James Poniewozik

I suppose I should say up front, like, I'm going to need to talk about what the show is about.

So, you know, plug your ears if you're somebody who's... I'm very much of the camp that a good story is unspoilable.

It cannot be ruined by spoilers.

If you feel otherwise, you know, just tune me up for a second.

But Pluribus was a show that arrived with a great deal of mystery about it because its premise is so wild.

Essentially, an alien RNA virus arrives on Earth by means of an intergalactic radio signal.

that infects most of humanity and causes them to become united in a joyous collective mind.

A handful of people are left out of it.

One of them is our heroine, Carol Sterka, played by the great Rhea Sehorne, who you might recall from Better Call Saul.

She is an author of...

romantic fiction and a sort of misanthrope by nature who ends up being kind of the perfect foil for this new collective of alien-juiced beatific humanity.

The sort of through line is Carol dealing with this new world, Carol trying to figure out if there is a way to reverse this virus and restore humanity to where it was before.

Part of the thing that I think is interesting is that it's a little bit playing around with the idea of, is what we've witnessed an apocalypse?

there is suddenly no war on Earth.

There's no conflict.

There's, you know, a lot of things that we say we aspire to in humanity have been achieved by our brains being taken over.

And underneath this highly entertaining, very funny, extremely well-acted, I mean, it's often like Ria Sehorne sort of giving a solo performance, is a very interesting idea about...

collectivism versus individualism, about what happiness means, about whether it is better to be blissful and have no free will or to be discontented but an intact individual.

Fascinating.

You know, like Severance, I think just a knock your socks off first season.