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Pluribus<\/a><\/p>\n Pirate Lady<\/p>\n \n Season 1<\/p>\n Episode 2\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 5 stars<\/p>\n *****\n <\/p>\n \n Carol gets an unlikely companion and struggles to connect with her fellow non-conforming humans. Despite the Albuquerque setting and Rhea Seehorn\u2019s presence in the lead role, there hasn\u2019t been much obvious crossover between Vince Gilligan\u2019s previous series, the crime drama Better Call Saul<\/a>, and Pluribus, which perhaps links up more firmly with his past as a writer on The X-Files. But it\u2019s worth noting a couple of places in the thrillingly expansive second episode, \u201cPirate Lady,\u201d that draw the two shows together.<\/p>\n First, there\u2019s the classic WTF cold open, which may not be as cryptic as the pre-title sequences in Better Call Saul or Breaking Bad<\/a>, but it introduces us to characters and a scenario that are wholly disconnected from what we\u2019ve seen so far. (Think, say, the \u201cMadrigal\u201d episode of Breaking Bad, which opens with a desultory German CEO dipping chicken tenders into a variety of sauces.) In \u201cPirate Lady,\u201d an unnamed woman in a burlap robe strides toward an overturned vehicle in a Middle Eastern city, wrenches a charred-up dead body from the driver\u2019s seat, and drags it through an open window. With help from a nearby truck driver, she wraps up the body and drags it uphill to the bus, where we can see other bodies are being collected. From there, she drives a waiting moped to the airport, climbs into the cockpit of a cargo plane, and pilots it to Albuquerque, where minions await with coffee, a hot shower, and a change of identity.<\/p>\n While we can certainly guess who she might be visiting in New Mexico, the open is an opportunity for the show to broaden its scope and suggest the true global scale of this alien operation. It\u2019s one thing to look at the smoking, chaotic city of Albuquerque and imagine scenes like it happening elsewhere, but another thing entirely to see the disquieting sequence where this unnamed being is zipping around dead bodies and burning buildings halfway around the world. And other details count, too, like the importance the aliens have placed on cleaning up the mess they\u2019ve made. They don\u2019t want the earth to be an apocalypse of rotting corpses and smoking wreckage, but something closer to the utopia these seemingly gentle visitors want to promote. Plus, a hierarchy has been introduced around this one character who many others are serving \u2014 and who will later emerge as an ambassador of their values.<\/p>\n The second connection is that for as much as Kim Wexler would have in common with Carol Struka, Carol at this moment seems even closer to Everett Acker, the cranky old coot who refused to leave his home in Better Call Saul. On that show, Kim represents a bank that\u2019s seeking to evict the final resident from a piece of property where it intends to build a call center. But Acker won\u2019t leave, and he greets anyone who asks with nasty invective, including Kim, who initially tries to bully him out before deciding that she\u2019s in his corner. Carol is Acker: Unpleasant but righteous and willing to stand on principle. She assumes she\u2019ll get dragged away at some point, but until that happens, no amount of enticement will get her to leave her spot.<\/p>\n \u201cPluribus\u201d crackles with terrific comic tension as Carol wakes up next to her dead partner, filled with grief yet spoiling for a fight. Her stubborn side comes out in her quixotic effort to dig a grave for Helen in their backyard \u2014 we certainly know from past Gillian shows that holes in New Mexico are not easily dug \u2014 but she\u2019s devoted, too, and tender in picking out the right quilt in which to lay Helen to rest. The timing isn\u2019t great for an unnamed visitor to stop in with a bottle of water and some advice on how better to penetrate the volcanic rock in her yard. Carol is not impressed to learn that \u201cJarmell Gurky,\u201d the line supervisor at the Aquafina bottling plant, says the water is okay to drink. She cracks it open and pours it into the ground \u2014 very Everett Acker-esque.<\/p>\n Yet Carol does need help, loathe though she might be to get it. And she does actually care deeply about her fellow man, despite the unkind things she\u2019s said in the past about \u201cHoustonMom\u201d and the other dimwits who like her books. After her fury results in the unnamed visitor falling into a spell and shaking \u2014 which, she learns, causes every other being to do likewise \u2014 news that it results in fatalities worldwide literally sickens her. She is an inadvertent mass murderer, just like the aliens who have taken over her planet. Among the important things she learns in this episode is that she\u2019ll have to control her temper or people will die, which bothers her immensely, even as the beings rush to reassure her. (Maybe because they\u2019ve killed infinitely more people, but we\u2019ll get to that in a bit.)<\/p>\n Though it pointedly takes Carol longer than anyone to ask the name of the important visitor from the opening sequence, we eventually learn it\u2019s Zosia (Karolina Wydra), who looks familiar to her because of her resemblance to Raban, the hunky space pirate of her fantasy series. That Raban was originally written as a woman freaks Carol out, because only she and Helen knew about that, which means that the alien has absorbed all her dead partner\u2019s memories and is now using them to ingratiate herself with Carol. That\u2019s an awful thing to do. But Carol is naturally curious to understand why she\u2019s among 12 people who were not susceptible to \u201cjoining\u201d the invaders. Where are the others? Can they meet?<\/p>\n The get-together of English-speaking humans at an airport in Bilbao takes the episode to another level of comedy and philosophy. First, there\u2019s the surreality of Carol huddling up with the first four non-conforming humans \u2014 Otgonbayer (Amaraa Sanjid), Xiu Mei (Sharon Gee), Kusimayu (Darinka Arones), and Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne) \u2014 as their \u201cjoined\u201d family members stand around pleasantly in the background. (\u201cWe\u2019re very pleased to meet you, Carol,\u201d they say in unison.) Then there\u2019s the arrival of the fifth, Koumba Diabat\u00e9 (Samba Schutte), in Air Force One, which the aliens have fetched at his request, along with the phalanx of sexy stewardesses who tend to him. Koumba has picked up on the aliens\u2019 eagerness to please the non-conformists quicker than the rest, and he\u2019s exploiting his power like an amiable Nero.<\/p>\n Once all of them gather for a meeting, the argument against Carol\u2019s skepticism becomes obvious: Why is any of this bad? Joining the aliens seems like a path to eternal contentedness, and, in the meantime, they can have anything they desire, from a tour of the Guggenheim to food service on par with Judgment City in the film Defending Your Life. Carol isn\u2019t having it. She doesn\u2019t like that nearly everyone on earth has been turned into an anesthetized pod person and doesn\u2019t understand why the others can\u2019t see how sinister it is. \u201cIt does not matter how nice they are to us or how many supermodels they send to peel our grapes and jerk us off,\u201d she says. \u201cIt does not change the fact that this is not right.\u201d<\/p>\n Carol may be correct, but she\u2019s incapable of being diplomatic about it. When Laxmi pushes back against her, Carol is so annoyed by Laxmi treating her adorable son, Ravi, like a real child that she quizzes the boy on the gynecological expertise he now possesses. Ultimately, only the easy-going Koumba continues to speak with her, but it\u2019s Carol\u2019s deepening relationship with Zosia that seems most crucial to the show going forward. The peace-loving utopia that Zosia and the aliens, who we learn are called Celtiberians, are promoting has some ethical holes that Carol is smart enough to expose. Chiefly, if the Celtiberians are so committed to peace that they won\u2019t kill a living thing deliberately, then how can they justify the 886,477,591 humans who have died so far in their mission on Earth? (\u201cI guess you gotta break a few eggs, huh?\u201d, snipes Carol, channeling George C. Scott in Dr. Strangelove.)<\/p>\n The final moments of the episode are more poignant, however, and suggest an important shift in the Carol-Celtiberian divide. Koumba has decided that he likes Zosia and wants her to be his companion, an arrangement that Carol is told requires her blessing. Carol is repulsed by how regressive this sounds and nearly loses her temper for an alien-shaking third time in the episode. \u201cThat\u2019s your idea of paradise?,\u201d she asks Zosia. \u201cBeing used like some sex doll?\u201d But in the final moments, when Carol is back in her coach seat on the plane, something nags at her. She\u2019s lonely, but she can see as plainly as we can that Zosia is affected by what she\u2019s said. Maybe this is how the revolution starts. Or maybe, like another ending that unfolds on an airport tarmac, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.<\/p>\n \u2022\u00a0Maybe the connection was unintentional, but the sight of humanoid aliens loading humans into trucks and zipping away on two-wheelers calls to mind Jonathan Glazer\u2019s Under the Skin<\/a>.<\/a> (Though the Celtiberians are much, much, much gentler to mankind than ScarJo and her kind in that film.)<\/p>\n
\n Photo: Apple TV\n <\/p>\n