Carol gains an unlikely companion and struggles to connect with her fellow non-conformists.
Photo: Apple TV
Despite being set in Albuquerque and having Rhea Seehorn in the lead role, there was no noticeable crossover between Vince Gilligan's previous crime drama series. Better call SaulAnd For manywhich is perhaps more closely related to his past as a writer X-Files. But it's worth noting a couple of passages in the thrillingly expansive second episode, “The Pirate Lady,” that bring the two series together.
First, it's a classic WTF cold open, which is perhaps not as cryptic as the pre-title sequence in Better call Saul or Breaking Badbut it introduces us to characters and a scenario that are completely different from what we have seen so far. (Remember, say, the episode of Madrigal Breaking Badwhich begins with a rambling German CEO dipping chicken pieces in various sauces.) In “The Pirate Lady,” an unnamed woman in a burlap robe walks to an overturned car in a Middle Eastern city, rips a charred corpse from the driver's seat and drags it through an open window. With the help of a nearby truck driver, she wraps the body and drags it up the hill to a bus, where we see more bodies being collected. From there, she rides a waiting moped to the airport, climbs into the cockpit of a cargo plane, and pilots it to Albuquerque, where her minions await her with coffee, a hot shower, and a change of identity.
While we can certainly guess who she might be visiting in New Mexico, the reveal gives the show an opportunity to expand the scope and show the true global scale of this alien operation. It's one thing to look at the smoking, chaotic city of Albuquerque and imagine similar scenes happening elsewhere, but quite another to see a disturbing scene of this nameless creature running around corpses and burning buildings on the other side of the world. And other details matter too, such as the importance the aliens place on cleaning up the mess they made. They don't want the earth to be an apocalypse of rotting corpses and smoking wreckage, but something closer to the utopia that these seemingly gentle visitors want to promote. Additionally, a hierarchy was introduced around this one character that many others serve and who would later become an ambassador for their values.
The second connection is that while Kim Wexler has a lot in common with Carol Struka, Carol at this point seems even closer to Everett Acker, the crotchety old coot who refused to leave his home in Better call Saul. In this show, Kim represents a bank that is trying to evict the last resident of a site where it intends to build a call center. But Acker doesn't go away and greets anyone who asks with nasty insults, including Kim, who initially tries to intimidate him before deciding she's in his corner. Carol – Acker: unpleasant, but righteous and willing to stand on principles. She assumes that at some point she will be dragged away, but until that happens, no temptation will force her to leave her place.
“Pluribus” is filled with amazing comic tension as Carol wakes up next to her dead partner, filled with grief but ready for a fight. Her stubborn side comes through in her quixotic attempts to dig a grave for Helen in their backyard—we know, of course, from past Gillian shows that holes are not easy to dig in New Mexico—but she is also dedicated to her task and gentle in choosing the right blanket to lay Helen to rest in. Not a good time for an unnamed visitor to stop by with a bottle of water and advice on how best to penetrate the volcanic rock in her yard. Carol was unimpressed when “Jarmell Gurkey”, the line supervisor at the Aquafina bottling plant, said the water was safe to drink. She opens it and pours it into the ground – very Everett Acker style.
And yet Carol does She needed help, no matter how much she wanted to get it. And she does actually cares deeply about her fellow humans, despite the unkind things she's said in the past about “Houston Mom” and other idiots who like her books. After her rage causes an unnamed visitor to fall into a spell and tremble – which she learns causes everyone else to do the same – the news that it is causing the deaths of people around the world literally makes her sick. She is an unintentional mass murderer, just like the aliens who took over her planet. Among the important things she learns in this episode is that she will have to control her temper or people will die, which worries her greatly, although the creatures rush to calm her down. (Maybe because they killed a lot more people, but we'll get to that in a moment.)
Although Carol clearly takes longer than anyone else to ask the name of the important visitor from the opening sequence, we eventually learn that it is Zosia (Carolina Otter), who seems familiar to her due to her resemblance to Raban, the burly space pirate from her fantasy series. Raban was originally written as a woman who scares Carol because only she and Helen knew about it, meaning that the alien had absorbed all of his dead partner's memories and was now using them to ingratiate himself with Carol. This is a terrible thing to do. But Carol is naturally curious to understand why she was among the 12 people who were not inclined to “join” the invaders. Where are the others? Can they meet?
The gathering of English speakers at Bilbao airport takes this episode to a new level of comedy and philosophy. First, there's the surreality of Carol clinging to the original four non-conforming people – Otgonbayer (Amaraa Sanjid), Xiu Mei (Sharon Gee), Kushimay (Darinka Arones) and Lakshmi (Menik Gooneratne) – while their “joined” family members stand pleasantly in the background. (“We're very pleased to meet you, Carol,” they say in unison.) Then the fifth, Koumba Diabate (Samba Schutte), arrives on Air Force One, which the aliens brought at his request, along with a phalanx of sexy flight attendants who keep an eye on him. Kumba senses the aliens' desire to please nonconformists faster than others and uses his power like the friendly Nero.
Once they all gather for the meeting, the argument against Carol's skepticism becomes clear: Why is this all bad? Joining the aliens seems like a path to eternal satisfaction, and yet they can have everything they want, from a tour of the Guggenheim to catering on par with the film's Doomsday City. Defending your life. Carol is not happy with this. She doesn't like how almost everyone on earth has turned into drugged pods, and she doesn't understand why others don't see how sinister it is. “It doesn’t matter how nice they are to us or how many supermodels they send to peel our grapes and jerk us off,” she says. “It doesn’t change the fact that it’s wrong.”
Carol may be right, but she's incapable of talking about it diplomatically. When Lakshmi confronts her, Carol becomes so annoyed that Lakshmi treats her adorable son Ravi like a real child that she questions the boy about the gynecological knowledge he now possesses. In the end, only the good-natured Kumba continues to talk to her, but it's Carol's deepening relationship with Zosia that feels most important to the show's moving forward. The peaceful utopia that Zosia and the aliens, who we learn are called Celtiberians, are promoting has some ethical holes that Carol is smart enough to uncover. Mainly, if the Celtiberians are so committed to peace that they will not intentionally kill a living being, then how can they justify the 886,477,591 people who have thus far died during their mission on Earth? (“I think you need to break some eggs, huh?” Carol quips to George C. Scott. Doctor Strangelove.)
However, the final moments of the episode are more poignant and suggest an important shift in the rift between Carol and the Celtiberians. Kumba has decided that he likes Zosia and wants her to be his companion, which Carol is told requires her blessing. Carol is put off by how regressive this sounds and almost loses her temper for the third time in the episode when she is shaken by the alien. “Is that your idea of heaven?” – she asks Zosya. “Was I used as a sex doll?” But in the final moments, as Carol sits back in her seat on the plane, something is bothering her. She is lonely, but she sees as clearly as we do that Zosia is affected by her words. Perhaps this is how a revolution begins. Or maybe, like the other ending, which takes place on an airport tarmac, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
• The connection may have been unintentional, but the sight of humanoid aliens loading people into trucks and driving off on two-wheelers is reminiscent of the Jonathan Glazer story. Under the skin. (Although there are very, very many Celtiberians, many softer towards humanity than ScarJo and her ilk in this film.)
• A seeming amateur gets into the cockpit and pilots a decommissioned plane across the sea? Who does Zosia think she is? Nathan Fielder?
• Jarmell Gurkey is a funny A+ movie name.
• The ability to recall any information or mentally communicate with anyone is admittedly extremely cool. Look at that little pause when Zosia asks if there are five English-speaking people willing to meet Carol, before she says, “All five say yes.”
• “Who flies this thing? That girl from TGI Friday's?”
• It's funny to hear everyone discussing the finer points of the film. Air Force One on the plane: “Actually, if you remember, Harrison Ford never flew in the escape pod, which I thought was a smart move. He stayed in the cargo hold.”
• Carol Ravi's various descriptions of his mother are incredibly funny: “The one who can do open-heart surgery and fly the space shuttle,” who is also “your prime minister, some guy you dated in high school, your gynecologist.”
• From the Department It's Not That Bad, Kumba gives Carol's counter-argument: “As we speak, no one is being robbed or killed. No one is in jail. Skin color doesn't seem to matter anymore. All the zoos are empty. All the dogs are off their chains. Peace on Earth.” There's also a counter-argument from Xiu Mei, who is annoyed that a freed Peking giraffe is eating leaves from her tree.
• Kudos to Carol for resisting the temptation of the peppery bacon she ate in 1998 and the crispy bun the aliens brought for her. I personally would sell humanity just for food. I'm weak.
• An important philosophical exchange to watch for in the future: Zosia tells Carol that her people can't choose, and Carol replies, “Yes, you can. If you can do square roots in your head, you can choose.” We all make choices. Some of these choices are inevitably harmful or even destructive. The Celtiberians are not immune.
