Pluribus has reached its fifth episode—which was made available early, ahead of Thanksgiving—meaning we’re halfway through its nine-episode first season. The new normal has almost become an uneasy routine for Carol (Rhea Seehorn), but the Others change the game yet again. And as Carol continues her quest to fight back, she encounters a new foe in Albuquerque’s wilder residents.
After getting too aggressive in her pursuit of information in last week’s “Please, Carol”—the Others, unsurprisingly, are extremely reluctant to divulge any details on how the Joining can be reversed—in “Got Milk,” Carol awakens to an empty city. Whoever is left in Albuquerque is currently on the highway motoring away. When Carol dials the help line, she’s met with a gratingly polite, needlessly verbose voice mail recording (“After everything that’s happened, we just need a little space,” the droll voice of Better Call Saul‘s Patrick Fabian intones) that she must now sit through anytime she needs something.
And, independent though Carol insists she is, she does need the Others’ help on occasion. She starts recording videos for “my 12 fellow survivors,” which she demands the Others translate (as needed) and distribute worldwide. Their purpose: to update the world’s few remaining free thinkers on her findings, but it’s also clear making contact is important. She’s now more alone than ever before, and she’s growing lonelier by the day.
“We owe it to humanity” to save the afflicted, she insists to her presumed audience, even though, as we’ve seen, most of the other “survivors” are unbothered by the way the world is now.
But from what we’ve seen of Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga)—the self-storage guy holed up in Paraguay—we can tell he’s definitely a wild card; Pluribus is clearly ramping up to tell us more about him in a future episode. This week, though, it’s all Carol… and some New Mexico wildlife that becomes emboldened by the newly empty-of-people landscape.
There are some wonderful moments in episode five, including a quick glimpse of the eerily appropriate book on Helen’s achingly empty side of the bed (And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie) and the pitiful failure of the drone sent to scoop up Carol’s overweight trash bag. The image of the drone drunkenly wrapping itself around a light pole—then the bag splitting open, dropping crap all over Carol’s cul-de-sac—says more about the way Pluribus‘ world now functions than any amount of dialogue ever could.
The snafu means Carol has to deal with the trash herself, but she discovers something curious while cramming her discards into a public waste can: milk cartons. So many milk cartons. The Others’ drink of choice… but why?
Carol’s detective work leads her to a factory that had, until very recently, been packaging a mysterious liquid made from a strange white powder mixed with water. Later, she traces the powder to a former dog food plant. We don’t see what she discovers, but we do see her let out a shocked gasp just as the episode ends.
Whatever she finds will, presumably, come to light in episode six. But she wouldn’t have picked up the milk-carton trail without having to go on a garbage journey—something she has to do when wolves start prowling around her backyard.
It’s an echo of what happened in real life during the pandemic. With covid fears keeping everyone indoors, nature began to reassert itself. Emboldened coyotes strolled down suburban streets; deer grazed without fear in city parks. In the Albuquerque of Pluribus, wolf packs stride through Carol’s upscale neighborhood, prowling for food in the one place they can still find food scraps in the garbage bins: Carol’s house. The first time they show up, she chases them off with a golf club. The second time, though, the wolves cross a line and start digging up Helen’s backyard grave.
It’s a bridge too far for Carol, who has so far kept her Helen-adjacent emotions rather well contained. In her panic, the only solution she can come up with is to rev up the cop car she’s been tooling around in, sirens and lights at full blast. It’s a messy but effective choice, and the wolves scatter.
In the next sequence, we see Carol driving to a building supply store and loading paving stones into her trunk—enough to cover Helen’s grave site and more. As the sun sets, after a long day of heavy lifting, she plants a marker to memorialize Helen’s final resting place, and we see deep sadness mixed with determination on her face.
Carol still has the independence she always had, even in these weird, mixed-up, isolating times. No wolves are going to dig up her late wife. Not today, and not ever. And the Others are not going to wreck the human race—that is, if Carol can figure out a way to stop them.
What did the gasp mean? What did Carol find? What puzzle piece will she uncover next—and will any of the other 12 ever respond to her video messages?
It’s going to be a hell of a wait until next Friday, when episode six of Pluribus hits Apple TV+.
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