state – leaving an IOU to humanity on the hospital desk for the ambulance he has to borrow.
When he finally does reach the end of his epic quest, reaching Carol at her home in New Mexico, both he and Carol are so independent, so convinced in their own minds, that they can barely negotiate with each other. They bicker with each other via AI Google Translate. Then, Manousos discovers Carol has been somewhat emotionally compromised, having sexually surrendered to the hivemind that she was initially so hateful of. (Specifically in the form of one ‘individual’, Zosia, who exemplifies her long-time fantasy woman.) Billions of people will now ‘know’ her in the biblical sense.
“Do you want to save the world or get the girl?” Manousos asks her, demanding that she choose between living her fantasy life with the pleasures of the hivemind or working to restore individual freedom.
Comically, Carol grows angry that Manousos learns her intimate details so quickly. She underestimated the complete lack of privacy she would have being sexually entangled with the entire world. Despite it all, she wanted her love affair to be private, for this one idealized body, Zosia, to belong to her. But ‘privacy’ no longer makes any sense in a world where almost all are one. The hivemind is merely trying to please her in any way it can, but without any individuality, is unable to truly give her personal belonging.
Despite the disturbing nature of the premise, we should find this eerily relatable to us in the age of internet and AI pornography – presumably, some deep state or Google database somewhere has very detailed records on the sexual interests of every young man and woman in America. And apart from the simulated sexuality of the digital realm, sexuality in our society seems to have already begun this process of being universalized. The ideal sex under leftism seems to be queer, sterile, utterly safe, and distributed between as many as can consent. The idea of sex taking place within an exclusive hierarchical covenant, where man and woman truly possess one another alone, is just a dim memory for many.
At the end of the first season, the last two individuals in America, a lesbian and a migrant, finally determine to work together to save the world.
Gilligan’s two beloved television shows, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, both feature white men as their protagonists. They’re caught in tragic spirals of deception and greed, compromised by their ambition to make it big in the American West, and ultimately shattered by their unwillingness to repent. Pluribus shows a world in which no American men are left.
