Pluribus kicks eerie up a notch with an unsettling fifth episode

If you’ve been holding off until now, it is time to hop on the bus. As in Pluribus.

The AppleTV series premiered a few weeks ago with new episodes each Friday — except for this week. Episode Five began streaming Wednesday as an early US Thanksgiving present.

The series, executive produced by Vince Gilligan and starring, in a tour de force performance, Rhea Seehorn (from Gilligan’s previous series What About Saul?). Seehorn plays Carol Sturka, a disgruntled novelist cranking out frothy Harlequin bodice rippers. The fact that they are all bestsellers only seems to make her crankier and even more cynical.

SPOILERS AHEAD: When aliens seemingly push pause on planet Earth, mind-robbing eight billion earthlings, cranky Carol and a dozen other survivors somehow seem immune. This happens without a formation of flying saucers or any evidence of invasion. It is as if everybody drank the Koolaid all at once and these 13 apostles, scattered all over the planet, still enjoy free will and awareness — whether they like it or not.

Carol does not like it. She lives in Albequerque (Gilligan’s favourite setting dating back to Breaking Bad), and when she finds out her hive-minded “nanny,” Zosia (Karolina Wydra) will respond to any request, no matter how outrageous, she starts ordering her around. “Take me to a meeting with the other 12,” gets her a private ride aboard a commercial jet, which is how the other 12 travel to the pow-wow. The playboy of the uninfected, Koomba (Samba Shutte), is cheeky enough to request his ride on Air Force One.

The others, however, are not as freaked out as Carol, willing to keep to themselves, enjoy the VIP all-inclusive room service and not form a rebellion, mush-brain inevitabilty be damned. Carol, who lost her book agent and life partner Helen (Miriam Shor) in the invasion, is grieving and seething and not going to stand for it any longer.

The transformation for viewers is almost as radical as it is for Carol. Gilligan’s story plays out in small doses, slowly revealing the dire circumstances for Carol and other holdouts. If you need a car, better be prepared to steal one till it runs out of gas. The local supermarket is empty? You can order it filled but what happens when the food all starts to rot?

Carol sticks to her favourite beverage of choice, the whiskey Writer’s Tears. Discovering that her alien abductors guised as neighbours cannot lie to her, she tests out a little truth serum stolen from a nearby hospital on Zosia. This just makes her assigned helper deathly ill, resulting in millions of people around the world also getting sick and/or dying. The consequences of pushing back are severe.

In a strange way, Pluribus reminded me at first of Will Forte’s 2015-2018 comedy The Last Man on Earth. It had a similar survivor premise, although no aliens. Forte’s show was played for laughs, but the desperation and loneliness kept creeping into the picture. I keep hoping Carol might bump into Forte’s Phil Miller among the dozen free-thinkers in Pluribus.

Instead, Gilligan leans into the whole Twilight Zone vibe of this new series. The weight of Carol’s predicament really hits home in Episode Five. Carol has alienated the aliens to the point where they won’t answer her phone calls or fetch things for her in person. Instead they send drones to pick up the trash, which will make you appreciate more your own neighbourhood waste management services.

All of this unfolds in a deliberate, eerie, quiet pace. Carol does not listen to music or TV in her empty house, and the soundtrack for Pluribus is just as mute. You are stuck there with her, hearing only the occasional wolf at the door. The lack of sound is effectively creepy. You may find yourself putting down you phone to see what this quiet is all about.

At the end of episode five, Carol has traced a source of liquid the locals all drink out of milk containers to a local factory. She is fearlessly determined, diving into dumpsters, nosing about in the dark, heading into a giant, foggy, refrigerated meat locker. There she makes a discovery.

You’ll have to wait until episode six next week to find out what, but I’m pretty sure it is not Will Forte. Nevertheless, Gilligan has crafted a truly unsettling sci-fi mystery series for these unsettling times. Has the whole world gone mad? Am I alone in my thinking? Is being unhappy but conscious better than being herded over a cliff? In Seehorn, he has found an actress who can turn prickly into a superpower. You should not be rooting for one so unpleasant, but you will. Allowing viewers the luxury of digesting each breadcrumb at a time is such a welcome change of pace. We’re now at the halfway point — don’t miss the Pluribus.