Summary
“Charm Offensive” is a pretty remarkably dense and nuanced episode of television that only gets more compelling the more you think about it.
The more you think about Pluribus, the better it gets. This isn’t true of very many shows these days, since a lot of shows – even the enjoyable ones – are conceptually fraudulent rubbish. But not this one. This one is entirely original, as evidenced by the fact that very little of consequence happens in Episode 8 – it contains no major revelations or plot swerves – and yet I nonetheless can’t stop turning it over in my mind.
There’s a fractal quality to the premise. Every time you think you’ve got a handle on it, another torrent of possibilities emerges. It also helps that we’re going through this process with Carol in real-time. The initial hook of “Charm Offensive” is that her desperate plea for the Others to return was really part of a long con to assimilate more information for her world-saving anti-alien whiteboard. But was it, really? Carol’s loneliness was, and remains, entirely genuine. She’s still desperate for human connection, for acceptance, for approval, but she’s also desperate not to be the only person in the world who isn’t a part of the only gang in town.
In other words, she wants to trick Zosia into parting with as much useful information as possible, but she also wants to sleep with her. Both things can be true.
For long stretches, Episode 8 of Pluribus becomes, essentially, a date movie, albeit one tinged with an impossibly dense web of sinister undertones and implications. You have to remember, for instance, that Carol’s attraction to Zosia isn’t organic. She was put forward as the primary liaison between Carol and the Others because she’s reminiscent of a character from her books. She’s extremely attractive, unflappably attentive, and wants nothing more than Carol’s happiness – but only because the only means to assimilate her is by convincing her it’s a good idea.
This idea colours everything in “Charm Offensive”, because as Carol gradually warms to the idea of the Others as she learns more about their pacifistic, eco-friendly nature, we’re constantly forced to ask ourselves how much of that nature is a manipulative put-on. Small details like how the Others all sleep in one giant room for the sake of resource efficiency, or how a lost dog has been adopted by a new owner, help to sell the notion that the Others are just a more utopian version of humanity as it was before. But we know that isn’t true, as does Carol, which is also why she’s continuing to pump Zosia for information even while she really earnestly bonds with her. The deception runs both ways, but the attraction might be a one-way street.
Backdropping all this is a lot of genuinely interesting information about the Others; about how they perceive group sensation, for instance, or communicate via natural electric charges, how they’re aware of everything that happens to everyone, everywhere, but don’t feel it simultaneously since it’d be too overwhelming. In truth, if you thought too hard about any of these questions, the entire premise would likely break down. But this isn’t supposed to be a rigorously conceived alien race. It’s more about vibes.
And Carol buys it. For the first time, she reveals something to Zosia about her love of the lonely sound of train horns, which Zosia didn’t know, which means that she can’t have revealed it to anyone else before. Zosia triggering the sound to please her is at once a thoughtful gesture and a deeply cynical one. You can’t extricate the two. Neither can Carol, which is perhaps why her grand speech about what the Others are doing is an unsustainable form of mental illness that she remains adamantly opposed to nonetheless ends with the two of them kissing and jumping into bed together.
The logistics of this lovemaking aren’t of particular concern in Pluribus Episode 8, although you can’t help but spare a thought for them, as I’m sure Carol did. What matters is that this development is at once both Carol “giving in” to her lust for Zosia specifically and, potentially, her need for connection generally, but also Carol pulling off a significant coup, finally creating enough closeness with the real, non-assimilated Zosia that she can dredge up a personal memory, expressed via a first-person pronoun. What are the implications here? If it’s possible for the Others to recall themselves as individuals, is it possible to undo the Joining?
We’ll see, but probably not in next week’s season finale, which likely has other matters on its mind. Manousos is closing in, and while he seems, at first blush, like a potential ally for Carol, the last couple of episodes have made a point that they’re on very different wavelengths. Even if Carol coming around to the idea of the Others is in service of an ulterior motive, she’s still more accommodating than Manousos, who holds his rescuers at scalpel-point just to make sure he settles up his hospital bill and isn’t left owing the Others anything at all. Call me crazy, but I think he and Carol might clash.
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