We now know officially that there is a way to reverse it.

If Zocia knows that, everyone knows that, but they don't want to.

None of them want to that's.

Because once they're in, I don't think you have the option to get back out.

They're not telling Carol this once you're in.

What we just found out is that that there is a way to get out.

We know it can be reversed.

Right.

But you're saying other people would do it, but I don't.

I don't think they can because like you said, if they all know how to do it, then by now somebody would have if they all know how to reverse it.

Right, which leads me to believe they just don't want to we.

Are Squawking Dead, a podcast pulverizing programs beyond The Walking Dead universe?

Sometimes we bring you news, Sometimes we make you laugh.

Most times we go deep.

This individual is also known as Blasi Gardner.

This individual was known as Cosmo Mom, 09.

It's hard to keep doing that, isn't it?

I know.

So we are here to talk about the fourth episode of Pluribus.

Please, Carol.

This episode was written by Allison Tatlock and directed by Zetna Fuentes.

Allison Tatlock was one of the regulars in the Better Call Saul Breaking Bad world as a writer and director.

I know she did some big episodes on Better Call Saul.

She's also writes for Stranger Things.

Oh yeah, cool.

She's a writer and producer of Better Call Saul, The Whispers Haul, Catch Fire, and Stranger Things.

She was a writer on season 5, episode 2, Fun Better Call Saul.

For those of you don't know, there is an official podcast for the show like there was for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul.

They don't talk about character arcs and things like that.

What they talk about is how the episodes are made, how they do shots, how they set this up, how they set that up.

I have listened to all of them.

And before we move on to the episode, I just want to talk about a couple things that were very interesting that I learned listening to this podcast.

It is hosted by one of the editors of the show.

Vince Gilligan is on every episode and they regularly have people from the episode.

For instance, the guest people on this episode for Please Carol were Ray C Horn and the gentleman who plays Manuelo, his name is Carlos Manuel Bosca.

I think they were all on it and they were talking just talking about how they do certain things to set those things up.

So one thing I want to talk about is the sprout sequence in the last episode when she goes to the sprouts to talk lead up.

So they actually had a store for three days and they actually cleaned out half of the store and they CGI the rest out.

So all of that was was real.

They did take everything out and then have people bring it all back in.

But since they only had it for three days, they couldn't film the parking lot scenes there.

So they filmed the parking lot scenes elsewhere.

And it's really interesting to hear them talk about how they had to make sure that every extra who was carrying something in the Sprout scenes was carrying the same thing when they were unloading the trucks and everything.

And they also had to be in the same order.

It's called the Pluribus official podcast.

So go check it out if you want to hear about behind the scenes stuff.

Carol's cul-de-sac, they built that themselves.

It's not a pre-existing neighborhood or anything, unlike in in Breaking Bad.

And part of the reason is because like with the Breaking Bad house, Walt's house, people still go and throw pizzas on the roof.

They put fences up.

And I know the people who own the house are like, please stop throwing pizzas on the roof.

Our house and Vince Gillen was also like, you know, they had like a hand grenade go off and things like that.

So they decided they didn't really want to have a real neighborhood where they had to deal with neighbors and things like that.

So that is a place that they built themselves.

Vince Gilligan also said very plainly that you can't get there, so don't try and you can't fly drones over it because it is protected airspace.

Another thing of interest is Apple Books released an excerpt from Carol's book.

It also comes with a letter from the author.

I read the letter.

I didn't copy any.

It's it was, it's like a letter to the your public or whatever.

But she does mention something about how everybody being the same.

Stuff like that was pretty interesting.

But the chapter that they release is the chapter that she tells the fan to read in the first episode when the fan is like, I just have to know if Rabon lives, I can't live without it.

She tells her to read page 18.

That is the chapter that they released on Apple Books.

And I did get it, and I did read it, and it is very much like a romanticy novel, very wordy and very descriptive.

Anyway, just go to Apple Books and search for Carol Sturka, and you can download that excerpt.

It's pretty cool.

That's just a fun little Easter egg that they threw in there.

So now that that stuff is out of the way, Rachel.

Yeah.

What did you think of this episode?

It was a really good episode.

I thought it was really interesting that we saw, oh gosh, I what was his name?

The gentleman that it opens with really liked seeing kind of what he was up to.

We've seen some other people who are unaffected by this virus, not a virus, whatever you want to call it.

We were able to take a lot out of seeing what he's doing versus what Carol's doing.

We also got to see a lot deeper into Carol's mind, I think in this episode too.

This has been a very enjoyable series so far.

It definitely keeps me interested, it's giving us answers while also providing new questions to keep us hooked, and I really appreciate that in writing.

This was the first episode that I really, really got mad at Carroll.

And really?

Disliked her?

Yes.

Supposed to dislike her?

It's not any fault with the show or anything.

I'm supposed to be mad at Carroll for what she did.

She is the definition of antihero because yes, she is being a hero, sort of.

She's not a terrible person, but she is making really bad, terrible decisions.

Who do you think she's being a hero to besides herself?

She feels like she's being a hero to the world because she.

Thinks that.

Yeah, right.

Right.

She thinks she's being a hero to the world now.

The rest of the world doesn't see her that way, but that's because they're part of the hive mind.

I'm sure a lot more people would agree with her if they were individuals.

The people who don't agree with her now is because they still have family members and whatnot.

If it was still the real world and someone was trying to take away people's autonomy, I feel like there would be a lot more people siding with Carol.

Does that make sense?

I understand it's not going on now because but they're all under the spell.

I feel like Carol would have a lot more people behind her if there were more of the unaffected.

Which I brought up a question I was thinking about earlier.

How many immune people died in the first kill off?

Because there's 7 billion people on the planet and there are 13 survivors, which is roughly 2 survivors per billion.

So if they killed off almost a billion people in the original die off, it stands to reason that we're at least two immune people in that die off, possibly more.

So I just wondered, did more immune people die because of that?

Or it's just an interesting.

I'm sure, I'm sure it did.

Yeah.

12 people that survived now are only there because they didn't.

They weren't in a situation.

In a car or a plane.

Right.

Or a plane.

Yeah, exactly.

What about people who have like Alzheimer's or babies?

How does a infant handle all of the knowledge of the world in his head?

Because your brain as a baby is not fully developed.

Obviously infants are a part of it, right?

We saw the one in the hospital.

So how do infants or people with Alzheimer's or other mental disabilities, how does a hive mind handle them?

This is something I hope that gets explained later on.

I'm just, maybe it won't, I don't know.

I'm interested in the hive mind and how it works, and that's just one of the things I find interesting.

Yeah, it makes sense to me right now.

If we compare it to, say, Google, we've got the Internet out there and we do our Internet searches.

When we ask a question, we get 100 hits on different websites, and they're not all credible.

So I must wonder if these thoughts sort of come through that way, but the most relevant are at the forefront.

When they're in the elevator and she's like, do you want?

She asks for the music, Yeah.

It's not like it just, it just comes on like you see her clothes in her eyes and like kind of think about it and then a couple of seconds later the music comes on.

So it's weird how they're connected.

I want to understand the connection more.

Can they close out part of it?

Can they pick and choose what they want to intake or are they all automatically in taking everything that happens?

Is it like ACB radio system?

If you think a thought does a broadcast to everybody, everyone hears it and then whoever is able to respond is who responds to it.

So if socia but put out there, hey, can somebody turn on the muzak in this elevator and then whoever happened to be near the the room that controls it, because obviously somebody had to go into a room and push a button to activate that right within the hospital.

And we know that there's people in the hospital.

We saw them all over.

So whoever was closest just did it.

It was really quick too.

So I wonder, as Carol was talking about Muzak with somebody like already heading like show, she might ask, like maybe she's being sarcastic about it, but we can't take that chance.

So one of us needs to head towards the, I don't know, the elevator control room.

Whatever.

Yeah, because it it came on fairly quickly.

It would have taken longer for somebody to walk down the hallway to another room or.

Whatever, I was thinking the same thing this.

Is part of the show that I really find interesting is how the hive mind works and I am ashamed to admit how much time I spend thinking about it.

Let's start with the first scene, which is our new friend who is searching the frequencies for people broadcasting and he sets the timer for it looks like 2 minutes when you look at the timer.

But I counted it because I was like, maybe it's the 78 seconds that the original message was going.

So I counted the seconds to see it was not.

It was like a minute.

So he's leaving it for a minute to give the opportunity for anybody broadcasting, which obviously nobody is.

He hears flies buzzing.

Flies in Vince Gilligan's world always have meaning.

Remember the fly episode in Breaking Bad?

And I know there were some fly things in Better Call Saul, but they're not coming to mind right away.

I don't know if they threw that in there on purpose or if it was a little shadow.

Hey fans, I know you know this.

Like the flies buzzing reminds him that there is a can in the trash and he pulls it out and licks it because he's hungry, which it was very deliberate and very drawn out, much like she did with the doughnuts, which I found interesting.

As he's licking it, he hears someone outside.

It's one of the others coming to take away the food that he had dumped out.

And I love the detail that she even picks up the little piece of potato off the ground and then she brings out some fresh food and sets it down again.

This is a very Vince Gilligan thing.

We don't skip around and show you little bits of it.

You watch the whole scene of the lady picking the stuff up, walking to her car, putting it in her car, bringing out the other one and walking over, setting it down.

There's no skipping around.

I love that he does these drawn out scenes.

The continuous shot.

Right.

So Manuelos watches her for a minute and then we get another Vince Gilligan thing, which is the eye shot at the door, the eye perspective.

It was a very big and and Better Call Saul, especially with Kim Wexler.

He goes out and looks at the food for a minute because he's really hungry and he knocks the food over instead of eating it.

He is more Carol than Carol.

He is the Uber Carol.

I'm not sure what the difference is.

I guess it's because his his place is fenced in and hers wasn't.

Because why do they approach her yet they're not forcing him.

They sent the lady to her to her house as she had she engaged with her.

Why are they not sending more people to engage with him?

And what is this lady that they're sending him?

Is she somebody special to him?

Because the obviously they try to choose a chaperone that is familiar to them in some way.

So is this his mom maybe?

I don't know if I would say it it is his mom.

It absolutely could be, but I'm more inclined to to say it's someone that is supposed to heavily remind him of his mom just given the the age difference and she's definitely a a motherly figure.

I think as far as why they're not able to get as close to him, I I think you nailed it right on the head.

He he's fenced in.

I don't think they've had the opportunity to approach him face to face.

Well, and I think they they require permission because when they asked Carol later on, she's like, who gave you permission to go in my house or like you did?

But within those gates isn't his house.

What's stopping them from getting through the the fence?

Well that's why I'm they have to ask permission before they can enter his area.

I also remember Zosha just turning up in her backyard but.

She stood at the gate, but she didn't come in the gate.

She was in.

She was inside the girl.

Started talking to her and the gate was also.

Open, right.

So I think if that fence were open, somebody would have walked through it.

But he's not opening those gates.

It also makes me wonder what he thinks is happening.

I'm not sure how much contact he's had really with anybody.

He even wrote a note to his to the tenants or whatever, the people who own the store storage units and was like, oh, sorry I had to get into your stuff.

It makes me think that he does not entirely understand what's what's happening outside those gates.

And also they apparently have not had much contact with him because for 33 hours they didn't even know that he was there.

Exactly.

So in the in the first scramble when everything was going on, when he might have been more vulnerable, they didn't know he was there to find him.

But I agree with you.

Does he have any idea?

He has to have some idea.

He has to know something.

Well, they've probably contacted him by phone as we saw them do that with Carol.

Whatever was explained to him over the phone, obviously he didn't.

He didn't like that explanation and is just sort of been shutting himself in there the whole time.

For that matter, if he was on the radio, they could have contacted him through the radio too.

That way too.

Yeah, and that might be why he's searching for other signals.

As he's walking through the storage building, he gets a thought to get into their storage units.

So this may be a thin parallel, but he looked at the storage unit doors the same way that Carol later looked at Zosha's IV.

She's going to break into Zosha's consciousness and try to extract things out of it, and he is breaking into the storage units trying to extract, well, food.

The look on their faces was was similar.

This was an interesting montage.

Because, like, people store some crazy stuff, man.

There's like a whole bunch of weird, weird stuff.

Haven't you ever seen Storage Wars?

Yeah, I was gonna say, I've watched a bunch of people that get storage units and the stuff they go through and it's like, whoa, people store some crazy stuff.

So he finds some kind of gel packet.

It looked like like a Jello packet or something.

It looked like candy that Silas has had.

Like gooey?

Like sour goo or something.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's what it looked like to me.

I couldn't say for sure, but that's what it reminded.

Me.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

It was like it looked like Jelly, like maybe some kind of weird Jelly pack or something.

He also has a couple packets of sugar, a single Creamer, which by the way, he licked the inside of that Creamer like I have been known to do as well.

So that was a nice trip.

When I was a little kid, I used to love like when you go to a restaurant and they'd have the bowl of creamers on the table and I would love to drink the creamers and I would lick the inside so.

My brother did the same thing as a kid.

Three cans of dog food and then there were also 2 tea bags and a tic tac container.

It would look like I had three or four tic tacs in it.

Why would somebody put a container with three tic tacs in a storage unit?

I don't know.

Anyway.

Well.

It was probably inside of something else, right inside of something else.

What he said.

I need to store this.

I mean, you never know, because like I said, people store some weird stuff.

I thought it was strange that they stored the dog.

Food.

Yeah, I did.

Too Doesn't your dog needed that?

So, fun thing I learned from the podcast, the dog food is actually haggis, yeah.

I would have rather eaten dog food.

It was made extra gelatinous to look greasy and stuff on there.

They couldn't have browned up some burger and.

That may not have been acting when he was eating it and making the face.

No kidding.

So gross.

Yeah, it made.

Me think of The Walking Dead when sure Carl finds the dog food and Rick won't let him eat it was that season 3 they go in the house and Darryl kills the owl.

Anyway, Rick wouldn't let Carl eat the dog food because it was costing him his humanity.

You're not a human if you're eating dog food.

Manuelos is using the dog food to prove his humanity.

I'm going to eat this dog food because I'm not going to eat what you're giving me.

And I love that.

After Carol called the second time, he went back to it and started just shoveling and really angry.

Like look at you calling me.

I'm going to eat this.

I'll show you.

I love that little touch I thought it was funny but of course the phone rings and it's Carol.

He hangs up soon as she starts talking because he thinks she's one of the joint.

He goes and sits back down to his dog food.

She calls again, he answers again and this time he tells her leave me alone you SO BS and hangs up the phone we know from last week.

We remember the scene from last week when Carol's calling him.

She calls back again and this time she tells him to go F his mother Cabron.

I've heard so many people talk about how she said that word Cabron.

My gosh.

And you can see it dawn on him, of course, that wait a minute.

They don't talk to me like that.

She is not one of them, no.

So he goes to write her name down, and what he writes down is Carol is Turkish, because that's what it sounds like.

She says it's Turka.

So that's what it sounds like then, right?

Carol is Turkish.

I thought that was funny, too.

That was the end of our cold, open meeting, Manuelos.

It gave us a lot of insight into him.

Even if he knows what's going on, in some way he thinks that humanity is going to come back because he takes the time to write the note.

I had to open your storage units.

You'll get restitution for that.

Yeah.

Dave says he is more stubborn than me.

He also said it's probably baby.

Food.

He was talking about the Jelly packet.

I don't think it was baby food for a few reasons.

The the font on it looked like wild and zany.

Yeah, like something you'd see on a candy wrapper.

And the consistency didn't really look like baby food would.

Baby food is more.

I agree with you, it looked like a kids candy.

Yeah, baby food has a different look to it.

It's not as gel looking, baby food is more thick.

It's food that's mushed up, so it's, yeah, not super Jelly Consistency.

I was thinking maybe something like that, but it probably had a lot of sugar in it, which was a lot of energy, at least for him right then.

In the moment, it was going to work for him, yeah.

I do hope we get to see him again, though.

I want these two to come together.

So Carol had the opportunity to tell him that she does want to reverse this process.

Well, in the main original trailer there is another scene of him that we have not seen yet.

Well, I didn't think we were done with him.

I mean, why would they?

We're going to see him.

In the future, what I wonder is, are we going to see any more of the other immune people that we met before?

But yeah, I know we're going to see him again.

He is the one who wrote out all of the numbers on the path.

They talked about it on the podcast.

Oh, wow.

He said he sat down and wrote all those numbers out.

Carol outside of the hospital, this particular scene as she's walking out and she's looking at her shirt, that little 5 second clip was one of the trailers that they put out originally.

No context, just Carol walking out of the hospital looking at her bloody shirt.

He's looking for a car and she gets into this car and when she starts it up, it sounds like there is a cassette tape in it.

The way it sounds because the genie in a bottle is it sounds really weird.

Well, and I'm pretty sure there's no music on the radio right now.

Right.

So it has to be like, right.

But even if it was like a DVD, it wouldn't be making that weird squealing.

So obviously this old car has a cassette player in it.

It apparently smells bad because she sniffs her armpit to see if it's her that is smelling in the car and then after a minute she just gets out.

This is just too much.

I can't even deal with this car.

And she turns around and she sees a cop car.

She takes a cop car and the others start talking to her.

They offer to get her her old car back and take the alcohol sensor off and she says no.

And the way she said no makes me think that she doesn't want to deal with.

Anything that has to do with Helen yet?

I don't want that extra reminder of Helen by driving this car.

I just think she's doing everything she can not to accept their help in any way, shape or form.

They mentioned Adam 12 which I looked up and I couldn't find any.

I don't know what that to mention too.

It was ATV show in the 60s that no, it was not Shatner.

Dave Shatner wasn't in that.

I went online today and read a long thing about it.

I couldn't find any connection.

I think they just threw it in there because it was where they used CBS or whatever.

But basically it was about a young policeman who is coming onto the force and he shows a lot of promise.

So an older policeman who was about to retire decides to stay on and help him grow into the ranks of the police, of the police force.

She pulls up to her house and there are several of the others out there cleaning up her house, patching up the holes from the hand grenade.

Including.

Including the mayor of Albuquerque himself.

When she says you're the effing mayor, that really is the mayor of Albuquerque.

And he really was out there working, doing those things.

She also says later when she asked for a volunteer, she's like, not a politician.

I thought that was funny because they're all the same.

What's the difference if you get him or anybody else, all the politicians going to be in there.

She says, who gave you permission to go in my house?

And their reply, as you did when you were in the ambulance with Zosia and we said, do you want us to clean up your house?

And you kind of absolutely nodded.

So while they ask permission, they also have a wide range of what they will accept as a yes.

She was obviously not in her right mind.

Things were going on and she never really said yes.

But they kind of took that and ran with it, which I found interesting.

They respect her boundaries but they will also take any instance to cross that boundary.

She goes inside and she opens up her big whiteboard with all of her notes for the next blood song book and I spent 1/2 an hour when she hit this board and trying to read everything on it.

The majority of it is wanting to kill Raban off for real.

How to do it?

She has things about sand flea people.

She has things about elixirs and love potions.

She has a big message up there that says kill Raban for real and in parentheses, ask Val who was there, Her agent.

So these are all notes that she took prior to the event, right?

Correct.

This was her idea before they sent Pirate Lady Raban looking.

Whatever.

I almost wonder if this was something Helen didn't know about, that she had planned to try to kill Rabban off.

Possibly.

Maybe Helen doesn't look at her notes right and things like that.

Sort.

It's her process.

Right.

And it is.

She does say ask Val.

She doesn't say anything about asking Helen on it.

But I feel like she is so tired of this being what she does that she really just wants to be done with this series.

She doesn't consider it worthy of her writing.

It's trash to her.

And so she's like, let me just kill this guy off so I can be done with this series and I can move on to something else.

But it might hurt her career if she does that.

I took a lot of notes up on the board, so hold on.

On the left side of the board, she has a list of things that she wants to do and she has little check boxes next to them and Research Skin Mites was one, and that one is checked off.

Reread 12th Night, that one is also checked off.

So I looked up 12th Night, which I have read that before, but I'm not a Shakespearean scholar so I'd forgot a lot of it.

But basically it's about people pretending to be other people and it's a comedy of errors.

So I kind of see what they're getting at with it here.

She also has Shakespearean reference written in in big letters across the board.

Oh, a quote from 12th Night, a famous quote.

Some are born great, some achieve great greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them.

So does she have greatness thrust upon her right now?

She thinks she does because she wants to be the hero.

It also says review Helen's reader feedback, but she has not checked that box.

There's another one that says to to be determined discussion, and then I couldn't read the rest of it and that one was not checked off.

There's a lot of things about elixirs and love potions.

For one thing, it's interesting to see an author's thought process on the board and then that leads into her using the other whiteboard for her thought process is on the others and what she writes there is what I know about them.

Eager to please would give me an A bomb.

Can't kill, not a family except for the 886,000,000.

People, they didn't kill them though, right?

They died under circumstance.

Don't play favorites all jerks the same.

That's referring to Kumba, of course, and trying to change me and then weirdly honest with the question mark.

So she decides to test that.

And of course, she's like, I need a volunteer.

And the mayor's like, oh, she's like, not a politician.

So she picks Jeff Hiller, who was the guy in the bicycle shorts outfit.

Now, Jeff Hiller, he was in a show called Somebody Somewhere, which is a great show.

He was really good in that.

He has also lately been on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the NPR show as a guest.

He's really funny on that too.

Who's in the 10th season of American Horror Story, too?

Yes, you said he looks like a serial killer.

No, he is.

He is a serial killer.

Right right, right.

You said that he is and I said yes I agree.

He looks like 1.

Yeah, he has a terrifying face.

I mean, love him, but yeah, terrifying.

One of the little funny behind the scenes things is as they were filming this, it's really hot in Albuquerque and he was wearing this bicycle suit and it's hot on set and he's saying something about he's like, oh, it's hot in here.

My bicycle suit is the suit is riding up in the front.

And Vince Gilligan says, I told him, hey, you know, these people don't care about that.

Don't worry about it.

And Ray Seahor says it as Vince Gilligan walks away.

Jeff went, but Jeff does.

It was just really funny.

Jeff Hiller has a sit down and she starts asking him questions about her books.

What do you think of my book books?

We love them.

She's like, but what do you love about them?

We love everything about them.

What exactly?

Character arcs, plot twists.

We love all of it because it's an expression of you.

But she doesn't think they're worth being an expression of her.

This is just how she makes money.

So, like, I don't feel like that was very endearing to her.

Basically, she calls bull.

She's like, you've never even read it.

And he responds by citing a paragraph about how she described a dress.

She's like, well, you think it's better than Shakespeare?

And he's like, yeah, it's better than Shakespeare.

Or as good.

As good as Shakespeare.

It was comparable, yeah, so.

Basically, he's like, look, we see your work through eyes that loved your work.

And there were people out there that that love her work.

And he brings up a case of Moira McAllister.

And as she says, the crazy lady from Kansas City who sends me crocheted hats, that is hurtful.

As someone who has sent crochet gifts to people, that's very hurt.

And he just like, basically your books saved her life.

He doesn't come around and say it, but he insinuates that she was going to UN alive herself and that Carol's books gave her something to live for.

OK, so I want to say that I can.

I can sympathize with that.

I wasn't to a place where I was like considering killing myself.

But other people's art gave me something to look forward to.

And Rachel has done the same for you.

We're all part of this Walking Dead family because the art spoke to us and even though other people are like, oh, that stupid zombie show, it means something to us.

So I understand what he is saying, and I wish that Carol could.

I don't feel like she really understands that.

I completely agree.

We know what it's like to get lost in this fantasy world and have it give us hope for real life.

Carol obviously doesn't see it like that for people.

I mean, she's seen the effects of it by meeting her fans and getting their perspectives, but I am not sure Carol can see beyond the end of her own nose.

She just sees what directly effects her and not how much good she's actually putting out there for people.

Like you said, she thinks this writing is trash.

She doesn't think there's any substance to it.

It's it's cotton candy, like Helen said.

It's a money maker.

Having Helen validate what she thinks about it herself.

All this time Helen's been like, no, it's it's great, people love it, It's awesome.

And now here is is Larry validating her worry that Helen really didn't think they were good.

They were OK.

They they were fun.

They were.

They were harmless.

And you can see the uncomfortableness and the pain that it's causing him to tell Carol this, which opens up just a whole entire new line of questioning for me.

Why is it so important?

Why are they going so far out of their way to make Carol and and everybody else for that matter, happy?

Why is their emotional state so important to the hive mind?

I can't think of a reason long term.

What is it going to mean to them in the end to satisfy them?

Yeah, I wonder that too.

Aside from being afraid of Carol or or any of them really, but Carol in particular, because she's the one that shows she's already right.

She's the one that's lost her temper and everything.

I think it, a lot of it is going to go back to being sent to Camp Freedom Falls, where I guarantee you she was told that she was nothing because of how she felt and she was no good.

I'm not saying that's all of it, but when you're 16, that is very devastating to you.

Well.

She was obviously told how she felt was wrong.

She was told that basically there's something wrong with her and we need to fix you.

For anybody, that's devastating.

But a teenager who's still trying to figure out who they are, and by your mother, someone who's supposed to love you unconditionally, extra devastating.

And obviously it shaped who she is.

As an adult she's accepted who she is, but I'm not so sure she likes who she is.

She feels a need to prove that she is someone, so to her, what she's writing now is mindless drivel.

But everybody loves it.

Everybody loves it, but she can't accept that because it's not what she thinks is good enough.

Sure, I I completely agree.

However, I think she's in a state of mind where, let's say things were different and she was able to publish Bitter Chrysalis and everybody loved it.

I still don't think she'd believe it because of how she feels about herself.

You can't accept the love and acceptance from other people until you feel it about yourself, and I think that's where Carol's at.

Right.

She had love and acceptance from Helen and now hearing unequivocally that what she feared the most was true about how Helen felt, a thought about her is devastating.

Well, about her book.

About her book, right?

But not about her personally, but about her books.

Exactly.

But yes, as an artist, I'm sure Carol feels that even though those books are trashed, they're still a part of her.

Yes, by Helen saying oh, those books are just cotton candy, she's just reinforcing what Carol's feared all along.

She's taking it as a personal attack on her and not just a critique on the writing.

Absolutely.

That is not helped when Larry tells her that Helen never finished Bitter, Bitter Chrysalis either.

Yeah.

Jumped ahead to the end.

The one that she is so proud of and wants to release.

And it feels like this is what'll make me.

I'll be Shakespeare with this, not with that other stuff.

That had to be especially devastating.

Now.

And again, you were right.

You can see how much it pains Larry to say it.

Zocia couldn't choose because it would hurt one of their feelings.

But Larry is being forced to hurt her feelings and you can see it in his in his face.

In previous episodes, we've had conversations and you've questioned whether or not not they understand the emotional aspect of humanity.

And I think the more we get into this, they do.

It's not always the rational choice, but they are definitely aware of the emotional aspect and they feel it and they recognize it.

But because they have so much rational knowledge and what it takes to survive, emotions just don't play a big part in any of their thought process or any of their decision making.

But obviously Carol is still a very emotional being and so so they know.

Again, it's only been a week since Helen died too.

This is not months later where she's had time to heal in a very stressful A.

Very stressful week.

No support week.

Exactly.

David doesn't want to join us on screen, but he's definitely here in spirit.

And he says Harold's probably working to earn Helen's love irrationally, like she probably did with her parents.

Also irrationally, yes, yes, we all want to be loved, but there's a right and a wrong way to earn that love, right?

You want to be loved unconditionally for who you are.

And if you have to change who you are to get that love, is it real love?

David also says Helen actually loves her freely, whereas her parents chose to deny her love.

Right, because Carol didn't change into what her parents wanted.

They weren't going to give her that love, but Helen does.

Helen loves who she is.

The critiques that Carol's hearing right now from Larry have nothing to do with her as a person.

It's about her books and they were very good money making big selling books.

I her and Helen a couple like before she started writing?

Or did her and Helen meet because of her writing?

Yeah, they haven't talked about that.

OK, I just.

I wonder if Helen had something to do with Carol's success in writing and that's sort of how they met.

Maybe she was a PR person or I don't know, but I almost wonder if Helen played a part in getting her books where they are.

I mean as her manager, I'm sure she had a hand in it in some.

Way.

But what came first, right?

The relationship or the management?

Racy Horn's face acting once again.

I mean, I say it every week.

But phenomenal.

She makes me want to cry.

I mean, I'm just sitting there watching her like I want to cry for you, Carol.

I'm sorry.

But not before you got really mad at her.

First you got mad, then you went, oh, I'm sorry.

I got mad at her later because, yeah, the things she did.

Here's the other thing though.

They have access to Helens memories, but Helen does not have the option to refute those memories or the context of those memories.

She is not there to say, yeah, I thought that.

But the truth is it's, you know I'm saying.

But all of her was uploaded prior to her death, so mentally she is all in there with them.

When you read a script, it's not going to be the same as when somebody acts it out.

So they're just reading her script without her being there to act out what is being.

I mean, arguably, aren't they doing that with everyone in the hive mind?

Because we kind of talked about whether or not an individual could come forward when she's talking to Larry.

If, if, if Larry in the hive mind could sort of come forward and be in that conference or, or if there are no more individuals.

Individuals don't exist anymore.

It's all just one brain wave, in which case Helen is there as much as anyone else's.

I kind of feel like maybe a little bit of their personality remains because the way Larry acts with Carol is different than how Zosha acts with her, and minimally.

OK, I would need some examples.

When she asked Larry his name, he's very unsure, but when she's talking to Zocia, Zocia is not unsure about what she's saying to her.

Maybe Larry was a shy kind of guy and that little bit of shyness still comes through, whereas Zocia probably was not.

And she's very comfortable and forward with Carol.

If they're all the hive mind and Zocia's been with her, then they should all be comfortable with Carol.

But I see that Larry was not particularly.

I didn't really notice that when I watched.

It seems like every time she talks to someone it's like the next person's just picking up the same conversation that has been had, if that makes sense.

Well, I mean, I agree with you there, but what I'm saying is they the way they present themselves to her is slightly different.

And like, like I said, Larry has like this tone, like he's kind of reticent and shy, whereas OSHA didn't have that at all.

She was like, hi Carol, we wish you would drink some more water.

Not like this, because when she's like, what's your name?

He kind of like your name.

Your name?

Your name?

Yeah.

And.

He was like this individual was Lawrence Jake.

So I just it's slightly different.

Like the it's still they're still saying the same things, but I feel like the tone is slightly different.

So she got the information she needed, right?

They can't lie to her.

They can avoid things, which he tried several times to avoid telling her things.

He tells her that Helen thought it was me, it was OK.

She's like she read 137 pages in three paragraphs.

It's 489 pages long.

She tells Larry to leave, which he does, and.

And then she erases the question mark.

And puts can't lie.

So she goes to the hospital to see Zocia.

And one thing I want to point out is there is a whole lot of milk in this show.

I pointed out in the first two episodes that the truck that they drive to pick up the dead body, when we have Zocia's cold open, the truck they drive to pick up the body is a milk truck.

The truck that they're flying over when she flies the plane is a yogurt truck.

There's oat milk in the refrigerator in episode 3 shows what you know is effers.

Then in this episode, we've got strawberry milk.

I didn't so watch the next episode, but I did see the title.

Oh.

Got milk.

Milk is a thing apparently in this show.

Take from that what you will because what is it like a nourishment and mother, I don't know, it's just something I noticed it was she opens up the milk for her and they're chit chatting and she's like OK, Zosha I need to ask you some questions as she asks her about reversing the joining and she can't lie.

So when Carol smartly changes it up and says is there not a way to reverse the joining by her not answering, Zosha basically tells her that yes, it could be reversed, however she won't tell her how.

This was the first time Zosha, she's not lying, but she does refuse to answer.

She said We can't answer questions like that, right?

Right.

So they are able to refuse.

And she didn't even try to talk around it this time.

Like she basically just said, I can't tell you one thing I noticed, and I should have mentioned this earlier.

I I thought about it when, when Larry said this individual was Lawrence J class, the only person who hasn't done that, that she's talked to was Zocia because she didn't ask her.

Her name?

Her name?

No, she didn't.

She found out her name from Kumba.

And I'm wondering if they did that on purpose to make Zocia look and feel more human to us, the audience, because she never came out and said this individual was Zocia, she just is Zocia.

If that's the case, this is an interesting choice by the showrunners.

Carol mentions Camp Freedom Falls and she goes, you know about that, Which I'm assuming she must have told Helen about it.

Well, or anyone who attended the camp is her.

Mother, right?

True.

So she says.

Yes.

You were 16.

You were trying to figure yourself out and your mother sent you to a conversion therapy camp in Covington, TN, and basically the worst people in the world were there.

Carol's like you.

People smile just like they did smile and tell me that I'm a terrible person.

You guys aren't telling me that, but it's the same vibe.

So Carol responds with, look, we know what it's like to be you.

We're of all been human.

We know what it is to be lonely and be sad and struggle and you don't know what it's like to be us, which is a good point.

However, she leaves out the caveat that if Carol becomes her or us, she doesn't have the option to get back out of it.

So it's kind of an unfair comparison because it's not like Carol can go, well, let me test this out and see if I like it, and then no, I don't.

I want to come back out.

But she's also not wrong.

Here's what I would say to that though.

We now know officially that there is a way to reverse it.

If Zocia knows that, everyone knows that if they wanted to, there is a way to reverse it.

But none of them want.

To That's because once they're in, I don't think you have the option to get back out.

They're not telling Carol this.

They're not saying once you come in, you can't get back out.

But I have the feeling this you don't get the option once you're in but.

What we just found out is that there is a way to get out.

We know it can be reversed.

Right.

But you're saying like other people would do it, but I don't think they can because like you said, if they all know how to do it, then by now somebody would have.

Which leads me to believe they just don't want to or they can't.

That the hive mind is better.

Well, it's like a psychic glue.

So maybe it's like a glue trap.

Your psyche gets into the psychic glue and you can't unglue it and get back out of it again.

You're stuck in the glue like a family on a flytrap on a flypaper.

Who knows?

We don't know.

This is all theories.

No we don't.

You know, it might be an all or nothing situation.

An individual might not be able to free themselves from the hive mind, but if you reverse it, everyone goes back, not just who wants.

To I mean, and if that's the case, then if there are people in there that want to get out, they might be being overpowered by the ones who don't.

We don't know what's going on inside the hive mind.

Carol doesn't have an answer for that, but she looks aside at Zoshi's IV bag and she has a plan.

So she goes into the pharmacy and she finds a book of dosages and tears out the page for basically what is sodium pentathol.

Anybody who watched TV or movies in the 70s and 80s and 90s, sodium pedophile was like the big trope.

Sodium pedophile is what they had called on TV in the 70s and 80s.

Whenever anybody needed to get truth out of somebody, we give them truth serum.

It's not really truth serum.

It doesn't make you tell the truth.

You just lose all of your inhibitions and say whatever comes into your.

Mind medically induced drunk.

Yes, to the NTH degree.

She finds the medicine she's looking for and a doctor walks in.

The actor is the husband of the writer of this episode, Allison Tatlock.

That is her husband playing the doctor.

OK.

She asked him if they have heroin, which is her second reference to heroin in the show because in episode 2 when they're like, you didn't ask anybody what it's like and she goes, I know better than to ask a drug dealer what his heroin is like.

The doctor mentions that they have a wing full of bodies recovering from addiction.

That caught my interest.

So are they not part of the hive mind?

Are they shut off from it because they're druggies?

Because she's he's like they're bodies.

He doesn't say people.

I wonder if they're in a medically induced coma?

Could be.

When he referred to them as bodies, first of all, I thought, OK, maybe they just refer to all of them as bodies because they're not individuals.

Well, this individual is known as blah blah blah anyway, But these bodies, maybe there's nothing going on.

If they're in a medically induced coma, then they're just bodies.

They're just shells and they're trying to rehabilitate them.

Obviously once they wake up then maybe they become part of the hive mind.

I mean, I would wonder if it's something like their memories or their thoughts are muddled or tainted because of the drugs.

Because you know, when you drink, you get fuzzy headed.

You don't think the same way you do when you're sober.

Same thing with drug addiction.

You don't think the same way you would when you were sober.

So is that why these people are separate?

Because they don't want whatever's in their brain getting into the hive mind again.

Would it encourage other individuals to get into addiction?

I don't know.

I just found it interesting that he said bodies recovering and he tries to talk her into taking oxycodone.

Please don't take heroin.

Take oxycodone instead.

That's not good enough for her.

She wants the real deal.

He tells her that the closest unadulterated heroin is 8 miles away and it's on the way.

So then she asks for hypodermic needles.

He tries to talk her out of that too, but obviously the reason is because she wants to to inject social later.

She also says she's gonna Sid Vicious this likes the Chelsea hotel.

I had to look that up.

I knew Sid Vicious died of a drug overdose.

I didn't know what the Chelsea hotel meant.

Sid Vicious was accused of killing his girlfriend at the Chelsea Hotel when they were in a drug fueled whatever and he never went to trial for it because he died of a heroin overdose later.

Sid and Nancy.

Girl, it's me and you like Sid and Nancy.

So Helen goes home.

She sets up a camera and injects herself with the truth serum.

She wakes up after she sleeps on the couch and she puts the camera on and she watches what she was doing.

And the first one, she's slurring her words.

This stuff isn't, it's an affection it affects.

This stuff doesn't work.

I love when she fast forwards and it shows her running around the house and she turns around and looks behind her like, what was I doing?

And she stops it.

And Carol on the screen is crying.

I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.

And her reaction almost made me cry.

But here's what I want to ask you, Rachel, do you think Carol is using this desire to reverse the joining as a way to avoid dealing with Helen's death?

I'm not saying she doesn't want to reverse the joining.

Obviously she does.

But the way she reacts to herself on screen is, I don't want to say ashamed, but she's just like, I don't want to acknowledge this right now because she she looks sad and then she fast forwards because she just doesn't want to deal with it.

Absolutely nobody likes sitting around feeling sad, so we use distractions and she's got a hell of A1 right right now keeping her busy.

I don't know if it's a conscious choice, but it's definitely working.

She's absolutely been avoiding feeling that grief.

Well, like I said earlier, when she didn't want the car, I felt like that's just one more thing to remind me of Helen and I don't need that right now.

I'll just drive around this cop car that I have no feelings for or no connections to other than the cop who drove the car, his wife's husband's brothers teacher or whatnot was a member of the Ycaro fan club and she was like, ah, chills.

There's no emotional connection to that car.

Whereas their car, that was their car.

It would be very hard for her to do that.

Listen to Ray talk about how they've done this.

She kind of just let her go, do what you want.

But she was like, then I realized that it would have to be 1 long continuous take because they Fast forward through it on the video.

Reading from her book was funny.

And the next one she's wearing 1 of Marva's crocheted hats.

As soon as I'm not that bad.

Did you get a Blair Witch vibes with her down?

Yes.

Very much, very much similar.

Hat and everything.

The next section is the pirate lady rant, which OK, So what I love the most about this is Carol agreeing with herself on the screen.

And what about that Lady?

Is she annoying or what she's like exactly?

I may be the only person left on earth, but at least I agree with me.

Then we come down to what tipped her off.

This is what made her realize that the sodium pentathol actually made her tell the truth was when she asks why Zocia is so effable.

And I love that that was your name today, Rachel.

So yes, the stuff works.

It will make Zocia tell the truth.

I didn't like what happened next.

If she wants to get rid of that SD card, she's going to need more than just flushing it down the toilet.

I thought the same thing because there are literally an endless number of people that could wait for that go through the sewer and find that card.

Absolutely.

I don't know why they would, but if you're gonna destroy something, destroy it.

Right, She flushed that the way she flushed the heroin earlier.

Yeah, So she flushes the card and then she goes to visit Sasha.

And this was the part where I had serious dislike for Carol.

It was cruel and I'm as an emotional human, so I don't know how the hive mind felt about it.

Wasn't so much that she shot her up with the sodium pentathol, whatever it was that she pretended to care before she did it.

Is she pretending?

Is she not pretending?

Earlier on I was like, no, she really is kind of coming to care for Zocia.

But then she does this and I'm like, wow, I don't know.

That was pretty bad.

And when she kept letting it go on, when she kept pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing, even as she saw Zocia was struggling, she wouldn't let it go.

And that really made me angry.

I understand why she's doing it, but I cannot agree with the method.

Yeah, I think Carol is having the same struggle we all are right now and asking herself that question.

Are they humans?

Are they something more?

Are they less?

How much do they really feel?

Because we see moments where Carol does seemingly care about Zocia.

She's helping her with her strawberry milk.

She's genuinely apologetic about blowing her up.

That's genuine, genuine.

But then she goes and does something like this with absolutely no regard for her feelings.

And then she says what she says to her.

You had pointed something out.

When the whole group comes out and we see Zosia is unable to speak, it almost looks like she's having a stroke.

And we find out she is going into cardiac arrest.

But the whole group comes out to sort of help her rescue or whatever, and they're all saying please Carol, please Carol.

But they're not in unison anymore.

It's definitely scattered.

And they're not smiling either.

They're definitely not smiling, so we know that they're capable of feeling something other than euphoria.

This is not a happy moment.

I also wonder what's happening around the rest of the world when this is going on.

Is everybody doing it?

Is the whole world saying?

So one of the things I I noticed is Carol was acting very nervous and fidgety.

So I'm wondering if they can't pick up on subtle emotions, what if they can only pick up on like your blatant happy, sad, angry.

When you watch her the way she's speaking and her movements are jerky and even when she's in the elevator with Zocia, it's very nervous.

She's speaking fast.

Do they just not pick up on that kind of thing?

That's why it has to be like a big blah.

I I would agree with you because I think if you or I were sitting in that wheelchair as Zosha and Carol was acting the way she was, we would have gotten uncomfortable.

That would have made you or I suspicious.

What did you sound weird?

What's going on?

But as we see the elevator doors shut and Zosha's got a smile on her face, she doesn't seem worried.

And if she is, she's not letting on that she suspects anything's going on behind her.

I'm thinking that they can't register subtle emotions or anything like that.

All they ever say is are you happy, are you sad?

Can we make you happy?

I know I've gone back and talked about this a few times, but it does, it really does remind me of Temperance Brennan in the first couple of seasons of Bones.

She is highly intelligent, but she is socially awkward and she, as a regular normal individual human being, also does not pick up on those subtleties in other humans.

She's aware of happy, sad, mad, angry things like that.

There's like a whole whole arc where she's literally learning how to read facial expression because she can't, she doesn't understand it.

And so I wonder if in the collective hive mind, they're at a level of intelligence where they don't recognize the the subtlety in in emotion anymore because everything is just hyper rational and there's no.

It's good you're happy or you're sad.

There's no are you satisfied?

Are you scared?

There's none of that.

It's all very broad and slight.

Irritation there's no anxious, very black and white emotion, the.

Part that made me the angriest was when Carol said don't you want to make me happy?

It's not making me happy.

Am I making you sad?

Am I making you?

Sad.

That was just low, Carol.

That really, really made me angry.

And I'm sure you noticed they all had tears streaming down their face, yes?

Yes, they all had tears and the guy that was standing directly to Carol's left, he looked angry at her.

It wasn't even not smiling or being like like Carol anything, like he actively looked like he was angry with her.

They were still cordial, like excuse us, Carol, please, Carol, let us do this.

Let us save her.

But.

We save her.

Right.

They were still cordial, but the light wasn't there anymore.

It was a very flat let us do this.

And like you said, they weren't in unison anymore.

Some of them were saying it together, but it wasn't in unison.

Like we just want to help you, Carol.

Like from the first episode where it was all exact.

I love the overhead shot when it separated and then closed back in.

It looked like bacteria engulfing a cell or something like that.

And I also love how they cut it off mid sentence.

Just leave you hanging.

Very Sopranos.

Don't touch that dial.

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I'm ready for the next episode.

I love the show, it is great.

It's definitely keeping me.

Interested, I'm very much into.

It I'm excited to learn more.

I'm getting ready to go watch the next episode right now.

Thank you for joining us today, Rachel.

Do you have anything else to?

Say, I think we nailed this one.

I think we did good.

We hit everything.

I'm sure we forgot some stuff and David will add to it.

This is why you need to be here, David.

We miss you.

He shines a light in all the nooks and crannies where we forget to look.

He opens things up that we don't think of.

No More Thing, the song that plays when she asks for muzak, is Arthur's theme from the movie Arthur.

The lyrics are when you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you could do is fall in love.

That's like the hook.

I don't know what the song would have to do with the show because it's our the movie, because it's about a rich guy who wants to find love.

I don't know.

I'll tell you what.

When I watched Arthur when I was a kid, I thought it was hilarious.

But the older I get, the more I realize that's really sad.

She also says, I know how much it can suck to be in a hospital as a throwaway line, I feel.

But maybe not.

Yeah, people who have gone through conversion camps, sometimes they have trouble in their later life.

Yeah, I got the impression whatever happened there, it wasn't just verbal.

Say it that way.

I don't think she carries that much trauma by just being yelled.

At I have never been to a conversion camp therapy but I have read about them and I know they can be pretty yes vile.

So I'm wondering if she has much like Maura who found something to live for.

Maybe Helen was the something that Carol found to live for.

Maybe, but we don't know when they got together or how long ago they met.

So thank you for joining us today, folks.

Yeah, come to the next episode.

Get on that schedule, become a special person and join us for the recordings.

I don't David.

David does.

This so much better Dave, we missed you.

Like Rachel said, I wish you were here.

We could have used your leadership because I suck at this.

No, you don't.

We all have our strengths.

Yeah.

Thanks for being here and bye.

I am Carol S Turka and Rachel is so GDF able.

Yeah.

And we'll see you next time.

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I am actually getting ready to record the next episode of Pluribus with the ladies here on Saturday.

Yeah, it's my dad's birthday.

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