Pluribus Season One

Where the Writing Went Wrong

Overall, I would say the show was well-made and pleasant to look at, but the best I can say about the premise and writing is that the show is "almost good."

The writers failed on two major issues: the "Others" are enduring mass starvation, and all but two of the "Survivors" on Earth do not care about the end of humanity even after learning of this mass starvation. My suspension of disbelief was broken by these two issues, and I found it hard to enjoy the show once both of these issues were revealed.

If the writers wanted to make a show about grappling with "you can have whatever you want, but at the expense of everyone else" or "keep your individuality, or join a utopian hive mind" then it they shouldn't have also included the "won't pick an apple" obvious end of humanity via mass starvation. Most of the Others will starve to death after only a few years, it seems, and the Survivors will be on their own. A more compelling dilemma would have been a long-term, sustainable situation where the Others are easily able to feed and care for themselves and the planet — in that situation the Survivors would be able to choose a lavish over-the-top lifestyle without having to ignore the mass global starvation.

If the writers wanted a show about fighting back against this mind virus, they shouldn't have had such a tiny group of Survivors where most inexplicably don't care (or somehow cannot see) that the world is ending. I understand the infected people can trick survivors into thinking everything's fine, but it's just not believable to me that only two survivors actually realize humanity is doomed.

The show has a few interesting ideas and good acting and execution. I don't understand how the show could have possibly advanced beyond the writing stage given those two glaring issues. Watching the Air Force One meeting scene was so painful I felt like I was taking crazy pills. It's like watching a zombie movie or a Godzilla movie where all the people just stand around and shrug. In my opinion, Pluribus just can't be a great show until the above two points above are resolved. I think the writers still have room to nicely fix things (and of course this may have been their plan all along) but with a few small changes the premise could have been much stronger.

What Could Have Been

If the number of Survivors was much larger, say several hundred people instead of a dozen, the show would have a lot more flexibility in where the writers could steer the plot. There were hints that the number of Survivors might increase...

The false dilemmas are the biggest pain point for me, especially since there's no apparent reason for the Others' mass starvation. I'm not sure if the writers wanted to actually present the second dilemma above ("keep your individuality, or join a utopian hive mind") as an explicit dilemma to the audience for the first few episodes, but by the time HDP and mass starvation were revealed (if not earlier) it is shown that this is not actually be a dilemma — the Others are clearly not living in a utopia. They exist merely to build a massive transmitter and propagate the mind virus further in the galaxy before most of them die of starvation and they can no longer maintain the transmitter and the massive amount of energy it requires. To me, it would have made a lot more sense if the Others were not starving themselves, and they actually were living in a utopia. This would both fix the false dilemmas above and also allow the mind virus transmission to many more target planets in the galaxy. In a functioning utopia, the Others could transmit the virus message indefinitely, and in time build and operate more and more power capacity and more and more transmitters. So why did the writers include the mass starvation? To create tension and force the Survivors to act quickly to save the world? Perhaps season two will clear things up.