‘Pluribus’ Episode 6: The Tricky Balance of Koumba

0:18Joanna Robinson:Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. And we are Rob Mahoney. Oh, we are. We are. We are. We also are, I don't know, the world's number one pigeon hater. um listen i don't know if you guys heard the origin story of rob's uh fight with pigeons but i want to say that recently our listeners have started sending in pigeon merch they have for rob to consider purchasing so this has become a full-fledged bit now and i'm really into it so rob where can folks send their uh suggestions for pigeon merch for you always to prestigetv at spotify.com but especially to licking the donut d-o-n-u-t at gmail.com and joe it's gotten so bad that now i am getting instagram ads for pigeon merch so are you thanks everybody slash i hate you but at some point me and the pigeons are gonna have to get together and hash this out because this is just not sustainable uh listen i think everyone in the world except for you is team pigeon so i wish you luck in this fight it's just simply not true i'm sorry that's absolutely not the case.

1:21Joanna Robinson:I have yet to hear from a fellow pigeon hater. Everyone else is, everyone seems indignant over your pigeon slander. Sarah Paulson included apparently. Sarah Paulson number one Rob Mahoney enemy. Okay, so listen. We're here to talk about Pluribus episode 6 HDP written by Vera Blassie and directed by Ganja Montero and HDP human derived protein. No mystery about what this episode title means. Rob Mahoney. Oh, actually, before we get into that I did really quickly want to say we're in the thick of Spotify wrapped season and I just wanted to thank everyone who had us on your Spotify wrapped list tagged us like thank you so much it's like thank you in the first place for listening to us for for so many minutes of your year that we wound up on your uh wrapped list and thanks for letting us know and everyone's just really sweet about it so thank you guys so much it's been amazing I think especially hearing from the people who are like, I jumped in for severance.

2:21I jumped in for slow horses and I just kind of kept along for the ride. I mean, that's, there's no better thing for people in our profession to hear than you just want to be here and hang out with us as we talk about good and sometimes very bad TV shows. But thankfully, Joe, right now the TV has been quite good.

2:35Joanna Robinson:It's true. It's true. We, you know, this week we did a West Wing episode that folks seem to really dig. So that's great. uh rob and jody covered chair the chair company um maybe it's is it just chair company no the i think it is the chair company okay the chair company um and then we will have um an episode on heated rivalry that will drop uh next week uh so that's that's the ongoing stuff and then we have one more of our sort of like best episodes of the century episodes coming next week so there's a lot going on a lot of minutes for you to consume so we can wind up on next year's spotify wrapped as well.

3:13Joanna Robinson:But I just wanted to thank everyone. Okay. So Rob Mahoney, what did you think of this episode of television? I quite liked it. And I would say in particular, this idea of taking a reveal that we assumed and was kind of the only place that plotline could go and turning it into something surprising and kind of fun and ultimately very dark. And just taking something that you were so sure you knew the answer to and transforming it into rather than like a plot reveal, I think a really great character moment for Carol. Like turning the fact that she is the last to know, basically, about the human and the human protein.

3:51Like, I didn't think we could make Carol a more lonely character, but we certainly did this week. Sad.

3:56Joanna Robinson:Very sad. Yeah, Kumbha being like, oh, you mean about the meeting people thing? Yeah. No big. Troubling, disturbing. You know, and then that's a great segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you, which is that we get a John Cena cameo in this episode. We had been discussing in previous episodes, like, would it be interesting for them to have celebrities as part of the hive mind? And we could see, you know, Noah Wiley from The Pit or whatever deliver news. And here we have John Cena. So what did you, how did this, our first celebrity cameo land for you? I loved it. I mean, it's kind of the pluribus version of Margot Robbie in a bathtub.

4:34It's like, let's just get John Cena on screen. And we love John Cena. We want to believe John Cena. We want to spend time with him just like Kumba does. I also just thought like when I saw that John Cena was on Bill's pod this week, I did not anticipate this enormous crossover event for people in our little world, Joe. This is tremendous news.

4:52Joanna Robinson:It's true. It's true. Yeah, I thought this was a really good use of him. And something that's really fun to know is that on the official podcast, they mentioned that they did not have the John Cena footage the day that they shot this. So Vince Gilligan just did it and didn't tell the cast. So they like pulled up this video and then it's just like Vince in full blown, like, aw shucks Vince mode doing this whole speech about why it's okay to eat people. First of all, release the tapes. Yeah. We're really going to need to see that. I demand to see it. I also want to mention that Ganja Montero, the director of this episode, also directed, I don't know, three great episodes of Agatha all along and has just been like doing some great TV directing work.

5:37Joanna Robinson:on the official podcast, Vince compared her to Michelle McLaren, who, if folks don't know, aren't weirdos who look at, you know, the name on who directed every episode of television. Michelle McLaren, an all-time Breaking Bad director. She directed many episodes, including Four Days Out, Salud, Gliding Over All, and Tahajali. And it's just like very innovative visually. And there's some fun innovations inside of this episode. But I I thought that, you know, as you might expect, Gunja Montero on that podcast episode was like, oh, Michelle McLaren, I will take it. Thank you so much. Biggest compliment.

6:14Joanna Robinson:But did you have any sort of top level thoughts on the direction of this episode? I mean, first of all, just how many different stories and types of storytelling are embedded here, right? You have like almost like a full blown horror movie found footage style in terms of the open and seeing kind of Carol's videotape. I thought that was a really smart way, again, to tap us into something we already thought we understood. And frankly, even though we knew or suspected it was going to be human bodies under there, individually shrink-wrapped parts of human bodies was somehow so much worse. Tough. Really tough.

6:45And then that transitions into, I mean, basically like a Bond movie for 10, 15 minutes with Kumbaa and kind of reenacting his dreams of high-stakes poker glory. And then from there, I mean, we go into like a pretty tense confrontation. we get this whole kind of sub story you know in the flashback with manuso so like i i love of course some of the individual flourishes in terms of shots like the slow rise of the tv out of the dresser is like an incredible moment as carol kind of susses out the hdmi of it all but just the variety and i think that's what pluribus kind of lends itself to we talked about this with some of the other shows we've covered joe like poker face where it's just you can sort of reinvent the style of story you want to tell from episode to episode because the world is empty.

7:29You can drive into Vegas and it is dead and frozen and there is no one out there. And when that's the canvas, you can kind of do whatever you want with this world.

7:37Joanna Robinson:I don't want to beat the dead horse of the official podcast because we have a lot of listener stuff to get to and a lot of our own thoughts to get to. But a couple of things I want to mention is that the head that she pulls up in the facility is a model of Vince Gilligan's head. So Vince Gilligan is like, this is my Alfred Hitchcock camera. He's like, I've never appeared in any of my stuff. So this is like my first version of that. And then I was so curious how they got empty Vegas. Because, you know, we got an email from a listener about the rooftop shot that we talked about last week. And we'll talk about that in a second.

8:12Joanna Robinson:But empty Vegas, I was like, Vegas is never empty. How did they do that? And so I was fascinated to learn that basically they drove the route that Carol took with several, I believe, cameras mounted, like sort of like the like Google Maps car, if you've ever seen that driving around or whatever, like several cameras mounted around and just drove the route over and over and over and over again in the sort of wee small hours of the morning where there's like as few people as possible. so that you can sort of like match shots. And as soon as like a person shows up in one shot, you have other coverage of it that you can use to convey this emptiness.

8:51Joanna Robinson:And I just thought it was really effective and really eerie to see a place like Vegas completely emptied out. It's completely haunting. I mean, especially the juxtaposition of this like extravagant party that Kumba has staged. Basically like puppeteering all of these people into the roles that I guess he wants them to play for his little fantasy into this place is just dead. Like there's just nothing happening here. And even Carol's criticisms on her way out. I mean, wherever she goes, everything kind of hollows out. But her criticisms of Vegas on her way out about like the neon lit ashtray part of it's like, it's not even really true anymore.

9:28Like there are the lights, but ultimately like this is barely even recognizable as Vegas without the people.

9:34Joanna Robinson:So sad. Carol, Carol sort of covering how heartbroken she is, is devastating.

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10:47Joanna Robinson:I was going to ask you this later, but I think this is a good place to ask you. You mentioned Kumba has sort of orchestrated this James Bond, you know, fantasy for himself. Yeah. you know a point that you raised initially and we've been returning to over and over again is this idea of like could you actually even enjoy a game of winning a game of poker with a royal flush if everyone there is just humoring you and you're clearly being dealt like yes you know the right cards and all sorts of stuff like that if you didn't have to work for it if you have to work for the royal flush uh if you didn't have to like actually have whatever it takes to get a room full of women to like get into a hot tub with you or whatever it is, does it really mean anything?

11:28Joanna Robinson:And I would say in the case of Kumba, like it does, like he's having a good time enjoying himself. So do you think there's like an upper limit to that? Or is there just some kind of personalities where it's just like, actually, this is great and I don't need to worry. I don't need to over over complicate a good thing. You know what I mean? I think it's both, right? Right. If we play out the story of Pluribus with Kumba and Vegas for 10 years, there are clearly diminishing returns to the royal flesh you know you have been dealt in all of these situations. It's just not going to hit the same. That said, as human beings, we are simple creatures.

12:05And you flip over the cards and everyone applauds for you. There's just that part of your brain that lights up, right? There is that kind of natural organic feedback. I think what's interesting about the world that Pluribus creates is all of those feedback loops, all of those very human responses to things would get warped over time and sanded down over time and you you just evolve into a different kind of person who's not responding to the applause of your puppets in the same way anymore because it would be empty now as far as the personality types joe like i think there's like a big messy conversation to have here about consent about i have a huge consent section inside of this episode so let's let's save that part of it like especially as it relates to ladies in the hot tub.

12:47But even in just like, I'm going to dress up this guy as Elvis, I'm going to put this lady in the full breakfast at Tiffany's and they're going to do the exact thing that I want them to do. It is weird and messy. And I do think it kind of requires a certain type of person who can put that at the back of their mind and go through the motions and enjoy that kind of setup. I felt, and I'm very anti-hive mind, but I felt sad for these people when he walks out of the

13:15Joanna Robinson:room and they just drop everything and then go into like robotically cleaning everything up that was harrowing i think to look at and something you know that again they talked about in the official pod was like the casting of this role was one of the hardest ones to cast because kumba on his on the surface all of his actions are so sleazy but they didn't want him to read as sleazy yeah because he is a genuine very sincere guy and he is very kind to carol Well, in that moment on the phone when he just says like, but she's so lonely. You know what I mean? Like he's advocating for her to a certain degree.

13:50Joanna Robinson:And so how can we get a performance where you're seeing this guy do this stuff that should make you uncomfortable? But I like him at the same time. So it's really tricky balance, you know? I mean, even with all of these weird thorny and ethical questions we're sort of raising and just like human questions. Yeah. I really like him. And I really love this scene. I love the collective gasp at the bets at the poker table. I love the very Bond score, the eyepatch guy hamming it up until he is too out of character and has to be kind of put in his place. It really is an amazing thing that they've been able to do with this character so far, where you don't feel judgmental of him necessarily, but you do feel judgmental of the world and the situation this puts everybody in, in a way.

14:36Joanna Robinson:Yeah, it's interesting. okay let's let's do some listener emails that will sort of touch on some of the big themes that i want to talk about today really quickly sort of like detail stuff uh a lot of people emailed us they were wolf dogs actually so they were not wolf wolves but they were wolf dogs okay so is that close enough to a wolf to satisfy you animal critic rob mahoney i'm cool with it i'm with a wolf dog i have no beef with the wolf dog community uh john uh who is the uh listener who i mentioned is a location manager was explaining why they probably did not do an actual film on the shot uh on the top of that roof had all these really interesting things to say about how hard it is to get equipment something on the rooftop the insurance that's required and why like very often they do sort of trickery to to deliver a rooftop shot uh a lot of stuff that i didn't know but John also gets really salty at the end about the VFX here, and I thought it was funny, so I'm going to share it.

15:35Joanna Robinson:John wrote, This scene also highlights how modern VFX technology is still just plain ass, despite what AI bros or post houses will tell you, compared to actually filming something practically. On a show that does so much practically. I know. The difference is quite stark. Probably the only true VFX stage shot of the entire season so far, honestly, and it sucked. This is why filmmakers should consider going organic, because the volume is ass green screen is ass tv slash film isn't a commercial or a tiktok the audience has standards so that's from john uh once again a location manager so he's like let's go out in the world this is my job to find you cool places to shoot so he has a vested interest in this but i i thought that was a great email so it's also true like is there no alternative to a weird vfx shop on the roof like if all those considerations are true about how difficult and complicated and expensive it would be maybe just shoot somewhere else like there's lots of ways to show albuquerque empty i yeah does it have to be that roof can you find a roof with like larger door access so that you could get the camera equipment up there but listen we are not making this show so uh i don't not our problem not our problem to solve something we love to talk about on this show uh over analyzers that we are color theory okay yes so we got we got a couple emails about the use of blue on the show and because we got a couple of those this week specifically I was really noticing like the blue and yellow chips on on the table you know where blue was used inside like coming out of Medusa's fridge and also the facility where all the bodies are the light is so blue so our listener Riley mentioned blue and orange right the blue and orange tones that are so prevalent in albuquerque's landscape are being used to divide the survivors and the joined the hospital is blue from top to bottom and most of the clothes being worn in the great exodus sequence are also shades of blue there's blue recycling bin and blue dumpster both filled with milk cartons the cold blue light that permeates both their manufacturing locations in last week's episode on the other hand when carol wants to emphasize her individuality in her recording she throws on a sandy blazer all the lights in her home are warm her drinks are dark and when she finishes her protection of Helen's grave the sunset shines a bright orange against her silhouette um that was really compelling to me and after I re-watched the pilot last night for reasons I'll get into in a second but uh worth noting that what Carol is wearing when this all happens is this like very bright yellow uh jacket uh as as part of her sort of escape from the zombies outfit um anything you want to say about the yellow blue and and uh what it does to have such a a repetition of such a distinct color palette yellow of course was like the clear marketing color for this show so what do you think of that and i mean yeah not only is it the clear marketing color but the clear marketing color in association i would say with carol specifically it's all carol screaming into the void backgrounded by yellow.

18:39And so look, the idea of vivid individual color being the standout for a person among a crowd, like a tale as old as time in terms of filmmaking. And it's just like such an easy and natural way to draw your eye, to draw the contrast. And especially as you're seeing on a practical level, if you had a well-oiled machine restocking a sprouts or running a hospital and everyone was wearing orange, it would be a little weird. And so blue, I think, is not just visually compatible with this type of story. But also is like really seamless in terms of the palettes you see in the world and ultimately what your eye registers as almost like background.

19:14Joanna Robinson:Yeah, that's interesting. A very calming color that's not going to stand out to you the way that yellow or orange would. It's worth noting that Carol has worn blue occasionally, so it's not sort of like necessarily a one-to-one, but I think it's, let's all track the blues and the yellows going forward. I think that'll be really interesting and rewarding for us. And then, of course, you know, as several of our listeners mentioned in emails, if you are a veteran of the Gilliganverse, like the use of that light blue specifically for the meth and Breaking Bad was very key. And thinking about the yellow boiler suits on like Walt and Jesse, also that green and Break Your Bread.

19:53Joanna Robinson:So like, you know, there are no, it's not new, the blue and the yellow inside of this universe, but how is it being used here? and I like that idea that it reflects sort of like the blue sky and the sandy ground of Albuquerque like it just sort of blends into everything so it's interesting and who like who has used that landscape in that palette better than Vince Gilligan over the years in terms of understanding its power and what it can represent and I'll also say Joe in terms of the party sequence yeah I mean among the most vivid color palettes we've seen so far wide ranging a lot of jewel tones it's kind of all over the map in a way that I think does fit what is being orchestrated there, right?

20:33And if it is this kind of technicolor fantasy, and it is Kumba sort of, again, like attributing people into these roles based off of what he thinks should be there, it's not going to be as orderly as everything we see going on with the hive mind overall. It's going to look a little more hodgepodge, but in its way, like quite beautiful.

20:49Joanna Robinson:Again, I'm disturbed by this whole setup but you know if you're gonna go go bondy and he really did it i my question is did he tell everyone exactly what to wear or did he just give them an ais prompt of like you know come come in your finest james bond uh at the casino fantasy clothing you know uh all right this is where i want to talk about consent and consent as it pertains uh to perhaps frozen eggs uh we got a lot of emails about this this morning. This is like, I think the thing that was number one on our listeners mind coming out of this episode. For sure. Kyle, our listener Kyle wrote, just wanted to note that Carol's eggs are sitting somewhere in an Albuquerque freezer, and they've got to be why they said they wouldn't take any stem cells from her body, right?

21:37Joanna Robinson:And Mary, who is a lawyer, wrote in to say, I believe is a lawyer, works in the legal profession, wrote in to say specifically the language around consent inside of this episode really tripped something for her, right? When Carol said she didn't consent and told the hive minds, you won't lay a finger on me, they responded, no stem cells would be collected from your body, but they made no promise not to use already gathered material. The subtle caveats in the hive mind's response felt extremely familiar to the kind of writing I see attorneys use every day to appease an opponent while leaving their options open.

22:09Joanna Robinson:And in her anger, Carol might be overlooking it and lots of other things her compatriots have learned by keeping the hive mind close. I thought it was interesting that Mary flags a sort of like tricksy legal language inside of an episode where Carol herself is like, oh, all the lawyers survived, right? Also, we had, and we mentioned this at the time, we had a lot of listeners flag the Carol freezing her eggs comment that came inside of that ice hotel sequence. And I kind of brushed it off as I was like, I think this is more of a character moment. I'm perfectly willing to be incorrect about that, as it seems like it might be.

22:43Joanna Robinson:Also, we had a listener point out when Carol was in the pharmacy a couple episodes ago, and the pharmacist was saying something about like, it's been a while since you injected yourself. And I'm like, what are we saying about Carol and needles? Someone pointed out, if you're undergoing fertility treatment, you were constantly injecting yourself. So that might have been another sort of like, remember, this person has eggs frozen somewhere. Absolutely. What are you? And so I do want to talk a little bit more about consent after this, but let's focus in on the egg stuff. What do you think about this?

23:14Well, yeah. We will not be collecting stem cells from your body. Might as well have been in italics, all caps. Let's just underline the from your body bit.

23:24Joanna Robinson:With an asterisk. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also got a fascinating email from Haley who said, this is a quote from her email, can the others get around Carol's lack of consent for gathering stem cells by doing something with the egg she froze as you said joe um i don't know how stem cells work or if it would require fertilizing an embryo to gather stem cells and then harvesting the fertilized embryo which i guess would force the others to have an answer to the question does life begin at conception i've i mean look i look forward to what's gonna be a very fun episode for us joe really uncomplicated very uncomplicated easy black and white answers to all of this fascinating but it all this stuff does kind of get to the questions of what the hive mind is allowed to do right based on its own programming and admission and it's not an accident that these two conversations are happening at the same time of like oh we need the consent to gather this personalized d like uh biological data and also we're telling you that we can't harvest wheat or harvest rice we don't want to hurt a fly or even a plant we can't inflict harm on anyone at any time and what is a frozen egg and like would they even be able to extract the dna or the stem cells from the egg itself depending on how they're classifying what that egg is like there's just a lot happening here in a way that i i really appreciate and i'm very eager to see how they untangle yeah it's fascinating what was really interesting to me and i think this consent question feeds into this larger debate we seem to be having with our listeners in our email inbox which is like uh some people are like hey why are you so down on the hive mind um and i this is baffling i continue to be surprised but listen we can have this conversation um i was watching this episode this current episode last night and uh my friend diana was like sort of background in the room and then she was like drawn in i was like hey do you want to she hadn't watched the episode she was asking me questions like what's going on who's this what's happening and i was like do you want to watch the pilot the pilot's so good let's like we'll just re-watch the pilot yeah so we were we were you know we watched the pilot and she was like oh so this started with no consent and that's really important to remember that when you see the scientist you know like the rat buying the scientist one things but when you see the scientists leave their lab and go smooch two people who are randomly working there without informing them what's about to happen to them not to mention so i think the fact that it is kissing you know because we've been talking about like the way it's spread you can lick a donut or you can you know drop droplets from a chem trail or whatever it is but they're like the kissing the like sort of assault uh nature of those first two uh infection points or the the third and the fourth infection points i thought was really interesting because it's like when you talk about the hive mind and the listeners that we have that are like hey man it would be cruel to rip these people from their pleasant existence inside of the hive mind and i'm like but the hive mind let's leave aside all the people that they killed in in in this joining moment let's leave aside helen for a moment and all the other helens they have effectively and this is what carol keeps saying killed john cena lakshmi's son all these other people who have been absorbed the original zoja like all this sort of stuff like that and actually not quite killed are occupying them because if there's a way to undo it would you not you know like if if everyone had signed a consent form and said i want to join the high mind it sounds great to be at peace and uh in harmony and all these other things that's one thing but that's not what we're dealing with here not even close and so i i I think people are forgetting that when they talk about the hive mind, they're forgetting that these are hostile occupiers of these other people.

27:13Joanna Robinson:So anyway, what do you think about that? I mean, ostensibly, they're prisoners in their own bodies, right? I think it's not just a question of is it unethical to rip them from that? Like, as you say, Joe, they didn't opt into it in the first place. And they're really being forced to accept an entire framework of what is happiness or what is satisfaction based on something that is not their own in the first place. So everything is being superimposed on top of them. They've been brought into this larger machine. And within that larger machine, I think you'd have a hard time making the ethical argument that like being somebody's puppet in a James Bond dream is really like the great fulfillment of your life.