Seeking Derangements - *Preview* SD 461 - Pluribusted w/ Theda Hammel

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Hello Seekers! Ben here, today director, podcaster and professional hater Theda Hammel joins Hesse and I to shit talk everyone's favorite show. We discuss our endless contempt for Carol Sturka, the people who created her, and how Apple TV has managed to lower audience expectations without us even noticing. Plus I get a long awaited apology from Theda. Go subscribe to NYMPHOWARS, the best podcast in the game. And (after you listen to this) go watch Jack Wagner and Dorian Electra on this week's Interior Motives.

My 2005 Nissan Ultima is broken. And Iowa has a blizzard right now. So it's just like absolutely horrible outside. And I guess I mean, what would I be using the car for anyways? You can't go to the corn house. Exactly. The corn house is closed. Corn lodge.

I really wanted to go to the corn lot today. All the corn is frozen. They just open a corn chalet in town. Yes. It's more off scale. I'm actually banned from the corn chalet. They don't. They don't happen last time.

Okay, I'm recording on backup, and that should be okay. Okay, perfect. Okay. Perfect. Hello, everyone. Welcome to seeking derangements. If you're hearing this on the free channel, this is a Patreon episode. So if you want to hear it, go to our Patreon to hear the full thing.

joining me today's hessa as always and the wonderful miss theta hamill is with us how's it going hi ben hi hessa so good to be with you today thank you for joining us on this song thank you for joining us on this no one wanted to record this it took months of back and forth to get this podcast recording it was just because it involved because of what it involved watching the show it was a joy to record it yes you might be wondering what show are we talking about it is of course pluribus which

the highly acclaimed almost universally acclaimed yes everyone and you know what people on on Twitter people are like I more than I see people I don't even see people praising it or like ragging on it at all

I just see people posting if you don't like pluribus you have the mind of a baby why don't you go watch a video keys jingling you fucking moron like Jesus Christ what the hell Watching a videos of Key of Key's jingling would be more stimulated than watching a drunk lesbian adult.

I'm sorry. It is a thoroughly a boring show. It is a boring, stupid show. Yeah, yes. And those two things are different. It's boring and it's stupid. And those are like totally different things to explore about it. Like, it could be as stupid as it is and still be interesting.

You know what I'm saying? Right. It really could. But it's boring. Boring is really its cardinal sin. I mean, like, I'm going to be honest, I did like the first episode, and I was like, this could be a good show, you know? Right.

But then nothing happens for about nine hours. But for literally nine hours, like literally. I did not like the first episode. You didn't like it? I liked her running around, you know, everything crazy is going on. You know, I felt like there was some really red flags in the first episode, because it's like you, the red flags are that she was, finding things that should have been easy, like difficult in ways that felt like it was patting

out the show. But I don't remember which things. Like her struggling to go up a staircase. She forgot how stairs work. It's there. It's there. It's around that level of thing. Like she suddenly like loses the ability to do things in, in order to prolong the runtime of the show. and I guess increased tension. But at least there was something going on, right? Like the catastrophe was unfolding. But I felt like there were bad signs right from the very beginning of just like... Yeah, yeah.

Gilly-Gilliginian difficulties. I loved the setup of her character being a, like, semi-closited, at least in her work, lesbian romantic novelist. Yeah, because lesbians hate romantic novels. They fucking... There's this whole, like, protracted thing, but she's, like, well, one, the revelation that Carol went to conversion therapy, hilarious. I mean, if I were, if I had to raise that daughter, it would be finding a lot of excuses to steer out of the house, okay, first of all. Yeah.

I use every modality available. Jewish sleepaway camp, fat camp, rehab, conversion therapy. to get her rehab study abroad to get her out of my sight but the whole one of the points of conflict in her

character is that she yes of course has all this lesbian trauma with the conversion therapy but then also has to construct like seven book like sci-fi horny you know fantasy series wherein she wants the main character, the love interest of the main character to be a woman,

but it has to be a man. So readers will, I'm like, are you kidding? Like, are you, sorry, there aren't hundreds of thousands of autistic lesbians in this country. First major plot hole. First major plot hole. First major one. Like, come on. That is really, that was the first red flag for me, if they don't. Also, another red flag, when she's reading, the excerpt from her book, and you're like, okay, she's reading an excerpt from the book. And then, like, two minutes later, she's still reading it. And I'm like, okay, I get it. I'm struggling to do something basic yet again. I get the kind of book that she writes. And then it goes for another minute. And you're like, what the fuck is going on? No, I was just thinking, that's the, that's the time problem

of the show. It's almost everything in the show takes place in almost like half real time. Like, like why what is the transaction of my time versus show budget there that like you have to see every single second of a process unfolding and not nothing that we'll get to this but like that is never more evident than in the fact that we have to listen to the entire voicemail the outgoing voicemail message of the of their phone line Every time. Every time. I was so annoyed because I'm like, this isn't even true to her character because she would be so annoyed by that. Right. She would be like, change the voice message. Yeah, she would say change the voice message immediately.

Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. And I think we can we can start here with our gang beat of our gang gang. The first major critique that I saw developing around the show as it was being. aired was quote unquote pacing right the show's too slow but for me i mean it's far be it for me i'm not i'm not a i'm not a film expert like i'm like either of you but to me the problem wasn't necessarily the pacing of the show it was the fact that i mean i love watching like slow things like i don't

like i know that this is going to sound like i'm going too far here but like i love like michael honicky's movies those are like painfully slow in many parts but it's like there's actually there's a reason there's a articulation for the slowness you know but the yeah it's functional the the slowness of movies like that and i've seen it on other shows it's functional i think in this show there's actually it's not a matter of pacing it's just that it's empty from start to finish there's yeah it's not even it's not even slow it's frozen it's not existing so it's not really facing it's about what is what's there and there's nothing with a gun to my head i couldn't tell you a single thing that happens in the middle eight episodes of this show.

Truly, like, it's, John Sina was there, I think. For a minute. There's a John Sina came.