you Hello Carol, welcome to ePluribus Unum, your favorite podcast on your favorite show Pluribus.

Today we will be going over episode 9, The Girl or the World.

Before we do that, I want to say hello to Josh.

Josh, how are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good over here.

Now, you just watched this and you're still in shock right now, I think.

Am I right?

In more ways than one, I think, yeah.

Well, good.

I think that's fantastic.

Let's hit some of our housekeeping real quick.

Of course, we would love for anyone and everyone that's listening to jump onto our Discord.

Let's have a little bit of discourse.

Let's talk about these episodes.

Let's talk about our theories.

And now we can have a discussion about the season as a whole.

Secondly, we definitely want to encourage you to listen to our other podcast, Dad, You're Wrong, where a Gen X Dad and Millennial Son discuss film philosophy and everything in between.

If you appreciate our podcast E Pluribus Unum, we have a feeling you'll probably like it.

Dad, you're wrong.

So please be sure to check that out.

And finally, I think we're going to do a 10th episode of E Pluribus Unum for a whole show.

Review and we may perhaps have a special guest come on to that show Josh.

What what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I would love to do a sort of a recap season one episode and just kind of give our thoughts on the season as a whole and Get some opinions from a guest star or two.

I think that'll be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I totally agree with you.

Well, that being said, we have a pretty heavy -duty and in -depth episode that we need to review today.

This is the final episode of season one, episode nine, entitled The Girl or the World.

Josh, what are your overall thoughts on this episode?

To quote a meme, a famous old meme, my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

No, I didn't feel that bad about it, but I would say that I do have a pretty solid air of disappointment around this episode.

And I would say as well that it's probably my least favorite episode of this first season.

Well, now I'm starting to feel like this is an episode of Dad, You're Wrong.

I think it was an excellent episode.

I think it delivered exactly what I had anticipated for the show and where we were going to go.

That's not to say I don't have a little bit of disappointment, but I think maybe in a different way.

And I'm wondering, as we have the conversation about the episode, if either of us change our minds or alter our way of thinking here.

Well, with that being said, I think it's well worth us just jumping right into this bad boy.

And we're taking a look at Pluribus, episode nine.

the girl or the world, and the very first thing that we see is a really gorgeous blue sky and another jet flying through the sky here.

Yeah, I enjoyed this cold open quite a bit as we pick up with Kusa Mayu in Peru.

As this plane's coming in, she asks, is that it?

And I think by that point, we sort of knew what was going down in this scene.

But the way they lay it out is so unnerving.

He has done such a good job of basically walking this line where it can either be really unnerving or it can be very comforting.

Isn't that weird?

What a weird dichotomy that we have here.

And she confesses she's been sweeping this patch of dirt for the last half hour.

So she's obviously been thinking about this quite a bit and Again, another actor whose face gives us so much without having to say a single word.

The actor's name is Darinka Arones, who plays Kusumayu.

And she does such a great job.

She has such an emotive face.

And her family are saying, are you nervous?

And she's, no, I'm not nervous.

I'm excited.

The next shot, we see a tall man.

meet an airplane come in on a landing strip and as they open the door we see this fairly decent sized gray box that the person on the plane hands to this tall Peruvian man we would assume and he takes the box and puts it into the back of this coyote.

He jumps in to travel down this dirt road where we assume he's probably headed to Kusumayu's village.

You have these huts, you have a corral with animals, you have a fire going, you have them singing.

It seems very much like a normal, natural situation here.

And we find out rather quickly that it actually isn't.

As we watch the people in the village, we can see that they're tending to the fire, making food, singing.

and they start to collect themselves into a group in the center of this small village.

She is actually sitting in the corral with several animals and she has a goat in her lap.

But what I think they're trying to show us here in this first scene is that maybe she is a little bit on the fence about joining her family and she is petting this animal, which is something that the joined wouldn't do.

even though they do ask her about her feelings and her thoughts, but they always try to say everything will be fine, but won't hurt, and we just want you to be happy as they always do.

I want to note though that one of her relatives, she has an unnerving smirk on her face.

Yeah.

even more so especially when Kusumayu isn't looking at her directly.

And it gives me that creepy feeling of how much of an act this is or how manipulative this is.

To me, it was very much the villain getting what they wanted by placating this person in the short term.

And that was the feeling that I'd gotten from there.

Their literal ritual, I heard turning.

So here's another thing I want to bring up about the scene.

We have the villagers collect themselves in the center of the village, and we essentially coax her out of the corral.

And she shuts the corral, by the way.

Behind her, everyone is dressed in reds and blues and purples.

And there is a, I'm gonna call it the rainbow effect throughout this episode, but we do get a lot of colors throughout the spectrum through the entire episode.

This episode isn't yellow, blue, red.

It's all of those things, but I think it's important when we apply those colors to each character.

Her elder relative there is wearing a red top and a purple skirt.

And as we know, blue and red make purple.

And I believe in your color theory that red, as we saw in the last episode, indicates danger.

I would say or something along those lines, something that's not good.

It's a color that Vince has used before in his series to indicate violence or other highly negative things.

And when you mix red and blue and when you say that blue essentially could be associated with the joint, that you get that purple.

And I believe in my mind that signifies the conflict that we have with the immune and the joined.

And I think it further signifies the conflict that Kusumayu has in her decision to become joined.

She's still a little conflicted by it.

You don't ask these questions if you're excited.

You just do the do.

As the villagers again come to the center of the village, they also lay down a blanket right behind her.

They know how this thing is going to play out.

And the man arrives with the gray case and we have a silver cylinder inside and when they crack it open they put it toward her face and there's a fog that comes out and we understand that she needs to inhale this fog in order to instigate the change into becoming one of the joined.

She takes a deep inhalation and her eyes roll back in the back of her head and she begins to seize and if you notice in this scene the moment that her eyes roll back into the back of her head everyone stops singing.

The performance of the ritual stops entirely once she's begun to turn How much does that tell us about the joined again about their performative nature that they have now literally?

recreated her village for her only Including all the singing and the ritualistic behavior and the food and the animals Just to get to the point to where they can get her to turn and the moment that that begins to happen the facade falls away in the same way she falls away into this blanket and goes into the seizure.

Once she has completed the seizure, another one of the most unnerving scenes in this episode, she gets the joined smile, and boy howdy, this is a character we haven't really seen smile, and now she has an all -knowing smile, and instantly I was terrified.

We pick up with Carol and Zosia here as they're using some sort of satellite feed to track Manousos as he's coming in in his ambulance and it gives that same kind of slightly comedic but also slightly sinister vibe to it.

We see Manousos pull up to Carol's cul -de -sac and again we have another slightly comedic scene where he's adjusting himself and tucking in his shirt and He doesn't go up to the door and knock on the door or ring the doorbell or anything like that.

He stays outside and he just honks on the horn instead.

And I thought that was pretty funny and kind of part and parcel for Manusso's character here.

So Manusso honks his horn and we get a really cool almost like Wild West standoff as Carol comes out and we see these two characters meet each other for the first time.

There's a really great pulled back establishing shot and it really exemplifies the gap between them, right?

And we're going to see a gap between these two characters throughout this episode.

We get a really great scene of them attempting to speak each other's languages.

and they don't seem to meet in the middle while they're initially having their conversation, which I thought really shows where their relationship is going throughout this episode.

I was also saying it illustrates how stubborn and hard -headed both of them are.

We've watched them individually as stubborn, hard -headed people.

We're like, yeah, that's great.

And now you put two stubborn, hard -headed people in the same cul -de -sac together and we get a completely different experience.

We really do.

Yeah and to quite a bit of comedic effect Manusos delivers his mantra.

I am Manusos Oviedo I am not one of them.

I wish to save the world and Carol doesn't take that as I thought she might initially but she does decide to go back in and grab her cell phone and she comes out and she wants to utilize a translation app, but Manusos definitely does not like the fact that Carol is utilizing her phone.

Oh, he's completely put off by it.

I do want to note as well the number on the ambulance is 103, which is a prime number and indivisible number with one of our indivisible characters that we have here.

Yeah, when she breaks out the phone and tries to use it as a translation device Manusos snatches it out of her hand and exclaims that they can hear us and they can hear our plan and they fumble back and forth until Manusos comes up with the brilliant idea apparently of dropping the phone into the sewer grate there in front of Carol's house what's funny again about the scene is that the app is still working so as they argue the app is continuing to translate And as Manousos has to retrieve it from the sewer grate, it's continuing to translate and it frustrates the both of them as it continues to simply just do its job.

I love that so much as they are arguing over the sewer grate and the app continues to translate their argument to them back and forth.

And of course, Carol, in her Carol ways, tells him to fuck right off and she storms back into the house.

You can see Manousos is disappointed at this point and he wants to make amends.

He'd made this arduous journey to get here.

He doesn't want to fail because of a cell phone.

I remember seeing the bumper for This segment that they used in the advertisement.

It's so funny He has a childlike reaction when he pulls it out of the great like he's just won a prize from a game at the fair and the next shot we see is the fish -eye lens of the viewer in the door and He is recording a message into the phone essentially telling her Okay, you've won.

We're not gonna go into the ambulance and speak, and I won't have my machete, but I'm not coming inside.

I would rather meet you out in the desert behind your house, and I will have my umbrella.

And her reaction to the recording of him having his umbrella was comedic shock at its best.

And he brings out a pink umbrella.

And the reason he brings out the umbrella is because he believes that they are utilizing satellites to spy on them, which they most certainly are.

He's completely right in this scene.

Well, they've told him as much, right?

They said, if you ever need anything, just wave to the sky and we're there.

And they have a conversation under the pink umbrella that is vital to every single episode in this show.

I absolutely love that Menousos refers to the joined as...

these weirdos.

I think that's such an apt way and such a menusos way to approach the hive mind.

Yeah, he insists that they are able to read lips from space.

And he's not wrong.

You mentioned before about how they aren't omnipotent.

They aren't everywhere.

So we should be able to get away with a handful of conversations without them absolutely knowing what we're talking about.

I agree with you 100%.

I'm deeply considering calling them weirdos from this point on rather than the joined.

I believe my comment from our last episode was, I'm ready for you to bounce out of the house so I can get back to my whiteboard and continue to theorize about your weird ass.

So I do agree with Menusos 110%.

What we discover is Menusos...

has a little bit of a different perspective on the joint than Carol does.

And we also discover, or I did in this instance, that Carol actually has a different perspective on the joint than I believe she had.

But he states that if they can't fix them, they are better off dead.

And Carol insists that they are still human, and she has to reiterate, they are not evil.

They won't even...

hurt an ant.

And Manusos says something very interesting.

He says, and isn't it evil to value a man the same as an ant?

Amazing line.

Love that.

Great line from Manusos.

I don't know if I necessarily agree with it, but it definitely helps to further define his perspective.

And Carol ends up using the same words that were used against her in episode two toward Manuso.

She says, have you even tried talking to them?

You might learn a thing or two.

They can't lie.

Did you know that?

And he says, these are the same weirdos that abandoned you, right?

And she says, yep, for 40 days.

He's very good at his questions.

And we find out later how good he is at his questions.

But he asks now, why did they come back?

And Carol doesn't answer him.

She actually lies to him and says, I don't know.

And again, for me, another instance where we find that Carol is siding with the joined or with her relationship with the joined by lying and saying, I don't know.

I think it also indicates her extreme sense of guilt about her relationship with the joint by lying about this.

And then she changes the subject as the joint does.

And she says, why can't they pick an apple?

She wants to change the subject very quickly because she doesn't want to talk about her intimacy with the joint.

And she finally gets frustrated and she goes, this is el stupido.

and she proceeds to go inside.

And this leads us to our next moment where finally Menousos has caved and he's inside the house, but he's also very adamant about searching the house for any type of surveillance.

Yeah, and we have another great interaction between Menousos and Carol as he's searching for bugs and he begins snapping his fingers at her.

And of course, we know Carol by now.

That's not gonna work.

I'm laughing just even thinking about that scene because it's so funny.

I think we all hoped that when they came together that we were going to get our super team, but it's very much not that way.

And it's much more realistic when you have two stubborn people meeting for the first time.

As he's searching throughout the house, another comedic scene, she asks, do you think they bugged me?

And he said, Insects?

What do insects have to do with this?

Another great use of language, of course, in this show.

But he continues searching and he gets to her liquor cabinet.

And boy, I wish I stayed at Carol's house because she is stocked up, I tell you.

But he does indeed find a little device and it was shot in such a fantastic way because a bottle was obstructing it initially and he slightly adjusts that bottle and the device comes into view and I just love, love, love how that was shot.

Because not only do you see the bottle, the device and Manusos, but you also see Carol in the background as well.

Again, wonderful cinematography here.

And he thinks he's found his prey here.

He thinks he's found that listening device and he gives it to Carol.

And what does she do instantly?

She falls back on her crutch of the weirdos, the joined, and she instantly calls Zosia.

Of course we find out it was actually Helen all along.

This is something that we have talked about throughout many episodes, the freezing of Carol's eggs, all the way back to that cold open where they were literally in a cold hotel.

I felt like they needed to reiterate that for the big reveal later.

I don't think it was much of a reveal, but we do find out that it was not a bug after all, and that it was placed by Helen.

But Carol leaves.

Manusos in the desert and walks through her backyard.

We see Manusos sneak a peek at Helen's grave.

So it's another piece of evidence that he's picking up, but he's also very smart.

He doesn't bring things up in the moment.

He holds onto them to bring them up later and use them to the best of their ability.

And when he's rummaging through her house, trying to find surveillance, He blocks her from going to the bar at one moment, and she says, I don't know how guests behave in Paraguay, but here in Albuquerque, when you cock -block someone from their booze, it's un grande mistakeo.

And I was like, goodness gracious, Carol.

But this scene is important because it shows...

Apparently, Carol has had a problem with drinking for a long period of her life and so much so her partner felt she needed to have a sensor in the liquor cabinet to determine how often the liquor cabinet was being opened when they were trying to harvest her eggs.

It's another instance where we see Helen monitoring and managing Carol's life prior.

to the joining and these little things sneak up on Carol after Helen's death here and then they definitely haunt her and once they get to a certain point in the conversation she simply turns to Manusos and she says I'm tired we can save the world manana and she snaps at him and points to the door and he very clearly gets it he smiles a little bit He puts his head down, and then he very swiftly walks out the front door.

And it shows, in my opinion, respect, because the moment earlier when he snapped at her, she says, I don't speak snap.

And I really like that, because snapping has always been a thing of respect in my life, that if anybody ever behaved that way, even to a child.

highly, highly disrespectful.

There's no reason to behave that way.

You can communicate, and he very clearly does.

He turns on the charm, he goes over to her, he very politely asks her, may I have the phone, please, and he smiles.

And it's a little bit much, but it shows that he is...

capable of communicating in a respectful way and that he's also willing to do so.

He's also a very task oriented character.

It seems like he's very much ready right now to get into the nitty gritty and how do we solve this problem.

And the Carol that we're experiencing right now is absolutely not.

She is very comfortable in her honeymoon mode with Zosia.

So many of the audience members were saying, I can't stand Carol.

Carol is so annoying.

I never thought that throughout the series.

I was always on the side of Carol and I enjoyed how she approached the world, even though it was from a bit of a curmudgeon.

Maybe we're just two curmudgeons over here recording this podcast.

I identified with Carol so much, right?

That's hilarious.

But this episode, this is the one where I was like, I do not like Carol in this moment.

I do not like what Carol has become now.

And I think that is probably a bit purposeful, but this first scene with Manusos was the beginning of sort of my worries about Carol.

In our last podcast, I mentioned how I had underestimated Carol time and time again, but we find out at the end of the last episode, they did win that charm offensive.

And Carol has bought into these weirdos.

And that's where my first disappointment with Carol had finally, finally come.

After they have their conversation about the sensor found in the liquor cabinet, Manousos asks her, who are you speaking to on the phone?

And she says, oh, the others, of course, who else would I be talking to?

She even says at the end of the phone call was Zosia.

I'll call you back later.

Yeah.

It also shows how much closer.

she and Zosia have become and her perspective on the relationship that she has specifically with her Zosia.

She takes Manousos next door over to the Wilson's house and lets him know that the house is fully stocked.

You have bed sheets.

You have towels.

You're ready to go.

And what do we get here?

We get a classic Manousos.

We get a, you don't own this house.

I don't own this house.

This is someone else's house.

I will not stay here.

And then she says, talk to me about that ambulance that you have outside.

And by the way, you're welcome.

Yeah, it shows some of the compromises that Manousos has made.

The entire episode up to this point has been Manousos making compromises with Carol in particular, just to achieve his goal.

He still has his end goal in mind and seemingly Carol has lost her end goal.

She's really drinking the weirdos Kool -Aid.

I really like saying the weirdos instead of the joint.

I'm fully bought into that.

And she has a really great carol line, a little carol -ism, if you will.

My vodka is getting warm.

You're welcome.

And she also mentions, if they return, I will get them back.

Wouldn't that be a good problem to have?

Yeah.

And the next cut scene we have is...

Once again, Carol passed out on the couch.

She has half a drink in her hand, and she's awakened when she drops that drink.

I want to point out that we have a loop playing in the background of the DVD menu of Golden Girls, just to remind everyone once again what a huge fan Carol and I are of Golden Girls.

And I thought that was pretty funny.

That's great.

I love that.

And what's funny is it's just the first refrain of the song just repeated over and over again.

What we saw after she exited the Wilson's house is that Manousos picks up the phone and doesn't just ask for one of the joint to come over and visit him.

He says specifically, I would like Zosia to come over and visit me.

And this is where Carol looks out the window and sees Zosia's blue car parked in front of Manny's house.

and she runs directly over there and bursts in through the front door.

And again, Ray and her facial expressions, we see this look of surprise on her face, but not shock, just almost pleasant surprise that it's Zosia and Manny sitting on the couch, seemingly having a innocuous conversation.

I thought this was so important.

This is the first time.

Menousos throughout the entire season has ever sat down and talked with one of the weirdos.

And it's not from a station of weakness.

It's not from a position of weakness.

He would like to have as much information so that they can continue what he sees as their plan at this moment.

Carol essentially commands Zosia to return to the house.

And we returned back with Carol and Zosia and Carol is having quite the fit.

And again, this just is the next step for me and my disappointment in Carol.

She has some really fantastic lines, really possessive lines.

When she's talking to Zosia in this moment, she says things like, he's just a stranger.

You're my chaperone.

You're mine.

And Zosia tries to reason with her and saying, Listen, we love him as much as we love you.

And that hurts Carol to her core.

That's the first little rupture that we see in this relationship.

And she says, how, how can you love this stranger as much as you love me?

Because she's become so possessive over Zosia to the point where she's clouded herself in the fact that she truly believes that.

She has this relationship with Zosia.

It shows the depth of her delusion, right?

We've talked before about Lakshmi's delusion with her family.

We've talked about Kumba's delusion with his fantasies.

And now we have a carol who began as the anti -hero or hero, the one against the horde, the yellow jacket against the bees.

And we thought very strongly about that.

And we didn't think there...

would be anything that they could offer her that would make her change her mind about who and what they are, until we have the pirate queen come in here.

This is another one of the tremendous indications that Carol has sold out to the joint.

She is so deluded, she honestly believes she's in a real relationship with Zosia, and that Zosia is quote unquote hers.

And when Zosia says no, We love him equally and she says no you can't he's a stranger you and I have we you're mine you're my chaperone mine and Again it very much like a child mine mine mine Yeah, I feel the same disappointment that you might be talking about, but I certainly don't have disappointment in the episode, because the arc is still there.

And I think it is as strong an episode as any other, but the disappointment most certainly is in, we didn't think that Carol would drink the Kool -Aid and fall for the ruse of the joint.

And as she pulls Zosia out of where Manny is staying, we get to see on Manuso's face our feelings toward Carol in this moment.

And he's looking at her with...

disappointment and disgust.

You're sleeping with the enemy and I know it and I'm disappointed and I'm disgusted.

And that's really great.

I'm glad you picked up on that because that's fantastic.

When you go back to look at the episode look at his face because it's very much there And I'm not going to say that it colors his view of Carol from this point on it doesn't I don't think he's naturally a judgy person anyway.

He's a religious man He's an honorable man seemingly from what we've seen thus far Obviously the joint know more about him than we do and they are quite put off by him So we need to find out some more about his past to have a better understanding, but he I don't think holds it against her later, but in that moment in the discovering that she has been intimate with the joint, he is both disappointed and disgusted.

And as Carol rips Zosia out of Manny's house, Manny immediately picks up the phone and says this.

How sinister is this on his part?

Send me another one.

And I mean, not another person, may I speak to someone?

It's a thing, send me another one.

And I'm like, ooh, that adds that creep factor to it.

And when they get back home, she starts to grill Zosia about what exactly did you tell Manny.

As Carol is grilling Zosia, you can see the headlights of the second.

joined, pull up next door as they flash through the shades of Carol's house.

And Zosia says, well, he's very good with his questions and you know us, we're compelled to be honest with him.

And she goes, no, you're compelled to be honest with me.

So again, another pin to drop in the cup of disappointment where Carol truly believed that this was a unique relationship she had with Zosia and that the joint had changed in some strange way that allowed them to have this unique little relationship when in actuality Zosia probably had a very similar relationship like this with Kumba when she was with him and any of the other joint would with anyone else in the same way.

Carol.

Wake up.

They're performative.

They're not doing this on their behalf because they want to.

They're doing it for you.

They're doing it for Carol so that she feels all the things that she wants to and needs to feel.

And this is just another crack in that facade of the lie that she's been telling herself over the last 12 to 14 days with Zosia.

Now we have the guilt and the things she didn't want to have come out about her relationship with the joint.

And I think that should be also telling to her, you shouldn't feel this guilt.

You should be more like Kumbha and be like, no, I love it.

I revel in it.

I love being with these people.

But instead she has a tremendous amount of guilt there.

And I think that's her subconscious telling her it's wrong to try and have this fake relationship with Zosia.

And this pulls us perfectly into The next sequence as Zosia gets up and calmly lays down on the ground and says something is about to happen.

And we discover later that she says, he did warn us beforehand.

So therefore Zosia knew.

And it takes Carol a moment to sort of figure out what's going on.

She's like, I didn't do anything.

And then she realizes, oh no.

but she does run back over to Manny's temporary home and infiltrates what might be causing the joint to have another seizure.

We find Manusos here with Rick and he's essentially experimenting with them and we have one of our theories confirmed finally and I was so happy about that.

you know, E.

Pluribus Unum called that one pretty hard.

I'm going to say Josh nailed it.

That's what I'm going to say.

Oh, okay.

I'll take the credit.

I'll take it.

Carol comes in and she is obviously distraught by what has happened with Zosia.

And she even says, you don't know how many people you just killed because she has no idea that he gave them any sort of warning.

but he runs out back to his ambulance and he opens up his backpack and pulls out the radio then he has in there and he turns it to 8 .613.

We hear that there is very much something going on on that frequency now.

I think we have it confirmed that specific frequency is likely what they're using to communicate.

That's likely the psychic glue that holds them all together.

And I think that's going to be a pretty big weapon for our protagonist as we move on into season two here.

But as he comes back in, we find that the seizures across the weirdos has essentially ceased and Now, in another fantastic comedic portion, and this is one not only me but my partner laughed out loud at, as Minuso sees him coming out of these seizures, he bends over the couch that Rick is laying on and just screams right into his face.

Yeah, you're adding comedy to a situation that's highly tense and intense and...

I honestly believe that because Carol is so deluded in this moment.

She can't see what he's trying to do I would think that the Carol even from the previous episode would see oh you're trying something you're trying to snap them out of it and it reminded me of my theory from the last episode that Could it possibly be Carol's love that would bring a character out of the joined and back to their individual state?

And now we have Manny experimenting in a way to say, is it this signal?

Can I infiltrate this signal in a way to get them maybe off of the signal and bring them back?

And you can hear him.

Try to be so compelling in Rick's ear to come back.

You know that this is the right thing.

I know that you're in there.

Come back.

It's almost like you're speaking to a person who's in a coma and you're just trying to convince them to return to the conscious world and he's doing his very best and you can clearly see the 8 .613 and there is some sort of sound or signal or almost a voice coming across and I was hoping now, because I'd mentioned in an earlier episode of E Pluribus Unum, I want to see someone turned from the joined to being immune.

And what do I get instead?

I think, you know, Vince is rubbing this in my face a little bit.

We get someone who was immune, who is now joined in the very opening sequence.

And I was hoping to get that little bit of a twist here with Rick.

But, you know, Carol has has other thoughts.

She does indeed.

We see that Carol did not go back for Zosia.

She went back for the shotgun.

You have him crouched over Rick, trying to compel him to come back, and you just get this huge shotgun blast, and you get this great angled shot of Carol holding the shotgun, re -cocking it, and saying, back away, now.

And it was like she was in an action film.

I was like, yeah, let's go.

But once again, she's kind of fighting for the wrong side here.

She's so deluded and blind, frankly, she can't see what he's trying to do.

But she's not clearly seeing that he is trying to experiment with Rick to see if he can't get him to turn.

And he's not doing it violently.

He's not injecting him with anything.

He's not torturing him.

He just...

scared him significantly, causing him to seize.

He was even able to bring him out of his seizure by bringing the ham radio and playing the frequency from 8 .613.

And it was him yelling back in Rick's face that brought Rick back into...

That catatonic state or that seizure state and I was fully ready for Rick to come back and in fact I was dreaming of alternate universe where it's actually Larry Lying on the couch there and we would actually get Larry back So another shout out to my true favorite character Larry here But after she fires off the shotgun and tells him to stop we get a quick break where she goes back to Visit Zosia and bring her out of her stupor.

She lets her sit off and Carol says can I get anything for you and she says yeah can I have some water and I want to think that water is also quite important in this show because you can see just how exhausted Zosia is from experiencing that seizure and I want to think there might be something else going on in that because she also sort of scarfs down the water and Carol has to tell her slow down it's okay.

Want to think water has something to do with it.

I can't say for sure, but I do want to throw that in there and Zosia also when she awakens from her stupor, she doesn't say can I have some water?

She said could we have some water so she's fully back into the joined against my theory of the more that we dig into her individuality and the more that Carol applies love to Zosia that the real Zosia could and would come back to us as an individual, but she does say, I will be fine.

And we hear the phone ring in the background and she says, are you going to answer that?

And she goes, we both know who that is.

And eventually once she gets Zosia settled, she does pick up the phone and she's like, uh -huh.

Yeah.

Um, well, it wasn't me this time and screw you too, Lakshmi.

and hangs up the phone.

So we get to have a little Lakshmi joke dropped in here before we conclude this season.

As our resident Lakshmi lover, I wish we got to see a little bit more, honestly, of Lakshmi, maybe see her in person.

As soon as the phone rang, we all knew who was calling over there.

Zosia tells Carol, you know what we have to do, right?

And we all know.

what they have to do at this point.

They have to flee from Manusos because he is utilizing their weakness against them.

So that's the only thing that they really can do at this point.

And Zosha even asked Carol here, what have you done with Manusos?

Where's Manusos?

And Carol says something like, Oh, don't worry about him.

He's in a, he's in a safe space for right now.

Then we find Manusos as she opens up the trunk to her Rolls Royce.

is in there.

Not only is he sitting in the trunk here, he's got his arms crossed as if he is a disappointed parent scolding his child or something like that.

I absolutely adored that.

Another scene where I laughed out loud.

She does explain to him that, well, now you've done it, so to speak.

The joint have now left the whole of Albuquerque.

All of the population has left.

And he says, so what?

It was worth it.

Now I know much more.

You were right.

I think there is a way to put things back in their place.

Now the work begins.

Again, vital, few words here, but vital to the episode and vital to the season as a whole.

Fantastic line from Menusos as the scene ends and we move into act three and Carol is seemingly hopping in her Rolls Royce to go and join.

the joined, joined the weirdos.

And before she closes the door, he says, do you want to save the world or get the girl?

And Carol closes the door and drives away.

That leads us to the title of our episode, but it also shows how pertinent that line is to the series as a whole.

He sees that she has fallen for The ways of the join he sees that she's not the person that he saw in that video 30 plus days earlier and he understands it also You do have a very clear choice here Do you want to save the world or do you want to get the girl?

Because he can see how passionate she is about our relationship with Zosia She still ignores him.

She gets in the car.

She drives away.

And in the background, you even see that trail of tail lights as the joined are leaving Albuquerque.

Yeah.

So this leads us pretty well into act three.

I guess you can call it the honeymoon.

This is again, I think where my disappointment in Carol really settled in.

Um, there is a, a really fantastic.

part at the beginning that I loved though.

I'll say this.

Zosia's in the, in a pool swimming in some scenic location and Carol is reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin.

This is such a fantastic sci -fi novel.

It was immaculate to me when I initially read it and it goes in so well with this show, not only with how the society is established within the Left Hand of Darkness, but also the gender fluidity.

And it just shows how Ursula Le Guin is truly decades ahead of her time.

So I truly, truly adored that portion.

The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969.

It is a novel about a human ambassador's complicated relationship with a gender fluid alien species.

and Carol is seeking literary justification for her interspecies romance with Zosia.

I could see that being a very comforting read, I think, for Carol in this time.

But we get pretty much a montage really of Carol and Zosia having this wonderful honeymoon where they're on beaches, they're going to ski resorts and a really great little subtle portion here when they hop off of the ski lift and it just ceases to move at that point.

It's really only there for them.

It's not only them, it's really only there for Carol.

You know, one visual detail I want to point out in this montage scene, they do exit that ski lift and when they do, they do a close up on Zosia's ski boots and they are locked together.

That is essentially what we're seeing with Zosia and Carol as they go on this honeymoon.

And as you mentioned before, we do have the same type of color structure we saw in the cold open.

In fact, we have Zosia wearing a red jacket and wearing blue pants, red and blue, purple.

We see Carol wearing red and blue and later on we even see the color of her socks are blue that go into sort of a pink as we had seen before with Kusumayu falling back onto the pink blanket and then the pink umbrella.

that Menousos and Carol use in the desert.

So I think what both purple and pink may signify on the show here is the blending of either the faction against the joined and the trepidation and doubt they have about that relationship, and then also the mixing of the immune and the joined, the red.

and the blue making that purple and we have that blend.

But what's significant is this.

We still have Zosia with a red jacket and blue pants.

We still have Carol draped and.

of a blue with the rainbow sock.

So we don't have the full blend into a solid purple where she has fully been taken into the joint.

And I think this scene here at the chalet really clearly illustrates that and really starts to ramp things up.

And this is where my disappointment started to wane both with her diluted relationship that she has with this person Zosia and we have a very important conversation between Carol and Zosia not just about the implications of their relationship but the nature of the relationship and how this pulls the scales away from Carol's eyes and the truth is revealed that she has diluted herself.

And now she finds herself in the true reality and the true nature of the relationship that she has with Zosia and the joint.

And she's truly bought in to these weirdos.

She has seemingly almost gone the way of Kumba and I had taken in that happiness, but of course things take quite a turn as this conversation continues.

But man, the first thing that I thought of when this conversation happened was, wow, did we nail it on our episode where she goes to Las Vegas?

We are literally talking about how Kumba utilizes the hive mind as his dopamine inducer.

So much of this episode was calling out a lot of our theories that were correct in the end, and I was incredibly happy about that.

But this conversation is fantastic.

Absolutely.

I would love to take just a half a step back for just a moment.

We also get further insight into Carol herself as a person.

We get to see her bad side.

Can I say that?

And as much as people may have not appreciated her view on life before this, what we see in this episode is the petulant child.

We see the spoiled person.

We see the person who lies to themselves.

We see the person who compromises themselves and compromises their, I don't want to say morals, but their thought process in the world that they're standing in.

I think the reason that the montage is so important is because it lands on her sitting on the couch, seemingly in utopia.

She's had this marvelous experience of traveling the world and going to these beautiful places and spending this time with a person that I believe she now loves.

And she's sitting in this chalet and guess what?

She says, man, I'm sorry.

I am just not good at feeling good.

It's not even that she's discovered this for herself in this moment She's always known this because the questions she asks as she's in this utopian Moment with her partner that she loves was there somebody before me when you were not joined she's not concerned with Zosia even or the Hive mind she's concerned with another person that had Zosia before she did jealousy and negative feelings that I haven't seen in Carol yet, but they are on full display in this episode, and I can see why that rubs people the wrong way, but I think it's vitally important that we do see the not -so -good side of Carol, and frankly, the not -so -good side of Manny as well.

We've really put him up on a pedestal, and in this episode, we can see that he can go dark, but she can't even enjoy this utopian moment with her partner.

Man, I'm sorry that I'm not...

good at just feeling good.

And then she asks specifically, like she wants to ask Google, what are those chemicals that swim in my brain that make me feel this way?

And this is a double -sided coin here, too.

She's not only asking because she wants to know, she's also helping to illustrate to the audience what could potentially be the drug inside of the joint that make them so darn happy.

and them so darn accepting of the situation because they're swimming in serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin and of course Zosia is very happy to jump into.

Fun fact.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, we're back to square one again, even after this long honeymoon.

And what does Zosia say?

And it only gets better.

And Carol says better.

You're not talking about the joining, are you?

And then she really gets nervous.

She immediately jumps from the joining to, but you said, you can't stick this giant needle in my ass and take my stem cells, right?

And it's so vital because it's another non -answer from Zosia here.

And even Carol calls it, Carol's now seeing it.

She's like, if you had an answer, you would have told me immediately.

And this becomes the most important shot in this episode, and I would hasten to say this is the most important shot in the entire series because it's the only time that it happens.

The next shot is a Wes Anderson, fully blocked, clear, straight, center shot of Carol's face, of Ray Seehorn's face.

She's looking down, she looks up, directly into the camera, and she says, My eggs.

The ones I froze with Helen.

You have them, don't you?

What a gut punch.

My heart just sank.

This had to happen.

This had to happen at some point where she finally has the revelation that this fantasy she's in is not real.

And here it is.

And it just hit her like a Mack truck.

And Zosia says, we do.

So again, here's a excellent example of how duplicitous and ignorant and evangelical that the joint are that behind her back, they would take her eggs and use them.

You have to destroy them essentially to create these stem cells.

And she talks about how difficult it is, but they're willing to do that all the while, while Zosia is courting her.

and taking her around the world.

It was simultaneously disgusting and shocking and irritating, but then it also, for me, fully washed away the disappointment I had in Carol because now our Carol is back.

On initial watch, the first half of the conversation I truly adored.

I loved it.

I loved it.

I loved it.

And then I think when it came to the quote unquote Wes Anderson shot where she stares into the camera, that was where it lost me a little bit.

I thought it was so on the nose, but quite honestly, hearing you talk about it made me like it more.

So I think, yeah, you're right at the beginning of our episode here.

I am coming around a little bit to lessen my disappointment a little bit.

I thought it was the most on the nose that this series has been up until this episode.

But now, hearing you talking about it, I think it has a point, right?

Yeah, I mean, as Amy pointed out in the cold, cold open, where we first learn about her eggs being frozen, it wasn't a throwaway line.

There are no throwaway lines in this series.

And it definitely called back.

And you're right, as far as the on the nose stuff.

But perhaps for certain audience members, it's a really good idea that we go to the liquor cabinet.

We find that there's a device there placed by Helen because they were trying to harvest her eggs and she was concerned about her drinking, hint, hint.

And we get back here.

where it is confirmed that the joint are experimenting on her eggs.

And they also confess in this conversation that at that point, because of their stupid, and I'm gonna just call it that, stupid biological imperative, or the lie in their philosophy.

Stupido, I think, is what we're saying now.

They're not going to offer Carol the opportunity not to be joined.

She goes, how long do I have?

And Zocha confesses about a month, hopefully not more than two or three, because she's so hopeful that she wants to turn Carol.

And in fact, Kusumayu's family in the very opening sequence say, look how blue the sky is.

It's a very hopeful day.

And it just comes all the way back around.

Their hope is...

domination.

Their hope isn't joy or love or any of these other things and here's where an extremely important key line gets dropped.

Carol says, if you loved me you would not do this.

So again the the last thread of her belief in the true love that she had was Zosha I think is broken here when she says you told me you would leave me alone I told you I didn't want to do this and yet here you are doing it anyway if you loved me you would not do this and What does Zosha say she says understand we have to do this because we love you because I love you.

Oh you manipulative bee You're gonna throw that one in there, and that was it.

You could see Ray Seehorn's face and her expression just drop, and she was done in that moment.

If she could have gotten in her Rolls Royce and driven away at that moment, she totally would have, but the look on her face is beyond priceless.

She's finally realized she had bought in or been fooled by the joint and now can see past that, and she doesn't want it any longer.

The ending of that conversation is just so heart -wrenching.

If you loved me, you would not do this.

Oh my goodness, Ray, you did it again.

Oh boy.

That one hit me pretty hard.

It's tough because we needed this journey to happen, right?

We needed this Carol positioning herself with the joined and coming back to what I consider our side or the good guy's side or Manuso's side.

Well, I love it when we can change each other's minds because we do have other episodes where you'll bring something up and either I didn't catch that or you've convinced me otherwise.

I'll go back all the way to the Soylent Green issue and how we have to change our line of thinking in the way that we see things.

Honestly, I'm glad because the last thing that anybody wants to do is be nine episodes invested into a show, watch the final episode and go, oh, I am left with a bad taste in my mouth.

If this were the penultimate episode, I would be very happy with it.

But to leave us on an episode where the conclusion is Carol going back to where she's always been was a disappointment for me.

We had this series launch not with one episode, but with two.

He wanted to work really hard to lay the groundwork for This show and in fact not once but twice they speed up the release of two episodes When we take these last two episodes that in my opinion are actually married I'm going to say that episode eight and nine are one episode The first episode is the persuasive episode it is the tantalizing episode it is the one where we've dangled enough carrots in front of Carol, in order to get her to come our way, and even at the very end when it seems like she might slip away, they use their final weapon, which is Zosia.

That's the first half of the episode.

The second half is the quintessential hero's story.

What does the hero first do when brought to a challenge?

They say no.

I'm not going to leave the village and slay the dragon.

This is the second half of that for Carol where she has said, you know what?

No, if Kumba can do it and Lakshmi can do it and I can find comfort in it, whether playing golf alone or having what could seem to be a real relationship with this person, Zosia, then I'm going to do that.

And why not?

you know prior to that she was abused where she was left alone for 40 days and that punishment was so severe on her it literally brought out the worst in carol the jealousy the anger the guilt and Through that, she now discovers that the path she had taken with Zosia was the wrong path for all of the wrong reasons.

And so she needed that catharsis.

She needed, as I think you mentioned earlier, actually, she needed to go through this second version of the gauntlet in order for her to firmly land on her feet and have no doubt.

about the direction that she's going.

She can't have her mind clouded with the dreams of having a relationship with Zosia and fight the joined at the same time.

And this really solidified it when they went behind her back and stole her eggs in order to force her to become a joined, even though they said they wouldn't do either.

We're not even just talking about physical pain.

Even the family at the beginning in the cold open says we would never hurt you You are though and it doesn't have to be physical in order for it to hurt and in fact in some ways This is worse than if you would have chopped off Carol's arm You've taken her on this whirlwind of what she believed would be a really beautiful future for her and thrown it in the garbage because you were actually lying the entire time.

So I think these two episodes are actually married together as one episode.

Her full arc of her accepting the world she's in, finding solace and perhaps love and partnership, only to find out in the end that it was all fake.

And that she now has to more firmly land on her feet now without any doubt whatsoever and move forward with Manusos.

I agree with a lot of your points here.

My still biggest disappointment with this episode is I knew how it was going to end.

By the end of this episode, we got to where I wanted to be at the beginning of this episode and to leave us on Exactly where I expected us to start is the biggest disappointment for me.

And the quote unquote big reveal, I'm doubling up on the quotes here of the egg theory.

It was so foreshadowed that to have that as the big reveal to bring Carol back to our side was disappointing to me.

It was one step back and one step forward.

I'm wondering if they just wanted to use this as the episode to provide these confirmations.

I wouldn't say that it's a big reveal in any...

Way, I would say they're more big confirmations and a confirmation as you noted earlier is extremely satisfying So I think he wanted to provide that to the audience as broadly as possible So that they would be willing to wait until August of 2027 before the next episode drops But I think the very end is important, and I think the very end does end in a great way.

I had a smile on my face as we wrap this episode up.

In Act 5, 74 days, 18 hours, 30 minutes, and 22 seconds is our time stamp.

Menousos is doing research on electronics, magnetic fields, circuits, and even crystallography.

I remember watching this a particular scene and saying, I can't believe how difficult that is.

How he's reading these very intricate and in -depth English versions of these books and having to translate them as well when he can't figure out the exact words.

It just shows the dedication of Manusos.

I absolutely love that.

I want to point this out.

The lights over the living room or the main room in this house are in a circular loop like pattern, like a DNA sequence.

I love that little detail that they add into the set design is absolutely wonderful.

And he looks up specifically the term loop in the dictionary and finds that circuit or circuito is the translation.

And as he's having this realization, he sees this red helicopter.

pull up outside.

Does a helicopter pull up?

I don't know.

I don't know what they do.

They will allow it.

Yeah.

But they're carrying a large storage case, which they drop into the cul -de -sac.

And we see as the helicopter lands, it's piloted by Zosia.

And there's a whole conversation that happens just between these two actors, glances that is again, just immaculate.

The casting on this show is so far and above anything else that's out there on TV, quite honestly.

It's pitch perfect, even with any of the supporting actors, without a doubt.

It's one of the reasons I love this show so much, and one of the reasons I can talk for two hours about every episode that is only 45 minutes, is because of these performances.

And the way it's shot also, we have the intimate...

a conversation without words between Zosia and Carol.

I believe on Carol's face alone, we see sadness, longing, disappointment, betrayal, but there's still a love there.

And they just hold that pose.

When Manousos walks up to her, she's literally answering the question that he had asked when she left before her honeymoon, we'll call it.

And she very flatly says, you win, we save the world.

And I would say she was emphatic in her response.

She wasn't saying it like, well, okay, you win, we're gonna save the world.

She was like, no, you win, we save the world.

And I love that he uses her full name whenever he speaks.

Carol Sterka, what is this?

And she simply says, atom bomb, as we know, is a reference to a previous conversation we had with The Joined where they said they would literally give her an atom bomb if she asked for it.

We get this really beautiful pull away from the camera overhead, and we have a really beautiful jump into a perfect ending song for this episode.

And the screen goes black.

I think she's fully back now, and I thought it was a perfect way to end the season.

Yeah, I think it was a good way to end the season.

On first watching, I was very disappointed.

In talking with you, I'm a little less disappointed.

While there was a lot that I loved, there was just as much that I disliked in this episode.

Um, but overall I would still give this a satisfactory score.

I still adored the show and I still respect the writing and directing team for what they gave us.

And I absolutely will be there.

in season two, episode one, and hungrily, I would say.

Well, I'm gonna hold tight to my overall thoughts on the episode.

I think it's as strong as any other episode.

If not more, I believe that if we have any on -the -nose writing from this team, it's just to ensure that some members of the audience are still able to keep up with the show without falling to the wayside.

Kudos to Pluribus season one.

I think it's a marvelous show.

It holds its own against shows like Severance or any other mystery box styled show.

It holds its own against anything else Vince Gilligan has made.

And yes, that does include the Lone Gunman series that we all adore.

Quite deeply.

So thanks to Vince and his team.

Thanks to Ray Congratulations on your nomination.

I believe you're going to win as much as I love Severance and the nominations they've received I think you you have sealed the deal for me here.

We have some really wonderful Easter eggs throughout the episode We had the magician's posters in the Wilson home.

I think these allude to themes of illusion and misdirection as we had seen in the prior episode.

It was awesome to come back to that 8 .613 frequency and see that it does have some weight.

I love all of the literary references throughout the series, including the left hand of darkness here in this episode.

I think it's important that we still pay attention to the color theory that we have throughout Purovus and see how it plays out.

I love that Carol did not go full purple on us and I do think that pink is actually a transformation color.

We saw it with Kusumayu laying on the pink blanket at the beginning and we see it in the end with Carol's pink tinge socks as she discovers the truth of her relationship with Zosia.

We do have some marvelous unresolved threads here.

You know, what, if anything, Carol can do with a nuclear bomb, if it is that at all.

Whether Menusso's frequency disruption can actually restore any of our humans.

And what is the nature of the alien signal from Kepler 600 light years away?

And what is their true intent?

We have a lot of questions here left open.

The show still sits at a 98%.

Overall Rotten Tomatoes score, most everybody's loving it.

I noticed that the audience score actually kind of hovers around our favorite score from Dad, You're Wrong.

It's at 68%.

Usually if it's 64%, it's gonna be a pretty darn good movie.

So maybe we can apply that to Pluribus here.

I'm extremely excited to sit down with Josh and our special guest to record.

our 10th episode, which will be an overview of Pluribus in its entirety.

Yes, it probably will be a little bit longer than some of our episodes, but if you've been listening thus far, I think you'd probably enjoy it.

Josh, do you have any closing thoughts, words, or any housekeeping before we bounce out of here and start talking about episode 10?

I think I just want to close it by thanking everyone across the globe that has listened to E -Player Basunam.

It has been the highlight, not only of recapping this excellent TV show, but just having an audience that would join us in that.

So I want to add, please hop in our Discord and chat with us.

We would love to chat with you guys about some theories on season two as it comes up.

And if you guys have any ideas on our series recap, of episode 10, please add in on that as well.

On top of that, we'd also encourage you to listen to our Dad Your Wrong podcast where a Gen X dad and millennial son discuss film.

philosophy and everything in between.

Once again, on behalf of Josh and myself, thank you all so much for listening to E Pluribus Unum.

This has been our ninth episode covering Pluribus episode nine, the world or the girl.

We do look forward to seeing you guys next week as we go through episode 10, the full recap of Pluribus.

And we sincerely hope that everyone has a wonderful end to their year.

Thank you again.