TV Tuesday: Plur1bus (2025) TV-MA

 TV Tuesday: Plur1bus (2025) TV-MA  

 

The research organization SETI makes a discovery that changes humanity forever, leaving only speculative historical romance writer Carol Sturka and a dozen others unaffected.

Apple TV+ bills this as a planet-wide "forced happiness" but that's not quite accurate.  In the first three episodes of this puzzle box series, we discover that it's more like a shared mind consensus with an built in imperative to make everyone happy.  Because Carol is outside the hive mind, and understandably freaked out by everyone's behavior, she is difficult to please.

First of all... that poor, poor man in Paraguay.  I hope Carol studies some Spanish.

While the new reality has an organized structure, it's obviously quite different from normal, so Plur1bus also has overtones of a post-apocalyptic world, and trying to navigate the "new normal".  When Carol organizes a meeting with the five English speaking people like herself who are out of the loop, all the methods of coping these people have adopted become obvious, and hint at the coping methods some adopted after the pandemic.

 Diabate, the opportunist, who takes advantage of this new found world, whoring and eating his way through, using up all of the fallen world's luxuries.  Laxmi, the denier, who refuses to believe her family has changed, including her ten year old son who now has the knowledge to fly the space shuttle.  Kusimayu, who just wants to join the collective so she can be with her family members again.

We see the extraordinary lengths the collective will go to to make the outsiders happy, including restocking an entire Sprouts grocery store in a few hours just because Carol asked for it because she wants to maintain her independance.

You may think that once we know how this collective consciousness was created the mystery is solved, but really it creates even more questions.  Will Manousos finally talk to Carol, and will he ever trust food outside his storage facility?  He seems to be the only other one who is as distrustful as Carol, and hopes to restore the world to the way it was.  And what is he searching for on the shortwave radio?

How does the collective spend its time at night when it's not working?  If they're moving away from private homes to a central location, where do they sleep, and what does that facility look like?  What does the collective do while they're off duty, because they don't even need to speak to each other.  Do they just sit around planning things in their heads?  Are they going to tear down all the unnecessary  buildings?  Is it going to end up being large dormitories, farms for their new vegetarian diet, and processing facilities with Carol's lone house standing in the middle like a protected historical building that they build around?

And what does this do to things like art, music and creativity?  Who needs to write a book when your largest audience already knows everything everyone else knows?  Or a song? Why write a love song, when everyone loves everyone else equally?

It's a fascinating show, and Carol with her anger and resentment simmering under the surface is a fascinating character. If you liked Severance, you will like Plur1bus.

Since this review spans the first four episodes, I won't bother with my usual counts, but there are plenty of laugh out loud moments thanks to Carol and her sarcastic wit.  As a crafting series, it works quite well.  The visuals are merely a beautiful topping on the verbal exchanges, so it works if your eyes are elsewhere, though there are long stretches where characters from the collective interact without speaking, so you may want to glance up once in a while when you don't hear dialogue, if only to catch yucky moments like the community doughnuts.

I eagerly await the second half of the season.  I just hope the writers are already working on season two, unlike Severance who waits until production is complete before they start writing, causing years-long delays.