Pluribus (Apple TV+)
Review / guide by Matt (@cleric20) Adcock
Just when you thought TV had got safe, Vince Gilligan is back and he’s brought the end of human authenticity with him. Pluribus, Apple TV’s new flagship sci-fi drama, opens not with a bang but with an unnervingly serene smile. Across Albuquerque, people are just a little too happy. It’s the kind of world where your neighbour waves at you for too long, and the local news signs off with a grin that won’t fade.
Enter Carol Sturka (Rhea ‘Better Call Saul’ Seehorn), a best-selling romance novelist who is, deliciously, “the most miserable person on Earth.” While everyone else is busy basking in newfound joy, Carol’s having none of it. She’s hollow, cynical, sharp — and crucially, immune to the mysterious wave of euphoric contagion sweeping humanity.
The episode’s opening ten minutes are a minor masterclass in tone. A sun-bleached diner, a radio DJ announcing that happiness levels have reached “record highs,” and a slow pan to a woman methodically licking a donut before putting it back in the box. It’s absurd, funny, grotesque and perfectly Gilligan.
The title isn’t subtle. Pluribus (Latin for “many,” as in E Pluribus Unum) evokes the collective, the idea that unity through conformity might just crush individuality. Episode 1 plays with this tension beautifully.
The premise: a new condition, part mental ‘glue’, part spiritual awakening, is spreading. It makes people radiantly optimistic and relentlessly cooperative. Crime vanishes. Depression disappears. Governments praise it as the dawn of a new humanity. And yet Carol sees only the rot beneath the smile.
Gilligan shoots her loneliness in harsh daylight, wide shots of her trudging through crowds of blissful citizens, the only frown for miles. She looks like a glitch in a utopian simulation.
Rhea Seehorn carries the episode with controlled weariness. Her Carol is brittle, intelligent, and visibly allergic to the enforced good vibes. There’s a moment where her publicist (a perfectly oily supporting turn from Carlos Manuel Vesga) tells her, “You could sell more books if you just smiled in photos.” Carol’s dry retort: “Maybe you could read more if you stopped smiling all the time” - lands like a prayer for everyone still clinging to emotional honesty.
Science fiction has long explored emotion as contagion, think The Stepford Wives, Smile, or Black Mirror’s Nosedive. But Pluribus takes that metaphor and runs it through Gilligan’s moral lens. Happiness here is institutionalised. Clinics hand out “optimism boosters.” Street billboards flash with slogans like “It’s your choice - be happy!”
The result feels like a spiritual sequel to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul but instead of meth or moral decay, the drug is contentment itself. As one background voice on a news broadcast says:
“Happiness is the new herd immunity.”
For those of us who watch with an eye for deeper meaning, Pluribus might be Gilligan’s most explicitly theological work yet. The idea of a world that worships false joy echoes ancient warnings against idols … the golden calves of comfort and self-satisfaction.
Carol’s immunity feels almost prophetic. She’s the lone dissenting spirit in a culture that has mistaken chemical calm for salvation. There’s an echo of Jeremiah here, lamenting while everyone else throws festivals.
It’s rich ground for reflection which is exactly the kind of moral discomfort Gilligan excels at.
Visually, the show is stunning. Albuquerque’s deserts are rendered in eerie pastel hues, giving it a slightly ‘off’ vibe, like the world’s been lightly Photoshopped. Director Michelle MacLaren (also Breaking Bad veteran) frames scenes with surgical precision, keeping Carol just slightly off-centre, always an outsider.
Composer Dave Porter returns too, with a score that oscillates between lullaby and dread. It’s a soundscape of enforced calm elevator music that wants you to relax but leaves you itching instead.
Out of a potential 5, you have to go with a Darkmatters:
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(5 - Pluribus is an elegant, slow-burning provocation...equal parts Black Mirror, Better Call Saul, and Brave New World. It’s not action-packed, but it hums with intelligence. Gilligan is clearly working at full creative power again, and Seehorn is mesmerising.)
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