“Grenade” Stretched the Boundaries of Pluribus in an Explosive Fashion

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https://popculturereferences.com/gre...osive-fashion/

Brian looks at a moment when the boundaries of Pluribus were stretched in an explosive fashion.



Today, we look at a moment when the boundaries of Pluribus were stretched in an explosive fashion.

This is a delayed Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day from March 2nd on this year (plus January 1st-March 1st of 2024), we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great female-centric TV episodes.

One of the best shows on TV these days is Pluribus, a TV show almost singlehandedly carried by its lead, Rhea Seehorn, as Carol Sturka, a closeted fantasy romance author who is one of the only humans left on Earth to retain control of her own mind following a sort of “invasion” by an alien groupmind that has joined the rest of the people in the world into one groupmind, dubbed “The Others” on the show.

The first episode of the series was all setup (it was done as a brilliantly creepy horror story), and then the SECOND episode was still MOSTLY setup, as Carol meets the other humans who aren’t part of the groupmind, and no one else is interested in saving humanity with her. So I thought I’d start the spotlight with the THIRD episode (the first one not written and directed by the show’s creator. This one was written and directed by Gordon Smith).

In the second episode, we met Zosia (Karolina Wydra), one of the Others who looks like what the original model for the romantic lead of her fantasy series looked like (before Carol felt pressured to make the lead into a man for the sake of sales). They figured Carol would be more receptive to talk to her, and that IS true.

One of the other immune humans wants to have Zosia be HIS escort, so long as Carol doesn’t care. Carol pretends like she doesn’t care, but she obviously DOES, so she asks to keep Zosia as her guide.

In this episode, Carol is dealing with the fact that she’s truly alone (as the other immune humans don’t want to help her). She wants to go grocery shopping, and she learns that all stores have been shut down to centralize the world’s food supplies, but for Carol, they’ll restock, and that’s a STUNNING sequence where all of these “joined” humans come together and restock the entire grocery store in Carol’s neighborhood in Albuquerque (the same setting as show creator’s Vince Gilligan’s previous two acclaimed series, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Seehorn played one of the main characters on Better Call Saul. She was amazing. I’d feature her work on Better Call Saul here this month, but there really weren’t any “female-centric” episodes of that show. She had great episodes, but none that I would say were “female-centric episodes”).

At one point, angry over the Others’ cutting the power to conserve energy, Carol asks for a hand grenade, and Zosia brings her one. Later, after some drinks with Zosia (again, Carol is starved to talk to SOMEone), Carol primes the grenade, not thinking it was for real. It WAS. Zosia saves Carol, and throws the grenade out the window, and it explodes, and Zosia is badly injured (but she survives).

Carol, though, learns that there is NO limit to what the Others will give her, which is very important information (especially for later in the season).

It’s a powerful episode both for plot reasons, but also in terms of the visuals and, of course, its deep insight into Carol’s loneliness.