Full spoilers follow for Pluribus Episode 5, “Got Milk,” which is available now on Apple TV.
Man, the whole planet is pissed off at Carol this week, that’s for sure.
That includes her fellow un-infected, Laxmi (Menik Gooneratne), who calls her from across the world to rip Rhea Seehorn’s Carol a new one for making her son cry. I mean, she made the entire human race cry, save 13 people, but Laxmi is mostly upset about her son.
It’s fun that Laxmi and Carol can’t find common ground no matter what, despite the dramatic shift in human history that took place eight days ago. But what’s most interesting in this episode is how the Joined are all giving Carol the cold shoulder. Like I said last week, it’s hard not to feel bad for what Carol did to Zosia (Karolina Wydra), sending her into cardiac arrest after drugging her and all. And even though we’re talking, again, about an incredible alien-influenced event that has dramatically changed humankind, it’s hard not to see where the Joined are coming from on this one. They just don’t feel like they can be around Carol anymore.
Which means that Pluribus Episode 5 puts Carol in a very The Last Woman on Earth place. We may have seen how Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga) was living his best The Omega Man life last week (or actually his worst life, eating garbage and whatnot), but now Carol is truly getting a chance to have an entire city (and its surrounding area) to herself. It’s maybe not as great as she thought it might be? The mass purge event of Albuquerque, with a church-like choir playing on the soundtrack as everyone loads up in cars, buses, etc. to leave the city, certainly sells the “group” in group-think aspect of the Joined. Hey, they just need a little space!
Seehorn continues to keep the laughs coming – albeit the darkly fatalistic laughs – as Carol tries to navigate this new iteration of the post-Joined world. Her video message to the other 12 non-infected is great as she does her best to convince them that they need to band together not just for their sake, but also for all of humanity. Amusingly, she can’t help but lecture them all, no matter how cheery and optimistic she tries to be, and the stilted sign off of “Good luck and godspeed!”, followed by an awkward clearing of her throat, is just perfect. (It’s a little less fun/more sad later when she deletes the video with her scientific, I guess, finds, as the loneliness and desperation of her current situation really start to kick in.)
Of course, the big question coming out of “Got Milk” is what’s really up with the milk of the title?“Got Milk” has other moments of humor, like the drone – first glimpsed in the initial and puzzling teaser trailer for the show this past fall – that can’t quite handle the weight of all that garbage, and winds up as the neighborhood’s newest ornament wrapped around a street lamp pole. But it’s also pretty intense at times, particularly when those wolves start staking out Carol’s house. It actually makes sense that they would, since the Joined seem pretty organized and surely would have cleared the area of most of the garbage and food stuffs that the wolves would be attracted to. That means Carol is the only game in town, but it also means that Helen’s fresh grave is open game.
It’s pretty intense when Carol sees the wolves digging at the grave, and when that one wolf snarls at her it’s suddenly driven home how alone Carol is at this point. But Charlton Heston would be proud of her response. Sure, she couldn’t figure out how to get the shotgun out of its holder (turns out you press a button), but her quick wits prevented a potentially horrific (and messy) situation. Seehorn sells it too after she’s smashed through the fence with her cop car and sits parked over the gravesite, just panting before eventually falling asleep during her all-night vigil.
Of course, the big question coming out of “Got Milk” is what’s really up with the milk of the title, the stuff that definitely isn’t milk and which the Joined are so into? Carol may not be great at science, but she’s done a pretty good job on the sleuthing front in terms of following the trail of the milk’s production pipeline – and all without Google Maps apparently! Her gasp which ends the episode, delayed for a beat as she takes in the scope of whatever it is she found under that tarp, is extremely effective.
What did she find!? Tune in next week…
Questions and Notes From Kepler-22b
- So they’ve got kids working jobs too, like that one who’s pushing a cart around in the hospital? I guess that clocks. They don’t need to go to school anymore, after all. (Even better: It’s a medication cart he’s pushing around. Because there’s no worry that he might accidentally or intentionally take drugs that aren’t meant for him.)
- The constant back and forth with the Joined’s voicemail system might seem kind of familiar to anyone who has tried to make a doctors appointment or deal with customer service one way or another these days, though the Joined are at least way more efficient.
- I wonder if the Joined were worried about Carol during the whole wolves incident. Actually, are they still watching her with satellites?
- Even though Apple provided press screeners for the first seven episodes, I’ve been watching them one at a time so I don’t get too far ahead for these reviews. So I have no idea what’s under that tarp, but my gut tells me it’s gonna be a Soylent Green is people situation, eh? If so, then Charlton Heston’s legacy really is all over this show!
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