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- [00:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
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- [00:30]
Professor Stephen Dyson
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- [00:42]
Professor Jeff Dudas
You get it now, you call it.
- [00:43]
Professor Stephen Dyson
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- [00:50]
Professor Jeff Dudas
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- [00:58]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Per month when network is busy. See Terms hello everybody.
- [01:01]
Marshall Po
This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network and if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
It's the Pop Culture Professors. And today we conclude our analysis of season one of Pluribus with our discussion of episode eight and episode nine. I'm Professor Stephen Dyson and I'M Professor Jeff Dudas and we are two political science professors who have just watched episode eight of Pluribus, the Apple TV series. Episode eight, Charm Offensive, the last episode before next week's season finale. What did you make of it, Jeff?
- [02:32]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I thought this week's episode was a bit of a placeholder. I don't think it was bad necessarily. And I, I wasn't bored. I'm not sure how you felt, but.
- [02:43]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, well, so in the, in the arc of a season, the, the penultimate episode before a finale, it's, it's not uncommon or one strategy is you put a lot of stuff on the table that's ultimately going to be paid off in the finale. And that, that was my reading of the episode. You know, we, we learned a lot, right. If you read the show in the register of. This is something that's sort of really happening with these real characters and there are real aliens who've really sent a virus and it's come to Earth. We learned a lot about the nature of what's purportedly going on. I know we've also been reading the episode, sorry, the show, or maybe predominantly been reading the show as a series of metaphors, allegories, you know, and operating less in a, in a, in a reality sense and more with more in a kind of ideational sense. You know, this was not an episode that did a lot to advance that ball. But in the lens of these are real characters who are facing a real situation, a lot was pushed forward in this episode.
- [03:37]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I think that that's right. If we imagine what we saw on the screen literally this week, then a lot happens.
- [03:43]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [03:43]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And we do learn a lot. You're right, it is.
- [03:45]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Carol learns a lot.
- [03:46]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Carol learns a lot. There's a ton of exposition. Again, if we take everything that we have seen at face value, it also pays off a certain set of themes, that alien invasion one prominently. There's also the anti communist theme or that we get a lot of with a sort of the collective, you know, sharing of space to sleep in. Nobody owns anything, right. They are. They're in sort of states of deprivation while they sleep because it's more energy efficient.
- [04:13]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [04:14]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And it's more productive in a certain sense. There's a throwback to kind of old anti communist themes, it seems to me, from the Cold War and maybe a little bit earlier. So those things it are on the surface and if we read those things as literal, then I think there would be good reason to believe that what we're getting next week out of the conclusion is some kind of resolution that introduces us to aliens or more to aliens, and has some sort of. Sets up some sort of, you know, charged ideological.
- [04:45]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Political.
- [04:45]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Ideological battle between individualism and collectivism or communism.
- [04:50]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, or also, I think Carol has learned enough now that she's. She's clearly planning a grand. A grand attempt to disrupt the joining. Right. Like she's. She's learned the. The nature of the communication amongst the joined, which I'd said couldn't plausibly have anything to do with. With people's electromagnetic properties because they don't stretch far enough. Apparently they do. And so that was.
- [05:12]
Professor Jeff Dudas
This is a little bit of a throwback to what Oviedo is doing. Right. With the radio frequencies. And I think we had a commenter at one point who had suggested this as. As a possibility that there's sort of radio wave kinds of technologies that are taking place somehow these amplified maybe. Let's put it another way, we learn a lot this week about what the Pluribus thinks is happening. We don't get a lot of evidence that actually that their take is correct. Right. So there is a sort of potentially interesting mirroring effect that's going on here. Carol has a theory of the case. Right. She has a theory of the Pluribus, which we have come to find over the course of the last several episodes or the last maybe four or five episodes, has elements that are persuasive and correct, but also has elements that I think are wrong. The Pluribus can lie to her. We've seen that before, and they are not entirely sincere. We see that a lot this week. Right. There's a lot of manipulative behavior that it. That the Pluribus is engaged in with regard to Carol. Her theory of the Pluribus, it seems, is not quite right, but it's at least plausible to me that the pluribus theory of its case is not quite right either. That this is, you know, an alien virus that has been sent via interstellar code and that, you know, there is some beneficent set of beings out at. Was it Kepler 22B?
- [06:40]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [06:41]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Who are sharing their gift with the world. I don't know that that is particularly persuasive either. Right. So certainly committed to this theory of the case in the same way that Carol's committed to her theory of the case. But I think we've seen elements, and I know you're going to expound on this, the Kepler 22B thing. I think we've seen elements that would suggest that there is Some confusion alight here with our main characters.
- [07:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay, so that's interesting. So the first of all, the Kepler 22B thing that's going on, I think there are allusions to other texts that might kind of shed some light upon this because at one point Zorja says to Carol, you know, we don't really quite know what it is that's there. Which is interesting because of course these are not transportations of alien beings into human souls. Right. This is a transportation of a virus. Yeah. You know, ostensibly a creation or maybe the essence of the, of the alien being, but, but not the transportation of alien individuals to kind of inhabit the, the flesh sacks of, of humanity. So even the, the kind of captured or joined humans are not fully certain of the origins of the, the thing that's captured them. But they do say we think it's a, like an ocean world. Yeah. And that's very interesting because that alludes to Solaris, the Stanislalem novel in Tchaikovsky film. And hat tip to a commenter who did, who did bring Solaris to our attention in, in last week's video. Solaris would be an interesting text here because what happens in Solaris is the, the planet Solaris or the world Solaris is discovered and investigated by humans. And they build a space station, Solaris Station atop it, in, in orbit, kind of around it. And they try to understand what's going on in Solaris, which is a water covered world. So it's completely an ocean planet. And the ocean planet is completely resistant to any human understanding of, of what it is. So they try every form of scientific experiments and every form of hypothesis. They develop their own scientific, a new scientific field called Solaristics, which, which becomes a series of dead ends. And a lot of Lem's book, the middle part is this kind of intellectual history of paradigm shifts in Solaristics, all of which lead to dead ends and all that. The ocean really gives the humans who study it reflections of themselves or reflections of their subconsciousness. So it shows an astronaut, a giant figure of his dead child. Or it rather famously shows Kelvin, the central character, repeated facsimiles of his wife who'd committed suicide years earlier on Earth. And they can never quite figure out is the ocean like a sentient ocean? If it is sentient, is this the way it's trying to communicate with them by reaching into their thoughts and replicating them? Is it trolling them? Or is it just a mechanism and it's just reflecting things? Because that's the nature of the mechanism with no intentionality behind it. And so that's really, really interesting. Both sort of specifically for the, for the intelligence of the pluribus in that in one sense they are guileless, right? They can't understand art. They don't really quite know what Carol's doing, although they're a bit suspicious of her. You know, they can't produce new things. They're sort of parasitic on existing human sort of knowledge and I guess, technologies. So the guileless from that standpoint, but they're also quite guileful from another standpoint, which is the standpoint of the self replicating virus and the virus that. That will just act in ways to kind of hijack its host and keep spreading itself. And they're sort of spectacularly going to do that by turning Earth or building on Earth a giant antenna to keep, keep replicating themselves in the universe. So there's that thing that's going on in terms of the literal way that the virus is working, or the alien intelligence or whatever it is, is working within the show. There's that mirror with Solaris. There's also the, the broader question that Solaris was asking, and Tarkovsky in the, in the film was, was really explicit about this, that Solaris was meant to show that humans shouldn't look outside themselves for explanations of their spiritual, political, social and psychological malaise. Right. That going out and trying to discover new things was not what humanity needed. I mean, Tarkovsky had produced Solaris as a riposte to 2001 a space odyssey in which technocratic, scientifically minded humans went out to discover the secrets of the cosmos and found them essentially in Solaris. They go out and do that and all they find are reflections of ourselves. And the grand conclusion is what humans need to do is reflect upon their own nature. And people knew this in the ancient past for Tarkovsky, and forgotten this in the contemporary age. And maybe that's the meta message of Pluribus. That's, that's a lot to take from one offhand reference to an ocean world. Yeah, maybe that's something that's going on.
- [11:28]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, it strikes me. So I think that that seems pretty promising as a, as a through line or a kind of a meta theory of what the show is up to. It strikes me there are a couple of other texts as well that are maybe useful here. And the one is, you talk about Tarkovsky knowing this was something that the ancients believed. Well, I mean, the obvious reference point is the myth of Narcissus and the staring into the pond and seeing only himself. Back. The other thing that comes to mind is a line of thought from the great modern director Werner Herzogen when reflecting upon the character of nature. Right. His argument is that we imagine that wild animals care about us. We anthropomorphize nature or animal life. And in fact that form of life is completely and totally indifferent to human existence. And this is a theme that he develops Herzog does in a variety of spaces. It's one of the sort of master themes of his movie Fitzcarraldo. It's the absolute on the nose theme of Grizzly Man. And so there's a way in which Solaris seems like it's quite likely the obvious reference text here, but it seems to point to a theme that has sort of deep roots when trying to make a commentary about how it is that human beings come to knowledge. Right? And the point seems to be the way you come to knowledge is you interrogate yourself. You don't use others as other beings, other forms of life as some sort of negative mirror against which you will then emerge in contrast. So I do wonder and imagine that there's probably that going on here, the other master text. It seems to me that we both had to do a little bit of work to dig into. Maybe we weren't the only ones. Since we both had this idea to do it independently of one another. We both went in and froze screen on Carol's whiteboard outline of the new Wecaro novel.
- [13:42]
Professor Stephen Dyson
So it's truly significant, right, that one thing that happens, the core of this episode, it's happened in previous episodes, but the core of this episode is there's the literal peeling back of the surface layer of Carol's home to reveal her writerly work of Waikaro and the great lost manuscript. Although I'm sure she herself doesn't consider it the great lost manuscript, which itself is serving as both, I don't know, cover for and disguise of and maybe parallel to the discoveries about the Pluribus. And it's always been significant, I think that Carol is a writer of fantastic fiction, that is, in which herself she is not literally invested, but is obviously a vehicle for her to work out some grander themes and ideas, although she's dissatisfied with the way that they're worked out. And so it surely matters that a writer of fantastical fiction is now the central protagonist in a story of the most fantastical fiction. And the method of her piecing together the puzzles, both as a writer and now as detective protagonist, is to write down what she knows in this whiteboard. Series of bullet points and allusions and linkages and so forth. So that's the. That's the role that's playing literally within the. Figuratively within the show you looked at.
- [15:04]
Professor Jeff Dudas
When you examine her whiteboard for the emerging Wakara novel, there's a text that recurs or a reference text, and it's Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. And Twelfth Night is all about deception and it's all about the revelation of imagined gender roles and the use of gender as a deceptive mode. Now this is one of Shakespeare's comedies, so it's all done in a sort of a light hearted manner. But it's a series of movements or moments of deception that revolve around gender reversals. So that is actually literally what's happening in the new Waikaro novel in which Verbanne becomes a woman. Right? And if you look at the whiteboard even more, there's lots of other elements of deception as well there, right. There's a reference to some sort of spice drug or space drug or something which she says first or she writes first it's poison and then say actually it's antidote, right. And it leads to a kind of a love potion or something of the sort. So there's these series of deceptions that seem to be in both in the foreground and the background.
- [16:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
It's about shape shifters in the Waikaro universe, right?
- [16:11]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And so, and that's kind of what's happening, it seems to me, on the literal surface as well here. It's a series of deceptions, right, that Carol is deceiving, trying to deceive Zoja, that she's kind of coming around, right? And so this is the, I guess the charm offensive in one way, a reference to the charm offensive. On the other hand. It's a series of deceptions on the part of Zoja via the Pluribus. To Carol, the whole scene with the diner, right, sort of gives away the show that this is in fact a body that is capable of manipulation, that is capable of guile, that is capable of deception. Carol does not ask for that diner to be rebuilt. They sort of prompt her to this in an attempt to manipulate her, I think on one hand into returning to the writing of Waikara, which I think they have some genuine interest in. But also because they see that as, I mean, that's what Carol should be doing. That's how she becomes the member of the Pluribus, right? When she commits herself to her role. Her role they think is as a writer of romance fiction. So they're Trying to kind of manipulate her into this posture. There's deception happening everywhere, it seems to me here in a way that. That is consistent with the sorts of meta literary and non literary texts that we've been talking about. Maybe that's a way to read things that there's a lot of head fakes going on maybe in this episode that are not quite literal. Although I guess we'll find out.
- [17:45]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, yeah. And the, the in in the same way as the, you know, Waikaro and the. The quote unquote real world that Carol's living in are presented as things she understands through the whiteboard and things she can actually sort of influence, or at least she can influence Waikaro and she can collate knowledge about Pluribus, some things that she'd written that she hadn't written in Waikaro. I mean, the two texts are starting to influence each other. Right. Because you have here Rabanne, the sort of romantic lead of Carol's. Why Carol fiction was a male character largely because Carol was making a kind of sop to mainstream tastes like that would sell better than what she really thought. Right. Which is Raban was a female erotic fantasy of hers, which the Pluribus then discovers, you know, through their knowledge of Helen in particular, that it was always Carol's desire that Rabban be a female and they resurrect Raban or a facsimile of Raban, send. Send her to Carol in the real world, which then has now influenced the new direction of. Of Ycairon. So yeah, you're right. There's lots of deception games going on.
- [18:56]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Here to cut you off in the same way that they've tried to do the same with Manusis by sending him his mother.
- [19:01]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [19:02]
Professor Jeff Dudas
So this is a. I mean, this is a body capable of manipulation of deception. And maybe Carol sort of comes to that realization at the end of this week's episode. I'm not sure. Right. But I'm not sure that Carol is. Has the personality to be easily influenced by new information.
- [19:27]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right, right. Well, neither does Manusis, you know, and we're sort of bookended by quick shots of Manusis, a couple of which were sort of symbolic, I think, or symbolically important. Manusis blood is dripping onto the hospital floor at the start of the episode and it makes the kind of smiley face, which is usually the yellow kind of Pluribus smiley face, and it makes the happy smiley face of Manusa's blood, which at some point you're like, well, if his blood is making that thing. Maybe he's gonna get assimilated. But then two of the quick drops spoil the picture and screw it up. And then the.
- [19:59]
Professor Jeff Dudas
By the way, sorry to cut you. I mean, there's a literary reference there to Alan Moore's Watchmen graphic novel. Of course, the first scene is almost. It's raindrops there that mess it up rather than more blood. But it's the same.
- [20:12]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. And it's Watts's faces, Rakesh's faces. Yes, but the. What else are they going to say? Oh, and the other thing that's going on is Manusis is being fed antibiotics to fight off an infection, and his body's kind of responding and is expelling the infection. Well, in some sense, you know, Carol and Manusis are sort of human antibodies to this. This infection. They're resistant to it and they're acting in ways. Obviously, this is where they're going in the, in the finale. As Manusis is, all we really see of him is in the. In the hospital. And then at the end, he's traveling and he's just 30 miles away from the United States Mexico border. So he's very close to Carol at this point. And that meeting is clearly coming in the finale.
- [20:50]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. So maybe we should. I mean, are we at a point where we should venture some. Some guesses, some educated guesses as to what we're going to see next week?
- [21:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, it's interesting. Yes. As it were some predictions so. Well, so Manusis and Carol are going to meet. I think that's my prediction of one kind of suck. If he, like, his car breaks down and he's left 15 miles away for you, the cliffhanger is, you know, will, does Triple A still work in the. In the Pluribus? I mean, they would. They would still have it. They come and fix that right up for you. So there's that. Carol's obviously, she learned a lot in this episode that seemed to me to be weaponizable knowledge or that's what she's searching for. So she learned about the means of communication between the Pluribus. She pushed them a lot on. Is there a way that she can push an individual Pluribus member, in particular Zoja, into a reverie state that would disjoin them from the collective? And again, this is a very old kind of sci fi theme. In this kind of thing. There's, you know, you find the one Android and you give it a series of. I can almost hear Captain Kirk. Is it not the case Android that if you follow rule one, you cannot follow rule two, because rule two would lead you to the. Does not compute, does it? You know, and then in the end you can kind of sever it from the collective and. And take over it. So I'm sure there's going to be a. An attempt to get Zoja removed from the. Right. She has this moment of reverie.
- [22:14]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [22:14]
Professor Stephen Dyson
We think after she's forced by Carol or invited by Carol to remember her childhood. Yeah. You know, and maybe it's gonna. Maybe Manusa provides another piece of information with the radio frequency that helps in that process.
- [22:27]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But then again, we also might find out that that moment of mango ice cream reverie was. Is itself a manipulation.
- [22:34]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes.
- [22:34]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right. Because we have now seen really without question, that they are capable of doing that. Sure, sure.
- [22:42]
Professor Stephen Dyson
So I think that's gonna happen. Diabadi's gotta re enter the scene at some point, hasn't he?
- [22:47]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, you would think.
- [22:49]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Cause it's been this three hander.
- [22:50]
Professor Jeff Dudas
There's a lot that one would think should be happening or needs to happen to conclude the season in a satisfying way. But I guess it is worth noting that this series has been renewed for season two already. And so I wonder how much resolution we're actually going to get.
- [23:08]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. There has to be some grand attempt to disrupt the joining and some cliffhanger as to whether it's succeeded or not. Right. Or some great revelation. I mean, one possibility as a grand theory we ventured grand theories in the past. One was, you know, which I'm not sure is going to be. Is going to be literally true because it would be quite cliched at this point. You know, the whole thing is Carol's is a rightly fantasy of Carols, but that's one theory we've thought about in the past. The other is when you think about the purported origin of this virus and it being an ocean planet and maybe it's the solaristic mirror, and also the degree to which the show is taking up distinctly human allegorical themes of collectivism, individuality, so on and so forth. I mean, there's no guarantee that the origin of the virus is not earthbound. Isn't that quite likely? Right. That there's some grand conspiracy that's earthbound, that's being deflected with stories of aliens.
- [24:07]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. Or it's just happenstance.
- [24:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [24:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Which wouldn't be surprising either. Right. The tendency of the human mind to organize random information into meaningful bits of data.
- [24:18]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right.
- [24:19]
Professor Jeff Dudas
That could be what happened here. And it just turned out unfortunately for, you know, however many hundreds of millions of people who lost their lives, that this pattern actually did lead to something. Right. So it could be.
- [24:34]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Oh, this would be that if you put a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters, sooner or later one of them will write Twelfth Night.
- [24:40]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right? Yes, yes. Which strikes me as, you know, potentially consistent with this theme of the. The dangers of. I don't know, the dangers of the unwillingness of the human mind to look inside of itself and interrogate itself and to instead search for grand theories to explain basically random outcomes or random circumstances.
- [25:12]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. Yeah. So that's a possibility. Yeah. I don't know. I think we. I think the show remains really, really interesting to me because I can't imagine any one of those is true, but I can't quite figure out what. What it is. So. Which is to say it's kept the. The central mysteries are still quite mysterious or quite open. I'm not confident in any of. In any of these literal predictions, and I'm also not quite sure yet which allegory or theme the show is definitively pinning itself. Its colors, too. But. But I am confident that. That it's. It's going to be an interesting one and a vivid one.
- [25:48]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. And I do. I guess I also. My other potential point of prediction is that it feels like we're going to get a return to this question of the pluribus attempting to turn the. The uninfected.
- [26:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [26:01]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And. And so I do wonder if we're gonna. If we're gonna get some sort of version of them attempting to extract stem cells. You know, we know. You know, it's been a kind of a common point. We've seen it in our comments and I know it's kind of been traveling around the Internet as well. Right. The reference to how Carol had her eggs frozen.
- [26:22]
Professor Stephen Dyson
So are they going to grow her child?
- [26:23]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Does that grow her child? You know, maybe the child has. Maybe the egg has already been implanted in Zoja and Zoja is going to be the. I thought that there was.
- [26:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Harold, I have something to tell you.
- [26:34]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. I thought there was a kind of a side glance moment when they were standing kind of on the ridge looking out at the train going by, where. Maybe it was the camera, maybe it was my imagination, but I. I thought I got a. Just a little bit of a peek of Zoja perhaps showing a little bit of a. A baby bump.
- [26:53]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Oh, okay.
- [26:54]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I may have just imagined that.
- [26:55]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Who knows? Yeah. The trend thing was also.
- [26:57]
Professor Jeff Dudas
That's gonna be part of what's happening.
- [26:58]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. The trend thing was also used. Sorry. Interesting, because Carol finds out they don't know everything about her, but also we don't. Cause she says, like, I really like trains. We also don't know if she's just.
- [27:09]
Professor Jeff Dudas
She's lying.
- [27:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I was gonna say, is she just making that up, you know, and wondering how credulous the Pluribus would be? So she's implanting. There are elements in this episode of one of the central premises of Three Body Problem, another recent science fiction text in which the protagonist discovers the sort of aliens. Because they communicate telepathically. They're open books to each other. So not only can they not lie, they don't understand understand lying and they don't understand strategy. And that's one thing that, that closed. Individual humans, the only thing that they have strategically over them becomes sort of a central plot point. And Carol's kind of discovering a similar. Yeah, a similar thing about the Pluribus.
- [27:47]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, the last thing I'll say, and I don't know if this is. This is definitely not a prediction, but I, you know, the dogs again recur.
- [27:56]
Professor Stephen Dyson
But they're not part. We. We learned crucial information. They're not part of the joint.
- [28:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
They're not part of the joint. And yet, I mean, it does strike me that dogs and dog like creatures are playing some sort of meaningful symbolic role in, in everything that's happening. And again, I, you know, I think we talked about earlier in the series that dogs have conventionally been, you know, and light colored dogs. And here we get, you know, the dog in question is kind of a salt and peppery kind of, you know, coated dog. And they, you know, ordinarily, conventionally in human mythology, dogs play this kind of intermediary role between the living and the dead. They're gatekeepers of that pathway. And so, you know, here they are again. And these feel like meaningful moments, but I'm not quite certain if they play a meaningful role in the nature.
- [28:50]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, they're also taken more literally. They're also quite sort of heavily pro social pack animals. So they play that analogical role to what the Pluribus is doing. But again, that's. This remains to me, presents to me, you know, continues to present to me as a very sophisticated show that the literal, most literal readings of are likely to be wrong. Now we could of course be wrong in that. And I think it's still possible to read it literally and figuratively. And I think one reason I did struggle a bit with this episode was it seems to present itself so literally and I think you're probably right. That in itself is a sort of meta deception.
- [29:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Well, but.
- [29:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
But we could just be overthinking.
- [29:31]
Professor Jeff Dudas
You could absolutely be overthinking of it. Although I will admit, and I'll put this on, put the marker down right now, as we conclude that if it turns out that all the literal things that we saw on screen this week seem to be substantiated next week, I will be disappointed.
- [29:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
It's just an alien invasion story. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right, well, let us know what you think in the comments. We definitely need your help this week, as in every week. You know, this is a show that can support multiple readings and multiple interpretations. We've only been able to provide 1, 1 or 2 or maybe 1.5 because, you know, there's a. Similarities between us. We have a very narrow range of sort of human experience and expertise, and we'd love to broaden it by, by knowing what, what you think. So please do get involved. We try and, you know, engage with the comments as much as possible. Thank you for watching. And on that bombshell, I'm Professor Stephen Dyson.
- [30:25]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And I'm Professor Jeff Dudas.
- [30:26]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And we are two political science professors who have just watched episode nine, the season finale of Apple TV's Pluribus. Jeff, it's over. Season one is over. I think Carol and Zsa's relationship is over. Right after Zoja delivered to Carol the Christmas gift everyone wants, which is an.
- [30:44]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Atomic bomb, which would mean that it truly is over. It's all over. If that goes off.
- [30:49]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, if it goes off, it's all over. But rather crucially, and I think we're going to get into this in this video, the show we know for a fact is not over. Yeah, it's been commissioned for a season two already. I've seen interviews with Vince Gilligan where he says his. He doesn't know how long it's going to run, but his ideal is four or five seasons. I saw an interview with Ray Seaborn where she said she hopes it goes for 10 seasons. So I think we'll have some commentary maybe a little later in the. In the video about what we see as the lifespan of. Of Pluribus and really what it has left to say. But first, let's get into, you know, our instant reactions to this episode. We've both seen it kind of once and we're talking immediately afterwards. So this is going to be a breakdown of some of the themes and ideas that we saw in the finale, where it leaves the story. Where the story could go and which of maybe which of its themes over the season we found to be sort of most compelling and most interesting. What did you make of the finale?
- [31:43]
Professor Jeff Dudas
So I thought, but as with the season as a whole, I think that this show looks incredible and there, there are some truly outstanding cinematography elements. I think, you know, the, the opening interlude, the first five or six minutes in Peru, you know, really stunning.
- [32:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, and a classic thing this show has done, which is to have these kind of set pieces. They're usually at the start of the episode and sometimes they're as long as 15 minutes with, you know, set in a. Set in a really interesting place that, that opens the vista of the show to a wider degree.
- [32:14]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And I did think it was a bold choice to reintroduce us to a character and to a scenario that we've had almost no time with over the course of the season. And I thought that that opening sequence pays off nicely towards the end of the episode when Zoja and Carol are in the ski lodge and they're having their sort of dialogic heart to heart. I thought that the show continues to look great and it continues to be extremely well acted and I think it moves some things forward in ways that are interesting. What did you think of this week's episode?
- [32:46]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, the Peru thing is an interesting place to start because it showcases the strength of the show, which is to simultaneously take very individual or very micro stories and illuminate much wider sort of themes. And that, that little bit in Peru is sort of a self encapsulated tragedy. Right? Because you have the, the young girl, I've got her name down here. Is it Kuzaya Kuze Mayo, the young girl who is unjoined and is experiencing this as a tragedy. Right. She's not like Carol, happy to be unjoined or manusis. I mean, happy is the wrong word, but you know what I'm saying? It doesn't want to be joined. She really wants to be reincorporated into this, you know, extended family or kind of village group. And she's really missing the, the connection that she used to have. And the pluribus is playing along with, with her. Yeah, right. They're saying it's going to be wonderful when, when you, when you join us. And crucially, they've cracked the, the sort of code of how to tailor the virus so that it can, it can incorporate the, I don't know, biologically resistant. They've got the DNA stuff all worked out and she just has to sniff the thing that arrives and she can be joined and she's joined and she gets the Pluribus smile. But then the whole village dissipates.
- [34:07]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Dissipates. And of course, her first move is she opens up the.
- [34:10]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Frees the animals and frees the animals.
- [34:12]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And then you're right. I mean, there is this interesting moment where the promise is togetherness and community, but in fact, what happens is that they all just kind of wander off on their own.
- [34:22]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right. And I think that was a really nice encapsulation of what's going on in. In the broader episode, but also in the season as a whole, which is what the Pluribus are offering are a facsimile of human connection. Yeah, It's. It's not the real satisfying.
- [34:35]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right.
- [34:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Thing. That, that, that village, they all. They all go off and scattered, and in one sense, she's now with them permanently in the same way that she's with everyone. If you're with everyone, you're with no one. Yeah. Right. It's. And it's a real. It's a real deceptive that they have deceived her in. In what it's going to be like because she. It's. It. They can't have a meeting of the minds because the pluribus. The Pluribus is intelligence and its understanding of connectivity is alien in. In all senses of that word to the human understanding.
- [35:05]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right. Well, I think it's incomplete.
- [35:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [35:08]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's. It's not based upon the full spectrum of human interaction in human life, which is why it comes across, as you say, as a facsimile of human community. It's not the real thing. And I did think that. But there were some moments throughout this week's episode in the interactions between Carol and Manousis where the contrast is made clear. Right. That relationship as it's developing, and it's hostile and kind of guarded and skeptical, but it is a genuine relationship, unlike the one that we are shown between Carol and Zoja.
- [35:44]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah. So I think that's absolutely crucial that these pairs of relationships and the way that they. They sort of interact with notions of. Of autonomy and collectivity and the, you know, because Imaya's given a facsimile of human connection, she's essentially deceived into giving up her. Her autonomy, which she, you know, she'd become an autonomous being in the context of that very supportive collective extended family, you know, so she could freely choose to associate with. With other autonomous beings. But it's what. What she got was not what she imagined she was gonna she was gonna get. Carol and Manuez are two fiercely autonomous beings who have this. A lot of the episode is this kind of struggle for power. Yeah. You know, and they go there. It's very funny. And it's. It's very kind of well done and subtly done in. In classic Pluribus style. But neither of them is going to yield.
- [36:35]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right.
- [36:35]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Their autonomy. And they. They spend a while struggling for dominance. You know, I don't. I don't speak snap and snap my fingers. And you. You go over there. We'll meet in the house. No, we. I wouldn't have gotten the damn ambulance either. I think Carol's right about that. But, you know, that's kind of struggle for domination or a negotiation over the terms of engagement. Yeah. And of ultimate alliance, which they're able to come into ultimate alliance in the end precisely because they are autonomous beings who are able to negotiate and then kind of freely give themselves into alliance with one another. And then the other great paired contrast that you have in the episode is a presence in an absence. And it's Helen. Sorry, it's. Zorja is present and Helen is absent as lovers of Carol. And Zorja is a AI Chatbot. Sexbot.
- [37:28]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yep.
- [37:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
That's her appeal to Carol. She's offering a facsimile of connection. Carol, as a lonely human being, does what lonely human beings do. Right. Which is project onto this. This fundamentally AI Like. I know it's not literal, but. But metaphorically AI like alien intelligence. Lots of reading between the lines, kind of literally in the. In the. In. When it's like chat GPT. You know, assuming that there is a peer intelligence behind the interaction that you're being given. But. But you're the person who's supplying the human element of this. This connection. And Carol is doing that with. With Zoja. Zoja, like a good. Like the next generation of ChatGPT or like a ChatGPT that you've interacted with for a while now, knows your preferences, how you like to be addressed. Zoja's using personal pronouns because she knows that's more effective with Carol. She's already been engineered to be kind of sexually appealing to. To. To Carol. And it's. It's sort of successful for quite a long period of time.
- [38:32]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right.
- [38:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Sorry, go ahead.
- [38:33]
Professor Jeff Dudas
No, that's exactly it. And in fact, Carol refers to Zoja after stumbling for the proper term for a while, as for companion. And, you know, as we were talking off camera, it struck me as you brought this theme to the table, it reminded me of these so called as if relationships that the sociologist Sherry Turkle has been writing about for her whole.
- [38:57]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Career, who is this great theorist of the computer age.
- [39:00]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, of the computer age. And. And she would argue that these kinds of technological inventions that people come to invest, as you say, invest themselves into and then imagine as if they were real human companions. And that on one hand, there's a kind of real obvious appeal to having such an as if companion, whether they be a, you know, in this case, it's a chatbot. Could be an AI or a robot robot. In Sherry Turkle's earliest imaginations or studies, they were the home computer. That there is a kind of an obvious and immediate appeal to having that sort of relationship that is close enough to an actual human relationship of reciprocity and mutuality, that it is, for a time, satisfying, but it's also a relationship that the human being always knows, at least in the back of their mind, is not real in the sense that it is not a human relationship. We very much get that here. And Carol, I think, gives it her best shot in this episode, right? She really, you know, I think the show has us spending about two weeks of time in. It's almost like a kind of a, you know, a romantic escapade, right, between Carol and Zoja. And they're going to various different locales and they're having these, you know, wonderful romantic times. So Carol gives it her best shot for sure, and she achieves a certain kind of happiness that she sort of marvels at. But she also is reconciling herself to the as if nature of the relationship always. And eventually what becomes clear to her is that, you know, Zoja does not have the same investment in this relationship that Carol has. Zsa's investment in it is, on one hand, it is to please Carol, but on the other hand, as you also were talking about off, off camera, it's to run a very particular agenda, Right. That the goal of the. Of the joined is to get more people to join. Well, and particularly Carol and Manouses and the. And the other sort of uninfected.
- [41:06]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, because Zoja's intelligence and the Pluribus intelligence is like AI intelligence. It's fundamentally alien again, in both, you know, it's. This is what sci fi does, right. It kind of literalizes or schematizes contemporary problems or contemporary anxieties and kind of stages the conflict between them or the. Whatever. The stakes are in the form of literalized characters that are operating both as characters, but as vectors for wider ideas. Zoja is an alien intelligence her intelligence is from. It is extraterrestrial, but that's not the point. It's alien to a human understanding of what emotional sexual handshake, for want of a better phrase, would be between two autonomous beings and an agreement to pursue a shared. A shared agenda or a shared life project. Zoja has a. Has a goal. Right? In the same way as like an algorithmic intelligence or a chatgpt has a goal. Right. It's trying to achieve something. It's just that goal is not what Carol, when she's anthropomorphizing those intelligences, expect them to be. And the pluribus have an agenda in the same way as sort of big tech or AI or the. Or an algorithmic society has an agenda, right? It's to subsume you and your identity fundamentally within a framework that is monetizable one one way or another, or even within ChatGPT, which is also supposed to be monetizable. You'll notice when you interact with it, the interaction never ends. It always has three more things it can do to you for you. Sorry. At the end of every question, it just wants to keep you kind of involved and kind of, kind of going down this path in the same way that Zoja does. And Carol's realization, though, is Zojja and Helen both lighter. Right. They both are or are deceptive towards. Right. We're given another example in this. In. In this episode, Helen has hidden a kind of motion sensor in the liquor cabinet at the time when Carol was freezing her eggs in order to ensure that the. That the eggs are, you know, viable.
- [43:07]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [43:07]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And it's perfectly understandable. And. And all the rest of it. It's a horrible moral dilemma. But. But, you know, you kind of understand what Helen's done here. Nonetheless, she has not said to Carol, hey, don't drink, and I trust you because I love you. Right. She's engaged in deception. Yeah, fine. It's not a moral condemnation. It's just a fact of what they've done. Zoja has also been deceiving Carol on largely the same subject. Right. Which is we need your consent. We need your stem cells, which Carol takes literally and reasonably to mean, unless I let you stick a needle, as she says, in my ass, you're not gonna get my stem cells. Zorja, by act of omission, has deliberately deceived Carol on the most crucial element of Carol's existence by harvesting the stem cells and starting to kind of make the virus that's gonna assimilate her But Carol comes to the realization that both lovers lie to her. But Helen's form of deception, because it's a human deception, it's the actions of an autonomous being who's trying to act in Carol's interest, who is impinging upon Carol's autonomy, but not in a way that's. I know what. The right way to express this. It's. It's not so gross or so It's. It's done from the right motives. I mean, the fact I'm struggling to express this shows how deeply the show is acting as to reflect upon what real human relationships are.
- [44:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [44:29]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And how they differ from the instrumentalized algorithmic. That's probably not a word, but you know what I'm saying. With Zora approaches her relationship with Carol.
- [44:38]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I. I mean, I think that's exactly what the show intends to do. And I think that this episode is successful in bringing that point to a sharp conclusion. So I think, you know, thematically, it does strike me that there have been lots of trails that have been laid throughout these nine episodes that have brought us to this point of compare and contrast between the as if relationships and the authentically human relationships. So I think the show is successful thematically in that way, and I think this week's episode is successful thematically in that way. And it also brings back, as you alluded to at the beginning, it brings back the discussion or calls back the discussion that Carol had had in episode four or five with. I think it was with Zoja or maybe it was with one of the other joined, that they would deliver her an atom bomb if she requested it. And so this is kind of the big conclusion, I suppose, at the end of this week's episode is that, in fact, they. They bring Carol back to her home to meet up with Manouses, and they will. They will begin this attempt to put the world right. But they also deliver, along with Carol, an actual atom bomb.
- [45:57]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, it's. It's prime day for Carol. And I mean, this has been a repeated thing. The show's done quite cleverly, which is. It's. It's brought things to Carol's door. Yeah. Like ordering off the. Off the Amazon.
- [46:08]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [46:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Oh, yes. It's doordash. You know, Zorja was doordashed back to. Back to Carol, the garbage business, you know, with the drones and so forth. When Carol wanted whiteboards, riders for, you know, her project last week that was. Now she's doordashed herself. An atomic bomb. It's quite a clever. Well, it's really interesting that the show has reintroduced the atomic bomb. Chekhov's atomic bomb. Right. You put it on the table. But, you know, describe it early in the season and it has to come back by the end of the season. Very interesting thematically in a show that is, at least to some degree, alluding to the contemporary dangers of AI, that if you think in contemporary technology, what are the two big things that have been invented that are simultaneously tributes to humanity's scientific ingenuity and also sort of existential folly? It's said to be the atom bomb and the kind of movement towards really impressive artificial intelligence. So it's important that those two are always brought together. That often happens in philosophical AI texts. You remember we watched God, what is it called? Oh, Ex Machina.
- [47:18]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah.
- [47:18]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And at one point, in the Ex Machina, which is about the development of a. Of a new kind of humanoid artificial intelligence, there's the OMD and all the gay song plays in the background like that. There's always an allusion to atomic Armageddon when you. When we talk about AI in the space.
- [47:34]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And not infrequently a reference to the Oppenheimer quote. Right.
- [47:38]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes. I'm become death, the destroyer of worlds. Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting. What is Carol going to do with this atomic bomb? I presume it's sort of a form of deterrence. Right. She says, if you the joined, try to approach me and I think you're going to give me the secret kind of sniffing salts.
- [47:57]
Professor Jeff Dudas
But it's also deeply.
- [47:58]
Professor Stephen Dyson
I'll blow everyone up.
- [47:59]
Professor Jeff Dudas
How is she going to do that?
- [48:00]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Which I also think is a very clever use of atomic weapons. I mean, I have this theory about portrayals of atomic weapons, which is what we know from the human experience of atomic weapons is that they are essentially unusable and that they involve humanity in a series of absurdities. Right. Mutually Assured destruction is anachronized as not anachronized. The acronym is MAD for a reason. You know, the maniac computer. You've always got that combination of high rationality in deterrence theory. If you do this, I will certainly destroy you. Therefore, logically, you will not do this. But also that at the same time I would be ensuring my own destruction, so I will never do it. So you're always caught in that paradox. And I always think once it's. Once atomic weapons are introduced in a. In a work of fiction, it's sort of over or it's absurd, because any choices is absurd. Yeah. Any choice Carol would make with that atomic bomb is absurd. Yeah. I mean, what if she. She's going to drive it to the big antenna that they're building, but then they just build a new one right there. The only possible use is. Is personal deterrence, which would be an act of self annihilation. Yeah. Anyway.
- [49:05]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right. Yeah. Who knows? Right. And what's she gonna. And they can't move it.
- [49:09]
Professor Stephen Dyson
No.
- [49:10]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Right. So it's just going to sit in the driveway, you know, like. Like a gate, I guess, that you could easily traverse. Right. As. As a symbol of. Of security.
- [49:21]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, she. She can't go. She can't go away from it either. She has to stay, like, within range of debt. I mean, anyway, you know, as. As I said, it's absurd. I don't. I don't mean that as a critique. I mean, it's. It's deliberately absurd. It's another way that the show is kind of reflecting upon the anxieties of human existence in our age of contemporary high technology and what that does to our understandings of rationality, connection, and living in this type of existence. Yeah.
- [49:49]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And the other character that we see really developed most clearly this week is Manousis. Right. Who is working within that same register of these same kinds of questions. Connection, autonomy and the like. He gets by far the most. I'm pretty sure that by far the most amount of screen time that we've seen him at any point this season. This is the big meeting that the show has been building towards between Carol and Manouses. And, you know, we get. I mean, they are different people, Right. They are both, you know, extremely willful and extremely stubborn. They are both committed to the end of the. Of whatever has happened. Right. But we also get some contrasts, I think, between them. Manusis is. And I think one of the commenters had said this a couple weeks ago, and Manasses is more of a zealot than Carol is, and he makes that clear this week. And he says these people, they're not human, they're not people, and if they can't be saved, then they should be dead. And this. He puts it so plainly that Carol is sort of shocked by this. And then I wonder if by the end of the episode, Carol has sort of reached the same conclusion.
- [50:58]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [50:58]
Professor Jeff Dudas
So what did you make of Manassis's appearances this week?
- [51:02]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, so it's super fascinating. I mean, he's obviously a person, he's obviously a fanatic, but he's a fanatic in. In service of sort of human dignity and human autonomy. I mean, his sort of most telling line I thought was. It's a great. Carol says they're not evil. Yeah. You know, matter of debate. But from Manusa's standpoint, the evil is they treat a man, a human, the same as an ant.
- [51:27]
Professor Jeff Dudas
As an ant.
- [51:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Which is true. Right. They regard them as, you know, they just join them all together and sort of stamp out the. The individual autonomy.
- [51:36]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And he says they stole our souls.
- [51:37]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes, exactly. And so his. His kind of radical individualism is not the kind of high Reaganite, you know, United States, like, let's make a lot of money. Radical individualism. It's. It's a. A sort of, I don't know, Earthium or soulful mod. Dignity is a big thing, right?
- [51:55]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Like substantial. Right?
- [51:56]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yes, exactly.
- [51:57]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Life is the struggle for meaning.
- [51:59]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Right, Precisely. So that was one part. His appearance afforded us. Another thing the show has done really well, which is it's dealing with weighty themes in a subtle way, which often means you have to deploy humour. It's just amazing to have them talk to each other through that phone. It was so beautifully accomplished and funny, but also thematically rich. The phone represents the technology and Manouses is just instantly like, let's flush the damn thing away. Even though for Carolina, she was already a technophobe and she's got it on airplane mode and she didn't really use it, and we've talked about that in previous episodes, that she's a person who's a little sort of behind the times in technological terms, but for Minutis, it's this devilish object. But it's also. This is the human dilemma. Right. It is sort of essential for them negotiating the terms of their alliance. I did think in an episode, in a show that was a lot about individuality and how you preserve individuality and. And two fearsome individuals that every time Carol says her name, the show, or every time Anousa says Carol's name, Carol says unknown name or individual comma, you must do X, Y, which was really clever. I mean, what is that? Like technology erasing individualism or. You know, there's something thematically rich that's going on now, which I think is really interesting. And then the interaction between them was very interesting for Carol's arc throughout the series, throughout the season. Sorry. In that Carol started out as Manusis. Right. She started out as hugely militant. Yeah. She then became, for a couple of weeks, diabate. Right. She'd accommodated herself, not insignificantly because of, you know, this kind of fleshly benefits thereof, but she'd accommodated herself to the. To the pluribus. And then Manusis appears. Sorry. At the end of the season as the original instantiation of Carol the Fanatic, and sort of snaps Carol back into that original mode or gets her out of the Pluribus's clutches, I guess. So that was what I saw.
- [54:04]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah. So I mean, the other. I mean, the elephant in the room, I suppose, for us at this point, so to speak, is this is the end of season one. And we talked a lot about this off camera and decided we would wait until later in the episode to bring it up. My takeaway at the. Of these last two episodes is that it. It feels like the story has kind of sputtered into a holding pattern.
- [54:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, it's completed.
- [54:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Very sad. Or it feels complete. Or that it should be complete.
- [54:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah.
- [54:33]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And instead what's happened is, is that we're going to have to wait a long time. Who knows how long, an unpredictable amount of time for a second season. And it's not clear what that second season is actually going to be, except now it's Adventure Time or now it's Action Time. And it struck me that this is the commercial imperative behind serialization as a form of storytelling. We talked about how serialization and storytelling gets started in the periodical times and is explicitly designed to engage more and more readers for as long as possible. And that. But serialization is not really about good storytelling. It's about keeping people engaged and selling a product. And I think it became so commonplace, everything was serialized for a century in all of our storytelling, that one of the things, for me, that's happened over the last decade or so, as we have had the onset of streaming, as we've had the onset of on demand, as we've had networks like Netflix, for example, or services like Netflix, which at least for a time would drop entire seasons or sometimes just entire stories all at once. The serialization as a form of storytelling has become problematic to me, and this show feels problematic in that way to me. I don't know why this story couldn't have been told in a complete form in 9, 10, 11 episodes, except that you have to keep it going for commercial purposes. And you had referenced earlier. Vince Gilligan hopes it's four or five seasons. Rhea Seymour would like it to be 10 seasons. What possible value would there be in this story being told out over the course of 10 seasons?
- [56:28]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, so my take on this is I'm sort of broadly sympathetic to that. I think about, you know, shows that I've. That I've thought of are of comparable artistic merit, that have that have gone multiple seasons. And what is it that they've done? So something like Mad Men, you know, starts in the early 1960s. The culture is really still the late 1950s. And you can make an argument that each season is sort of examining the evolution of a particular form of the American dream, you know, over a really crucial decade into the 70s or something. Like, I know you don't like the show, won't engage in it, but something like Battlestar Galactica, which was this sort of retelling of the Odyssey, you know, and they had to get from one place to another. And so you could. You could justify the next season because they needed to continue the journey. But the journey had an obvious end point. And just as in the Odyssey, you know, there's a lot of pages in that you wouldn't want to go from. I want to get home. It was a bit hard, and now I'm home. You want to turn effects. But so. So. So there was some good point, or.
- [57:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Even in a more contemporary, like, Apple TV scenario, like For All Mankind, in which each season leaps forward into another decade and then explores the ins and outs of that decade. Right. That, as I hear you saying, that there. There are storytelling elements. Right. That can be neatly fit into the package of serialization in those kinds of stories.
- [57:50]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Yeah, because. Because it has this. This obvious teleology to. To where the. Where the story needs to go. So the question is, what is, you know, what is the equally interesting intellectual statement that a season two of Pluribus can make? To me, it's a sort of fascinating, really wonderful reflection on contemporary existence. Pluribus, season one. You would need to do something, I think, radically different in season two to sort of justify a second season. And it does seem like what we're gonna get is the episodic continuation of really the same story. Yeah. I could be wrong. I mean, maybe they're going to go in a radically new direction.
- [58:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Maybe. Let's take a quick break, and then we'll finish this thought.
- [58:33]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay. And we are back on this Christmas Eve discussing the finale of Pluribus. We were sort of exploring the question of whether there is a viable season two or, you know, in intellectual terms or in story terms, what is there left to. To say? And I did wonder, Jeff, you know, what is it you would have preferred in a finale?
- [58:53]
Professor Jeff Dudas
I don't know. I would have preferred maybe one more episode in which we get some narrative closure here and we get the sense that there is a beginning and an end to this story. Or maybe it wouldn't be 10 episodes. But maybe you could be a little more parsimonious in your storytelling over the course of the nine. But it's an arbitrary number. Right. That's the other issue that strikes me is like, why did they stop after nine? Exactly. Like why couldn't you have done a 10th or an 11th show episode in order to finish the story? So I think something that was a little more obvious, that we were thematically closing. How it ends, I don't have any investment in, frankly, because as we've talked about over these last nine episodes, I think the point of the show has been to explore the broad thematics of it. And I think that has been the most interesting and enriching parts of it and to explore those thematics in a personalized form with this group of characters. One character in particular whose journey has been pretty interesting and pretty fascinating. So my concern is that at this point we just get a series of seasons that are kind of sloppy and not particularly coherent anymore and that my concern is that the writer has a vague end point in mind but doesn't actually know how they're going to get there. And the show is just going to keep going for several seasons because it's. It's a moneymaker.
- [60:24]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay. So I have two. Two endings in mind. Okay. So one, one is absurd. It's not, it's not throwaway. That's a different thing. But, but it, but it's, it's deliberately absurdist. The other is actually comes from something someone put in the comments section, I think last week and I'll flesh it out a little bit. The first, the first option. It's a one season rap and there's one more episode and I would like them to engineer something akin to the last scene in Dr. Strangelove where Peter Sellers is having has wrestled manfully with his kind of flaming bomber and his malfunctioning, you know, bomb. All of humanity needs him to fail to drop this bomb because it's going to be the end of the world. And he manages in the end to wrestle the bomb off its. Off its hook over the Soviet Union and is a straddling his cowboy hat going yeehaw.
- [61:15]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Having just ended the sellers, in fairness.
- [61:16]
Professor Stephen Dyson
But is it not. Who is it?
- [61:18]
Professor Jeff Dudas
It's. I can't remember the actor's name, but it's not.
- [61:23]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Okay, who, Whoever. Whoever it is that you know.
- [61:25]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, writing down Oblivion and Joy.
- [61:27]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Exactly. So some equivalent of Carol doing that. And I think you would have had a perfect one season kind of, you know, reflection on the anxieties of contemporary existence that that would end in an appropriate way. That's one option. Option two, let's have a genuine season two. And this is something that came from a commenter. I can't take credit for this, but I do think it's a smart idea. Commenter said look, what Earth has been or what humanity has been in season one is essentially occupied. They've been occupied by an alien force. It's one of the metaphors that's going on. So what about a post occupation reflection? So let's have a season where the joining has been undone and humans are now trying to reflect upon the experience. And in one sense, of course it's hugely tragic because tens of millions of people have died and maybe and or but is the right join here. But it's also provided an opportunity for reflection upon what kind of societies we want to have and how we want to live individually and collectively and what it is that we truly value about living in existence and separation and that, that dialectical tension with our, our fellow person and that, that you could easily conduct that through the, through the standpoint of Carol and or Manusis and also, you know, continue that micro macro play that the show has done so well. I think that would be very, very brave and would definitely justify a second season that would be fantastically innovative and brave kind of storytelling.
- [62:59]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Yeah, I like both of those ideas and there might be others as well and who knows, maybe my fears will be unfounded, but I can't say these last two episodes had filled me with much confidence about this series going forward.
- [63:11]
Professor Stephen Dyson
Well, Happy Christmas to you too. Professor Grinch has turned up to spoil, spoil everyone's enjoyment. No, this is surely the role of the, of the over intellectualized critic critic in contemporary societies to take something people like and tell. Tell them that they're wrong to do so.
- [63:29]
Professor Jeff Dudas
Exactly. But we did wait until the end of the episode to do it.
- [63:32]
Professor Stephen Dyson
So like subscribe. Please do tell us what you think in the, in the comments. We've, you know, being sincere here. We've genuinely sort of appreciated and benefited from the kind of feedback that we're, that we're getting. Let us know if we're half right. Totally right. Totally wrong. You know, any and all opinions are gratefully, gratefully accepted. Jeff, All I want for Christmas is YouTube to deliver us a good audience for this video. But it's been a. Yeah, it's been a pleasure and happy Christmas season's greetings.
- [64:03]
Professor Jeff Dudas
And to you and to all of our audience as well.
- [64:06]
Professor Stephen Dyson
And on that atomic bombshell.