Summary
Pluribus slows the pace way down in Episode 6, which contains a couple of key revelations (and a fun cameo) but strings everything together with long stretches of nothing.
A couple of things occurred to me while watching Episode 6 of Pluribus. One is that this show would be terrible if anyone other than Vince Gilligan were behind it. That sounds like the kind of sycophantic fanboy glazing that I’m not ordinarily prone to, but it’s more just a statement of fact. An episode like “HDP” lives in the odd quiet and long stretches of nothing that most editors would rightly excise. It has a couple of big revelations and an unexpected cameo, but they’re strung together by substantial periods of almost nothing. In normal circumstances, nothing about it would work.
But these aren’t normal circumstances. We’re approaching the final stretch of a show about a misanthrope being trapped in the middle of the most polite alien invasion in history. There are also only three episodes left to unravel what is turning out to be an increasingly vast mystery. On paper, it’s the worst time to essentially be taking an episode off. But “HDP” nonetheless feels surprisingly critical to everything, even if it spends most of its time on a comically sterile depiction of Sin City. The whole vibe lives in those juxtapositions.
Anyway, the first big revelation concerns Carol’s discovery in the Agri-Jet warehouse. It turns out that the place is full of vacuum-packed human remains. Since Carol decides to vlog this, the whole thing is shot like found-footage horror, which is pretty funny. But she has a point. It’s immediately clear that the aliens are eating people. And since it’s still unclear whether they have disseminated her previous missives as instructed, Carol has no idea whether she can trust them to put out this latest video, which she rightly considers to be the most damning yet. Instead, she drives to deliver it to Diabate in person.
Diabate is living out a James Bond-style luxury fantasy in the penthouse suite of Las Vegas’s Westgate Hotel. This is the kind of thing that Gilligan excels at, since there’s really no need for the scene of a card game between Diabate and a stand-in for Emilio Largo to go on for as long as it does. But Pluribus Episode 6 luxuriates in it. It’s ridiculous on multiple levels, not least since it’s all pointless. There’s never going to be any outcome beyond Diabate emerging as the winner. It is, after all, his fantasy. And the ability to live out his fantasies all of the time is the primary argument in favour of the alien invasion remaining as-is.
Part of the reason this feels so chilled is that the Others have departed en masse. Just like they abandoned Albuquerque after Carol forced their hand by drugging Zosia, they also leave Vegas as soon as they realise she’s on her way there, presumably being very serious about needing some space. But they also still have some obligations to consider. They have to keep telling the truth. And they have to keep giving Carol and Diabate what they want, just so long as they ask for it. So when Diabate reveals that he already knew about the whole “eating people” thing, the Others provide a handy personalised explanation via John Cena, which will hopefully put Carol’s mind at ease.
In short: Yes, the Others are eating people, or at the very least eating “Human Derived Protein”, since they can’t kill any other living things, including plants, meaning they can’t harvest food or kill animals to eat. This has limited them to existing processed food and things that can be acquired without harm, such as milk from living animals or apples that have naturally fallen to the ground. The Others aren’t keen on acquiring protein from the 100,000+ people who die every day from natural causes, but needs must. They also guarantee Carol that she’ll never be fed any HDP unless she asks for it – she’ll continue to receive the finest available food.
Diabate already knew this because he asked why the Others were drinking so much milk when he was hanging out with Cena (of course it’s part of his fantasies to befriend celebrities). But it’s not the only thing he knows. He has also been informed that the only way for the Others to assimilate the remaining immune people into the hivemind is to adapt the virus, which means harvesting their stem cells. However, since this is an invasive procedure, they can’t do it without consent. This means that Carol, Diabate, and the few remaining others are essentially safe from assimilation. Carol immediately confirms this by dialling the helpline from the nearest phone and demanding confirmation, which comes in the form of a giant digital billboard.
The revelation leaves Carol at a bit of a loss. The more she discovers, the more reasonable and apologetic the Others seem; the more she looks like the bad guy. Diabate managed to learn significantly more than she did just by playing ball. He’s also still in contact with the other English-speaking immune people, who voted for Carol not to be included in their Zoom group because of her past behaviour. Despite him claiming to only be a phone call away, it’s clear Diabate’s heart isn’t in it. He isn’t the ally Carol thinks because he’d simply rather not spend much time with her, which is a pretty sobering realisation.
Pluribus Episode 6 ends by suggesting that Carol’s only hope to be understood is someone even more reclusive than her, who has rejected the Others’ overtures even more forcefully – Manousos. In a quiet sequence at the end of the episode, we see him receive Carol’s first video message and set out to Albuquerque to find her. But to what end?
