PLURIBUS Review: The Consequences of Love

Life can certainly be miserable, sometimes. Make that "all the time."

Pluribus
The first three episodes are now streaming on Apple TV. Episode 4 debuts tomorrow, and subsequent episodes debut every Friday. I've seen seven episodes of the nine-episode season.

Before Vince Gilligan created Breaking Bad, he broke out professionally as a writer and then a producer on The X-Files. Thus, as Pluribus has developed over its first three episodes, it's no surprise that it feels like an episode of The X-Files set in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, the spare locales where Breaking Bad, as well as its spin-off prequel series Better Call Saul, co-created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, were centered.

The impression is doubled with the powerhouse presence of Rhea Seehorn, who broke out as a star in Better Call Saul, playing Kim Wexler, an attorney with a weakness for con games who gets involved with the titular character. If that series, which I just re-watched in its entirety earlier this year, sometimes made me wish for more Rhea Seehorn, here that wish is granted.

As Carol Sturka, the author of a series of popular speculative history romance novels, she is introduced on a nationwide book tour in the company of her manager Helen Umstead (Miriam Shor). The first three episodes make it clear that their relationship is far more meaningful than it might initially appear. Then everything -- and I mean everything -- goes haywire, and nothing will ever be the same.

The show's logline keeps it simple: "The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness." The trailer certainly backs that up:

Yet, if you've seen either Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul, it's unimaginable that Vince Gilligan will make anything in the show that simple. In those shows, Gilligan set a creative pattern by meticulously laying the groundwork for the narrative to develop in an extremely logical manner.

By the conclusion of the third episode, we've seen that Carol was not entirely thrilled with the type of success she had enjoyed. We've also started to see the depth of her relationship with Helen. We can understand, to some degree, why she would become so obsessed with finding out what, exactly, has happened to change the world, and why she seems to be unaffected, as nearly everyone else seems to have been.

Carol is also starting to understand her specific place in this massively-different world, which contributes to her general frame of mind. To be frank, "miserable" is not the most accurate word to describe her, but to say more might spoil things.

After re-watching Better Call Saul, I had a deeper appreciation of Rhea Seehorn's dramatic talent. With Pluribus, my appreciation only soars higher. She taps into primal anger, like a volcano erupting, and then tamps it down to sound like the sweetest thing, and then ramps back up again, and then finds a middle ground between fury and sorrow, and navigates it convincingly.

Rhea Seehorn is the heart and soul of the series. Creator Vince Gilligan was given a two-season order for the show, and he is not in a rush to give up all its secrets. As demonstrated with his past shows, patience is a wonderful virtue because it is always richly rewarded, even if the aftertaste is not always pleasant.

Perhaps I shouldn't say "in Vince we trust," or anything stupid like that. But, yeah, I trust that this season will have a good pay-off, leading to an even better one down the road. You just gotta have patience and enjoy the ride. With Rhea Seehorn at the wheel, I'm having a great time with Pluribus.

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