Effervescent Anthrax

Something about sad lesbians and determined latinos, man...

Spoilers for Pluribus, but you should seriously watch the show. I said it before and I'm saying it again. Fuck you pirate it somewhere

-All the people who said that this show is moving slowly have never felt lonely a day in their lives. This is not a show about an alien hive mind, this is a show about the soul-shattering weight of loneliness. It's long because being lonely grows agonizing exponentially over time. Also, grow the fuck up.

-Manousos is one of the best, most compelling characters Vince Gilligan has ever written. Seriously, up there with Walter White and Saul Goodman. His aspirations are no less than saving the world, but onward he persists. Interested to see what happens with him.

-Cinematography/camerawork is pretty great. Always very cold and clinical, which helps the feel of the show, as well as the story

-I want to write something about the work of Vince Gilligan as a whole (i was halfway through this sentence when i found out that rob reiner might be fucking dead?), cause all of his tv shows share similarities that I can't totally articulate. The best I can put it is that he's really good at stringing gimmicks together, one after another, in such a way that you can never really process that they're gimmicks. Which is maybe what a good tv show is? Not entirely sure

-Rhea Seahorn is a good actor. She really sells the reveals of the dishes at the restaurant, making sure it doesn't feel like bland exposition and that she really is talking to herself. And there are also a billion other moments where I was like "oh she's good."

-One of my favorite things about this show is the moral ambiguity. Yeah, no one was aware they were joining the hive, but don't they seem so much happier? Yeah, people died in the process, but there's a real chance that they figure out this food thing and reproduce endlessly, right? Yeah, Carol feels lonely, but does that mean she gets to kill eleven million people? Not saying I agree with these beliefs, I'm just saying... they're there in the back of your mind, right? You're always thinking about them. How righteous is Carol's mission? Is Manousos'?

(Who up plurring they one bussy)

Spoilers for Pluribus but you should really just watch the show

-Carol Sturka is such a fucking tragic character and one of the greatest depictions of loneliness I've ever seen on camera. You're surrounded by endless amounts of people who nominally want nothing more than to make you feel better, but not a single one can actually connect with or understand you. They're all on a different wavelength than you, understanding things that you just can't, and want nothing more than to force you to be like them.

-They should have more fun with acting stuff. I get that it's a TV show with a limited budget and production time, but I would really try to get acting, movement, dialect, and accent coaches to come in to clamp down on any amount of individuality with movement, line delivery, mannerisms, etc. in all actors playing The Hive.

-I would lean more into the erotica stuff. The Hive seems to have a vague understanding of how eroticism and sexuality work, but not what makes something sexy. Sending Zosia, Carol's ideal woman, as a first point of contact was fucked. More stuff like that would be cool.

-Why is The Hive so stupid? Even if they hadn't absorbed millions of mental health professionals, they literally have billions of lives' worth of lived experience, and also have every mind on the planet to dedicate to working out how best to appease Carol. Are they not dedicating that much brainpower to it? Did the alien thing change how they view social cues and social behaviors? (Unrelated: do thoughts travel faster than light? Theoretically, there should be a fraction of a second's delay as thoughts travel from Argentina to China)

-I know I'm criticizing it but I really do think this is a great show. A weaker writer would have made this about something specific and tried to ham-fist a moral, or make this show "about" something. It's up there with One Battle After Another with its searing topicality, but while OBAA started with the particular to work out to the universal, this starts with the universal and then gets to the particular. Vince Gilligan is a smart guy, I'm excited to see what's gonna happen next.

-If you think this series is slow you are a child. Go watch family guy on snapchat highlights and see if you feel better after your mom makes your ham sandwich for dinner.

DFW: He's the fucking PRESIDENT?

Me: -and they know it's stupid and substanceless and has no actual benefit for their soul, but they'll proudly watch it anyway!