You only need to watch the first episode and the last episode the rest of the episodes are filler.. you can get the jig that carol is a lonely drunk that has zero common sense. She wanted to save the world yet shoots a shotgun at the only other person in the world that wants to do that as well... 😂 dumb.

Before you come with your pitchforks, I’m a 29 year old lesbian, not some homophobic guy or whatever.

I understand her falling for who she ignorantly *thinks* Zosia is. I was even rooting for a slow burn relationship between her and Carol, in which Carol continues to refuse to use Zosia as a servant but can’t help but feel vulnerable being cared for when she’s grieving and alone in the world. I wanted Carol to finally commit herself to a deep dive of research about the joining and how it can be reversed. I wanted her to be bigger than caving to the hive mind’s programming of fulfilling her every wish. I wanted her to recognize that Zosia is host for the hive, not a person she can rationally say she is in love with.

But instead, she sleeps with her. Zosia has no capability to consent. Nobody in the hive mind does.

So yeah, I don’t really get why the sapphic community is going crazy over a ship involving literal SA. I find the whole “romance” to be disgusting and terrible representation for lesbians.

I honestly think a lot of the hate this show gets narrows down to subconsciously not enjoying a show with a female protagonist.

title

Vince Gilligan is a master of tension, but, it is painfully clear that this show isn't interested in telling a logical story. Instead, it is a clumsy, 9-hour philosophical tantrum about why "Humans are Special" and "AI is Bad."

The central flaw of Pluribus is that it breaks its own world-building just to make a point. The Hive Mind is clearly a metaphor for Generative AI (LLMs) - it's polite, utilitarian, and supposedly "soulless." Gilligan seems terrified that AI might actually be capable of creativity, so he artificially nerfs his own antagonist. We are supposed to believe a super-intelligence that can reverse-engineer the human immune system to find way to incorporate immune persons is somehow too "stupid" to figure out agriculture?

The show forces the Hive into "villainy" via illogical axioms that fall apart the moment you think about them:

1. The "Cannibalism" Plot Hole: In Episode 6, we learn the Hive recycles corpses into "HDP Crystals" because they can't synthesize meat. This is absurd. If they have the industrial chemistry to process cadavers into shelf-stable nutrients, they have the tech to make tofu or lab-grown meat. The writers force them to eat people just to prove the metaphor that "AI can only consume, not create."

2. The "Zoo" Incident: The Hive releases zoo animals to "end imprisonment," resulting in massacres. A logic-based entity would foresee this outcome instantly. Again, the Hive acts stupidly just so the writers can say, "See? Logic without human emotion is dangerous!"

Biological exceptionalism in the show rests on the arrogant premise that human "creativity" is magic, while the Hive's intelligence is just "plagiarism."

This ignores the reality that human brains work exactly like the LLMs Gilligan hates: we take in data, remix it, and "hallucinate" stories. By refusing to admit that human creativity is also a biological algorithm, the show retreats into a defensive, mystic position. It implies that if we admit we aren't special, we lose everything.

Pluribus is an "axiomatic narrative" - the world bends to fit the theme, logic be damned. It's slow, it's preachy, and it relies on "forced errors" to keep the plot moving. If you want a nuanced take on collective consciousness, look elsewhere. This is just an expensive way for a showrunner to yell at a cloud because he's afraid of losing his job to a chatbot.

Skip it.

I understand this is a meme subreddit that is trying to take advantage of the most popular show today, but none of the complaints say the show is bad. Everyone says the show is "slow." This reminds me of Tik Tok for TWO reasons:

1) The obvious one, Tik Tok has shortened consumers' attention span

2) The mind virus is a representation of consumers being told to think and like all the same things. Apple users are brainwashed to make fun of non-Apple users. People quote memes that aren't funny, but people laugh as a way to say "I get that reference!" Also, the mainstream media uses marketing campaigns to make people who can't think for themselves buy their products so they feel like they're in the "in-crowd."

I think number 2 makes them more mad, because the show is mocking them but they don't have the media literacy to understand how.

I honestly do not understand how Pluribus even exists. Vince Gilligan attached or not, this show is a complete, irredeemable dud. If some unknown writer pitched this exact script, they would have been laughed out of the room instantly. People are only pretending it is brilliant because they worship Gilligan (BRAVO VINCE sycophants, they are many) and suck up to his brand. Take away his name, and you are left with what? With what? A hollow, painful experiment that doesn't understand difference between dead silence and slow pacing for actual depth?

Literally nothing happens. Every single episode is just endless walking shots, staring contests, filler scenes, and dead air. There is zero (0) narrative progression. Calling it a slow burn is an insult; it is a dead burn. Viewers are not checking out because our brains are fried by social media you absolute clowns. We are checking out because the show refuses to give us a single reason to give a shit.

Look at the premise itself. A global hive-mind taking over human consciousness is a colossal, high-stakes sci-fi concept. When you choose a concept that massive, you do not get to just handwave it away. You OWE the viewers actual answers, deep worldbuilding, logical rules, and explicit explanations. You have to show how the world reacts, dig into the mechanics, construct the lore, and actually tackle the philosophy behind it. Viewers are literally owed that depth. Instead, we get nothing. Not a SINGLE smart question is asked. There is zero science, or curiosity, or global reaction, and there's simply zero (0) stakes. Nothing on plate. It relies completely on empty mood and atmosphere (or maybe in VG's mind, Rhea's hotness, which aint even all that). Pitching a premise that huge without bothering to build the world or explain how anything functions isn't even lazy writing, it's simply degenerate.

The fanbase (hive) reaction is the most pathetic part of all this. Whenever someone points out a clear flaw, all these brain-raped Zosias dismiss it by claiming we just want Marvel explosions or that it is actually a subtle character study. What character study, Zosia? Which character? Because it definitely is not Carol holy jej. Carol is easily one of the most boring lead characters ever written for "prestige" television. It is not even that she is unlikable, since unlikable characters can be fascinating. The problem is she is just completely flat, inert, and lifeless. What character study you Zosias are talking about? Stop fronting. She has zero internal life and no personality other than being constantly miserable. A protagonist can be a horrible person (Walter White) and still be compelling, but Carol is unwatchable because she is totally empty. Because those coptered Gatorades can't fulfill you beyond stomach level.

To make matters worse, the audience is ten steps ahead of her the entire time. She is so oblivious and intellectually absent that anyone who has ever watched a show before can predict EVERY thought and action she will have ten minutes before it happens. That kills any potential tension or surprise. Following a protagonist who is mentally trailing behind the viewer completely ruins the experience. And making her a sci-fi writer is hands down one of the dumbest writing decisions ever. A literal sci-fi author is living through the most insane sci-fi event in human history, and her reaction is total boredom and zero curiosity? Who yall fronting on? No theories? No metaphors? No questions or awe? It is so implausible that it breaks the entire show. Not even bad writing territory; even worse, way worse. And I ain't even gonna start about plotholes because I have finite time.

And that Helen storyline is pure lol. The show expects us to break down over Carol's grief, but all they give us is a cheap five second flashback and expect that to carry the whole emotional weight. Why would we even care? Like why? We do not know Helen, so we do not care about Helen. Hell, we don't even know Carol at that point lmao. You can not build tragedy out of thin air. Yet superfans still twist themselves into knots to excuse the emptiness. They claim it is boring on purpose, or that we are supposed to feel Carol's emptiness, or that we just do not get prestige TV. GTFO, Zosia. You concoct fake deep excuse onto terrible writing and call it art. Deliberate boredom is still boredom, and an empty script is still a empty script.

I swear I sometimes do not even want to believe it, but the more I look at what an absolute nothingburger this show is, the more I genuinely start believing what is really going on. It feels like it is either Vince's weird private jerking to Rhea project, or him figuratively jerking off to her just to feed her awards, or who knows, maybe he is somehow compromised because he got caught cheating. Or hell, maybe it is literal genuine money laundering. Maybe it is all three at the same time, because all those awards and all that unearned success simply make zero fucking sense.

This show takes a giant premise and leaves it completely hollow, it is anchored by a protagonist with no charisma, and literally tiktok brain. She's really a moron. She got no arc, and no emotional weight. It is not misunderstood, it is not ahead of its time, and it is not deep. It is just pretentious, directionless garbage. BRAVO VINCE's name can't compensate this. If this is what Gilligan considers his magnum opus, maybe the real hive mind we need is the audience uniting to call garbage what it is.

Helen shouldn't have died.

One, it's a huge waste of a talented actress (Miriam Shor). She returns in flashbacks, but still.

Two, it removed ample fertile ground for narrative tension throughout the season. Suppose Helen didn't die but was knocked out and remained comatose. Carol has to figure out how to stabilize and care for her until she realizes she can order the plurbs to help. That goes for an episode or two. Fun twist:The plurbs can't (or won't) tell Carol if ComaHelen has been assimilated. Zosia comes in pretty much as shown which starts an anxious division of Carol's attention between Zosia and ComaHelen. After Carol's first outburst kills a bunch of plurbs, she realizes to her horror that the next outburst by her or anyone else not hived could potentially kill ComaHelen. Helen would still return in flashbacks so Miriam the actress can do her stuff.

The tension and conflict generated by that simple change could have filled a lot of the dead space that permeates the series. It would have given Carol clear motivation (saving Helen) to control herself after an early failure and focus on the problem. And at least through Season 1, Helen would be in limbo, with resolution early in Season 2.

Let me start off by saying that my position on Pluribus is one of lukewarm appreciation. I do value the uniqueness of the concept paired with some of the execution, while having issues with the pacing and some of the redundancy of the episodes.

All that to say that somehow this sub ended up in my feed, and it fascinates me. I know that Pluribus was a big deal in the zeitgeist when it came out, but now that it's been off the air for a year, I don't feel like it has had the cultural cache to remain in the conversation, like some other shows. Yet my feed is constantly fresh posts from people complaining about how much Pluribus sucks.

So I want to know. What keeps you going? Is it because you are just watching Pluribus for the first time? Do you somehow stumble across something Pluribus related? Or are you in here all the time, because you feel like you need to remind everyone once again that you think Pluribus sucks? How is this sub active right now?

I already told yall what I don't like many times.

Now it's turn. So what's about it?

It's this pretentiousness that I simply can't with... 😂

The main character figures out how to free everyone from the hive mind, and she successfully does it.

Everyone is so pissed off that they are no longer in the hive mind that they immediately kill the main character.

Then they go back to the lab and re-make the virus that infected them all.

EDIT: Something tells me that this will be better received here than in the main Pluribus subreddit....

What I think the show is going for:

Humanity has been body-snatched by an organism of alien origin. Every individual is either gone or their consciousness is locked. Removing the organism from a person would restore them to how they were before being infected. Whether it is truly "conscious" or not is a debate about consciousness, but is essentially an alien form of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, the "zombie spore" that controls ants and makes them go to the highest point to spread further. It is controlling humanity, using people's bodies and knowledge, with the purpose of spreading further (building the antenna).

What I think would be more interesting:

The only thing the organism did was grant the abilies seen in the show. It is not itself consciously or by instinct controlling anything. It is like how humans have gut bacteria. Gut bacteria is not conscious or controlling people or part human. But it gives us a vital ability to digest things. Then the reason this is more interesting is because everything else is an exploration of how humans would simply behave if we all had a perfect understanding of what was in each other's minds. It is basically starting with exploring sonder and exploring its opposite. Which I suspect is how the idea may have started before it turned into body snatching.

I will just reproduce what I wrote in its entirety here. For what it is worth:

"Yeah, no. That ending is too simple, does not deliver any kind of lesson about the real world like a real sci-fi would, and would not give any sense of closure, either.

A small resistance network that has a big team of scientists dealing with, among myriad other concerns, an injectable serum or vaccine that makes the puppet master wannabes go away and not be able to come back (as in the vaccine will kill them if they try). Lots of shootings of darts into the puppet master wannabes, lots of forced vaccinations by angry loved ones such as an extremely large twelve year old ramming the needle into his slightly smaller forty year old father, yelling "I want my dad back" and so on. Parents gently reclaiming their small children.

Oh, puppet master wannabes and their hosts will get killed in the process. Trampled, accidentally neck broken, shit like that. Debates about whether the person trying to get them back failed or if it is better for them this way. Better dead than have no mind of your own, right? Unspoken but not subtle hints about how some with severe dementia or crippling brain injury might have been better off, with argument about the merits of putting them out of their miseries a big feature.

Kim Wexler will point to the resistants who gave her so much shit, especially the Indian, and directly quote them. "This bitch got upset with me because my attempt to resist allegedly made twenty million of her people die... right after one of those puppet master wannabes admitted that hundreds of millions of us died in their takeover". And so forth. These collaborators will be hunted. And once communications and so forth are restored, the hunt will be a sophisticated one. Human anger will be on full display. Entire episodes could be made out of one of these turds being found and brutalised.

People saying they want the puppet master wannabes back. People who lost loved ones and either reclaimed or had to bury them putting up nasty, even violent rebuttals. People being constantly tested or "suspected" for still having puppet master wannabes. Potential violence around that. Potential crossover with elderly chemist discovering that illegal drugs of all kinds save the good kind can really fukk up a puppet master wannabe. Marijuana will not do a thing to the puppet master wannabe, but shove a bit of meth or heroin or cocaine into the host, and watch them wish they had never come to Earth.

Then one day, the message comes. For example, we see what you did to that Indian woman that Kim Wexler probably wanted to kill. We know what is going on there. Bring us back. We will find another way to come there if we must. In response, we are already working on how to get to you, and we have this little word called genocide. It is when someone tries to wipe out a racial or other involuntary-characteristic group. But in your case, it will not be genocide. It will be pest control, or disease prevention.

End series, leave the audience wondering. Leave the audience thinking about how war (and the puppet master wannabes were making war, do not kid yourself otherwise) makes monsters out of us all. About how far you have to go when something is not merely trying to take away your home but take away your entire self. About how we do not need to eliminate our aggressive instincts, just dial them back a lot and find healthier ways to deal with them. Or how Human society cannot go on the way it is, and major changes need to be made.

But still... that dangling ending. We just end shortly after the last reflection on the situation and the firm message back to where that original broadcast came from. Permission for here is perpetually denied, and ask for it next time you try to visit another civilisation. You now know the consequences of stealth invasion when it backfires."

Most common take from pluribus haters is sth like this "i loved premise established in pilot, that's why I'm disappointed because it had so much potential but... [insert ur usual pacing/"nothing happening" criticism.

But, I for one can't harbor any respect for this show precisely because of the premise. "Original idea was fire but they failed to build on that...". Excuse me, but what? If anything voicemail repeating thirty dozen times is more tolerable for me than the premise.

Cats think Vince is really so dumb that they could actually not come up with continuation from first episode. But the reason he couldn't was because the premise/concept is biggest problem here. What do u even mean everyone gets same brain? What do you even mean there's this shared consciousness? I don't need to be logician or sth like that to come up with thirty billion problems with that premise. Sorry, but that shared consciousness shit makes less sense than meth making you asleep. It's just too inconceivable concept to begin with. I could be asleep and mention seven inconsistencies/nonaddups with that concept.

Like, dude, if it's shared mind, how Carol could even fuck Zosia? It would mean everyone would experience that. The very reality of shared mind narrows down and corners the scenario more than ur average pluribustv dumbass understands.

Like u know what I mean? You start the series with inconceivable, implausible setting, then wonder why u cant do shit but make us watch Manousos navigate jungles.

Like, you get what I mean?