watched this clip so many times figured i might as well make an edit out of it

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watched this clip so many times figured i might as well make an edit out of it

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Carol Sturkaâs arms. You agree
I canât get this picture out of my head. Sheâs just so damn beautiful.
I'm almost surprised to see people call Pluribus "slow", because to me it really didn't feel slow. And that's not to say that it isn't, because it's definitely not fast-paced. There's a lot of lingering shots, we spend a long time with characters in one moment, long pauses between dialogue, etc. But it felt so natural to me when watching it. Of course it would be slow, all of humanity, the whole world, basically stopped moving. And the show taking it's time with the plot really emphasizes Carol's loneliness, her grief, and eventually her conflicted feelings about it all. It's uncomfortable, even a little bit awkward to watch at times and that really makes you feel what Carol is going through.
Idk, the show taking it's time is so so important to the plot and it works so well that I barely even noticed it.
listen i understand that the belief helen put the breathalyzer in their car to protect carol is a pretty common and cozy one. but that simply is not the case, unfortunately.
the device carol has in her car is called an âignition interlock deviceâ (IID). it was put there by the state as a penalty for being charged with a DWI (new mexico statutory equivalent of a DUI). new mexico is pretty liberal with installation of IIDs, so thereâs a few ways that carol would end up with an IID installed in her car: either she had a really severe DWI within the last 5ish years where she was driving blackout drunk (BAC over .17) or she got a DWI less than a year before the show started.
while itâs nice to think that helen loved her so much and protected her from the world such that she was always safe from herself, the IID is proof that carolâs alcoholism put a noticeable strain on their life. an IID makes it even less likely that carol, a prolific day drinker, would be able to drive herself anywhere alone. she couldnât get groceries and couldnât perform tasks that involved leaving the house, and likely became more reclusive than she was before the IID was installed. they likely had to shell out for a lawyer to mitigate the charges. carol, at the age of 50, had to go to a class where they teach her about how drunk driving kills children.
and carol most certainly felt shame and regret about these things. the thing about grief in the wake of a family memberâs death is that you are hit with the pain of every time you were a burden on them. and that pain really shines through in rhea seehornâs performance; she is not betrayed or angry about the sensor on the cabinet (which actually was put there by helen), sheâs ashamed. it was one more reminder of her own flaws and the mistakes she made in a relationship with someone who is no longer alive to hear her apologies. when you grapple with grief, that shame is overwhelming. and i think a touchy feely reading of the purpose and source of the IID undercuts the ugly reality of the death of a loved one and the lingering shame that haunts us for all of the times we made mistakes we can never take back.

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you think pluribus can't get any more disturbing when you're presented with the idea of humanity becoming part of a blissful hivemind that wants the few stragglers left to join them, and then episode four smashes a barrel over your head with the realization that for carol, the entire world has suddenly reverted into what was the worst experience of her life. a conversion camp full of saccharine smiles with the sole purpose of making her assimilate. fuck
No because letâs talk about it. I was talking about the show with my dad and he said âI donât know why they made Carol gayâ and I told him âbecause she has the lived experienced of having EVERYONE try to change her and turn her into one of them.â Carol is fantastic gay representation because her queerness is essential to her character, itâs what makes her understand that whatâs happening is wrong. Vince Gilligan really ate with that
her life is in shamblesâŚ. i miss her so badly
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I fear my white knight instinct is peaking with this oneâŚ
Too many people on this site are pro hive. It is a BAD THING. People seem to think Carol is meant to be an example of a racist white lady forcing American individualism onto another culture, this is NOT THE CASE and it is a gross misreading of the text. The Hive is a painfully clear allegory for forced assimilation. They practically state it in the show, the characters might as well be looking at the audience and saying "WE ARE TALKING ABOUT ASSIMILATION AND CULTURAL GENOCIDE".
The survivors who are cool with the hive and refusing to accept that their loved ones do not exist anymore and are (for the time being) essentially dead are the people who assimilate willingly, then refuse to admit that they have done so or argue how it was a good thing.
Manousos is a Colombian man who has watched his home and culture be eradicated through assimilation, with his mother being stripped of her true personality and behaving in a sterotypical 'loving gentle mother' way that contradicts her true personality, while he actively fights against the colonization and destruction of these things. Looking at it allegorically, him accepting the hive would be like him changing his name to something like Mark and getting embarrassed and ashamed whenever anything related to his old culture is brought up.
Carol is a lesbian woman who believed she had to hide her homosexuality from her readers, else risk no one being willing to engage with her media. She literally changed the gender of the main love interest of her novels because she believed it to be the 'safe option'. She is also literally a Conversion Therapy survivor. Carol ALREADY had to actively fight to remain true to herself as a member of a marginalized group. Joining the hive would completely erase her identity as a lesbian. Looking at it allegorically, it would be the version where the conversion therapy traumatized her so badly that she ended up marrying a man and pretending to be straight for the rest of her life.
In the hive there are no lesbian's, there are no columbians, there are no real people. When Koumba says that skin colour does not matter, that is literal and all encompassing. It doesn't just not matter in the fact that there is no oppression, it doesn't matter in the sense that all culture has been eradicated. It does not exist anymore. It is essentially a full and total cultural genocide of the entire planet. When The Hive tries to comfort Carol by telling her that they are very accepting, she is really saying that when Carol is a part of Them there will be nothing to accept, because they will all be the same anyway. The Hive is the social pressure for trans people to detransition to avoid being assaulted, it is little girls being forced to play with dolls if they want cars, it is little boys being forced to play with cars when they want dolls, it is being made fun of for you accent until you learn to erase it, it is autistic people being mocked for stimming. The Hive is colonialism, it is cultural genocide, and it is conversion therapy.
I keep seeing (admittedly mostly on Reddit) posts and discussions about the morals and ethics of Carol having sex with the Hive, technically without Zosia's consent (because the Hive wants to please the survivors, to make them happy, the consent in question is a given).
Now, while it is true that Zosia as the individual was unable to give her consent because that very idea was eliminated from her psyche, I don't think enough people are focusing on how Carol is a victim just as much.
Because the Hive isolated her for forty days, aware of what prolonged social isolation does to a person, especially in a time of confusion and grief. They meticulously crafted a person they knew she would have found attractive on both a physical and emotional level and then snatched her away from Carol.
They made it so that almost every interaction Carol had with the Hive was through Zosia, toying with the perceived notion on individuality. Because even if Carol is aware of the Hive, I guess it would become harder not to think about Zosia as an individual if you almost exclusively hear from her. After all, it's not like the human mind was conceived with the capability to perfectly grasp and come to terms with what a hivemind is.
And to add the cherry on top, the Hive initiated the kiss.
So:
1. Carol has been isolated by all humanity (except DiabatĂŠ for like a day) for more than a month.
2. When the Hive returns, the first and only person Carol sees is Zosia.
3. The Hive knows how fragile Carol is at the moment and they need to distract her from asking too many questions about experimentation to turn her into one of them.
4. Through the body of an incredibly attractive woman especially made solely for Carol, the Hive intitiates the first physical contact Carol has had since the Joining.
5. Carol is very obviously (and reasonably) mentally unstable.
So, while I feel sorry for Zosia as an individual, I think largely speaking the audience has fallen into the same trap as Carol and does not see Zosia for what she is in respect to the Hive: a means to an end.
If you wanna blame someone blame the Hive, not Carol.
Carol Sturka has a tin ear for languages
I love that this is a trait they gave her. Itâs canon. Like she clearly made it through high school Spanish but her accent is atrocious. I donât think Iâve ever heard someone sound that white while uttering the phrase âchinga tu madre, cabrĂłn!â
And then she asked Zosia how to say cheers in Sanskrit. âSubhamatsu,â Zosia says, and Carol interprets this as âshoopy shoop shoop.â Anyway thatâs one more reason why I love my dork queen.

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something that throws me in the show is how the others refer to their former selves. It is sprinkled in like a little bits of grit into the narrative. And each time they seem to get it a little bit wrong in their attempts to reassure or placate Carol.
Like taking so little care, that TGI Friday gal flies the plane out. Even when Zosia explains, on the return flight, the experience of the pilots and their reassuring piloty voices, they still try to interrupt with their unsolicited helpfulness. They seem so unaware in their blissed our hiveness how discombobulating they are to Carol.
They seem to see themselves as a single brainiac entity and their bodies as at best useful meatbags at worst inconvenient as they require replenishing.
But I am still impressed how they have managed to make Zosia in the most part workable for Carol. However, I suspect so much of that is what Carol is projecting due bone-deep loneliness and to the loss of Helen. She is like a poor little duckling trying to imprint all her affection which has misdirected understandably onto the Pirate Lady.
Carol: I must have every happy chemical flowing in my bloodstream. I keep thinking it's gonna go away, but then it doesn't... And I don't want it to.... Zosia: I'm glad. And it only gets better đ Carol: đ Carol: Carol: Better? Zosia: đ Carol: You're not talking about the Joining, are you? Zosia: đŹ Me: hey quick question did all seven billion of you graduate magna cum laude from the university of fumbling bad bitches
People have been nagging me to share âthe curry storyâ on here for ages, so alright, Iâll do it. (If youâre Indian and reading this, I am so sorry).
I swear to god, everything I am about to say in this story is true.
When I was eleven, I moved to a small town in rural England and acquired a new best friend at school. Her at that point seemingly-very-normal-parents- nice suburban house, three kids, trampoline in the backyard- invited me over for dinner, and said they were making curry and rhubarb crumble.
âCurry and rhubarb crumbleâ. Never in the history of mankind have words been so untrue.
The âcurryâ consisted of, I swear I am not making this up, a vague mixture of * deep breath, oatmeal, tofu sausages, corn, tomato juice, chopped onions, raisins, âleftover broccoli leavesâ, kale, and scrambled eggs. The only spice in it was the tiniest smidgen of turmeric. All these ingredients were vaguely stirred together, undercooked, and stuck under a broiler for ten minutes.Â
They gave me a massive portion. I somehow, I still donât know how, was polite enough to finish it.
âIâm done,â I said.
âNo,â said her father. âIn this house, we LICK our plates clean.â
He did. They didnât make me hold it up and lick it like they all did, but they did make me clean the plate with a piece of bread and my fork until they were satisfied.
Desert came. The rhubarb crumble was entirely unsweetened. Not so much as a raisin. I canât remember what the crumble part was, because my mind is still haunted by the memory of being forced to eat an entire bowl of unsweetened rhubarb. You know in old Looney Tunes when characters would be tricked into eating allum and their heads would shrink? Thatâs what eating it felt like. They made me clean my bowl of that too, and wouldnât let me leave the table until I finished.Â
The next time, (I was in middle school and as yet too polite to turn down my best friendâs parents) they made âspaghetti and meatballs and saladâ. The spaghetti was utterly plain and so undercooked it was crunchy, the âmeatballsâ consisted of a single large orb of some grey material i have yet to identify, and the salad was, i shit you not, limp boiled lettuce. Crunchy spaghetti, unidentified lumpy grey stuff, and boiled lettuce.
The fascinating thing is that, while yes, these people were obviously health nuts, it was so much more than that. They were health nuts who also cooked like aliens who had never seen human food before. Or like small children making âpotionsâ. One of the more edible things they served to me once was a dessert they made up which consisted of halved apples rolled in cornflour with some milk poured on top. One time, they were convinced to make pizza as a treat. They decided to put an onion on it. Fair and fine, youâd think. Not in that house. They just cut the onion in half once, and stuck each unchopped half facedown on one side of the pizza.
Speaking of onions, one time, my friend decided to make a banana and yoghurt smoothie. Her dad came in, said it wasnât healthy enough, and made her add an onion to it.
They had a homemade cereal I thankfully was able to opt out of trying which 100% looked like the contents of a vacuum bag. I still have no idea what it contained.
Amazingly, it was by no means just me who experienced this. It was a small town, and every girl in it my age had a selection of horror stories about being invited to dinner at this friendâs house in the exact same ritualistic horror-film fashion. We used to sit around comparing them at sleepovers. Age did not exempt you. One time, this friendâs six year old brother had a friend over for dinner at the same time, poor soul. His mom arrived to pick him up, and wasnât allowed to take him home until he finished whatever crime against cooking was on the menu that night.Â
Every story was the same. The ritual that never varied. Every time, these people would make a huge fanfare out of inviting you over for dinner, act all hospitable and excited, set the table, and then serve you a massive helping of the worst food in the world, and make you clean your plate of it, desert included. Who the hell forces you to finish your DESERT?
Itâs a mystery to me. They clearly had SOME degree of self-awareness, because after I came to my senses and started coming up with excuses to avoid eating at their house they would tease me saying things like âohoho, you donât like LIKE our food do youâ. If they had been a bit more fun and less generally puritanical sort of people, I could totally believe this was a family trolling activity where they secretly schemed to come up with the worst possible dishes, secretly filmed themselves forcing people to eat them and watched it and laughed afterwards, I could believe it.
All Iâm saying is Iâm pretty sure they werenât aliens, but the more I type this out, the more tempted I am to believe it. Fuck it, maybe they WERE aliens.
This whole thing is wild but Iâve tried to read the list of ingredients in that âcurryâ like 3 times and my brain just checks out every time. Itâs like youâre trying to read a long passage in a textbook you donât understand. My brain is just noping right out of there.
VINCE GILLIGAN: I hate AI. (Variety; Deadline)
Vince Gilligan you absolute goat
Helen didn't try to force Carol into her definition of happiness. She accepted her as she was. They went to the ice hotel and Helen admired the artwork while Carol complained it was cold. Helen said, "This is perfect for you. You love feeling bad." She accepted this about Carol. Helen was in awe of the aurora borealis; Carol said, "It kinda looks like a screensaver." Helen laughed. She didn't tell Carol to stop being negative or stop being so unpleasant. She loved her as she was. That's what love was to them. It was the exact opposite of the hive's definition, which is to force everyone to be happy--whether they like it or not.

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afraid i can't get over how humiliating it is to be in your 50s and be forced to experience the crushing loneliness you felt as a lesbian teenage girl in the 1980s. like it really is hard to fathom something worse happening to a woman who has fought tooth and nail to accept herself as who she is and STILL, in her grown age, struggles with it because of the violence she experienced while she was a kid. like hey no one wants to sit with you at lunch because you're fucking weird and no one is the rest of the world and lunch is tuesdays and thursdays on zoom
Something that bothers me about a lot of interpretations of Carol is that people view her as a giant loser of a person? And I donât see that reading, even beyond the obvious which is that to be a best-selling author, regardless of subject matter, she has talent, imagination, and the ability to know what her audience wants. She also managed to maintain a long-term partnership with Helen, which meant that they had both worked out what dynamics between them could be tolerated, what reconciliation looked like, affection, friendship, emotional/mental needs, etc. Helen would not have put up with Carolâs ass for that long if there wasnât some truly lovely things underneath the anger, substance use, and curmudgeony ways. Warning for a rambling character analysis because I have so many thoughts:
We see her lose her partner, her rock and anchor point, in such a traumatic way and then have to deal with an apocalypse on top of that in the span of maybe 2 months? Kudos to her for lasting even that long because if my partner died in front of me like that, even without the end of the world, Iâd also be considering trial by fire(work) if you catch my drift.
And yes, Carolâs not overly concerned with niceties and can come off as a mean drunk, but who wouldnât? Thereâs a quote that basically says when the whole world is blind, the man who can see is called crazy. And thatâs her perspective - for some reason, nobody is as alarmed as she is and she canât figure out why. She feels like sheâs the only person who can see how bad things are (because, to be fair, sheâs had the worst go of it).
She didnât want the translators because she didnât know at the time that the Hive couldnât lie and didnât trust them to not manipulate her words, not because sheâs inherently racist. Itâs crazy that people are upset with Carol for not considering the feelings of the other survivors when hardly any of them considered her. What she was going through? Why was she the way she was? How could you blame her for being angry and inadvertently causing deaths from that anger when she didnât know that would happen? Did anyone ask her why she was so angry and haunted? (Anger is one of our foundational emotions, btw. I think itâs very deliberate that they wrote a situation where her anger is essentially policed.)
Carol is someone who values truth, choice, and agency, things that have all been denied to her at some point in her life, which in part fuels her misery and discontent.
And I think, something that gets lost, is that Carol cares. She cares about her fans (even though she pokes fun at them) through her actions. She kept the crocheted items, she interacted with them so beautifully during the book-signing, she remembered some of their usernames/details. Carol shows through her actions that she cares. She goes on the trips with Helen despite not wanting to because it mattered to Helen. She throws up and feels so obviously remorseful every time she loses her temper. She cares so deeply about the Others because theyâre people and their freedom/choice/individuality was stripped of them without consent, which is something thatâs obviously important to her given how she views Koumbaâs actions. The Othersâ lack of want, desire, agency, etc. is clearly upsetting to her.
Furthermore, post-isolation, she gets a lot of flak for breaking down and sleeping with Zosia as if the Hive was not purposefully manipulating her toward this end, playing on her need for connection to foster dependence. Zosia initiated the kiss. It was maybe one of the few times we see Zosia take an action that she didnât ask for consent for first, didnât wait for Carol to tell her, etc. Hell, it even had me questioning if that was a moment of agency. A sign of want. Something that would matter to Carol.
I tell people all the time that social connection and love are both up there with food, water, and shelter in terms of basic human needs. The person deprived of them has a hard time accessing their higher thoughts/self-actualization traits. Itâs one of the main reasons many places are starting to look at solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment. The damage done to our psyches in the presence of loneliness isnât just mental; physically speaking, prolonged loneliness causes issues in our bodies too.
Like yes, at the end of 40 days of essentially solitary confinement, she trips up, but we see that caring nature deep inside her when she starts asking Zosia questions about herself, and ensuring that she eats too, etc. Carol cares about people even if she is gruff about it. Even if she knows, in this context, it is going to be used against her.
Like in a way Carol and the Hive both have something the other is missing, and her inability to be placated for very long because of how strongly she values choice and autonomy and agency is something I think that draws the Hive to her in a unique way. Carolâs individualism and original experiences is fascinating to the Hive; the Hiveâs connection and community is something Carol has always wanted but could never have.
When you think about it, Carol has lived her entire life feeling that some of her agency and choice have been taken from her. She is closeted, essentially, because she fears that being her authentic self will cost her the life she was come to enjoy and the comfort of it. She lost her family/lost the illusion of them loving her unconditionally over her sexuality, and that kind of betrayal from them is enough to have her guard up with everyone else. I think thatâs why the idea of agency and consent rings so true to her core motivations. I think itâs different than just âoh sheâs an American, of course she values individualism.â
Maybe Iâm too close to the subject matter to see it, but I grew up in a southern US town and still live in the âBible Belt.â Iâm fortunate that I didnât have to come out until I was out of the house and less dependent on my parents. The fear of conversion therapy was there for me, albeit more as a nebulous, vague idea like Hell, but it is still there for some in a far more tangible way.
And besides, even if you arenât sent to a conversion camp, youâre often disowned or youâre socially ostracized. Itâs honestly so similar to the Hive. You are different from these people and you both know it; they wave at you and smile but you have your guard up because you know deep down, if they could, they would change you. They would make you like them.
And the mother stuff, donât even get me started. Carol specifically mentions her mother for a reason. I can understand why Carol is so bitter, why she assumes the worst: why wouldnât she? Why wouldnât she assume the worst when the one person in the whole world who is supposed to love you unconditionally (your mother) doesnât love you? Or doesnât love you unconditionally, at least.
So, long-winded, but itâs her empathy, her caring nature, her core fundamental love of humanity, that pushes her to resist the Hive so much. Because she doesnât want to see what happened to her happen to billions of others. Let them have the choice, because Carol knows what itâs like when you donât. When people try and take that away from you. When you live a life miserable because of how much of yourself you have to hide from the world.
Carol is deeply empathic person at her core. Sheâs just also abrasive and not a âpeopleâ person. Those arenât the core traits to her, though. Sheâs not just purely selfish, sheâs reliving the worst thing she has ever experienced and sheâs entirely alone after spending a long time having at least one person by her side who showed her that she wasnât unlovable.
We have seen the trope over and over again of the hero almost losing the one person they loved the most and doing anything in their power to stop it. Carol did lose that person, and sheâs having to figure out how to cope with that.
TLDR: I think Carol deserves some grace because at her core, sheâs an empathetic and caring person.
And also I love her so much. Thatâs it.
I am always a little bemused by those who wonder why she is so guarded and why she is not out in 2026 and how hurtful it is to Helen and herself.
I lost a dear friend who I corresponded by snail mail for years with because when I came out to her, she went to her university Christian Union at the time (one of the most prestigious that rhymes with Doxxturd) and the president told her she should suggest I get conversion therapy.
After reading her letter with this awesome advice we didnât get in touch for 15 years. It took FB and her marrying a physicist (an atheist) and having kids to realise what unconditional love looks like.
I got over it but it did really suck being homo in the 1990s. Lesbians was pretty invisible and some preferred the magic cloak of invisibility. I understand why others might still cling to the cloak.