The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘Pluribus’ Episode 3: Negative Nancy at the Ice Hotel

Episode Date: November 14, 2025

Jo and Rob have rejoined the hive mind to dig into the third episode of Apple TV’s new series, ‘Pluribus’. (00:00) Intro (6:24) Digging into the emails (25:34) Negative Nancy at the ice hotel (37:02) Carol on the plane (42:24) Golden Girls (48:56) The totality of a person (1:06:11) Uniforms in the show (1:08:24) 'Breaking Bad'/'Better Call Saul' Easter eggs Email us! [e-mail] or [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Friday, you donut lickers. We're back for Plyubis episode three. This is the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Jonah Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney. We're here to talk to you about the episode titled Grenade, written and directed by Gordon Smith, who I just want to mention really quickly because I love this about what Vince Gilligan does with the folks that have worked with him for years. Gordon Smith started as an assistant on Breaking Bad, sort of rose up the ranks, wrote. one of the best episodes of Better Call Saul chicanery, and is here directing now, writing and directing for Pluribus. And I just really love how loyal Vince Gilligan is to his people and how he sort of loves to teach the people around him and sort of promote them as they go. So just a shout out to Vince Gilligan as one of the great showrunners that we have. I mean, it fits like the cottage industry thing that he does in turning Albuquerque into a company town. Like the whole operation feels so inclusive in a way that, I mean, it's a little warm and fuzzy, Joe. I got to say.

Listen, he just wants us all to be happy. He does, truly. And what could possibly go wrong? In this episode grenade, a literal grenade goes off. But as we love to sort of overanalyze episode titles, Rob, first of all, I want to know what you thought of this episode. And secondly, do you have any alternative, what other kinds of grenades might have gone off in this episode of television?

I really like this episode. I think we're stepping away from like the big picture existential questions of episode two. certainly getting some distance from the world altering events of episode one, but you can feel all of these supposedly benevolent means of control that are starting to constrict Carol on her movement and the life that she is hoping to live as one of the last few true humans on Earth. As for other grenades, I mean, there's emotional grenades all over this episode. Or I guess maybe landmines, maybe Claymore's.

I don't know exactly what the explosive mechanism is, but things are going off left and right internally for Carol, I would say. I would say that right before the literal grenade goes off. Yes. Is when Zosha hits Carol with the Ice Hotel memory, which we got at the beginning of the episode. And we'll talk about all of that. We're going to go through the episode, of course. But I, I, like, audibly gasped.

It felt like such a violation for her. The fucking gall of this woman. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Like, she has to know what she's doing on some level. I know we're going to get into it. And honestly, that moment, too, fits what probably should be a recurring prompt for us, which is the, like, holy shit, racy.

horn moment of the week because her like slow indignantly tearing up and trying to even not give Zosha the satisfaction of that, just A plus. Peak, peak acting TV as far as I'm concerned. I think that, I think it's really interesting listening to the official podcast, listening to them talk about sort of the emotional intelligence journey that these beings are on if you want to call them humans. And I think that's a question we can ask throughout this entire season series of television. What makes a human to human is obviously something that's on the plate here.

Are these people humans? I saw a lot of people ask a question of like, hey, if they're bonded to everyone in the world and that includes all the psychiatrists that ever were, all the diplomats that ever were, all the like, why are they so fumble bumbully with like context sometimes? And so there's something that the writers are trying to get at when it comes to like, there are ways in which the reprogramming of these people sort of reboot. their emotional intelligence to a certain degree. So there are ways in which they are very emotionally intelligent, and there are ways in which

they are learning. And it seems to be like it's across the organism because they talked about, in the official podcast, they talked about Zosha on a emotional intelligence journey, what she learns, is learning inside of this episode. And then they talked about the DHS guy played by Robert Bailey, who I thought was so funny at the end of the episode, like really, really good. But they were like, he's continuing the emotional. journey that we saw Zoujean. So it's like a group growth, I guess, that they're on, which I think

I hadn't thought about it and I thought was really interesting. So something to consider. I think all those elements to serve the story as an allegory for AI element of like it's one thing to have all this information and it's another thing to understand how to process and use it. And, you know, some prompts are going to be more effective than others, I suspect, for whatever this hive mind is. And something we should say in terms of like this episode specifically, it, It comes in around 43 minutes, which is considerably shorter than the first two episodes, which were closer to an hour. And it seems like the rest of the season is going to be in that sort of like 45-ish minute range. So this is going to be the standard going forward.

I do love that model of like, you know, whether it's a double premiere or not, but like event premiere. Yes. And then, you know, then we get into normal TV cadence. I think it serves especially a show like this really, really well. There's so much to chew over. I did see, you know, I love to trawl or Reddit. I did see kind of what I expected to see on the Reddit, which was like plenty of people saying, A, nothing happened. I mean, a house blew up. I don't know what more you want, but we can talk about that. An entire sprouts got restocked, guys. Yeah. An entire season of Golden Girls was watching. Nothing happened. Are you kidding me? Are you joking me? We bade for a while to your favorite character, the unicorn truck. Like a lot of things happened inside of this episode. But also like this is what Vince Gilligan show does. It slow rolls things. It really asks you to.

sort of marinate with characters. So I think patience is the watchword, but I don't find it, I personally don't find it like unentertaining as we're sort of really moving step by step forward on this journey. I mean, if you're just here for a plot delivery mechanism, like those beats will come, but a character heavy episode in which we get flashback in which we learn a lot about Carol in which we're learning in real time about how this hive mind processes and operates, like, again, there's a ton to chew on. I just fundamentally don't understand that perspective of watching TV. I think it's just people want different.

They want something else from their television. Absolutely. I don't think this is a show for them and that's okay. But it's a show for plenty of people. And plenty of people are super stoked about what they saw. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Hey, you could be earning 2% daily cash back on that purchase. And that one.

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registered futures commission merchant, is non-withdrawable and expire seven days after receipt. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tool. Restrictions apply. See terms at banduel.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms. Speaking of those plenty of people, we got literally hundreds of emails. We were talking to our guy Justin Stales about this and we were like, I don't think we've gotten this many emails since I asked a question on the severance finale that a bunch of people put into chat, GBT, and send us back, Adjustment Bureau as the answer.

This is the second most, like the second biggest hall of emails. I think we've gotten for a single episode of the podcast. Astonishing stuff from you guys. Really good. So many people licking donuts out there, Joe. And very thoughtfully and entertaining lots of different ideas and theories and proposals for everything that we asked for in the first pod. I was overwhelmed by the amount of donut licking happening.

I was literally overwhelmed. So here's the deal. If you're just tuning on, you missed our first podcast. The email for the show that we're doing this time around is licking the donut at gmail.com. You simply must take a bow again. This is among the greatest things that you have ever done in a long and storied professional career, New York Times bestseller, Joanna Robinson. Whether or not that's true. I suspect that a lot of people just wanted to type Licking the donut at gmail.com into an email address to line.

To clarify, and I really regret that I didn't do this last time, we're spelling donut D-O-N-U-T, the dumb, dumb American way, not D-O-U-G-H-N-U-T. So, D-O-N-U-T. At the last minute, I tried to scoop up the other one because I saw that some people were, like, making that mistake. And I was like, oh, we'll just own both. Like many other donut-licking email addresses, it was already taken and Rob, we found out why, thanks to our listeners, why are all so many. Donut-licking email addresses already taken. So this was a huge pop culture blind spot for me. Was it also for you?

Yes. Revelation. Apparently Ariana Grande was involved in a donut-licking incident controversy. We have now seen the tape of her licking a donut on display in a shop and cackling with her friends. It was very upsetting behavior, I have to say. But at the same time, clearly it lives on in the minds of the people. Like, this is something that is a touch point. Ariana Grande is currently, it's so early, but currently like one of the frontrunners to perhaps win an Oscar this year for her work in Wicked for Good.

Yeah, but when will she apologize for the donut licking? If not a single journalist asks her about this on the road to Oscar, they're derelict in their duty. Okay. That is paging Sean and Amanda on the big picture. You have to get Ariana to interview and you have to put her feet to the fire or her tongue to the fire or whatever you prefer. I prefer. I prefer not to. Anyway, so Ariana Grande, uh, donut liquor in chief. Um, but licking the donut at gmail.com or prestige TV at Spotify.com to reach us. We, we're just going to go through a couple things. Honestly, we could spend nine hours talking about all the emails you guys sent us. We're going to do our best. But our scientist listeners had a lot of nits to pick about this episode, uh, both about how viruses are spread, about bacteria, about how you would get it to a space station, like all. all this stuff. So I think we're all just going to have to suspend some like scientific belief when watching this. But I appreciate all the expertise we got about how viruses are spread. So thank you

so much. And I assume the space station sub stuff was just like, we know you're going to wonder about this. So let's just talk about it. Even though it's like logistically impossible. But let's take it off the board. I do like the future sees impossibility of constantly discovering new people who they didn't, they accidentally didn't reach. You know what I mean? I mean. I mean, this is very lost. of you. Exactly. I mean, 100%. You got to have some, some, some like, other characters in the tank somewhere in the world, you know? So, yeah. And then we got, we asked, and you answered, we asked for, with love and respect to Vince Gilligan and his crew, we did not particularly fancy the fact that they disguised to call Carol and her cohort the old schools and the other

people, the others, with love and respect to lost. So I couldn't collect them all, but I'm a rapid fire my sort of faves to you, Rob. Okay, please. You let me know what you think. I've divided them between the sort of the collective and the singular, unless it's a duo that needs to be read together, in which case I've paired them. So we're just going to speed run this, okay? Yes. And I will say many people send in many very funny and very creative suggestions that are more text-based. Yes. That are a little difficult to parse said out loud. So we acknowledge them, we love them all the same, but it's like, we got to find something punchy, we can say that makes sense.

The number one suggestion, and it's one that, like, I kind of have already glommed onto in my own mind is hive mind, right? Like, that's, that's the joined, right? Because they talked about the joining. The collective. The glued versus the unglued. The stuck versus the unstuck. The terminally online really cracked me up.

It's good. The donut liquors. The swarm, the merged. The merged and the divested, the bound versus the unbound. Are any of those? sticking out to you as hot faves. I just don't think we're going to do better than hive mind. Yeah, it's simple, it's evocative.

Like, we reach for it for a reason. It just makes a lot of sense. I did like, we got one from Lucas that was the chorus that I like, I like, I like, I like the construction of that. But also it has like a one step removed lack of simplicity maybe that hive mind really zeroes in on. I think if we say hive mind and someone is like hopping into the podcast like halfway through the season, they'll know what we're talking about.

If we say the chorus, they'll be like, what is this phrase you've in I am compelled by the donut liquors, of course. It's very good. And then we get to the other groups. Free willies just made me laugh. They have free wills. So someone suggested free willies. Indies in terms of their independent.

We can continue the severance ideas. The uncollected, the originals, which is very CW. The unplugged, the dirty dozen, the egg cartons or even the donuts. And that is based on the fact that we have a baker's dozen of these people so far, right? 13. You missed two of my favorites though, Joe. One of them I love, but I simply cannot say out loud, potentially hundreds of times on this podcast.

The plurbies. Or were the plurbies supposed to describe the hive mind? Whichever. The plurbys. I love the word, but I simply cannot be saying it that many times. Roxy recommended for Carol and her cohort, The Homies, which I just thought was great. I also liked that. But I'm not in love with any of these.

Is there one that you're great? gravitating to that feels natural? I don't know. Not, not yet. Let's feel it out. Let's keep thinking. Let's be human beings who don't have to have everything pre-planned and pre-ordained. And we're going to browse the shelves of sprouts and pick out exactly what we want when the time is right. And I guess it's going to be a shitty frozen meal, even though there's all this delicious

produce. Okay. I think we know who cooked in that household. You know, I don't get the sense that Carol was really like putting things together. That's true. Helen held it all down. Okay. And then you guys responded in depth when we asked, what would you do if you had the hive mind at your beck and call? I put them in buckets. We've got what I'm calling the adventure bucket. And that is like Russ who says, who loves F1 and is like, you know, basically the auto bond will be free and clear and I can drive cars as fast as I want. Tim, who is a surfer and is like, I could, he's like, what do you say? You could endless summer your way around the world. Like all of the brakes are yours. So that's one. But let me ask you on that front, like if you ride the gnarliest wave and no one sees it, did it make a crush?

Like, you know, I worry about these things as far as like the satisfaction of the thing you think you want. Well, this goes to a lot of our listeners, and I didn't know we hit this demographic, but love to have you here, are golfers. And they talked about going to the greatest golf courses around the world. But again, if you're only really competing against yourself, because like you could play with Tiger Woods, I guess, if you wanted to or something like that. But like, then you're just going to lose very badly. So you can't play with someone who's like close to you and your ability. This is the ongoing problem of, you know, being all alone in the world as, as Carol is. Or you can

hope that one of the other 12 is an avid and roughly your level of golfer. Like I think, because if it is someone who's part of the hive mind, that's just not like, that's not your buddy anymore. Right. And that's not even Tiger Woods anymore. Exactly. Okay. And then Molly said she wanted to go to Sentinel Island, the one uncontacted island on Earth to see what's going on with the structures and paths seen on Google Earth? And I'm like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. On that front, we got another bucket I'm calling secrets, right? Reagan said he wanted to go to Area 51, Fort Knox, the Vatican Archives. Gabrielle said she wanted to know all the secret files that every president is given when they, you know, about like Area 51, Fort Knox, like, et cetera, et cetera.

The phrase let me touch the phrase let me touch. The phrase let me touch. The phrase let me the Gutenberg Bible was in here, which is a very donut-licking mentality, I have to say. A step for the Vatican archives. I know there are centuries of secrets in there just waiting to be revealed. And then last and last one at least, Doug took this idea to like a more of our time tabloid era and says he wants to know who killed Jean Bonnet Ramsey or who the Zodiac killer was. So I thought all of that stuff was really good. Two more buckets. Sports. I'm going to read some things that I don't understand, but perhaps you do, wrong. Please.

How about NBA 4K oops all point guards? It raises the question, could you do a real-life FIFA oops all messy versus oops all Ronaldo? I understand that. How much of those players excellence is due to what's in their brain I thought this is really interesting and this comes up a couple times versus their physical attributes. I don't think it breaks the rules

of pleuribus if you draft 45,000 to root for Messi and 45,000 to root for Ronaldo and stage the whole thing at Wembley Stadium. So that's what Trevor wants to do. But Ian gets even a little more creative. and is the putting elite athletes from one sport into another sport, right? Joe, how familiar are you with this? Because this is a classic like sports off-season filler type conversation of like, what if LeBron played football?

Right. This is Ian's like main question. LeBron as a titan on the Cleveland Browns, right? But the Cleveland Browns don't exist. Like this is the thing is there is no context to evaluate what you think you want. Can Otani? hit some threes on the Knicks. Can Tom Brady return a serve from Serena Williams? Opportunities are endless. And I, I would love to see Tom Brady get his ass handed to him by

Serena Williams in the game of tennis. I would like that we could all take joy in, I think. And then this is, this is sort of like the last, on the sort of like Jacob, Rob, how could you not want to go to Madison Square Garden sort of question? Jacob is asking, can the children of court neighbors run a Stefan Drayman two-man game? Can Zosia do a dream shake? Does the understand undersecretary of agriculture have hardened step back three in his bag right so like they know they know everything yes but if but if they have not trained physically to do so you know like zoja has the muscle memory to fly any plane but can she perform like an elite athlete can obviously there's a lot I do and don't understand about this prompt but I figured we should represent the ringer listeners

in this regard is there anything you a genuine sports enthusiast want to say about this section of responses that we got? I think the hive mind doesn't want that smoke. That's a lot of torn ACLs that are happening if Zosha is trying to do the dream shake. You know, like, to your point, they're physically not prepared necessarily for the rigors of what you're asking them to do. I do think it would be fun in a one-time basis to do some of the experimentation we're talking about, like put these people out there, see if they have the collective mind and understanding

of how to run the perfect pick and roll. But they either do or they don't. And so they're either perfect optimized basketball machines or they're a very perfect optimized basketball machines or there are a bunch of dumbdums out there who don't know what they're doing. And neither of those results is honestly that interesting to watch. I think, well, what I think is interesting about this prompt and the next, the final bucket, which I'm calling the arts, this is more my speed, of like this idea that everyone's the same, everyone is one. But like, if you can sink a certain shot in basketball and I can't, or if you can paint something that I can't,

the idea of like I can cook any meal because I know the technical proficiencies of a kitchen or whatever but there has to be some other things and certainly when it comes to art yes and this is like we got a lot of emails about this like Kelsey was like I'd ask right away for the finishing of a song of ice and fire right like I would want George Aramartan to finish song of ice and fire but is it really a song of ice and fire if George is like the high mine and not George R&R.R.R. Rage says what is Chris Nolan doing?

Has he stopped making the Odyssey and I don't know, driving an ambulance? I mean, that would be devastating. What if Carol asked for Nolan's Odyssey with a hive mind restart the whole production? We'd love to hear your thoughts about this. And even if Carol asked for The Odyssey, is Chris Nolan still Chris Nolan? Can he still finish the Odyssey? Right? This is the existential question.

Like, what makes you, you? What makes you unique? And so, like, there are ways in which we have to have certain experiences. We got a lot of questions about, like, love. Can you fall in love if you're part. of a hive mind. We quote unquote love everyone. But can you like fall? And I'm certainly, that's a question maybe Carol will be asking about Zosha going forward. Like can this person care about me in a way that feels individual from the collective? All this stuff is really

fascinating to me. And not just that feels individual from the collective, but feels flawed. And I think this is the part of like, can you even create art if you are a hive mind? If you have all this information, like if you have the collective knowledge of the entire world and all of resources at your disposal. I would argue that you are just incapable of making great art. Like those are not circumstances that make art because it can't be infinite in scope or nature. It removes all of the imagination that makes the thing the thing. It's imagination and distinct point of view and distinct experience, right? Like, you know, when we talk about going to the Guggenheim or a lot of our listeners like, I would go to the Louvre and stuff like that, like

seeing those great works of art, which were created by individuals and if we don't have the individual minds, we got some interesting. emails for people who are like, Carol's selfish to not want to join the hive mind. Since a hive mind is so interested in the benefit of the entire species, what is the holdout hoping for, just their own individual glory? But I would argue, and I think the show is arguing, that Carol is holding out for the individuality of humanity, which makes a human to human and makes the world interesting. And if everyone is just smooth-brain hive mind, where you don't even have to talk to each other, because you can all just like know what each other is thinking all the time.

One of our listeners, and I have this email later, I'll shut them out sort of later as we get to it in context, which is basically saying like, the hive mines are kind of fun to watch as they bump up against Carol. Yeah. But if you take away the Carols and the others like her and it's just the collective silently worker being around as as Carol says and like, you know, removing stock from the shells of a of a sprouts silently yet efficiently. That's not cool, man. That's not interesting at all. So I think that's interesting. Yeah, optimization just isn't that interesting. And it, look, with Carol, clearly the show is interested in the, the worst person you know just made a great point sort of formula here. Like Carol's version of humanity is complicated and incredibly messy. And she is no one's idea of if we were going to put up our best and finest and most like fully actualized humans, Carol is not among them. But that's kind of what makes it interesting is that we're fighting for. a flawed version of who we are against something that we should say. The hive mind says that they have the interests of humanity at heart.

We have no idea if that's true. We have no idea what their actual motivations are. But that is the supposed confrontation, right? Is this like all of the machinery and then the wrench in the works of the machinery? And at some point, you do have to pick and choose which one you would prefer. I was talking to a pal about the show. On your point about Carol not being the best that humanity has to offer. We're not sending our best necessarily.

No. I was talking to someone and they were like, I find Carol's so, and they sort of like trailed off. And I said relatable at the same time. They said insufferable. And I was like, oh, no. But that's the whole bag right there. Okay. There are several moments in this episode.

I regret to him for you, Rob Mahoney, where I was like, oh, that's me. I'm Carol. Okay. Please isolate those for us. Where did you see yourself, Joe? My love of a sprouts. Yucking your own yum of getting on the news. New York Times bestseller list and saying, oh, I only came in at this number. It doesn't really

count. I was like, I understand that that's not a broadly relatable experience, but I was like, that's 100% what I did in my own brain. Because I was like, oh, what number though? Anyway, so I'll talk about some more. But like, I think as like a white woman who makes her living doing something artistic adjacent. Yeah. And has given to the Sierra Club, perhaps twice in her life, you know, like has these pretensions of the Sprouts thing is incredible for a million different reasons. But the specific brand of Sprout, like that it's a Sprouts is so hilarious to me,

again, as a Sprout shopper myself, because it's such a like, because Sprout's, proposes, like, pretends to be like a farmer's market, quote, unquote. And it's just sort of like this facsimile a farmer. It's this, um, I'm telling myself that I'm not shopping at Whole Foods. I'm shopping organic. I'm doing all these things. And it's just like, are you? You know, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a, with love and respect to Sprout. Sprout sponsor us. I love your store, but also I don't love what it says about me necessarily. So they might be sponsoring this show. You know, we're not at like nobody wants this levels of product integration but like theragon and sprouts are plot points in this episode so i don't know what's happening with that they both fit like a glove

like what they represent i totally understand and the reed makes it feel like a little bit more organic if we want to you know fall into the sprouts mold uh but they are front and center like we are we are spending a lot of time seeing that marquee at sprouts i hope dhL uh is proud of the way they were represented in this episode. Quite helpful. They should be. They should be. Okay, we're going to get into the episode itself.

And then at the end, if we have time, we're running short on time. But if we have time, I want to get to like a bunch of listener comps that they brought up of other shows and books that this reminded them of. If I don't get to it this week, we'll definitely do it next week. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound terseptide may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used. with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight

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And if they're going up, it's after. I still think if it were me, I would color them differently or something like that. But that's okay. I'm not confused at all. We know where and when we are. I'm not confused. I don't know. I think it's so we're 2,617 days and some hours and minutes and seconds before.

That's seven years ago. And among other things, what this tells us is like how long Carol and Helen were together. Yeah. Like seven years ago, they were not only going on, you know, big vacations together. Carol was like freezing her eggs. They were talking about starting a family together. You know what I mean? And so, like, this is such a, has been such a huge part of Carol's life for so long, her relationship with Helen.

A couple things on that front. A listener, Chris was asking, like, why it was, why that, what that zero is. The zero is, like, mass infection. But I think also, crucially for our POV character, it's Helen dying, right? Yeah. Like, this is before Helen's death and after Helen's death is Carol's sort of unique experience of this whole thing. But on the Helen and Carol front,

we did get some listener emails that were like, Rob, buddy, can't believe you miss that they were together. And that's fine. Like, we don't want to dwell on that. But I did think this email from Lillian who was like, hey, Rob,

what does this do to your understanding of who Carol is or the story when you realize who Helen was to her when she lost her? I mean, it intensifies so much of the first two episodes, which, yeah, like,

I have zero idea how that went straight over my head to the degree that it did. And especially when you see episode three and it's like they're going to see the indigo girls and saying at a B&B. It's like, okay, yeah. In Provincetown. The signs are here, frankly. The closet is glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But also I love that we're getting not just like recontextualizing as idiots like me realize what's actually happening in the show, but getting these flashbacks to spend more time with Helen in particular, who I was just worried she was going to be gone. And it was all going to be retrospective. was all going to be talking about memories or like little bits and shreds, but to actually

see them together. And I think most crucially and maybe most heartbreakingly see that like Carol has been this way for a long time. Like there is a part of her that has been a negative Nancy at the ice hotel and is like complaining about all the things while Helen is wide eyed and feeling alive in a totally different way. And the way that those two people work off of each other and complete each other and form a pair is like clearly an instructive part of the show and something that makes everything that

we're seeing with Carol in sort of the present day that much more devastating. Like that is a character who is five days removed from losing her partner for life and now has to pick up all the pieces. And so like, yeah, she's a little bit of a mess and she can be a little bit shitty in the same ways that she was, but also in new ways that represent everything that she's lost. I think also thinking about, um, I love that point and I love, I love watching Helen in this scene sort of like be the one person who could get her to enjoy something, right? Sort of like jolly her out of her. She's like, you love being miserable.

Not in like a, you're ruining our vacation sort of way. Just sort of like, this is you. Come sit with me. Come put this fur on your lap. Look at this guy. You're going to like it. I mean, I got to say boohooing the ice window showing you the northern lights. Come on.

Like, this is a pretty cool hotel. It's a very cool hotel. Rob, you could not catch me dead staying in an ice hotel. No. I would stay at a different. hotel and look at the northern lights in Norway, but I would not stay on a bed made of ice. I don't like being cold. It would not be for me.

But if I had agreed to go with my partner, I wouldn't be shitty about it once I was there. Okay. But also, I would say for someone like Carol who hid something so fundamental about herself, that like her queerness that she hid from her audience, the idea of everyone knowing everything about her might be so much scarier for someone. like her who kept such a big part of herself so secret and so intimate, she's been outed by, like, the fact that Helen has joined the collective consciousness before she dies means that everything about her is now on display to all of these people. And the fact that, like, you know, maybe it's

healing that the hive mind, the collective is like, and that's great. And we love love and, you know, love wins and we're into it or whatever. Maybe that's healing. But right now it's exposing and vulnerable. to someone like her. And then I think also thinking about the ways in which Zosha is accessing Helen inside of this episode, which we already talked about a little bit, but like the way in which that forces Carol to understand that the last like minutes, seconds that she shared with the love of her life was not really with the love of her life. was with like a pod person essentially, right? And so it's just like that final memory she has of her

is not is not even real because she was already like plugged into the Ethernet. And that's just like equally devastating to me. So I mean, not only does it make her feel like a pod person in those moments. It makes Helen again, this person that she loved feel like fodder like food for a larger machine. Like there is an element as far as this larger conversation of are these still people. Right. Like it is it's so dehumanizing. And in all the ways we've, already talked about of like what makes a human a human to just be like part of this thing that is facilitating memories for now a woman who has been like engineered to be attractive to you to spout back at you like it it's all really gross but also like there are moments like when um it is gross

so gross when zosha is on the phone talking about the therigan like why helen bought the therogun for her um or so like the last gift she'll ever receive from helen right is is this thing. The way they put it on the official podcast is like also this is the last piece of mail she'll ever receive, right? Like that's that that experience of being a human is over. The last bills she'll ever receive like all this or stuff like that. But I did think for a moment, Joe, that the pod people had ordered her the Theragon as like a spectacular bit of passion, like passive aggression. Relax. Please stop yelling at us. Um, all I wrote in my notes like methadone Helen, right? Like this is just sort of like,

She's got like fumes of the person that she like loves so much and it is painful, but also like, is there something about that that is also compelling? You have access to this person I don't have access to anymore. Yeah. And that, I don't know. There's something about that that is. Yeah. And is there like a tipping point for that of where Carol like, look, clearly the events of this episode and I think specifically the guilt of Zosha getting injured because of the grenade are going to bond these characters. Like we're seeing them come closer and closer together in exactly the way the hive mind frankly seems to want.

Sure. But will there be a tipping point where Carol wants to know, like that thing that I always wondered about Helen, like, how did she really feel about this? She could know it if she wants to in the same way that as our emailers have been entertaining the ideas of like wondering the secrets of the universe. You could also know what your friends thought about you, what your loved ones thought about you. What were their deepest, sometimes darkest feelings about something that, oh, absolutely not. But someone like Carol, given the vulnerable state that she's in where she is like post water chugging vodka, I could see her going into all kinds of dark tunnels. You don't chase your Xanax with vodka, Rob?

That's not. No. I mean, at least she didn't dry swallow that thing. So like there's levels to this, but that's not my preferred pill delivery method, no. I was really, I was struck by the, I could have saved that 100 grand. and frozen my eggs here, yokes and all. So this idea that Carol had frozen her eggs with the idea that they would have kids someday potentially.

So like what happened there? There was seven years ago. So what happened there was the plan we'll get to it someday? Did they try it? Didn't succeed. Like what was going on there? But that's like a pain point for Carol for sure. And I saw a lot of people on the Reddit as Reddit brains often do.

And I love the Reddit brain. But we're like, oh, well, if there's some of her DNA frozen somewhere, is that, is that like a hint to a future cure. Maybe. Like, who knows? Yeah, could be. But I thought it was more like character based of sort of like this is, tells us something about their relationship and also some of the pain in Carol's past that we have yet to unearth.

And then on the look front, something I think that's really interesting that I didn't realize is that they color graded the show differently in episode two and in episode three. Basically, the before is more muted tones. And then the after, they're calling it Cota Chrome, like these saturated colors. Hyper, yeah. Yeah. So like this idea that like, so that's something maybe to watch for like future flashbacks of like what does the before look like. And the now is this like, you know, that bright yellow of the world.

You know, I think that's true. And it kind of fits the canon too. Like if all the cars just stopped, wouldn't the air feel a little less smoggy? Like in this optimization engine, there's a lot that's appealing in terms of saving humanity from itself. It's not all good, but there are certain things that I think would look a little more hyper-saturated. That's like the whole COVID. The animals are returning. Also, our listener, Andrew, I want to see this little Matrix thing here.

Matrix is one of the comps that a lot of people brought up. But this, you know, line from Agent Smith about, did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. We sure do, Joe. You know, you were talking so perfectly last week about this idea of like, are any of these benefits worth anything if you didn't have to like strive for them, struggle for them, etc.

But this idea of like to be human is to suffer. I don't know. Interesting. I probably agree. But I just think it's interesting. I don't know whether it is to suffer. But it's certainly the way we make sense. of things. And so, like, whether it is true for us, like, on a biological level that we need to

suffer, who's to say? But culturally and psychologically, we are oriented to, like, organizing our lives based on the hardest moments and the hardest spots. But it's really one of the only things that, things that, like, propels most people to actually grow is going through something incredibly painful. And so if you remove all of that pain, is there any kind of progress? Or is it just, as you said, in watching the, like, aunt colony nature of filling out a grocery store, just a constant flow of stuff. But it's all so flat. Right.

It's an emotional stasis, and this is why I think it's interesting that we have these friction points with Carol of emotional growth for the Zosges and the DHS guys of the world. Okay. Carol on the plane. Last time we didn't get a chance to talk about Carol's seat choice on the plane, but do you want to talk about this, Rob, and this scene in general? I know she's just trying to stay away from everybody, so she's going to the back, but simply why?

Well, she's making a point. I will take the worst seat on the plane because fuck you and your seduction of convenience or pleasure or whatever it is. The point is just not worth the lack of legroom, you know? Like, you sit in first class and make Zosia sit at the back of the plane. That feels like there's other ways to keep your distance from the other people who are on here. This reminds me of our severance pot and the fact that you and I are tall people and it's different to fly when you're as tall as we are. It's extremely true. I thought the pilot-co-pilot thing was really funny.

Super funny. Really good. And also the fact that when she waits for Zosha to go all the way back to her seat before ringing the button. Also, a pronunciation update. I feel like last week we might have mispronounced, or at least I did. It's Carolina V-Dra is the actress who plays Zodja. I think we said Yidra because we're not Polish ourselves. Okay.

Anything you want to say about the other, I don't know, originally. let's call them, the other people that we find out are seated around the world. Any of these stick out to you. I mean, we don't learn a lot. I mean, we do learn a lot about them biographic. We get their, their bioblast kind of information dump, and we learn that they are a mix of, you know, tenors and contortionists and literal children and a lot of cat lovers in the mix, which, you know, power to them. The cat lovers shall inherit the earth. It's a win. It's a win for us, Rob. Sorry. You know what? You can have this one. you, thanks.

Obviously, there's the exception to that group being the one that Carol actually interacts with, which is this guy, Minusos, who's this dude from Paraguay. I don't know, like, he's going to come back. Like, that's too dangly of a thread for him not to be a presence in this show on some level. I would be shocked if they do not meet in person now that Carol can just jet set wherever she wants. But I do want to just put a very specific spotlight on the Racie Horn line delivery on Cabrón, where she, like, really, really put some spice on that thing in a way that I appreciate it. This is where I want to offer an apology and say I fucked up a little bit last week on the pod.

I had been talking to someone who had seen this episode and I referenced this scene in last week's pod. And I do apologize if people were confused or like, I don't remember that happening. It's because it happens in episode three. I'm not watching head. This will not come up again. But that is something I did last week. I will say that the actor who's playing Manusos is the only other actor besides Ray and Carolina who is in the main cast of this show. so I have to imagine that he will be coming back.

This was a moment for me, Joe, where I did see myself in Carol in one very specific way. I like Carol, am a phone pacer. If I am on the phone, I am trotting around a room, I'm covering ground. Like, I cannot sit still and be on a phone. Okay, that's good to know. I don't think we've ever spoken on the phone. But if we ever do, I will keep that in mind. Joe, this is simply not true.

Really? We text. I don't think we talk on the phone. We definitely have before talking through some planning things for this or that, but it isn't frequent for us. You're absolutely right. Carol gets the mail. We already talked about this, right? This is her last mail ever. There's a bill with Helen's name on it that is upsetting that I will be coming back to for a later point and then the Therigan. Also something really crucial that you're glossing over, which is the takeout menu for Mr. Burger Cabob. Thank you. Which you love to frequent Mr. Burger Cabob. Are you interested?

Based on these prices, I absolutely am. 599 for kebab with fries or rice and Shirazi salad, which I love Shirazi salad. I simply can't beat that. 599. I go there every day for lunch. Come on. Okay. Well, Mr. Kabab Burger, we also welcome.

If sprouts and Mr. Kabob Burger want to sponsor the pod. Be respectful. It's Mr. Burger Cabal. Oh, I'm so sorry. Some people on this podcast, Joe, are dedicated to getting the details right, you know. This is the. important stuff. Anything else you want to say about this Theragun moment that we haven't already covered?

I mean, coding it as Therogun specifically, which is an exorbitantly expensive percussion massager, I have to say, does make it a very sweet gesture. Like finding the thing your partner would not buy for themselves and indulging them with that thing. It makes it very sad and very sweet to open that kind of last gift from Helen. I think it's really funny. Someone, one of our listeners was like, Carol is a best-selling author. isn't she swaning around in first class on her book tour?

Like, why is she sitting in the back? Wouldn't she be used to first class? I think you have a misunderstanding of how much money. If you're Lee Child, maybe, you know? How much money bestselling authors make? You can afford a nice house in Albuquerque, but like, you know, which is great. But like, you're not, she's not living in that house in a place where the real estate market is through the roof. And she's not flying first class everywhere.

And she's not buying their guns left in. right. It's just simply not the life she's living. This all ends, of course, with her looking at the orchid on Helen's grave, and it's very, very sad. That shot, too, of like the in-focus, out-of-focus shift to the orchid. Really, really, really elegant stuff. Really good stuff. Carol is watching the Golden Girls.

Shut up, physical media. She's got the Golden Girls on DVD. Do you think this is the only thing she has on DVD, or do you think it's her favorite thing? Is there another reason she would turn to the... comfort of Betty White and the Golden Girls. Well, who among us would not, frankly. Really agree. I'm going to guess that based on her treatment of the discs themselves, that Carol was not

the physical media. Maybe this is a chance to get into our Gilligan shot of the week. Of course it's a great nominee. Of course it is. And of course it's the only reason a DVD would be weirdly upturned on its side on the table. But they didn't talk about this on the official pod about like how he really wanted to get the shot and they're like, we could just do it in post. He's like, no, I want to do it.

The director of this episode was like, I want to do it. And they did it. So yeah, Betty White reflected in the upturned DVD. It's fucking good. Like, it's like, I'm here for it. And I'm here for doing it. But the reality of that moment is a human has propped up a disc on their table in a way that no other human would. Disrespectful. So thank you to whoever was buying the physical media in that house. But I don't think Carol was the primary customer. I'm going to give you a couple of other nominees for the Gillianverse shot. Yeah. Extreme close-up of airplane instruments.

Carol reflected in the gleaming silver cloche that is over the breakfast that is left at her front doorstep. And the pouring water turning into vodka shot, which I thought was very Gilligan-coated. Okay. So we're binging to the Golden Girls. We're not showering and we're not really doing well, I would say. And then a steaming hot breakfast from your favorite being. and be in Provincetown is dropped off at your front door. Rob, are you eating the sorghum flour pancakes and post-egs and the microgreens?

Yeah, it's very tempting to me personally. Same. But again, when it's presented as like, here's this intimate memory of this person who you are trying to keep private and this hive mind keeps insisting on like shoving down your throat, that's what makes it feel gross and maybe you would lose your appetite. It looks like a beautiful breakfast. It really does. But this is kind of the combination of, I would say, Carol is like starting to

set her boundaries in this episode. She is trying to create a wall between her and the hive mind on two different fronts. One, like, she doesn't want to be taken care of, and I want to dig into that more specifically, because there's a lot to unpack with that. And then also Helen is just hard off limits. And the breakfast on the doorstep in the cloche is just like an embodiment of all of that stuff, like swaddled together. By a lot to impact, do you mean several trucks full of food in the sprouts? Let's talk about this. Okay, so she goes to Proud's still driving the unicorn truck, which is not long for this world. And this is genuine, okay, I wrote peak white lady bullshit. And again, I say that as someone who can deeply relate

to what Carol is doing here. But the insistence on being quote unquote independent, I must take care of myself. Yep. And in doing so, forces all of these people, not forces, but it results in all of these people stalking the store so she can quote unquote independently get food for herself versus is the one person who showed up to put the breakfast on her doorstep. Yes. I think it is so funny. All those bulk bins had to be restocked. Now, the hive mind did it in an hour and eight minutes, which is incredible.

Astounding work. But Carol, may we sneak past you here to get like the entirety of the sprouts restocked so she can be a quote unquote independent person is like genuinely extremely funny to me. I really liked it. It's really great. And especially we've already established. in this world, like there might be a very short, like, there's not a lot of meat that's going to be out there or hunted or harvested in the foreseeable future. Did they restock the butcher counter?

Like, it kind of looked like they did. And so it's like, ma'am, you need to freeze this meat if you want a hamburger in the next six months. Right. Burger kebab is not going to do it for you. Simply. I mean, look, they're not open for business anymore, although the hive mind has tapped into Mr. Burger Kabob himself and is like harnessing all that information, including his expert

pricing strategies. So maybe there's something to work with there, but you're right. Like this is where I sit with the Sprout stuff. And ultimately this larger conversation about like being an independent person. Carol like clearly does not want to be treated like a guest in her own life or frankly like on her own fucking planet. Like you just got here and you're going to take care of me. How dare you? Which that part I understand.

The ways in which she goes about it are incredibly wasteful and frankly ridiculous. And she's she is turning her nose up at gestures on principle that I understand. but in ways that are very human. And I think ultimately digging into this thing of like having the piping hot breakfast delivered to your door and this very specific kind of control that happens when you have all of your needs met and you don't have to provide for yourself. Right. Like I think this is something where Carol is finding herself where if you give over all of the

ways that you take care of yourself, you become reliant in a way where you are then subservient to the people who are providing your needs. And so that is something that if you were in Carol's position, And specifically if you're digging in your heels and the way that she is resisting and wanting to maintain who she is. And like the hive mind is straight up saying like, yeah, we're trying to turn you into a pod person in the next two weeks to six months. Like that's an expressed interest of what they are trying to do. Absolutely. I know.

And I like, I support what she wants. And if she had like walked out her backyard, found a stream and like caught herself a fish out of a stream, that's one thing. To insist on restocking the sprouts just for her is a completely. different thing. And it's so good. It's really good. What do you make? We had talked about this last week. We talked about like what are what is the hive mind doing when we don't see them? Are they just don't ogleasening themselves in a corner, et cetera? But we've got a couple things that we know, right? They are consolidating food resources, medicine, all this sort of stuff like that. And they are consolidating, they're turning off the power grid because people don't work at night and there's no crime.

And is this the future liberals want? That's my question for you. You know, all we want are, you know, 15-minute walkable cities, you know, we want working public transit. Yeah. I don't need to be part of a beehive, per se. Okay, fair enough. But, you know, maybe this is the only way to achieve it. Like, maybe some of what the show is suggesting is that in order to reach this level

of optimization, we do have to deny a lot of what makes us individuals, certainly, but even just fundamentally human. This is where I want to mention this email we got from our listener, Elis, who says, says in terms of no crime at night. She wrote this previous episode, but in terms of no crime at night, she wrote, what happened to all the sociopaths and deeply evil people who have committed atrocities? If everyone knows how to do open heart surgery, does everyone know how to professionally torture someone at death? Were most of the people who died and then joining rejected because of what they were like, most of the people in the upper levels of government

were dead. It's not as stretch to believe that most of them could have fallen to that category. Anger, I love this part. Anger is a base human slash animal response. If that's been scrubbed, Have any of the other difficult, messy emotions made it being in love causes just as much difficulty as anger, if not more? So, yeah, are you human if you can't be angry, messy? And also, the hive mind absorbed everything but not everything if sort of like evil is not here, if ill will is not here, if, et cetera, et cetera. Any thoughts on that, Rob Mahoney?

I mean, I think it goes back to what we're talking about about the difference between having information versus having the totality of a person. Like you can have you can have all their memories written down, but that doesn't make you them. Yeah, yeah. And I all, like, this show just begs all of these questions about what exactly is contained within the hive mind. Like, we got another email from Kevin who is wondering, like, what does it mean to share consciousness with a newborn baby? Like, are, like, you are a newborn baby. You are a toddler. You are an elderly person. Like, you have this wealth of experience that, like, has no way of really reconciling, to be honest with you. our capacity as humans for just like understanding each other's situations is fairly limited.

And if you're brain, if you just went full galaxy brain and like I have to relearn object permanence for the first time, like no wonder they don't understand sarcasm. You know, like there's a lot that's going on. Also like the children of the corn who lived next door are creepy enough, right? But like, you know, in the show Station 11, which I loved, and I think in the book as well, you have this idea of the postpans, the kids who were born after the pandemic. So what is it like to just have always been part of the hive mind versus assimilated into the hive mind? Do you know what I mean?

Well, and in order to be part of the hive mind post-pan, does the hive mind have to have sex with itself? And in doing so, like, does it care about its own? Is that like a purely biological drive of procreate? Or is there anything else involving there? now that you have the sexual experience and information of the entire planet. Like, I can't even imagine the tantric shenanigans that could happen if it were interested in such things, Joe. Some of them are contortionists? What are you going to do?

Like, I think that, like, yeah, I had this written down. Are we just breeding? Are we just fulfilling a biological imperative? So we're back, you know, we're back watching the Golden Girls. We did get this great email from Natania, one of our listeners, who was talking about the way in which Carol's experience is very much like depression, which I thought was really interesting. I love that. I thought it was a really, really good email.

But like, I think this idea that like this, the isolation, the sense that everyone around you is happy and having a frictionless existence and you're the problem, all this sort of stuff, I thought was really interesting. Anything you want to say on the Golden Girls specifically front or anything else? I mean, first, thank you for being a friend, Joe. Oh, yeah. Travel down their own back and get. Of course. I mean, your heart is true. You are a pal and a confidant.

Knowing what Carol's comfort show is is nice in and of itself. I just love this beat for this character. But also I thought it was interesting in the scenes that we get, specifically, they're all like Rose Nile and St. Olaf's stories, which are one of the great parts about Golden Girls, to be honest. The story that's like interrupted at the end, it's like a scene break, is her, Rose telling the story about there were some men who claimed to be druid priests who said they could stop a volcano from erupting. if the quote, dumbest virgin in the town would basically do what they said. And it cuts off at this point before Rose reveals, it turns out they weren't Druid priest at all. They were just like a bunch of people looking for a good time. I thought it was interesting that we left that part out.

You know, like maybe that's a nothing thing. Maybe that's like, I don't know, a bunch of like supposing do-goaters just showed up on the planet saying they wanted to make humanity better. Maybe they're not do-goaters trying to make humanity better. On the official podcast, they talked about the fact that they essentially had like some folks on staff like scrub through to find like what pieces they would want to put on. And I don't know if they, this is not contradicting what you're saying. I was just saying, imagine your job is to like as a PA, it's your job to scrub through and find like the funniest Rose and Island stories to like just clip out for for a second or two on Pilarbus. Vince or any other showrunners, if you're hiring for that specific job, I will take it.

We volunteer. I'm going to return to this. You donated twice the Sierra Club, and I just want to say plurvis. Stop reading me to filth this instant. I would really appreciate it. Okay. It would be unsettling, we should say, if only your cul-de-sac was lit, and everything else was pure darkness.

And this is the other thing about the optimization and the sort of ant-colonity nature of it is there is something about watching it unfold that is appealing and, like, nice, in a fluid and like everything is working correctly kind of way. And it's also so unnerving to see. Absolutely. If you were in Carol's position, how would you not be constantly on edge by a chain of people coming saying one word at a time on their way out of the grocery store? Like, it's horrifying.

That was tough. And again, on this idea of we're learning as a collective, I would say if you want Carol not to freak out, put some pilot uniforms on your pilot. and don't speak as one in that way that you did at the end of the Sprout's montage, I would say. Okay, this is the direct quote from the official pot about this idea of emotional intelligent, right? Like Zosha shows up with a hand grenade because she doesn't understand that Carol's like dripping with sarcasm when she says this. Great emotional intelligence, but they're humans. So they'll get things wrong and they'll learn and they'll evolve.

I thought that was really interesting. They're humans. And I was like, are they? Yeah. You know? Like, that's the question we're asking. I mean, it's an intergalactic virus, but it is working with human hardware. Right. And so clearly, like, it's going to be limited by, in some ways, what the human brain can do,

although it's also tapping into abilities that the human brain could never dream of. So it's like, how human are they? I still don't understand, even knowing all that. And this might sound like nitpicking. I don't mean it this way. I just think it's, I think it's just philosophically interesting to explore. if Zosia can get drunk having vodka with Carol and the hive mind doesn't get drunk also, then she's having a unique experience.

And so does that not make the Zosia-shaped person different from the hive mind? Because she had this experience of getting drunk. I was thinking about this, like on a very basic level. I was thinking about you and I as tall people. Like if my experience is I can reach anything on. any shelf I want. And then there are some people who can't do that. Then my experience is distinct from their experience. And so that's a very, very, very, like, minor sort of thing. But, like, extrapolate that out and out and out and out. Like, the weather is different here than it is here.

Like, you know, like, there's just all these ways in which we're having different experiences in life. And so how can we claim to be, like, one if we're having these little? And so is that baked into the concept? Like, are we going to see the collective, you know, my, I'm weirdly, bizarrely, kind of rooting for Zosha and Carol. I don't know what to tell you. They've got great chemistry. And apparently this scene, the vodka scene, the Aquavit sort of speech was Carolina's chemistry read with Ray, like this is what they did in their audition to sort

of like see if they connected. It's very endearing. Like, Zosha's etymology corner, like I would subscribe. I enjoyed it a lot, full of fun facts. Like the chemistry is undeniable. Right. So I'm rooting for it. Yeah.

I don't know if I'm rooting for it. I like watching it. Here's the way in which I'm rooting for it. I'm rooting for Zosia to like... Wake up. Grow beyond. Well, no, because if she wakes up, then she's not Zosha anymore, right? That's very true.

Because Zosia isn't real. Right. That's what, like, so what are we rooting for? Because to root for Zosia to have any kind of progress is to root for this construction, again, that has been like engineered to be attractive to Carol. And even though Carol is trying to keep everything at arm's length, like she clearly is susceptible to it. Right.

Like she stops the plane not to get on to join the harem and go party on Air Force One, but she wants the space pirate for herself. Right. She is pulling Zosia off the plane. Come with me. She shows up with the hand grenade. Can you like come in and have a drink with me? Yeah.

She is trying her damnedest to not do this and you can feel her doing it because the chemistry is there. And it is real. It's undeniable. and yet it is gross. Yeah. Okay. On the costume front, I want to say really quickly,

I really love that, like, Zosia had changed into this, like, floy dress to join the harem. Yeah. Which she's wearing at the beginning of this episode, but she's back in, like, a smart blazer when she comes over

with a grenade for Carol. I love that. We get some information about the biological imperative. We get some information about, like, when Carol says, how long do I have left before you turn me into a worker bee? And Zosia does not contradict the,

the characterization of worker bee. Tough, I would say. That's not how I would sell. Join us. Join us be a worker bee is not what I would say, but I don't have Mr. Burger Kabob's level of marketing at my fingertips. So how do I know? Also, we had a lot of listeners asked a question and about this idea that they can't,

the they, the hive mind can't kill. What are you extrapolating from this? Like what does this mean to you? It all feels like terribly convenient. And again, something that has been like focus grouped to be non-threatening, right? This idea like, oh, we couldn't possibly kill not just you, but any animal on earth. Like it is not in our nature. And so all of this talk about the biological imperative, on the one hand, like that's true of a virus, right?

Like viruses operate in a way that is to set like they are trying to spread. They are trying to protect themselves. Like they are programmed to do very specific things and kind of can't go outside that programming. Yeah. But it feels like the thing you would say. Like, it gives you a lot of cover to say, we have a biological imperative to not harm anybody and then have the cover to do basically whatever the hell you want. On that level, that's true.

And then also on in the writer's room level, you have to solve the problem of like, why don't they just kill the people who are not part of the hive mind? And it's like, we can't kill. I did think it was interesting. Our listener, Liz, was like, if human, if the implications of never being able to kill or cause harm to any living thing, because they mentioned last week's episode that several people were mauled when the lions were let out of the zoo, right?

If humans can't protect themselves against lions with their lives on the lion, what else does that extend to? Do viruses or bacteria count? And if all these other living things start killing people, is there a chance that this hive mind could be the end of humanity entirely,

whether that is intended or not? A bit depressing to think that violence or animosity could be inherent to humanity and necessary to survival. I think it probably would be the end of humanity in certain ways. including just very literally.

And the fact that the hive mind supposedly has this code, but also does not really seem to give a shit about hundreds of millions of people dying in the takeover, the contradiction of that is very juicy and very interesting. And like, I don't know how you could square it in a way that makes this all feel above board. Like, there's just no way we're getting the Odyssey because Matt Damon was on a horse and spazzed out

and like went straight into the ocean. So it's like all of these things cannot be true. Like the art will not continue. Humanity will not continue in its current form. and these people or the hive mind or whatever they are don't seem like terribly they want to make people happy supposedly but I just don't buy the biological imperative line can I say how much I want to start getting these stories about like Matt Damon fell off a horse into the ocean or whatever because not you Matt Damon but like like in that leftovers like

specific pop culture Mark Lynn Baker sort of way like who died in the the pleuribusing of the world We need to know. Give us names. Give us specific names. Okay. We already mentioned the sort of violation of Zosha talking about the Ice Hotel. Really hurt my feelings when she did that. I really tough. And then the grenade blows up the house. So I guess now we know why they wanted to build their own cul-de-sac because they were going to blow up a house inside of the cul-de-sac. Anything else you want to say about that? Well, that seems to be like where the money is this episode, Joe, is not just building, but demolishing. your own house and your own cul-de-sac. Like, that, that's a flex if you have the budget to do that sort of thing. And what I love that they were talking about on the official pot is that they knew that when they were building the house, so they built the house just so that we could blow it up

with sort of like minimal long-term repercussions or whatever. To be fair, that's the way many houses and apartments are built these days without any thought for what might happen beyond six months from now. Fair, fair, fair. When I said my, like, where is the money in this episode? Where's the $15 million? For me, it's emptying out an entire sprouts and then restocking it. Seems expensive. I guess they had access to that sprouts for three days only. They had to film all the exteriors in a different parking lot because they didn't have enough access to sprouts to get everything done. And they wanted like that sort of the way that the director described it was like a Buzzbee Berkeley-esque sort of coordinated ballet. They wanted in Vince Gilligan style to show us them restocked. walking everything. And they simply did not have enough time in the sprouts to do that. So they

sort of did it in the parking lot instead with all the crates and hand trucks. But I thought that was really interesting. I mean, you do get sufficient like label turning and positioning of various produce. Again, it's like the OCD in me is singing watching this stuff. Olives, a real star of this episode, honestly. What did you make, look, first of all, when Zosia's kind of like reading Carol the ingredients in her fridge. Um, red olives. Like, I assume that's like a cala. I mean, I guess a Kalamata could be a red olive.

I guess like a charyngola is a red olive. But like, who is a jar of charyngola olives just like sitting in their fridge? Um, who even knows what a charni oliv is? They're not all red, but they can't be red. Only Rob Mahoney. Love that. Would you call like a pimento a red olive? Because it has like red in it.

That's a filling. I agree. Oh, wait, you're talking about separate pimento's not pimento. in the olive. Well, I am talking about a pimento in the olive. That's a green olive, usually. I agree. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to answer your prompt. I don't know. I will say this. I do have olives in my fridge at all time. Same. But that's for martini purposes and no other real reason. See, I love an olive. And frankly, I thought dropping off the cloche with the breakfast is a little disrespectful because we see the fridge. And she has what looks to be like a pretty decent, like, wheel of

Bree cheese in there or something like that. It's like you got the cheese and the olives. There's probably some bread in here. Like you are halfway to a spread, you know, if not further. You're telling me she couldn't make a meal of this? I simply don't believe it. Shark cutery, but no meat because we're not, we're not curing meat anymore in this new world. Okay, Carol's in the hospital. We get extreme close up on, um, sorry, Carol's in the hospital waiting for Zosha, right? I really love the moment when when Zosha comes out, she collapses. she's like, don't worry, helps on the way. And that's when the sirens turn on.

I really like that as an idea of like, the sirens are just for Carol, right? They're so Carol knows that help is on the way, right? Helen already, like, called them via the Ethernet. So it's, and it's not to get, like, traffic out of the way because all the hive mind knows the ambulance is coming. So the sirens are for Carol. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Both in the sirens coming up for Carol and also Zosha rolling up to the house as thank you for being a friend place. I can't. It's just like the little things with this show. Thank you for being a friend blaring into the empty cul-de-sac is pretty phenomenal. Turns out like you should not mix hand grenades with Xanax and vodka. That's just like not the cocktail. You want it will land you in the hospital. We get an extreme close up on Carol's hands as she's waiting to hear news of Zosha.

And then here comes our D.HL guy played by Robert Bailey Jr. Just an all-timer. Phenomenal. Like episode stealer. Like they got to bring this guy back. Please have to. Please bring him back for- We'll order whatever we need to order for the DHL guy to show up, but bring him back, please.

I wanted a moment to talk about people still being in their various uniforms, like the TGI Friday's person, the pilots, the DHL guy. This idea that like a uniform marks you as part of a collective, right? Yes. But also in this case, it makes you stick out a bit from the, you know, like we could say the DHL guy, the TGI Friday's girl, like, etc., etc. Why do we think a DHL guy still dresses in uniform? And are we headed towards a future hive mind reality where like everyone is just wearing like matching hemp jumpsuits or something like that? Do you know what I mean? Like, why is fashion? What is style? What is uniform? What is, what is any of this stuff still doing here? How much of is it for Carol's benefit and how much of it

is something else entirely, you know? I mean, I think a lot of it is for Carol's benefit. Right. Right. It's the idea of having her pilot not be the woman from TGI Fridays and instead be wearing a pilot's uniform, even though they're technically the same thing at this point. Like, who really cares, but it feels away. And I wonder if this point it is just more about the projection of normalcy, right? You're used to seeing people working out in the world. And it would be kind of weird if everyone was just in plain clothes, right? If no one was in uniform, that would be upsetting in like a visually different way. That said, it's a little odd to that, like, for example, that DHS guy gets conscripted into being the one to come talk to Carol who's like he's kind of Zosha and kind of not when everything about Zosia is so tailored right like her appearance what she wears how she is styled all very specific they could have put this guy in a tux they could have put him in and they could have made him in scrubs well put him in put him in scrubs right because it's like make him look like Noah Wiley from the pit why not why not get Noah Wiley to come deliver this news right Dr. what happened to Noah Wiley?

is what we want to know. It's no wily okay in the pluribus universe. We need to know. I need him to be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should say on that front, like, one of the things that was flagged to us over email to is like the plane that Carol is on is a Wayfarer Airlines plane, which is an airline that is specifically in a plane crash in Breaking Bad. I guess, spoiler alert for Breaking Bad. So it's not not in the Breaking Bad universe. This is my detail, my like super detail that I want to mention, which is not Wayfarer Airlines, though that's on my list. But, Fiona Calm, which is the bill for Helen that she sort of lingers on, this is a better call Saul. We saw like Fiona Com billboards and vans and like ads and stuff like that. So we are, yes, this is the same. There is a Kim Wexler out there somewhere. She has a perky ponytail. And I don't know what she would make of Carol with her greasy unwashed hair, Bob, but this is the same universe.

And I love that, honestly. Incredible. Did you have a detail you want to shout out specifically? For me, it's a very simple one, which is when the hive mind calls Carol on the caller ID, it says, it's us, Carol. Every bit of text and Chiron in this show is so good and so funny. And like, again, having all of this stuff is what makes this so feel so watchable because, yeah, they're throwing all of these heavy, huge questions about it, like to us. And all of these like very perilous circumstances. And like what Carol is dealing with is as big and as serious as it gets.

and that this show can still just be so funny all the time. Really a miracle and really what a Vince Gilligan show does so well. Anything inspired by this idea that like Carol asks about an atom bomb and our favorite character, DHS guy is like, would you like an atom mom? Like that they would give her an atom mom. To go back to the grenade moment, on the official pod, they were like, they would have let her blow herself up if she insisted on it. Like when Zosia takes the grenade, she says like basically may we.

Can we take care of this? If we may. If we may, right? So like, which is funny and it's sort of like, and her delivery is so good. But also it's a consent. Like Carol has to like give her the grenade. Otherwise they would have let Carol, not only Carol bow herself up, but Carol blows Zosha up. Like they would have let that happen.

So in terms of like what will the hive mind do or not do, an atom bomb is, is fascinating. you know, as a, as a player on the board here. Well, the nuclear football is back in play, Joe. You know, it's right there for the taking. I would say I had two takeaways from the sequence. First, like one of the clearest signs of somebody in captivity is the way that they test the limits on what they're allowed to do. And so the idea of asking, could I have another grenade?

Could I have a bazook? Could I have a nuke if I asked for it? Like, this is Carol. You can obviously see the gears turning for her as far as what she is allowed to ask for and what that might allow her to do in liberating humanity or whatever it is that she hopes to accomplish. I also thought it was really interesting the way that even though DHO guy is impeccably acted and super helpful, like on face,

the way that he is talking to her is really patronizing too. It's also like it is very like we would need to have a talk, we'll explain to you all the pros and cons of you having a nuke. And if you still really, really want it, we'll go get you that nuke. It very much is like, you know, your daughter wants an ice cream cone. Well, you know, Carolina said this on the official pod that like as a mother, she channeled some of her like dealing patiently with a can take her as child sort of energy that she's harnessed over the years in her scenes with Carol, with Ray as Carol.

And so like that idea of thinking of Carol as a child, an unruly child, ties into sort of that idea also of Zosha saying to Carol, if you saw a drowning person, right? They think humanity as it exists is drowning. And we want to save you. You're a child. You don't know what you're doing. You throw a tantrum and we restock a sprouts for you.

Like you don't quite know what you're doing. And there are ways in which that's aggravating because it is so patronizing. And there are ways in which is like, oh, but is it a little, like, are they a more evolved? Are they? Yes. That's the ongoing question of the show. If they're not suffering, if they're not falling in love, if they're not having sex for pleasure, if they're not doing this, that, or the other thing, like, are they actually more evolved?

Or do they just think they are, you know? It's a great question. I thought that whole conversation about Carol drowning and the idea of throwing the life preserver. Because on a species level, Zosia is correct. Like, we as a species are drowning. Like, we do not have a handle on what we're doing, on how to navigate being people in the world, cultures in the world. And on a Carol level, I also don't think she's wrong. Carol is clearly drowning in a bunch of different ways, in part, to be fair, because the takeover killed her wife. So, you know,

like, let's take a little accountability, Zosha and the hive mind for that. The thing that gets stuck for Carol, and I think would get stuck for almost any of us, is like, what gives you the alien virus the right? Not just, are you more evolved? Because even if you are more evolved, fuck you. Like what makes you the arbiter of all of human existence? And there are ways in which that's like true of all humanity. There are ways in which that is true of like Americans that is way. That is true of white Americans. That is true of blonde white lady Americans like all this or stuff. So like that's a key demographic blonde white lady Americans. Listen, we are we we matter. Do we? I don't know. It's a good question

to ask. Okay. So I do not think we have time to get all to all the comps that our listeners emailed in, but there's like a bunch of them. We'll talk about them. There's Twilight Zone. There's Star Trek. There's an Octavia Butler story. There's all this stuff that people wrote it about that I really want to get into next week. Licking the donut at gmail.com. That's D-O-N-U-T at g-mell.com. Please keep them coming. Your emails are amazing. Just because we couldn't get to them all didn't mean we loved, like didn't love reading them all. They're fantastic. Rob, anything else you want to mention before we go? I would love to know, just on a personal level, if people want to email us at Licking the donut of g-gmail.com.

If you were in a post-apocalyptic alien virus-led world and you needed your personal cozy time with the Golden Girls, what is the appeal of the loosened blanket? Like, I just have never understood it, a big holy blanket, and I would like to get it other than it's clearly feeling cozy-coated. I feel like Afghans are usually like inherited, like passed down, but I could be wrong. I don't know. I feel like they're pottery barned. Oh, unpleasant to contemplate.

Licking the donut at Gmail.com, if you have some sort of loose woven. Afghan thoughts. Also, what would be under your close outside your front door? I would like to know, licking the donut at gmail.com. We'll see you next week. Thanks so much to Donny Beecham. Thanks to Justin Seals. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. And thanks to Plurvis. What a great show. And we'll see you

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