‘Pluribus’ Episode 3 Recap: Carol Gets a Grenade

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for Episode 3 of “Pluribus,” streaming now on Apple TV.

Meat Loaf once sang, “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that.”

And in the third episode of “Pluribus,” the hive mind that has conquered nearly all of humanity tells Carol, “We would do anything to make you happy, including giving you a hand grenade.” (I’m paraphrasing.)

In this week’s installment of Vince Gilligan’s dystopian (or utopian?) Apple TV drama, Carol (Rhea Seehorn) learns just how far her new friends will go to please her. The answer, apparently, is nuclear.

The episode opens with a flashback seven years before “The Joining,” when billions of people were suddenly abducted into one collective consciousness, resulting in hundreds of millions of casualties, including Carol’s wife, Helen (Miriam Shor). Far from Albuquerque, Helen and Carol have arrived at an ice hotel in Norway, where even the bed is frozen. Helen is in vacation mode, marveling at the snowy suite and sipping brandy from an ice glass. Carol is, per usual, miserable, proclaiming “hell is in Norway” and obsessing over her book’s placement on the bestseller list. It’s a seemingly small moment in Carol’s relationship with Helen that reveals a lot about our protagonist. In other words, it’s a classic Gilligan cold open — get it?

Back in the present, Carol sits in coach on a plane back to New Mexico that is empty except for Zosia (Karolina Wydra). They’re coming back from Spain, where Carol had lunch with the handful of English-speaking human beings left on Earth. She tried to form a pact with the others to resist the “pluribus,” as we’re calling it, but it didn’t go so well, so now she’s asking Zosia about the non-English-speaking leftovers. Zosia tells Carol about a man in Paraguay named Manousos, who has largely managed to avoid contact with the pluribus. Zosia connects them on the phone, but Manousos does not seem happy to speak with Carol, and they exchange some crude insults in Spanish.

Zosia drops off Carol’s mail, which includes a package from the before times. Carol had recently tried out a massage gun at an airport gift shop, and Helen had ordered it for her as a surprise. At least, this is what Zosia relays over the phone. Carol is disturbed by the idea that Helen’s consciousness has been uploaded to the masses — her thoughts and memories easily plucked and regurgitated by Zosia and co. So, she demands, “You’re going to forget everything you know about Helen. … Only I get to remember her.”

Later that day, Carol goes to the grocery store, only to realize the entire place has been gutted. The pluribus is “consolidating resources to centralize useful items for distribution.” They can deliver to Carol anything she needs at any time, but the woman just wants to shop for some oak milk and feel some semblance of normalcy. Is that too much to ask?

Apparently not — within minutes, several commercial trucks arrive at the parking lot, and smiling bodies suddenly appear to help restock the store. Freaked out by her army of unquestioning servants, Carol later tells Zosia, jokingly, that she would love a hand grenade — “got one of those?” Lo and behold, later that night Zosia arrives at her doorstep with the explosive. “We thought you were probably being sarcastic, but we didn’t want to take the chance,” she says.

Instead of waving her away, Carol invites Zosia inside for a drink and asks some important questions: Does the whole world get tipsy if one of them takes a swig? No. And how long will it take for the pluribus to turn Carol into one of them? “It could be as soon as a couple weeks, or it could take months, or longer,” Zosia says. The collective has a “biological imperative” to convert Carol, you see. Zosia compares it to seeing someone drowning in a lake and throwing them a life preserver. “You wouldn’t think, you wouldn’t wait, you wouldn’t try to get consensus on it. You’d just throw it,” she says.

“So now I’m drowning?” Carol asks. And Zosia smiles: “You just don’t know it.”

Carol has had enough of hearing about this cultish paradise, and, just for kicks, pulls the pin of the grenade. Zosia’s eyes widen, and Carol calls her bluff: “Like you would give me a real hand grenade.” But there is no bluff, and Zosia grabs the grenade and throws it out the window. It explodes, setting fire to Carol’s car and front yard. Zosia collapses.

In the hospital the next morning, Carol peppers a representative for the mind meld with questions. Would they give her another hand grenade? Yes. Even after last night? Yes. What about a bazooka? Yes. A tank? Why not? An atom bomb? Well, the pluribus would weigh the pros and cons, but ultimately, yes. “We wouldn’t necessarily feel good about it,” he says. “But we would move heaven and earth to make you happy, Carol.”

So far, the pluribus has killed Carol with kindness. Could Carol kill kindness with kindness?