Copyright /FILM
This article contains spoilers for "Pluribus" season 1, episode 1. The meaning behind the word "Pluribus" — or "PLUR1BUS," as the opening credits style the title — isn't exactly the biggest mystery that "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" creator Vince Gilligan's new Apple TV show has to offer. The Latin phrase "E pluribus unum" ("From many, one"), after all, has been part of the American mindset since 1776, when it was first suggested as the official motto of the United States of America. Combined with that persistent number one in the title, it seemed pretty reasonable to expect that the motto's themes would feature on the show in some way. Even so, few could have expected just how literally "Pluribus" chooses to interpret the motto. The show's very first episode spends its early moments teasing some sort of cookie cutter pandemic apocalypse scenario, only to take a wild pivot when the ominous-looking, seizure-inducing space plague simply ... rewrites everyone's brains and turns the world's population into a creepily friendly hive mind. "From many, one" indeed. "Pluribus" is without doubt a science fiction show, but that wasn't the original intention. Gilligan ended up making the series a sci-fi project by accident when he realized that the show's central premise — everyone in the world suddenly being super nice to a certain person — wouldn't be realistic without some serious world-changing shenanigans. In the show's season 1 premiere, this approach works like a dream. Rhea Seehorn does some heavy lifting to finally win that elusive Emmy as Carol Struka, the grouchy romance author who's immune to the hive mind virus. She serves as our point of view character and grows increasingly frantic when everyone around her glitches out ... and then, without a warning, recovers and starts turning their quite literally undivided, unnaturally friendly focus back onto her. It's a horrifying and borderline incomprehensible situation that's made convincing by Seehorn's all-too-relatable reactions. The austere marketing for Gilligan's "Severance"-style Apple TV sci-fi series had already hinted that a happiness pandemic story of some sort was coming, sure. Still, "Pluribus" going this hard this early in the game is a shocker, even with the series' title cheekily revealing its central premise all along. "Pluribus" is now streaming on Apple TV.
