Page 1 of 1
Pluribus
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:02 pm
by Zot!
Pluribus seems just ok to me. Another Vince Gilligan dark comedy. It's not deserving of it's high concept Shyamalanesque set-up we've all seen a million times, which they then immediately dispense with by thoroughly explaining the "mystery" with a literal question and answer session. Maybe there is more intrigue waiting in the wings, but I expect it will be instead an overwrought Happy Go Lucky. Despite all that, some winning comedy and silliness. I consider Gilligan's previous Breaking Bad universe to be the last truly TV thing on TV I've enjoyed, besides maybe some straightforward procedural cop shows, so I'm giving this a chance.
Re: TV of 2025
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:22 pm
by domino harvey
The premise screams too high concept to be sustainable for a multi season series, and I doubt Gilligan is planning to do what the Good Place did with their high concept and just refresh and reinvent itself a dozen times to exploit all possibilities in a long form way
Re: TV of 2025
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:44 pm
by therewillbeblus
Zot! wrote: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:02 pm
Pluribus seems just ok to me. Another Vince Gilligan dark comedy. It's not deserving of it's high concept Shyamalanesque set-up we've all seen a million times, which they then immediately dispense with by thoroughly explaining the "mystery" with a literal question and answer session. Maybe there is more intrigue waiting in the wings, but I expect it will be instead an overwrought
Happy Go Lucky.
I have more faith in this show, and fully expect Gilligan to reinvent the material to new creative ends, especially because he already front-loaded the most obvious season/series-long quest into an intra-episode bit. I don't think he would've burned that trump card without some strong ideas to take the show in novel directions, but we'll see. Personally, I loved the way the first episode unfolded and the show seems to be balancing its tones well in the aftermath of that chaos, between the emotional dysregulation the fueled the Event Pic pilot extremely effectively and the more static numbness, both associated with grief. I'm curious to see Gilligan take Seehorn through various stages of development but I think he sides with her position, so I doubt it arrives where you think it might
Re: TV of 2025
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2025 4:42 pm
by Zot!
therewillbeblus wrote: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:44 pm
Zot! wrote: Mon Nov 10, 2025 2:02 pm
Pluribus seems just ok to me. Another Vince Gilligan dark comedy. It's not deserving of it's high concept Shyamalanesque set-up we've all seen a million times, which they then immediately dispense with by thoroughly explaining the "mystery" with a literal question and answer session. Maybe there is more intrigue waiting in the wings, but I expect it will be instead an overwrought
Happy Go Lucky.
I have more faith in this show, and fully expect Gilligan to reinvent the material to new creative ends, especially because he already front-loaded the most obvious season/series-long quest into an intra-episode bit. I don't think he would've burned that trump card without some strong ideas to take the show in novel directions, but we'll see. Personally, I loved the way the first episode unfolded and the show seems to be balancing its tones well in the aftermath of that chaos, between the emotional dysregulation the fueled the Event Pic pilot extremely effectively and the more static numbness, both associated with grief. I'm curious to see Gilligan take Seehorn through various stages of development but I think he sides with her position, so I doubt it arrives where you think it might
Sure, could surprise me. After all, I waited years before I caved into watching Breaking Bad because it's fans presented it to be the
Boondock Saints of "TV's Golden Era". But I wound up thoroughly enjoying it despite my prejudice...though I still think that show had a lousy start. I do think Gilligan is very good at the TV serial format without being overly clever or insulting to his viewers. My early critique was mostly just having to do with the exceedingly well tread scenario that I am finding hard to get over. I am judging it too soon, though it would probably help if what I saw of Severance wasn't already leaving a bad taste in my mouth.
Re: TV of 2025
Posted: Mon Nov 10, 2025 4:49 pm
by therewillbeblus
I also thought Breaking Bad had a shaky start, and didn't really become "great" until the end of season three, when Gilligan seemed to perfect his use of pacing and shot choices that dance around an idea we’ll arrive at (basically auteurist by now), which is partly why I preferred Better Call Saul - the rhythm had been nailed down from frame one. Even if this show doesn't incite as much creativity in narrative pull, I hope the style carries it for at least the nine eps
Re: Pluribus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2025 8:45 pm
by Mr Sausage
Breaking Bad had a lot of amazing episodes, but plenty of filler. There was a lot of waiting around for Walt to start cooking again, or conflicts that were drawn out to fill seasons. Better Call Saul made the great decision to have four main characters (six if you count Gus and Lalo) whose stories could diverge and intersect as the writers needed, so the series never felt like it had to tread water and you felt you were getting a wider vision of a world that Walt and Jesse had a limited perspective of. Made for a more rounded and compelling series. If you periodically got tired of Walt’s bullshit, as I did, there wasn’t a lot of relief in Breaking Bad, whereas if Saul ever starts to get a bit much, it’s not a problem because you get to spend plenty of time with Kim, Mike, and Nacho, all of whom have quite different, less flamboyant personalities.
As for Pluribus, it’s not the mysteries that interest me. It’s watching a repressed, prickly, grieving woman try to navigate a world in which she has no outlet for the emotions brimming inside her, and little tolerance for frustration, but all of her choices going forward are significant. I think it’s going to be fun watching this woman try to thread a needle while wearing oven mitts.
Re: Pluribus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2025 9:16 pm
by tenia
I actually got bored of Better Call Saul, something that never happened to me with Breaking Bad. That last season ? Ugh.
But mostly, my issues were with how a good chunk of the show simply relies on Saul being just awful, in a mechanical systematic and thus predictable way. Things will go well for him, and then he screws it up, Kim will take him out of it, it'll go better again, and then he'll screw it up again. For 6 seasons.
Re: Pluribus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2025 10:08 pm
by Mr Sausage
But all of Breaking Bad is what you describe, Walt getting to a point of equilibrium and then just crashing out from ego. Rinse, repeat. But you can’t get away from Walt like you can with Saul.
Both shows embrace character-as-fate, but with Better Call Saul this is more explicit (we know already where Saul ends up) and more pointed, since that fate affects three other characters we come to care about. In Breaking Bad, each season is essentially the same, but with far fewer characters to spend our time with. It’s no accident that the best seasons of the latter are the ones where Mike, Gus, and Skyler have the most to do.
Fair enough that you preferred the earlier show, but I always thought Breaking Bad was skimmable, but not Saul. Too many intricate story lines involving all the main characters.
Re: Pluribus
Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2025 11:20 pm
by swo17
Sausage not liking
Breaking Bad is my fault
Re: Pluribus
Posted: Wed Nov 12, 2025 6:40 am
by tenia
Mr Sausage wrote:It’s no accident that the best seasons of the latter are the ones where Mike, Gus, and Skyler have the most to do.
I prefer seasons 2 to 4.
Pluribus
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2025 7:07 pm
by Mr Sausage
This latest episode is showing the series to be a character piece (and acting showcase for Rhea Seahorn) instead of a pot-boiler. It advanced almost nothing in the way of plot (just played variations on what we know), but revealed quite a lot in terms of character. The suspense is all in wondering what this pressure cooker of a woman will ultimately do in a situation she finds intolerable. I’m really enjoying it.
Also some of this episode was hilarious. The atom bomb discussion? The delivery guy’s bewildered, uncomfortable, yet unwaveringly helpful demeanour was perfect. I am loving how the hive mind is so solicitous and omniscient, and yet as unable to understand Rhea Seahorn’s character as she is of understanding it. The series is mainly two people’s total inability to communicate.
Re: TV of 2025
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2026 12:40 am
by Murdoch
Pluribus is an odd show.
I love these high concept types of stories, and here the world is taken over by a nonviolent hive mind species that spreads to everyone but a very small group of people. These shows/movies typically follow the same formula - survivors band together, figure out a cure while avoiding the threat's attempts to assimilate/destroy them. Pluribus seems to revel in following those beats but eschewing the conventuons of the heroic group banding together.
Here, Rhea Seahorn spends a good portion of her screentime drinking or drunk. The other survivors indulge their invaders' offers of the largest riches the world has to offer, treating Seahorn as the oddball for not accepting the newfound "peace" of the world. The invaders themselves have a strange nonviolent ethos in which they can't even pick an apple from a tree or harvest produce since it would result in harm to vegetation, and they can't even lie to the survivors they're trying to convince to assimilate.
It's an invasion story in which the biggest threat to humanity is Seahorn, since her angry outbursts directed at the hive mind people causes every one of the billions of infected to fall into seizure, no matter if they're right next to her or a thousand miles away flying a plane full of other people. Most of her time is spent alone, attempting to learn more about the invaders, but when she believes she's discovered a horrifying truth - that the hive mind consume predeceased human corpses - she learns the other survivors already knew and approve of its efficient means of disposing of the dead.
What reads like parody, is actually a story of Seahorn grieving her partner and being thrust into near-conamstant isolation. It's fairly straight-faced in execution overall.
I was ready to give up on Gilligan after all his returns to the Breaking Bad universe, but this is such a 180 from Walter White & Co., and trom any other scifi show I've seen on TV, that I can't help but keep watching
edit: Didn't realize this had a thread already. Thanks mods!