{"id":425899,"date":"2025-12-05T06:51:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425899\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T06:51:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T06:51:15","slug":"pluribus-recap-episode-6-leaving-albuquerque","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/425899\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Pluribus\u2019 Recap, Episode 6: Leaving Albuquerque"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Pluribus<\/a><\/p>\n

HDP<\/p>\n

\n Season 1<\/p>\n

Episode 6\n <\/p>\n

\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n

4 stars<\/p>\n

****\n <\/p>\n

\n Carol sets out to share her revelation about the Others, only to realize it might not matter.
\n Photo: Apple TV\n <\/p>\n

While doing a press conference at the Marrakech Film Festival last week, where he was serving as a juror, the great Korean director Bong Joon Ho (Parasite) was asked about AI and gave a colorful two-pronged response<\/a>: \u201cMy official answer is, AI is good because it\u2019s the very beginning of the human race finally seriously thinking about what only humans can do. But my personal answer is, I\u2019m going to organize a military squad, and their mission is to destroy AI.\u201d The first part of Bong\u2019s answer applies well to Pluribus, which isn\u2019t specifically a show about AI, but which does ask viewers to think about the value of humanity in the face of a more uniform, homogenizing threat. And there\u2019s one small moment in this otherwise incident-packed episode that brings the theme home.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s morning at the \u201cElvis Suite\u201d on the 30th floor of the Westgate hotel in Las Vegas, where Koumba Diabat\u00e9 has continued living out the extended fantasy life that the Others have provided him. But Koumba, for all his lusty indulgences, has shown a more generous and forgiving spirit than the other immune humans when it comes to Carol, who are less persuaded by her \u201cdramatic\u201d appeals to rebellion. When Carol emerges from her sleep, Koumba offers her a simple breakfast of eggs, bacon, avocado, and toast \u2014 an analog breakfast, not a scrupulous re-creation of something she might have eaten at a luxury New England B&B years before. Then Carol piles everything on her plate into a rough slice of avocado toast, mashing them together in an improvised layer. Koumba follows suit.<\/p>\n

Though the moment passes without comment, Carol\u2019s avocado toast may be the most effective argument she\u2019s made so far on humanity\u2019s behalf. Her other efforts to persuade her 12 fellow immune survivors have been much more strenuous and often off-putting, from the contentious exchanges on Air Force One and in Spain to the series of videos she\u2019s been sending them from her home in Albuquerque. The Others have the capacity to create a happy, idealized, unnervingly perfect world, but they would not think to jam together a breakfast sandwich on the fly like Carol and Koumba do. Humans have the capacity for such crude innovations, and the fact that these two \u201cunjoined\u201d people pull it off instinctually is a tribute to the messy avocado mash of humankind. The Others wouldn\u2019t think of it, despite the chorus of consciences that compose their collective mind.<\/p>\n

After last week\u2019s cliffhanging gasp, it\u2019s a pleasure to watch the air seep out of a genuinely shocking revelation. All the quality sleuthing that brought Carol to a refrigerated warehouse in Albuquerque led to her discovering that the shrink-wrapped foodstuffs so neatly stored on the shelves include human body parts. The Soylent Green is people<\/a>, and now Carol gets to play Charlton Heston, warning survivors of this diabolical alien plot that\u2019s been happening under their noses. Not long after returning home to record another video, Carol wisely reconsiders, figuring this news is so damning and so secret that the Others would not want it to get out. So she strikes out to Las Vegas \u2014 an eight-hour drive, roughly \u2014 in the hope that Koumba will be holed up at the Elvis Suite just as he\u2019d promised. His appetites prove reliable.<\/p>\n

What Carol cannot anticipate, as she searches breathlessly for an HDMI hookup for her video camera, is that Koumba can guess what she\u2019s about to show him: \u201cIs this about them eating people?\u201d It turns out that \u201cJohn Cena\u201d (John Cena) has already talked to him and the other immune survivors about it, and, well, it\u2019s \u201ctroubling,\u201d but there\u2019s a sound explanation for it. According to this charismatic spokes-wrestler, the life-sustaining \u201cmilk\u201d that the Others drink is composed of 8 to 12 percent HDP, a \u201chuman-derived protein\u201d derived from dead humans like the ones Carol found in the warehouse. The Others don\u2019t believe in killing any living thing, including plants, for food, so the only edible material available to feed 7,348,292,411 humans comes from windfalls and stockpiles. They\u2019re \u201cnot keen\u201d on having to use HDP, but the alternative is worse on balance. And even then, Koumba tells Carol, they only have about ten years before the supply runs low and mass starvation becomes an issue.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to unpack in the Others\u2019 ethical understanding of sustenance, which is consistent at the very least, if still hard for Carol to forgive. She retreats to sarcasm when Koumba reminds her about the Others saying in Spain that they \u201cprefer\u201d vegetarianism (\u201cOh great, so all the fucking lawyers in the world survived\u201d) and she scoffs at their refusal to harvest crops to survive. (\u201cI don\u2019t know. Maybe tell them to pick a fucking apple!\u201d) But the idea of eating humans, which is an alien plot we\u2019ve seen in everything from Peter Jackson\u2019s Bad Taste to Jonathan Glazer\u2019s Under the Skin, points to the obvious extraterrestrial logic that we\u2019re not to be treated any differently than the other animals we have no trouble consuming. For the Others to mine this organic source without killing anyone is a mercy \u2014 in Bad Taste, we\u2019re literally processed for an intergalactic fast-food chain. It\u2019s all just a matter of where people (or the Others) choose to draw the lines.<\/p>\n

Yet the feeling Carol is left with, beyond humiliation and repulsion, is a profound loneliness. She asks for the nearest bathroom so she can cry without Koumba around, but he\u2019s more perceptive than he seems and realizes that she\u2019s feeling isolated. She had hoped to rally the non-afflicted on behalf of humankind, and they not only rejected her but opted against including her in the twice-weekly Zoom calls they\u2019d been having to stay in touch. She may imagine herself as Charlton Heston in Soylent Green, but in actuality she\u2019s feeling like Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, the Last Person on Earth. It\u2019s enraging, but it also just plain hurts.<\/p>\n

But lo, a kindred spirit lurks! Manousos, our man in Paraguay, has continued to rebuff all attempts to reach him as he picks through nonperishables and scans the airwaves for a radio signal. He rejects his latest food delivery from the Others, as usual, but he takes a keen interest in the VHS tape that Carol has sent out about her conviction that \u201cthe joining\u201d can be reversed and that maybe the other survivors can give further thought to whether they actually cherish the individuality they seem so sanguine about abandoning. Based on the speed with which he abandons his post, beelines home, and sets off in his ramshackle convertible, Carol finally has an audience. And maybe an ally.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t call me son,\u201d Manousos chides the kindly Other that\u2019s currently occupying a familiar body. \u201cYou\u2019re not my mother. My mother\u2019s a bitch.\u201d Carol would cheer if she could see it.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0He may be occupying the Elvis Suite, but Koumba is first shown playing out a fantasy closer to the ludicrous poker scene in the Daniel Craig version of Casino Royale, where 007 squares off against an adversary, each holding impossible hands. If you\u2019re playing five-card poker, you should feel comfortable betting everything you have (and everyone you know) on a straight flush, but that\u2019s no match for the royal flush Koumba is holding. The glamorous assemblage of Others that Koumba has gathered to appreciate this little scenario raises a question, though: Will he ever grow tired of having his every wish granted? Will the inauthenticity of situations like this bore him over time?<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Koumba is certainly exact about his role-playing games, however. When the eyepatch-wearing villain across the table joins the onlookers in applauding his victory, Koumba scolds, \u201cHey man, stay in character.\u201d (Wonderful little postscript here, too, with the Others quietly cleaning up the set when he has abandoned it.)<\/p>\n

\u2022\u00a0Funny how even the John Cena video comes with the disclaimer that the Others still need their space and won\u2019t speak to her directly. She\u2019s off-putting on a truly global scale.<\/p>\n

\u2022 One other massive revelation from this episode: The Others discover they cannot bring the holdouts into the collective without accessing their individual stem cells, which requires a painful extraction from the body. And they won\u2019t do it without consent, which not only gives Carol more leverage but also allows Koumba to continue his current arrangement indefinitely. (\u201cThey were not pleased about it, let me tell you.\u201d)<\/p>\n

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