Apple TV’s Most-Watched Sci-Fi Series Ever Proves Its Divisive Pace Is the Whole Point

Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for the Pluribus Season 1 finale.As an alum of The X-Files, Vince Gilligan understands the eternal power of the unknown. By leaving viewers in the dark, you’ll keep them wanting more. The creator of Breaking Bad and theacclaimed Apple TV series Pluribus, Gilligan forces his audience to sit through episodes of methodical plot-building and character development, but he rewards their patience with some of the most intense, probing, and dynamic episodes of television in history. When recommending Breaking Bad to friends, everyone was obligated to preface it by saying, “It starts out slow.” With its spin-off series, Better Call Saul, Gilligan and co-creator Peter Gould upped the ante by crafting multiple deliberately paced seasons without an explosive resolution.

Pluribus, which reunites Gilligan with Better Call Saul breakout star Rhea Seehorn, is the showrunner’s apex as a patient storyteller, so much so that many audiences have turned against it after its first season due to its pacing. However, to suggest that the show is boring, repetitive, or anticlimactic is a grave misreading of Gilligan’s artistic touch that has defined his legendary career in television.

‘Pluribus’ Leaves Most of Its Questions Unanswered

The first episode of Pluribus introduces viewers to Carol Sturka (Seehorn), a cynical author residing in Gilligan’s favorite city, Albuquerque, who finds herself in the middle of a traumatic global takeover by an unknown entity. Like Carol, who witnesses the death of her wife, Helen (Miriam Shor), amid the chaos of the world, viewers are perplexed, if not horrified, at what is occurring. Why are all these people dying? How do all the survivors know Carol’s name, including a White House staff member? Most importantly, why is everyone so peculiarly nice? It’s a dazzling episode that drops viewers into this ostentatious scenario and trusts them to make their own judgments.

As the nine-episode season progresses, the audience is given little crumbs that explain the origin and existence of this hivemind, known as “The Others,” who dutifully serve Carol with the intent of making her happy, something she’s certainly not interested in. She first tries to commission assistance from the remaining people in the world unaffected by the virus. Then she turns to performing her own sleuthing and undermining the hive, which embodies what Artificial Intelligence would look like as a cult. After tiresome resistance, Carol begins exhibiting signs of Stockholm syndrome, learning to accept the comfortable but inhuman lifestyle propagated by the Others.

‘Pluribus’ Carol Sturka Is a More Passive Protagonist Than Walter White or Saul Goodman

After its enticing setup, Pluribus does not indulge the audience with a thrilling second act and conclusion. In Gilligan’s previous shows, Walter White (Bryan Cranston) shaves his head and transforms into the first phase of Heisenberg in Breaking Bad, and in Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) can’t help but lay the groundwork for his titular alter ego by performing numerous cons. Pluribus, which ends with Carol and fellow immune Manousos Oviedo (Carlos-Manuel Vesga) receiving a package containing an atom bomb (an item that Carol previously asked if she could request from the Others), indicates that the story is only starting. The show more or less remains in the same place from the end of Episode 1 through its finale, drawing the ire of some viewers who felt cheated out of dramatic stakes.

Despite Gilligan’s fascination with change and character evolution, Pluribus deals with a protagonist stubborn to change her pessimistic ways in the face of her perpetually happy neighbors. As a reluctant hero, a woman already stuck in a malaise as a frustrated novelist writing low-brow fantasy books, it would be disingenuous to Carol’s characterization if she solved the world’s problems within a season. While it slows the development of the story, her exasperation at the Others’ robotic friendliness is an essential component to the show’s dark humor and grounded quality. The series may be science fiction, but living with advanced technology with the potential to take over humanity is eerily reflective of our present day.

‘Pluribus’ Proves that Slow-Burn Filmmaking Is Vince Gilligan’s Secret Weapon

Image via Apple TV

Having attained the highest levels of critical adoration during the peak of the prestige television boom, Gilligan has nothing to prove, and Pluribus represents an artist in complete control of his uncompromising vision. Even when Breaking Bad was at its most heart-pounding, Gilligan and his creative team always returned to slow-burn filmmaking, visualized by unbroken wide shots of a sweeping vista. Characters who concoct elaborate schemes, investigate documents, and build machinery complement his love for process and procedure, leaving no stone unturned in the world and story-building department. Preternatural private eye/hitman Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) in the Heisenberg-verse is perhaps the North Star of Gilligan’s style, as both shows depict him laboriously dismantling devices and tailing his enemies.

Gilligan’s love for process comes alive in Pluribus, resulting in low-energy scenes without a direct resolution. However, the series is more suited to slow-burning sequences than Breaking Bad or Saul, as the plot machinations are limited to merely watching Carol try to make sense of her surroundings. The series wisely keeps its scope measured — forcing us to focus on one tiny aspect of this global takeover rather than diving into the life-or-death consequences in its first season.

Although time has passed since the nadir of 2020, the listless nature of Carol’s life recalls how we all hunkered down and dealt with grave uncertainty during the pandemic, and this feeling should resonate with all audiences. Interstitials track the progression of time since the Others’ takeover, yet nothing has changed. Slow-burn pacing is not just an artistic flex on the showrunner or director’s part, but also an actor’s showcase. Off the momentum as Kim Wexler in Better Call Saul, Seehorn uses the narrative flexibility of Pluribus to express a wide range of emotions, starting with disdain towards Carol’s audience to a strange affection for her chaperone, Zosia (Karolina Wydra).

Pluribus is never boring, but it refuses to hold the audience’s hand — a challenge for those engaging in passive or second-screen viewing. The series taps into your feelings of being stuck in a dead end. First, you try to fight against it, then you begrudgingly accept these circumstances after futile efforts, and then you find yourself longing to stay in a place of eternal comfort. Rather than conveying these ideas out loud, Gilligan uses methodical pacing to track Carol’s psychological status, which has devolved from a noble rebel to being romantically involved with her captor. For some, Pluribus perhaps just hits too close to home as a reflection of recent history and our attachment to technological assistance that enables loneliness.