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overthinking entertainment
Pluribus: Got Milk - Season 1, Episode 5
Carol doubles down on her investigation-loneliness be damned. Meanwhile, howls in the night reveal a new source of danger.
N.B. Due to Thanksgiving, AppleTV dropped the episode on Wednesday instead of Friday.
fter Zosia is returned to the hospital, Laxmi, one of the immune, calls Carol and berates her for disrupting the Others. Carol naps, during which the entire Albuquerque population departs, leaving a recorded message telling Carol they need space from her. She records a video message to the other twelve immune, explaining what she's learned and asking for their help. In trying to prevent wolves from digging in her garbage, she takes her trash to town and discovers a large number of empty milk cartons from a local dairy. She investigates and finds that, instead of milk, the dairy is producing a strange fluid created from a bagged crystalline substance. She postulates the Others drink it to maintain the hive mind. The wolves return for more food and attempt to dig up Helen's body. Carol scares them away with her police car and lays heavy tile over the grave to protect it. She tests the pH of the substance and sends another video to the other immune with the information. After finding a bar code on the bag, she traces its origin to a local food packing plant and discovers something shocking hidden under a tarp.
posted by Frayed Knot on Nov 26, 2025 at 5:26 AM
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Soylent amber? Straw?
Seehorn is perfect in this role. Though I loved Breaking Bad, I never got into Better Call Saul, so I never watched anything with her acting before. She's great. I cannot imagine any other actor carrying this.
posted by SoberHighland at 6:22 AM
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From the Hive's point of view, it makes perfect sense. I mean, what else are you going to do with all those dead bodies, and their multi-step process ensures that the Soylent is safe to drink. I do wonder, though, if they are doing something else with the brains - iirc, eating human brain is a good way to get a prion disease and I don't think pasteurization is enough to get rid of it. I hope so, anyway, as it would be hilarious if the one thing that the zombies DON'T want is "braaiinnnns".
posted by Mogur at 6:26 AM
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I kinda hope it's not soylent amber, but the lovely cliff hanging reaction by Carol really narrows down the options of what it could be. If it is, and Pluribus' reflex is to eat the dead, then it definitely indicates that generally shared human values, such as cannibalism, is absent within Pluribus. But you know who doesn't have a problem eating people, dogs! I wonder if the wolves (I think they were supposed to be wolves, as opposed to coyotes), trying to dig up and eat her partner's grave was supposed to be a nod to this.
Pluribus' "we need space" was an interesting, if a bit over the top, reaction. You'd think with their spying abilities, they could generally keep themselves out of Carol's vicinity without having to...empty an entire city. I really want to meet Zosia again after Carol's near accidental murder and was kind of disappointed she was absent from her bed. I appreciated how there was a very clear tonal shift in Pluribus toward Carol after what happened. I also wish Carol had immediately asked them to shorten the voicemail.
If the broken entangled drone doesn't become the pizza on the roof for this show, I will be devastated.
posted by Atreides at 7:02 AM
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My guess is that in the season finale, Pluribus will be revealed as something not at all what we are thinking. It will be a huge rug-pull in the story, and that will be the season cliffhanger.
This is a guess that we will all be guessing. Just a guess.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:06 AM
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My guess is that in the season finale, Pluribus will be revealed as something not at all what we are thinking. It will be a huge rug-pull in the story, and that will be the season cliffhanger.
We're only half way through S1 so that's a lot of tension to hold for five more episodes.
Pluribus has shown itself to be very efficient, if nothing else. They have also stated their deep aversion to to harming other living creatures, i.e. killing and processing animals for meat. So using the unjoined dead as a source of nutrition seems possible, if that's in fact what they are doing---I'm not yet convinced that's the cause of Carol's gasp.
I'm wondering if there's more subtlety at play here, like there's some kind of immune reaction in human physiology that needs to be suppressed or some vital 'nutrient' the virus requires that humans don't make or make enough of for them.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 8:23 AM
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I have a feeling it's not dead bodies because Carol's reaction was pretty delayed. If you lifted a tarp and saw a pile of frozen corpses you'd probably react immediately. And it would be a bit too obvious, if it's meant to be a cliffhanger. But it's hard to think of what else it could have been.
posted by zixyer at 11:49 AM
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WARNING: Gross thought ahead! >>>>>>> I'm thinking the corpses were carefully butchered into small pieces, and at first glance in the dark with a flashlight, just resembled frozen animal/livestock meat. Until she recognized fingers or toes or something.
I'm amazed at this show. First episode had me cringing, thinking it was another zombie story. By the end of that episode and in these few recent episodes, it has changed into something I am extremely invested in. Sure: it's a Twilight Zone concept and it's going to be stretched out to dozens of hours. But the acting, directing, the cinematography and the way the story is evolving is just expertly done.
The fact that I was laughing out loud at a wordless scene with a delivery drone is really saying something about the quality here. I said this before but it bears repeating: Seehorn is fantastic, she can carry long stretches of scenes all alone. I cannot imagine any other actor doing this. Her casting and performance is superb.
posted by SoberHighland at 12:15 PM
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I don't think it's people. For one thing that feels too obvious. Secondly, didn't we establish that The Joined prefer to be vegetarian? There's more than enough non-meat in the world to sustain them. If it's people they're eating, there has to be a reason beyond simple sustenance.
But if it's not people, what else could it be? And how are they able to manufacture this nutrient powder in such quantities so quickly? It's only been a little over a week. I guess they can use existing infrastructure very efficiently, given their numbers and coordination. Maybe it's another one of those things they don't even think about. Perhaps their vegetarianism allows for eating things that died of other causes, even if they prefer not to kill. Perhaps they aren't aware of the human taboo around cannibalism. It wouldn't be the first time they've shown a complete lack of understanding of human behaviour and morality.
I'm also unclear on what happened to the animals. If I remember correctly, they released captive animals from zoos, etc. But did the animals also get Joined? As far as I know, wolves and other predators tend not to eat corpses that aren't fresh, with the exception of scavengers. Those dogs/wolves wouldn't naturally seek out a buried decaying corpse, right? So that leads me to conclude that they are also part of the hive mind. But they don't get to just switch to a vegetarian diet like humans can. Maybe they are unable to prey on livestock by virtue of having been Joined and have been driven to scavenge. But then why wouldn't the joined humans just leave them food? And why don't they also need space from Carol? Is each species it's own separate hive mind? That makes no sense to me either.
I have so many questions!
posted by Acey at 1:19 PM
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Favorite little moment was Carol trying to dispose of her garbage in a park trash bin, failing to fit the elegant serving tray and cloche from the hive into it, and her eyes slowly falling on the adjacent recycling bin.
Yeah, they're eating the dead. Happy US Thanksgiving!
posted by figurant at 5:15 PM
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I don't think the animals are Joined. I thought they were more likely coyotes than wolves, but both will scavenge in human garbage and are primarily carnivores. I think these are just opportunistic scavengers who are emboldened by all the other human beings leaving. Possibly the Joined have impacted their other local food sources with their efficiency if they augment their diet with what they get from the trash. How the Joined have impacted local eco-systems that rely on human waste is another fascinating avenue to consider particularly with the Joined's seeming "do no harm" approach.
It is interesting to see how Carol changes in isolation. She's much more well regulated even with the episode with the wolves/coyotes going after Helen. And she seems a lot more capable and curious this episode.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:38 PM
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Oh in terms of what Carol discovers, I think soylent green is kinda obvious, but we do see the Joined initially collecting the dead and taking them away. We have no idea where or what was done with them. While the Joined won't kill, they were willing to use meat that was killed before their arrival. This may be the same. The question then would be how would they sustain this supply? Right now with all the bodies that failed the transformation it's easy, but those won't last forever and then what? So I suspect it's something else.
posted by miss-lapin at 5:43 PM
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I'm sorry, but my whole opinion of Carol has changed since she held huge bags of dog food in her own two hands and did not think to leave it out for the wolves. What the fuck, Carol! Those poor little guys.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:45 PM
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I don't think they're eating the dead. Why would they? Cannibalism, as noted above, is not healthy for human beings. And it's not as though there's nothing else to eat.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:48 PM
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Carol really needed this solitude. Putting the tiles over the grave was the sort of meaningful, exhausting labor that she originally attempted by digging the grave. But more than that: she got to make a memorial that looked finished.
posted by meese at 6:53 PM
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The message I got? Read the entirety of the final credits and attempt to memorize every name. /not necessarily
posted by Token Meme at 7:06 PM
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Maybe she saw, like, zebras?
posted by sixswitch at 8:22 PM
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Roadkill? I'm thinking it's something normally taboo in America.
posted by fiercekitten at 10:39 PM
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Copies of How to Serve Man?
posted by umber vowel at 10:50 PM
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We Is Us
posted by oneirodynia at 11:26 PM
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flesh seems too mundane.
Also, those shots of her exploring the freezer with a flash light might be the most X-Files looking this show has done so far.
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:46 PM
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I have seen folks saying they were wolves and maybe on the podcast they said they were wolf-dogs, but I think this means the animals they used for filming, not necessarily what they were supposed to be in the narrative. In New Mexico, it seems more likely that they would have been coyotes. Wolves were reintroduced there, but there aren't that many and many of them have collars for monitoring.
posted by snofoam at 4:20 AM
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Great cliffhanger. Not sure what she has seen, though. The walk-in is full of veggies and fruits. Maybe peoplemeat? That does seem a little too Soylent. Too "we've all seen this movie." Maybe veggiebabies? But, wouldn't the Pluribi have taken whatever it is with them when they relocated?
I did a bit of eye-rolling at Carol magically matching the barcode of the big bag of whatever-the-hell-the-stuff-is with the big bag of dogfood at Sprouts. That just seemed a wee bit too "and then a miracle happens" to me.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:54 AM
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I did a bit of eye-rolling at Carol magically matching the barcode of the big bag of whatever-the-hell-the-stuff-is with the big bag of dogfood at Sprouts. That just seemed a wee bit too "and then a miracle happens" to me.
I thought it was more that once she was at Sprouts she realized "wait, I've seen this bag with its distinctive blue tear strip before". Still a bit of a leap.
posted by jedicus at 4:58 AM
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The bar code wasn't the same, I didn't think? The mystery bar code had a lot of thick lines, whereas the dog food bag had a lot of slim lines. That's at least what I thought when I watched it.
posted by meese at 5:37 AM
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It's a conundrum, because I feel like it can't be cannibalism, it's too obvious, but I also feel like what else could be that shocking. I kind of wonder if it could be Zosia, because surely the Joined are watching Carol remotely. Zosia could be there waiting for her, and be in rough shape. This feels like a stretch to me, though.
On another note, the drone trying to carry away the garbage bag is a comic masterpiece.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:20 AM
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Isn't it hilarious that this is the episode that got released early for Thanksgiving?
I originally assumed that this was a move to ensure viewership despite the holiday. But I'm tickled by the idea that they did it to specifically encourage viewership of this episode right before or on the big feast day
posted by meese at 6:49 AM
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The barcode is the same. She sees the barcode and then looks the manufacturer. That's how she knows what factory to go to. It's the factory that makes that dog food.
I'm going to revise my opinion on the scavenging animals being wolves because I didn't notice till I just went to check the barcode scene, but the name of the dog food is Western Wolf. So I think there is a tie in there.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:35 AM
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Another thought about eating the dead: at the time of the Joining (indeed, every day in the real world, too), there were millions of people in hospice, the sick, elderly, in hospitals with terminal illnesses, etc. How many thousand human die naturally on the planet each day? I don't know (don't feel like looking it up) but it's a lot. And an enormous number of people dying happens naturally every day in the real world.
I assume those who are Joined (the Pluribus) will eventually age and die just as we all will. The Pluribus has to do something with all those natural deaths, right? Isn't processing those natural deaths into consumable food the most efficient, rational thing to do?
Creepy thought: what does the Pluribus do with the critically injured, the extremely disabled, bedridden, the sickly, the brain damaged, etc? Do those people get cared for, or are they no longer "useful" to the Pluribus and just allowed to perish?
If a Pluribus individual falls accidentally and is severely injured, does the Pluribus bother to rehabilitate that person? They did with Zosia, but she was Carol's ambassador of a sort. What about some person that's hundreds of miles away from any of the 13 un-Joined? Do they get medical attention? Does it make "rational" sense for Pluribus to heal these people, or just let them die?
posted by SoberHighland at 7:41 AM
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The barcode is the same. She sees the barcode and then looks the manufacturer. That's how she knows what factory to go to. It's the factory that makes that dog food.
Yes, we know that, but it just seems to be a huuuuuge leap that Carol would click on the Pluribus bag being similar to the dogfood bag. As far as I can tell, she's not a dog owner, so she would have no real reason to be at all familiar with much of anything in the pet food aisle.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:37 AM
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I think that's an absurd critique. Those of us who are non-dog-owners have seen and know what those big bags of string-pull-top kibble look like and are for. For god's sake, not everyone in the world is an unobservant boob.
posted by Deminime at 9:07 AM
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In an earlier episode, Zosia (or another of the Joined?) mentions that the hospital Zosia is taken to is also housing many former drug addicts who are being physically rehabbed, so they definitely take care of individuals when possible.
What's under the tarp: not many things besides human bodies that would freak Carol out like that. ("Oh my god... they're eating... laptop batteries!!!") Can human flesh be processed down to a crystalline substance? No idea.
I don't think there's going to be some big "twist" or "rug-pull" about the nature of Pluribus, nor do I think such a twist would be a good idea. For one, why would they need to lie about their motivations to 13 people when they've taken over the rest of the population? Now, there are certainly details about how they operate and their end-goal that are yet to be revealed, and that may change things about them, but honestly, it is a much more interesting story if everything they've said is true: they are the product of an alien technology that joins all sentient (human) life on the planet into a mostly "benign" hive mind. If the twist is something like, "it was a government experiment gone wrong!" (unlikely since the source is outer space) or "it is prep for an alien invasion!" (well they've won already, so...) or "they are going to EAT all the PEOPLE" (well they've won already, so...), it will be sorely disappointing. But the story as is sets up a conflict between toxic individuality and toxic collectivism, which is a much better story than "what is Pluribus REALLY up to?! And can Carol stop them before it's too late?!" Finally, Gilligan's last two shows involved no such twists; they were pretty simple set-ups: "what if a high school chemistry teacher started cooking and selling meth?" and "what if a two-bit con artist tried to become a lawyer?" This one is "what would a pessimistic misanthrope do if the world was taken over by a friendly hive mind?" Seems like enough to me.
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:12 AM
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Oh yeah, and if no one noticed: The voice on the recording was Patrick Fabian, AKA Howard Hamlin :)
posted by Saxon Kane at 9:41 AM
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I don't think a twist is coming like, "Pluribus is actually evil!" because it's actually more interesting if Pluribus isn't evil. I feel like the show is more likely to veer, at least briefly, into I Am Legend novel territory, in which we really begin to question whether Carol, by refusing to accept a changing world, isn't really the villain. Ultimately, I don't think it's a story about heroes and villains, though, even if Carol currently thinks that it is.
That kind of is consistent with Breaking Bad and BCS, which both present initially likeable protagonists who slowly morph into guys who kind of suck. If anything, I think what is most likely to keep Carol from going down this path is Gilligan's self-awareness, and his keen awareness of audience expectations and the need to subvert them.
Similarly, I'd be really surprised to learn Carol has found dead human beings getting mulched simply because the show is kind of telegraphing that very thing. Breaking Bad spent a whole season priming viewers to expect a meth lab explosion at the end, only to end with something much worse that no one could have anticipated. My guess is that the next episode starts with a flashback that sets up a currently unguessable revelation (but it could just be people, okay).
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:54 AM
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Yes, we know that, but it just seems to be a huuuuuge leap that Carol would click on the Pluribus bag being similar to the dogfood bag.
Carol's brain as she wanders around Sprouts:
hmmm, what else have I seen in the world that comes in big bags? Potatoes? No, not that big, and they'd be transparent bags or net or something. Flour? Rice? Maybe at a restaurant, I might need to search a bakery later. Dog food? Big dogs eat a lot. Let's check the dog food aisle.
posted by oneirodynia at 1:40 PM
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Yes that's how I also interpreted it, oneirodynia. Doesn't seem like a huge leap to me, and I don't have a dog. But Thorzdad, I was responding to meese's comment "The bar code wasn't the same, I didn't think? The mystery bar code had a lot of thick lines, whereas the dog food bag had a lot of slim lines."
posted by miss-lapin at 2:24 PM
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When I first saw the bag, I immediately thought it was a bag of concrete, and I would never have made the dog food connection. I would definitely gone to look at bags of rice first, but probably both rice and concrete are not local to where she is, so dog food is the only thing that made sense.
The drone scene was funny, but that bag weighed 5 lbs tops. If they said max 17 lbs then that drone could have definitely handled the light bag Carol left out there.
I think I am different than any other mefite because if I were Carol I would welcome being part of the hivemind. Everything will be better for most people, and it seems very nice.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:29 PM
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my brain doesn't work in pounds but wasn't the metal serving dish in there? it seemed heavy.
posted by onya at 2:31 PM
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The bag was weird because why would a sack of white powder at a milk factory be suspicious? It's very common to make packaged milk out of milk powder.
posted by WhackyparseThis at 3:23 PM
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I thought it was hilarious that Carol made the Joined stock her a full supermarket only to end up eating frozen TV dinners. What if this is not a joke/character beat, but a plot point?
Whatever Carol has found in the cold storage facility, her gasp is may not be caused by what she sees, but by the realisation that she doesn't really know what she's eating, or what the joined are feeding her.
Maybe Carol's frozen meals contain a somewhat rare and easily recognisable ingredient, and she's looking at it, and then it hits her. Fast fade to black.
posted by kandinski at 3:32 PM
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A bag of concrete that size would be way too heavy to be practical.
posted by snofoam at 4:45 PM
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For those who need the dots drawn very close together:
The Soylent kibble is processed with water at Duke Dairy for the ease of packaging into single-serve milk cartons. Duke Dairy, if one notices the factory storage and piping apparatus, is a plant for putting liquid milk into cartons, chosen by the Joiners for packaging convenience. The different bar codes are because the dog food is for Sprouts purchase, while Agri-Jet, as the name may imply to those who are actively thinking as they watch, is a wholesale processor of various agricultural and feed products. It requires bags for storing and shipping those products, in addition to the retail sleeving (suggested as a hint to the viewer by the stack of milk labels Carol riffles through in the factory). The storage bags, not their retail sleeving, are marked with manufacturer's bar codes for ease of processing. Perhaps the curious have noticed similar bar codes on other packaging elements (boxes, bags) that do not match the retail bar codes with which the products in those packaging elements are sold.
People have remarked in other FanFare threads on the TV-viewing habit of pointing out anything that isn't explicitly spelled out in excruciating hold-the-assumed-to-be-imbecilic-viewer's-hand detail as an imaginary plot hole. Kinda says something when one's critique of the show's believability is based on what one sees as the limits of the characters' imaginations and experience, and it turns out one's critique instead displays that one's imagination and experiences are rather more limited than that of the characters under critique and the authors who wrote them.
God forbid a TV show like this one should ever demand that we venture even slightly beyond our collective solipsistic interiority.
posted by Deminime at 4:50 PM
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Speaking only for myself, I don't really care that much about the series of logic leaps that led Carol to the fireworks factory. I feel like it's a testament to how much this show makes people feel like they need to think about what's going on in it that...well, anyone has even thought about it. If this were an episode of SVU, and Ice-T found some weird clue that led him to the whereabouts of a suspect, most people would just go, "Oh, okay," because he has to find the suspect somehow or there's just not a show.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:08 PM
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I mean, I guess we all find our own weird things to fixate on that are kind of sideways to the actual main point of the show. I'm still just dying to know what the fuck is actually happening in Wycaro where there are flea people in it, which...if that is normal for fantasy romance I have clearly misjudged it, and I apologize. (It dawns on me that these could in fact be Lilliputians, which still is not really a thing I might anticipate from the fantasy romance genre, but is at least less weird than the body-armored, blood-drinking building bounders I was picturing.)
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:12 PM
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The Soylent kibble is processed with water at Duke Dairy for the ease of packaging into single-serve milk cartons. Duke Dairy, if one notices the factory storage and piping apparatus, is a plant for putting liquid milk into cartons, chosen by the Joiners for packaging convenience. The different bar codes are because the dog food is for Sprouts purchase, while Agri-Jet, as the name may imply to those who are actively thinking as they watch, is a wholesale processor of various agricultural and feed products. It requires bags for storing and shipping those products, in addition to the retail sleeving (suggested as a hint to the viewer by the stack of milk labels Carol riffles through in the factory). The storage bags, not their retail sleeving, are marked with manufacturer's bar codes for ease of processing. Perhaps the curious have noticed similar bar codes on other packaging elements (boxes, bags) that do not match the retail bar codes with which the products in those packaging elements are sold.
Explained this way makes it seem even less plausible that Carol would be able to figure out the source of the liquid nutrient so quickly. Bags and barcodes are used in a wide variety of industries including those that have no connection with food, so the ease with which she found the source feels a little distracting, at least as much as the the idea that all these relevant industries would be so conveniently located in Albuquerque. Not to mention the contents of the bags doesn't appear to be food-like at all.
What got me was that pluribus doesn't seem terribly interested in sanitary food conditions, nor in the possibility that vermin, broadly, could become a problem. It feels like the live-and-let-live principle could lead to a difficult problem pretty quickly.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:55 PM
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I don't think that wild animals are a sacred cow to Pluribus; if they were willing to kill humans in the initial takeover, I think Pluribus is willing to do population control on animals that get out of hand. They just aren't going to kill animals unnecessarily.
Sprouts seems like the kind of supermarket that caters to upscale NPR-listening types who like to buy local.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:16 PM
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Presumably putting the mystery liquid in milk cartons is to hide it from Carol and other Unjoined so as not to disturb them as that seems to be very important to them. In areas where there are no Unjoined (most of the world) they likely wouldn't bother with the subterfuge and just have it available in the most accessible way. But in this case they would likely use what's nearby, which is apparently a milk factory and a dog food plant. Doesn't seem all that weird to me given everything else that's going on in the show.
posted by miss-lapin at 7:32 PM
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I'm not sure it's subterfuge, just practicality. They have a food product that needs to be sanitarily mass produced and distributed for human consumption There's little reason to not re-use the existing food production infrastructure as it's tooled up to do exactly that already.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:52 PM
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They didn't use the vast numbers of water bottles . I mean they could probably pump this stuff directly into buildings given how efficient they are. But the vessels they chose obscure the liquid inside, which is why it took so long for Carol to discover this. I don't think that's accidental.
The goal of their subterfuge may not be that they are being malicious. It may be that this is like the Joined family members who play along with the denial of the Unjoined. Just part of their plan to please the Unjoined until they can figure out how transform them. They could be doing it to protect their survival. But they also could be doing it for less benign reasons.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:13 PM
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Remember that Pluribus has been around for a month, multiplying like crazy. We know from an earlier episode that they seized control of certain key areas quickly (I'm still trying to figure out how the hell they got the astronauts, which they specifically mention, but whatever). I'd imagine as part of that, they sought out the infrastructure they could quickly take control of to covertly start manufacturing and distributing whatever their amber liquid drink is.
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:48 PM
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Sprouts seems like the kind of supermarket that caters to upscale NPR-listening types who like to buy local
We have one near us. I would describe it as the Old Navy to Whole Foods's GAP in this market niche, though with WF being owned by Amazon now it's a less-stark comparison. It's not super-granola but presents as very slightly more granola than Safeway.
posted by migurski at 10:11 PM
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Since They can't lie, why didn't Carol ask Them about the powder?
It was funny that in her video she referred to the three other twelve unjoined as "Us".
I haven't driven the I25 / I40 interchange in more than twenty years and can't believe how sprawling it is. Still want a Green Chile Breakfast Burrito from the Frontier after all this time, however.
posted by autopilot at 10:49 PM
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...the the idea that all these relevant industries would be so conveniently located in Albuquerque.
ABQ is the largest city in New Mexico. It makes sense that production and distribution would happen there. Looking at a map of Albuquerque, it's a twenty minute drive from Carol's house* to, e.g. Creamland Dairies, which in in the city limits.
*I'm not saying in-universe this is the part of town where she lives, but it's where they built the cul-de-sac set. Regardless, she could drive to a dairy in ABQ, though possibly not in twenty minutes. There's more than one, in fact, as well as food processing and distribution facilities.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:24 PM
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Thanks for the location! I had been trying to figure out how far west of the Rio Grande her house was to have such a nice view of the complete Sandias.
Those directions also assume normal traffic, but she can turn on the police lights and go as fast as she wants to. Plus there is no one else on the roads.
posted by autopilot at 11:54 PM
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If Soylent Amber is made of people, and that is all they are eating then that implies they aren't continuing other food production (except as necessary to feed the 12?). I assume that would imply a 'fast burn' strategy that doesn't include a plan for the long term survival of the hive mind. My guess is that, aside from the side project of taking care of the unjoined, they are focusing all their resources towards building an antenna to broadcast the signal. Once the antenna is completed and broadcasting, will the hive mind move on to other projects or will it just be done and become despondent? What if Carol has to become counselor to the hive mind?
posted by thedward at 7:10 AM
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My guess is if it's not butchered human meat or brains, it's probably pets. Previous episodes raised questions on what is happening to all the animals, they make a point when enumerating the survivors that a few of them "love cats", the episode has references to "dog food" and the wolf dogs, and when asked if they are vegetarian, they don't confirm that but instead say "that would be our preference".
Most pets wouldn't be able to survive on their own even if set free, so they might have made the decision to humanely euthanize them and use them as a stopgap protein while they work to transition agricultural output to support a vegetarian only diet.
posted by zixyer at 7:30 AM
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I can see the logic of that but why wouldn't the freed animals in the zoo meet a similar fate? Many of them were raised in captivity and can't survive in the wild, not to mention a lot of the animals are in specially maintained habitats far from where they thrive naturally. So why would they bother to execute house pets when they just let other animals in captivity go to die in the wild?
posted by miss-lapin at 8:33 AM
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It kinda makes sense to me...it would probably be easier to euthanize large numbers of docile pets at once than to put down zoo animals, which are mostly wild animals. And really, where are the pets? We haven't visited any of the Joined at home, but we haven't seen anyone walking a dog or anything. And if they're using the dog food factory to make straw water, they...logically are not using the dog food factory to make dog food any longer.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 8:46 AM
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I'm fully on board with kittens' comment.
I really hope they aren't setting up a review that Pluribus is actually some evil human-eating monster or something. That'd be hackneyed. I'm much more interested in the idea that maybe Pluribus is exactly what it says it is, and that the joined people really are experiencing the bliss we see, and they really will run the planet efficiently. It's still monstrous but in a more unsettling way.
But what's keeping me really fascinated is how unlikeable Carol is. Those scenes of her making her crazy videos to distribute.. she's doing her best, I sympathize with her, even as I recognize how badly she's doing. Having her isolated entirely this episode was a really fascinating thing to do, hanging the whole show on Seehorn's ability to fill scene after scene. It works.
Some Gilligan magic here too. I love the variety of all the extras they have in the crowd scenes. Here that first scene, as they are withdrawing. Whoever is doing casting for that is having a lot of fun finding the most remarkable looking people in ABQ. Also we got a few of the Gilligan weird shots. I particularly liked the dolly pull through the wavy privacy glass in the door.
posted by Nelson at 9:34 AM
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I'm kind of growing attached to my pet idea. The cannibalism/recycling theming in this episode would still work as a misdirect, showing that the others don't share human ethics. They prioritize efficiency over morality, but in a different way. The subplot with the starving wolf dogs neatly illustrates the problem with keeping the pets alive. There's some clever irony in repurposing the dog food facility to make food from dogs instead of food for dogs. And stating that some of the survivors are cat lovers might be a telegraph that this could be how Carol will finally convince some of them to come to her side.
And let's not forget the gross-out scene with Manousos eating the dog food. Could have been some more foreshadowing.
posted by zixyer at 10:05 AM
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I've been wondering if maybe's the opposite if the Joined are feeding the human dead to the animals to augment their diet. This would mean they aren't killing anything and is a fairly efficient as they would be using the already dead humans to sustain other living beings.
posted by miss-lapin at 10:35 AM
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People die naturally all the time, and there are animals dying all the time, so it makes sense that a thrifty and not sentimental collective would harvest all that protein in some way. And they are not only eating people, if that's what it is -- she went past shelves of vegetables, which I'm sure they are replenishing by farming.
But while following this protein-harvesting line of thought I hit upon what I think is really is under that tarp. Because I agree that it being people would be too on-the-nose, overdone, and obvious.
It's insects. Insects are a concentrated and sustainable source of protein. She would be shocked because, well, most of us would be shocked encountering vats of insects in a food factory making human food.
posted by antinomia at 10:50 AM
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Carol already sounds like a crazy conspiracy theorist to the other 12 (well...not the guy in Paraguay, provided he ever sees her video), so imagine her telling them: "They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there."
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:54 AM
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This episode showcased everything that's great about Gilligan as a storyteller. Clean and efficient. Every plot development followed clearly from the thing that had just happened. This because this because that.
I loved Rhea Seehorn so much in Better Call Saul. Kim Wexler is maybe my favourite character ever in television. So I'm not surprised to see Seehorn doing this, and really happy to see so many people discovering her.
I have a feeling it's not dead bodies because Carol's reaction was pretty delayed. If you lifted a tarp and saw a pile of frozen corpses you'd probably react immediately.
The delayed reaction makes perfect sense to me. Think about it: You happen upon a huge industrial fridge/freezer, you see lots of food but also bodies. Given what Carol knows about the fallout of the joining so far, your first thought is probably "okay that's creepy but this makes sense as a place to store all the suddenly dead bodies". It's only in the next beat when you put the fact of all these bodies together with the question that lead you here together and realize what it means. The reaction wasn't to the bodies, it was to suddenly understanding the answer to the question she had been researching all episode.
If you followed the path that was laid out in the story of the episode, you should be gasping at exactly the same moment that Carol does.
Gilligan has been pretty clear that this show is at least partly intended as a rebuke of AI, but it also feels like a rebuke of the expectation of modern television that it narrates and spoon feeds every single plot swerve to the viewer.
Since They can't lie, why didn't Carol ask Them about the powder?
Pretty convenient then that there's now no one Carol can interrogate, huh? They didn't bail on ABQ because their feelings are hurt or they're scared Carol will hurt them. They bailed because Carol has figured out a weakness in how they interact with her and they didn't want to give her any more chances to exploit it, including over the phone.
posted by dry white toast at 11:57 AM
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I agree that the most likely thing is human bodies. Gilligan doesn't usually trick the audience with a reveal, it's more about what place does this end up taking us next.
Insects are out because they said they don't even kill ants if they can avoid it. Euthanized pets doesn't align with what we've heard of their actions, either. It's not growing mushrooms on dead bodies because they're in a freezer.
My guess is that it is dead bodies, but this leads to some further discovery, like they are not just doing this for efficiency, but they need to do it for some reason. Maybe that leads to a calculation that the infected have a finite group lifespan. Or maybe it's just that this is the evidence she needs to flip some of the uninfected and that's what drives the next part of the story.
posted by snofoam at 12:12 PM
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The title of the bottom book on Carol's bedside table was not legible, but I recognized its blue and yellow dust jacket as the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm assuming that if she had a court-mandated breath alcohol interlock device on her car, she also had to go to court-mandated AA meetings. It also seems like AA might have been a type of collective that Carol wouldn't want to get assimilated into, hence her still having a drinking problem. Which she tried to hide by putting away the bottles on her bar before filming her PSA.
posted by larrybob at 12:20 PM
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most of us would be shocked encountering vats of insects in a food factory making human food.
I agree with this sentiment, but the shapes under the tarps in the refrigerated warehouse were lumpy and irregular. Insects, dead, or alive and merely very cold, would be in boxes.
What I think about when I contemplate the possibility of dead humans is: that warehouse isn't a freezer- there were stacks of watermelons in it, so it has to be a refrigerated storage area. It seems like there would be a smell if the bodies were not dressed (as in preparing meat, not "dressed" as in garbed). It would take a beat or two to fully understand what you were looking at.
posted by oneirodynia at 3:17 PM
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So both Carol and the collective want to conceal their consumption of amber liquids.
posted by subocoyne at 3:33 PM
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If they are dead people, it's easy to see how Carol and the Joined could view the situation differently. As we have seen, Carol will literally defend the sanctity of the dead with her life. But I'm not sure Pluribus even considers Helen dead; her memories became part of Pluribus, and Pluribus is an entity that's alive. Dead bodies to Pluribus might be the same as an animal or an insect shedding its skin. And some of those animals and insects eat their dead skin for its nutrients.
Effectively, Pluribus is an immortal being, though eventually it will be a Ship of Theseus situation where none of the people who were part of the original joining will still be alive. But their memories, presumably, will always be there, and to Pluribus life will have begun with the individual life of the oldest person who first joined it, and end...never, I guess.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:51 PM
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Wait, did she manage to separate Zosia?? I the beginning of the episode the nurse answers Carol saying that "SHE will be alright", is it common for Pluribus to not address themselves as "we"?
posted by BruxoPimba at 5:23 PM
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for any that doubt that it's made of people, they pretty clearly broadcast this with the coyotes trying to dig up her partner's corpse. you can eat people, they loudly declared
posted by dis_integration at 8:31 PM
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Reddit's also pointed out that when we first meet Zosia, she is helping to load the dead into a refrigerated truck that says Fresh Dairy Products in Arabic.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 9:26 PM
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The thing that really stood out to me was that the milk carton food substance speaks somewhat to the conversation about the Wycaro books versus Shakespeare -- that is, the question of whether it's possible for the joined to have an aesthetic preference. Drinking flavorless processed liquid as their sole form of sustenance clearly indicates a negative, at least as compared to human experience as we know it. To me, this moves the joined a meaningful step toward the alien.
That said, while I was leaning very much towards it being frozen corpses under the tarps, too, my partner pointed out that if it is corpses, they are not being processed into Soylent Amber. Because if that's what's happening, then the joined become not just oddly alien, but truly monstrous. If that happens, Carol wins the moral argument and the show loses a lot of tension. The joined need to continue to have a plausible argument for being truly better off, but still uncanny, or else it becomes "the movie we've all seen before," which, as the show has clearly stated, this is not.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 9:39 PM
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On the other hand I was unsure if the joined could be creative, or if they're limited to what humanity already knew. The creamation process does seem to be technologically innovative, though maybe it was an idea someone already had in their head.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:18 AM
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The creamation process
Right to jail. Right away.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:17 AM
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(lol lol)
Dietary... preferences... have been a focus of the series so far, including the dog food eating in Paraguay.
posted by armacy at 5:04 AM
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The creamation process does seem to be technologically innovative, though maybe it was an idea someone already had in their head.
From the Cremation Association of North America: alkaline hydrolysis
I think it's human effluent. Neither Carol nor her storage facility counterpart will eat or drink what's offered...though at least a few of the unjoined already have.
posted by MonkeyToes at 8:15 AM
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Interesting that early conversion therapy failed, maybe a precursor to the current situation. I see Carol as caught between what others want her to be and feel, and her own refusal to own who she is and what she feels. Rebellion through hiding (the closet, the alcohol, the secret contempt for her readers) is not enough; what would it mean for Carol to come to terms with her own humanity? To fully own it. Not to go back to the status quo, but to grow into self-acceptance despite the temptation/pressure to change.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:32 AM
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I can't imagine any thin liquid actually providing the kind of nutrition a human needs, but maybe it's helping them stay connected or is otherwise a supplement rather than what they eat to survive.
Carol used her pool testing strips to determine that it's close to neutral but slightly basic. Zosia commented on the booze they drank together ina an earlier episode about it's alkaline qualities. Could be unrelated, but it's an odd thing to come up twice. Slightly alkaline does describe many human juices.
posted by subocoyne at 12:04 PM
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If everyone on Earth has gone vegan overnight, there might be a temporary shortage of protein. There might not be enough soy and peas and lentils to replace meat and dairy protein for everyone, until they can sow and harvest more fields.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 12:44 PM
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The birds getting into the bags of the powder says it's got some nutritional value. Funny thing to me was that Carol couldn't bring herself to try it. It can't possibly convert her; if Pluribus only needed to feed her something to convert her they would have already done so.
posted by joeyh at 7:31 AM
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... if it is corpses, they are not being processed into Soylent Amber. Because if that's what's happening, then the joined become not just oddly alien, but truly monstrous. If that happens, Carol wins the moral argument ...
There have been several cultures from different parts of the world that ate their dead as part of their funerary practices.
posted by antinomia at 3:25 PM
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So, given Gilligan's X-Files past, what are the chances whatever's under the tarp isn't of this world?
posted by oldnumberseven at 2:59 AM
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I guess I will be the naysayer here but I'm starting to question if I am going to want to stay with this show or not. The show is obviously very well made and thought out and I love me some Rhea Seehorn. I want to marry here and have her incredibly talented babies but Gilligan is going to actually have to introduce some other meaningful characters for this to go anywhere for me.
As great as Cranston and Odenkirk are in BB and BCS they were also great because of all the great characters that were a part of it. I mean I wouldn't even have known who Seehorn was if not for BCS. We get glimpses of some potentially good characters but none are a big part of the show yet. From my view there are just two main characters and that's Carol and the "hivemind/joined" played by many different actors. The handful of others have not figured much in the story yet. I'm sure they will at some point but watching Carol flail around by herself for much longer is going to annoy me. Maybe I need to be more patient.
Plus I don't really care for the "soylent green" cliffhanger/possible misdirect no matter what it turns out to be. Rant over.
posted by Justin Case at 9:38 AM
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So, given Gilligan's X-Files past, what are the chances whatever's under the tarp isn't of this world?
mmmmmm, I like this idea. Maybe they aren't even dead, or for nutritional purposes at all- just in cold storage until [a certain time].
posted by oneirodynia at 1:01 PM
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I'm going to laugh so hard if what is under that tarp is just like, 3,000 lbs. of Crystal Light.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 3:54 PM
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I'm pretty sure that those were body parts in the freezer, and not just based on Carol's reaction. You can see what look like arms/legs/torsos under the tarps behind Carol as she's walking down the aisle. They're not insects and they sure don't look like animals! Admittedly, it's odd that they all look like white-people body parts, if that's what they are. But I can't think what else they could be, piled there in such bulk--they filled a LOT of shelves compared to, say, the frozen watermelons. If they're not parts, then they're something like variably shaped loaves of bread. Or very large pale-colored yams? I dunno, I'm not sure it was even supposed to be a big mystery what was under there.
On rewatch, Carol's reaction doesn't seem so delayed, fwiw. It looks like it takes her a second to understand what she's seeing, and as she realizes, her hand flinches away from the tarp and she steps back, and then she gasps. It makes more sense as a processing-the-horror kind of thing rather than an instantaneous reaction.
It seemed like Carol had only one sip of whiskey the whole episode, which strikes me as a good thing. The first time she went for her liquor, she stopped and put the glass back. The second time she poured a glass but then got distracted by the coyotes. The third time she took one drink and then noticed the dog food bag and left on her sleuthing mission.
It was good to see her mourning/processing Helen's death without the crutch.
posted by torticat at 4:07 PM
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if that's what's happening, then the joined become not just oddly alien, but truly monstrous. If that happens, Carol wins the moral argument
Do you think, Smedly, Butlerian jihadi? I mean if they were killing people for food, then of course that would be the case. But I'm not sure that being 100% pragmatic & conservationist with regard to the use of dead bodies makes them morally monstrous, even though we find it repugnant. We're still getting clues to the ways in which the Joined have lost their humanness--they lack the joy of knowing good art from bad, don't seem to eat food for pleasure. Presumably don't have sex for fun, at least in the way we would think of sex as mutually consensual/enjoyable. Etc.
Anyway, "recycling" the dead seems like just a more extreme example of that kind of otherness. Is our aversion to that idea really moral, or is it more aesthetic? It's kind of a blurry line, and "blurry" doesn't seem like something the Joined really do.
posted by torticat at 4:47 PM
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...and to be more clear: from everything we've seen, making aesthetic distinctions doesn't seem to be something they do. They aren't subject to the kind of "gross-out" reaction that regular humans have. Another example might be that they are untroubled by (among other things) a child having the same range of knowledge that an adult does--which similarly gets into murky territory. "Developmentally inappropriate" might suggest ideas like abusiveness to us, but the Joined don't entertain questions like that.
posted by torticat at 5:04 PM
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I think the real question is whether the cold open of the next episode will be a flashback to pre-evacuation where we see a bright and cheery overview of the "milk" making process in reverse that leads us back to the giant freezer.
posted by snofoam at 5:37 PM
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That would be very Vince Gilligan.
posted by oneirodynia at 11:29 PM
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I appreciate now being given the mental preparation for that very likely scene.
posted by Atreides at 7:02 AM
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I keep being convinced it's absolutely NOT recycling the dead for the simple fact that cannibalism leads to prion disease, which is generally always fatal and incurable. Adopted broadly, that seems like a good way to accelerate humanity's extinction -- but then again, we might just be a cosmic Taco Bell "third meal" run for these Joiners.
I assumed this whole time they were telling us the truth based on everything we've seen, at least about mostly being vegan. And I don't see any practical way to render a whole human body into a crystalline white powder, but what do I know? Joiners could indeed have a process for removing everything but the brain and converting it into the equivalent of protein powder for easy, on-the-go consumption.
We'll probably know just how wrong I am in about 72 hours.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:25 AM
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They sent the signal in a pretty good way, I think.
The receiving species needs to be able to receive the signal, notice the signal exists, decode the signal, know what RNA is, know how to construct that RNA.
That would likely put all of their... hosts(?) in a technological position to be able to create the crystals to make the amber liquid.
I was very interested to hear, back in whatever episode, that being vegetarian "would be our preference" which is at least two layers of non-answer.
If I wanted to theorize about what they're drinking and why (which I know it's just a show and I shouldn't), it would be my preference to consider the texture (implies a protein to me) and the new functions of the joined maybe being helped by something that either enables intracellular communication or inhibits some other signal.
I want to jump ahead to when we get to see the giant transmitter they must be building. Is it in orbit? I hope it's in orbit!
posted by Acari at 9:56 AM
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I assumed this whole time they were telling us the truth based on everything we've seen, at least about mostly being vegan
Same here! I reconciled this with the idea of frozen body parts only after someone upthread pointed out the ambiguous "would be our preference" wording.
I do believe that they do not intentionally kill other living creatures. Which is why I don't think the frozen things are euthanized pets (or euthanized animals of any kind, including humans).
posted by torticat at 10:27 AM
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I don't see any practical way to render a whole human body into a crystalline white powder
No one's going to improve on "creamation," I think we have to go with that
posted by torticat at 10:31 AM
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Creamation with sprinkles on top?
posted by Nelson at 10:52 AM
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The biggest question I have about the show right now is: are all thoughts/experiences/knowledge available to all of the joined at all times? Or, to ask another way, if there were No number of welders in the world before and they needed 2N welders for a project, could they manage that?
Or could they have 8 billion welders if necessary?
(Like... Are they "consulting" an individual mind, or is it all one big new one?)
posted by Acari at 11:43 AM
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I think so, yes -- Zosia's able to fly a plane, Laxmi's kid was able to confidently answer questions about gynecology, and we've seen various people doing work that is at odds with their clothing/uniform or their age -- the suited man delivering groceries, and wasn't there a kid acting as a nurse or doctor in the hospital in this episode? It certainly feels to me that Pluribus units can be hot-swapped into any activities as needed.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:07 PM
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That's my understanding. Though, I think someone on here brought up the question of muscle memory being an important aspect of skill/ability and that wouldn't expect to transfer over.
The more I think on it, I'm liking the idea that whatever ingredient X is, it's essential for maintaining the hive mind links; like it's something that gets burned up by the infected bodies if it's not replaced. Separate someone from the nutrient/vitamin or whatever long enough, and they will lose contact with Pluribus.
posted by Atreides at 12:12 PM
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Regarding the possible cannibalism question - one thing that listening to Gilligan-related podcasts for nearly fifteen years has taught me is that whatever's going on, however far-fetched will be at least based in scientific fact (albeit one that might have been stretched beyond plausibility). Like a chemist ought to be able to take the clues we've been given and go, "Oh, I know what that is, it's..." But I don't know what it is, because I'm a graphic designer not a research chemist.
I knew I should have paid more attention in school.
posted by Grangousier at 12:52 PM
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I worry a bit that the joined are working on spreading the message, with no regard for keeping hosts alive long-term.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:00 PM
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It's clear that that they can all do anything that another individual could do, but it's not clear if there's a limit.
Yes a kid can be a doctor (maybe not a surgeon or acrobat), but is that limited by the number of people who originally could do those things?
Are they using a remote desktop connection analogy, where in order to access the program installed on the remote computer only one user can login remotely at once? Or more of a cloud based analogy where everybody can access the relevant Wikipedia page at once?
(I don't think we'll learn the answer, but I'm still curious)
posted by Acari at 1:29 PM
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the simple fact that cannibalism leads to prion disease, which is generally always fatal and incurable.
You can only prion disease if you eat brain tissue.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:10 PM
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Are they using a remote desktop connection analogy, where in order to access the program installed on the remote computer only one user can login remotely at once? Or more of a cloud based analogy where everybody can access the relevant Wikipedia page at once?
I've been getting the vibe that it's more like a cloud service. The rules seem to be :
- They are a constant shared consciousness (not unlike an always-online cloud service)
- They have the stored memories of anyone alive within the time period when "The Joining" happened (analogy : cloud backup storage, but not an active processor if the "server" went "offline" after "The Joining" happened)
- Instant communication is possible by way of - to put this in cloud processing terms - querying the database of the consciousness and returning the result from the most qualified source(s)
It does also seem to be heavily metaphoric about AI chatbots (so far), in that their responses were very "oh you're the smartest and most capable person and gee golly we love you and thank you for your question", even up to the point where they don't even warn her about the request or proper usage of a live hand grenade (and, of course, the possibility of procuring an atomic bomb).
I am pretty sure, and deeply hope, this will be about more than just a metaphor about AI. It's too interesting a plot to throw away for just driving that point.
posted by revmitcz at 1:03 AM
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Acari: If I wanted to theorize about what they're drinking
My first thought was it's something akin to Royal Jelly (but can't explain Carol's reaction)
posted by dhruva at 8:12 AM
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I'm still just dying to know what the fuck is actually happening in Wycaro where there are flea people in it, which...if that is normal for fantasy romance I have clearly misjudged it, and I apologize.
In the world of romantasy, there is a book out there for...well, perhaps not literally every possible proclivity, but certainly much stranger ones than flea people.
posted by lampoil at 5:10 PM
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Someone on reddit theorized that the reason that Manouso doesn't eat the food he's offered isn't because he doesn't trust the others, but because he knows what's in it.
posted by zixyer at 10:34 AM
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Pluribus ad on a fridge caused a schizophrenic woman named Carol to be hospitalized.
(Also, ads on fridges are symptomatic of a seriously beige dystopia)
posted by autopilot at 10:43 AM
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Someone on reddit theorized that the reason that Manouso doesn't eat the food he's offered isn't because he doesn't trust the others, but because he knows what's in it.
Not sure how he would know anything about it, as it seems that he hasn't left his storage facility/bunker since the Joining. Plus, there's the food they cook and prepare for the unJoined -- which appears to be normal, actual food -- and then there's the Milk the Joined drink, which is the mystery. A much simpler answer is that he doesn't trust the Joined (would you?) and so he is worried that maybe the food is poisoned with whatever caused them to become a hive mind. It isn't even clear that Manousos knows anything specific about them except that everyone else is behaving strangely -- while all the other unJoined have had extensive contact with Pluribus and been informed about it, he's been self-isolating.
posted by Saxon Kane at 11:05 AM
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what the fuck is actually happening in Wycaro where there are flea people
Who presumably feed on the blood of mammals, which would make an interesting parallel to the liquid in the milk boxes.
posted by MonkeyToes at 12:54 PM
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It's probably just an accident, because naming it for this on purpose would feel pretty silly, but I can't stop hearing "Wycaro" as a toddler trying to say "Why, Carol?" so I figured I might as well infect you all with that thought too. (An escalation of "Please, Carol" from a couple weeks back?)
posted by nobody at 1:46 PM
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I mean authors have named things for sillier reasons like the land of Oz was so named after the files in a cabinet: O-Z.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:23 PM
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trying to say "Why, Carol?"
Or it's self-contempt.
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:08 PM
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i hope they work towards a better explanation of this severe refusal to grow crops. it's illogical if it's not a tactic for killing off large numbers of the human race prior to an alien invasion
posted by dis_integration at 7:55 PM
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Like a chemist ought to be able to take the clues we've been given and go, "Oh, I know what that is, it's..." But I don't know what it is, because I'm a graphic designer not a research chemist.
I knew I should have paid more attention in school.
If you join the joined you'll be both. No school needed.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 8:24 PM
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The "flea people" concept in Wycaro brought to mind China Mieville's mosquito people in The Scar. The blood-sucking theme makes better sense in the context of Pluribus though, so thanks to the person that commented on that above.
posted by abraxasaxarba at 3:26 PM
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