Pluribus Scares Me

Rhea Seehorn is at the top of my heart. She is my major blorbo in two instances: Better Call Saul, which I am in the middle of watching (Jimmy stop that, no), in which she plays the perpetually frazzled Kim Wexler, and now in Pluribus, which I have just watched the first episode of.

Kim with her post-its. She's an artist.

In Pluribus she is Carol Sturka, a romance novel writer who appears to despise everything associated with romance novels. Immediately, I like that this character is a hater. I sort of think it would be more fun if she just loved her stinky novels, but I can never say no to a hater. People are filth to this woman, and of course - that makes perfect sense for a protagonist that now has to deal with a hivemind of every person on Earth. Does she hate them more or less as an amalgamation? Perhaps I will find out when I watch: more episodes.

But to be honest with you, I'm frightened. I'm not sure exactly why, but before I even started watching this thing I felt a little anxiety squeeze. Maybe it was just the concept alone of the human population being Borg'd, but I felt an aversion to watching. I didn't feel ready. When I did get around to it, the show only expanded that feeling, because the thing is - it is hurtful. This show is about causing pain to me, personally. I mean, in the very first episode, of course, you're waiting for the other shoe to drop, for all the cards to fall into place. But moreover, the show is about being trapped. And boy do I feel it.

Carol has a surely yummy alcoholic drink, and then finds herself running around and grabbing objects and slamming on that accelerator. Can a woman not just have a tasty treat? Does a woman have to grapple with a new, reduced, form of humanity that is closing in on her and begging her to assimilate?

It is interesting and cool, I think, that Carol starts out surrounded by her gaggle of adoring fans, the book lovers who swoon and salivate over a dull masculine stereotype that she herself finds pathetic, and ends surrounded by a world of hollowed out, flattened approximations of a former planet of diverse individuals. In both lives, she is alone, but in her new one she has no commiseration. Just the full attention of every loser in the world.

I can't wait to see what happens next - but I dread it.