Review: Pluribus, "Grenade" | Season 1, Episode 3
She wants to live all alone in the desert. She wants to be like Georgia O'Keeffe.
Hey free subscribers—as always, a reminder that Donna's reviews of Pluribus are heading behind the paywall. $5 a month gets you access to her reviews and the conversations among subscribers, along with the rest of our fall coverage. To see our full schedule, see our Calendars.
We can’t help but have hopes and expectations for the shows we watch. We watch because we want something, at times something quite specific—a particular experience. Go here, explore this idea, move the plot along, answer this question. These desires affect how we respond to what ends up on the screen. And if the first two episodes didn’t do so already, I’ll bet the reactions to this one will fully expose what different viewers want out of this show.
When “Pirate Lady” ended with Carol flagging down Air Force One on the tarmac, I figured the robinsonade was over. The rest of the show, I thought, was likely to be about Carol joining the immune community. I resigned myself to it. I was still open to enjoying whatever came next, and I hoped to be surprised and delighted; I generally try not to have particular expectations, because I want to experience what the creator is interested in showing and telling rather than imposing my wishes. But I can’t deny that something I really wanted from this show was an exploration of solitude. That hope came from my longstanding fascination with those lone castaway stories, as I mentioned last week. It’s personal to me, idiosyncratic to a degree, although certainly the history of literature and film shows many people are drawn to the premise.
So I was ecstatic after this week’s (ice-)cold opening—more on that later—when Carol simply returns to Albuquerque with Zosia, turning her back on her fellow individuals. It’s not that I want the whole show to be Carol binging Golden Girls, with occasional jaunts into town for supplies. But I’m glad we’re not rushing past that part. As much as I enjoy my hermit fantasies playing out on screen, the question what does Carol want? is far more important than the question what does Donna Bowman want? And Carol is currently defined by what she does not want. She doesn’t want to be catered to. She doesn’t want to be wheedled. She doesn’t want anyone to hover, or surveil her. If she does want something, it’s Zosia—some version of Zosia, anyway, who could be excised from the collective or partitioned off in some way. Some version of Zosia who has a little bit of individuality, who could maybe fill a fraction of the Helen-shaped hole in Carol’s life.
