Pluribus – The Gap Review

Well. That was quite the episode. And, for my money (having not seen the last two episodes of the season just yet) the best one so far in Pluribus’s freshman season. After watching Carol actively push everyone and everything away – both in her quest to discover a means to put the world back the way it was and out of the deep grief she feels over the loss of Helen – we finally saw her break. And after teases about just who Manousos, our mysterious man from Paraguay, is, we get half of an episode to get a much better read on why he has rejected the new world order. It was a hell of an episode.

Let’s start with Manousos (the great Carlos-Manuel Vesga). We knew that he, like Carol, doesn’t trust the Others at all. He rejected their food – to his own physical detriment – and was holed away in the storage facility he ran in an attempt to both avoid these strange pod people and to try to determine if there was any world left outside. And when Carol provided the spark – another person, angry and unhappy with the Others and willing to fight back – our hermit left his hideaway and reemerged into the world on a quest to reach New Mexico.

Now, we still don’t learn too much about Manousos as we watch his journey to and into the Darien Gap, but there are a handful of things we can deduce. For one, he’s incredibly self-sufficient. He doesn’t want help from anyone. He doesn’t want to admit any weakness. And he will do whatever it takes to reach his goal. Second, he has a firm belief that the Others have stolen the lives of the bodies they inhabit. They have stolen the people, the food, anything they use. They are thieves. And this is a man with a fierce moral code – he left IOUs on the storage units he took supplies from and left money on the cars he took gas from. And everything about the Others flies in the face of the way in which is sees the world. Which is fascinating, as Carol lacks that same moral compass – which might lead to a clash once the pair inevitably meet up.

I haven’t gotten a chance to talk about Vesga’s work, mostly because our time with Manousos has been rather fleeting thus far, but wow. In a series with a pretty stacked cast, Vesga is sensational. He’s been asked to convey a lot about a character with little to no dialogue throughout his time on the series and boy has he nailed it. I’ve never once wondered just what was going on in Manousos’ mind – everything is there in his facial expressions, his physicality, his eyes. And when Vesga gets the chance to speak, well, he makes it count. The chillingly soft voice. The steady cadence. This isn’t someone who is intimidated by this new world. This is someone who wants to burn it down to save it. And he sees Carol as a potential ally – his only ally, really. Which makes me a bit worried about just which version of Carol he’ll find when he eventually makes his way north. That is, once he recovers from his horrific injuries under the care of the Others. And that’s going to be a heck of a confrontation all in itself.

As for Carol, well, Koumba called it last week. She’s so incredibly lonely. But boy is she trying to do everything in her power to try to hide it throughout most of the episode. Adopting a page from Koumba’s playbook and attempting to live it up – naked soaks in the hot springs, stealing a Georgia O’Keeffe original to replace her print, having a fancy dinner. But spending the day shanking golf balls on the links and at buildings can’t replace the ever growing void within. Most humans cannot survive in isolation for long periods of time – even if they have an entire city as their playground. And the “accident” with the firework was the wake-up call Carol needed to recognize that she can’t do it alone.

When that firework fell forward, Carol had a choice. Get up and quickly right it or give up. And watching that choice play out on her face was, well, devastating. Rhea Seehorn is one of the best actors we have working today and she let us see every moment in Carol’s thought process. The final moment of acceptance? Crushing yet beautiful. And, speaking of Seehorn’s performance – aside from Carol’s phone calls – she had next to no dialogue (outside of commenting on food and singing songs). To go through an entire episode, never speaking to another character – just offering the occasional song or quip into the ether – yet still command the screen? That’s a level that many actors couldn’t hope to achieve. Yet Seehorn makes it look easy while still letting us mine the depths of what is making Carol tick.

Each sequence in the Carol portion of the episode peels back the hard outer shell that Carol has clung to as armor since this situation began. She’s tried to be strong, tried to move forward, buried herself in the idea that she can change things back – on her own if she has to. But nearly 50 days into this new world, Carol is done. She’s broken. She just wants it to be over. And then, unlike Manousos – who must do things on his own – she reaches out for help. And it arrives.

Which sets the story onto a new and intriguing path. Carol has recognized that she needs someone, even if that someone contains the hive mind of the world. But she needs another person. And she thinks she has no one other than Zosia to cling to. Will she keep accepting help or revert back to her old ways? And will she keep asking for the finer things in life, a la Koumba? We know that Manousos does not trust the Others at all – he wants nothing to do with them. When he meets Carol, how will he feel about her acceptance of (at least) Zosia into her life? Will he be willing to trust Carol if Carol trusts Zosia? And what does this mean for her plan to set the world back on its axis if she’s willing accepting Zosia into her life?

While Carol was our source of conflict for much of the season – from her rejecting the Others to her rejecting the other Survivors – we’re now set-up for a conflict between the two people who earnestly want to save the world from itself. The great thing about Vince Gilligan shows is that they constantly evolve and change. Like onions, there are many layers within. We’ve peeled off the Carol against the world arc and are transitioning into something deeper – what happens when two Survivors with the same ultimate goal but seemingly different worldviews meet?