Plur1bus: Milk is people! Episode five review

"Milk is peeeeeople!", as Charlton Heston might holler to an earlier generation of cinemaphiles. 

The latest episode of Plur1bus, Got Milk?, delivered the goods, with fabulous and unexpected twists and turns. 

First, the hive evacuated the entire city of Albuquerque (what a weird name) to get away from our favourite anti-hero, Carol, who pushed her personal pirate what's-her-face for information on how to undo the great joining. Not cool, Carol: the hive viewed this as harm. 

They needed ‘space’. 

The show hilariously replicates patterns of emotional abuse, just on a global scale. Carol’s selfish, willfully inconsiderate, even abusive, while the hive is unctuously accommodating, suicidally pacifistic and agreeable to a fault. 

The show contrasts these two diametrically opposed personality types: the selfish individual and the altruistic collective. Both are flawed, and the show doesn’t pull any punches in depicting each at their worst. Well. Carol could actually be even more awful; she’s not acting like a psychopath or malignant narcissist, which would be the true opposite of the codependent. 

But to what end? What’s the POV driving the narrative? 

Time will tell, but three things to keep in mind: first, the codependent hive is doomed from an evolutionary POV, while Carol is not. True, it will take time for predators to multiply enough to impact the population, but the hive lets itself be prey, so there will be no cap on predator expansion. Have you ever met someone who was endlessly self-righteous in their pacifism, to a smug, suicidal degree? That’s the hive. 

Second, the hive has a biological imperative to infect every human (including Carol), a process that killed over 800 million people. I suppose you could contrast that with selfishness killing billions throughout the course of history, but within the confines of the show, the death toll weighs heavily against the hive so far.

Three, Carol’s not as awful and selfish as a selfish person could be, while the hive is ridiculously codependent. Carol is not a compulsive liar, fraudster or serial killer. That would be the real flip side of the coin, but the show doesn’t go there. As such, the deck is decisively stacked from the get go.

Other than the city evacuation, the other big surprise is a truly horrific reveal: remember those 800,000,000 who died when the virus was downloaded? Well, they’re being ground up, liquified, and served up in milk cartons to the hive for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Ew.

Of course, this makes total, pragmatic sense: the hive refuses to harm anything, even bed bugs. Their only defense is avoidance, so they can’t kill animals for food. They can’t kill insects that eat crops. Their idealism is absolute: they even free lions and tigers that then prey on hive members. Because moral superiority. As such, a readily available food source (dead people) would be very valuable, as it has no ethical cost. 

What happens when the Eaters of the Dead run out of dead bodies to feast upon? 

They’ll have to subsist on what crops they can grow without harming anything, anything at all, which will be… challenging. 

My guess? Some people are going to starve. Not that the hive will mind, it sheds hosts like Stalin sheds Kulaks and I shed skin.

So, all in all an excellent episode. I wasn’t expecting the hive to go no-contact with Carol. I also hadn’t, but should have, predicted the hive would eat the dead. 

What’s next, Vinny? 

I’m looking forward to more twists and turns. 

The Baker’s Dozen might be put off by the hive eating the dead, possibly making Carol new allies. 

If Carol is able to find a way to break the hive connection, the show could go in a whole new direction. Would the hive, threatened with dissolution, become less passive? It might let individual members be eaten, but what if the entire collective is threatened? Whats it’s biological imperative? Why does it have to spread to everyone, unless it is to neutralize all possible resistance? Because the biological imperative it has shown so far is a one-way abnegation ticket to extinction. 

If the show goes on long enough, I suspect aliens might arrive in a colony ship, ready to turn humanity into their eager and willing slave labour force. I predict invaders will be human in appearance, principally because prosthetics would look cheezy, and wouldn’t fit with the show’s overall vibe. Star Trek this is not. Perhaps the aliens seeded humanity on earth in the first place, in the distant past. That’d be an easy, quick exposition drop.

So far, the show has presented everything in a very grounded, plausible manner (as much as an instantaneous communication hive mind is realistic). 

Which leads to another question: if the hive is connected irrespective of distance, does that mean the transmitters, who are also part of the hive, are in communication with the hive on earth? Is it a pansolar-system, or pangalactic, hivemind? 

Does it drink Pangalactic Gargleblasters?

Something for Carol to inquire about in future.

It’s worth noting the questions that Carol is NOT asking. The hive cannot lie, so the show will have to avoid areas of inquiry that would give away future plot points. If she doesn’t ask easy and obvious questions, then that’s probably the direction the show is going.

Andor season 2: 2 BBY (episodes 7-9)

The 2 BBY (episodes 7-9) set is phenomenal. All the painstaking buildup in episodes 1-6 pays off, and then some. 

Was there some arguably extraneous material in the build up? I'd say yes, more so than in season 1, but if it'd been all focused on Ghorman, it'd have been too obvious. Ghorman needed to emerge from the noise.

Multiple storylines and characters converge wonderfully: Cassian, Mon Mothma, Dedra, Syril, and Luthen all overlap or directly connect this set. The scope is fabulous, comprehensive, and internally consistent; the sets and action sequences are feature film level. 

My only gripe is that the show was a tad too on the nose in leveraging a French Resistance vibe, right down to the berets, accents and cafes. But that's a minor gripe. Yes, I know, the Empire are Space Nazis, but their garb at least has a distinctive futuristic twist.

The writing was on point, and we got the great speeches we've come to expect from Andor: Mothma delivers a fantastic, and disturbingly relevant speech, and Saw waxes eloquent about vaping toxic fuel.

Bix, tilting on the brink of a new arc, writes herself out of the show. I get it, the show's about Cassian. Silver lining: at least she wasn't killed off. Perhaps we'll see more of her in the future.

Syril's story comes to it's inevitably unfortunate end, which works incredibly well. From soaring high on secret agent shenanigans in 3 BBY, here he comes crashing down like a brick, his entire world view annihilated. In his last few minutes, he realizes the Empire is not what he thought it was, that he's been used and is just another pawn... it might have led to a realignment of his world view, except... he sees his arch nemesis (Cassian, natch) and enters a homicidal frenzy: Kill Andor!

It's a sad end for poor, sad sack Syril; everything tracks, and it's dramatically fitting. His confrontation with Dedra (anagram for 'dread') was quite unsettling, too. That said, I'd have liked to see him live at least a little longer, if only to see if he can pull together his shattered psyche, and what he'd have done next if allowed time to process. How does a law & order fetishist survive in a dictatorship when they actually really do believe in justice? Unfortunately, that'd take time, and this is Andor, not the Syril Karn show, and there are only 3 episodes left. 

So Syril had to say sayonara. 

Personally, I am, as a general principle, against killing off interesting characters unless absolutely necessary. You never know when you'll want to explore their journey again. I believe this preference is borne out by all the resurrected characters in Star Wars, Marvel, etc. Just don't kill them in the first place, that way we don't get all these hackneyed, convoluted resurrection plots. "Somehow, Palpatine returned." So did Darth Maul, and he got bisected and fell a thousand feet down a shaft. 

Shafts in Star Wars are way less deadly than Russian windows.

In some cases, as with Darth Vader (or, for the most part, the Emperor), the villain's death is essential to the overall story. You can't avoid it... yet look at all the prequel material covering Darth Vader. It's practically endless. The writers (and more importantly their corporate masters) can't get enough of the Vademeister.

I hope there are no more deaths, so these characters can be further explored in other media. Like Rogue One? Oops.

Episodes eight and nine have a particularly strong narrative flow, and I watched nine right after eight, against my better bedtime judgement. With all the dominoes were falling into place, how could I not? 

This has been an absolutely stand out set of episodes; they cover key events and do so in a very grounded (for a space opera with laser swords and space wizards) way. I loved it. 

Andor's grounded approach bears further mention: it's an aspect of Star Wars, going back to the original, that helped cement it as relatable: rather than everything being new and shiny, the universe is worn and lived in, and the characters whine about not being allowed to hang out with their friends, pick up power converters, or attend insufferably long weddings. The mundane mixed with with the fantastical reinforces the suspension of disbelief.

It's a fantastical galaxy you can believe in.

The last three (9-12) episodes lead right up to the three days before Rogue One. That sets Andor himself (and possibly Mothma) on a very narrow path, dealing with intel on the new Death Star, which makes me wonder: does the show have any twists left to throw in front of them?

Given Andor's journey is largely set, I'm more interested in what happens to Luthen and Dedra. Luthen's been a big part of setting up the Rebellion; many are arguing that means he must die because he's not seen later. I'd rather he just continues working in the background, along with Lonni and Kleya. 

Will Syril's death hang over Dedra? Will she attend his funeral and clash with the Queen of Passive Aggression? She's already failed at Ferrix, will she be used as the fall guy for Ghorman? Or would that be the Empire admitting they did anything wrong?

And given how huge a failure it was for the ISB to allow Mothma to speak to the galaxy, I'm expecting a few Imperial heads to roll, and for an intense crackdown to follow. Will Luthen and team be able to evade it? Where was Partagaz in all this? 

What about Saw? I'm expecting him to come back, as he's been left dangling. 

We shall see. 

The Wire vs. Sherlock

The sense of verisimilitude show runner David Simon achieves in The Wire is phenomenal. A slow burn ensemble piece, it gives the audience a wonderful window on institutional absurdity. Nuanced Dilbert topped by a throat-cutting edge, it's rewarding viewing.

Simon has his head screwed on straight; interviews reveal a clear thinking and spiritually aware individual unencumbered by the raging narcissism so rampant in the entertainment industry. His work is refreshing, challenging, dark, wearying, exhausting, rewarding, and brilliant.

Characters are well rounded, have motivations one can identify with, believable abilities, and face an exterior world of crushing weight and overwhelming power. Most shows preach the solipsistic idea that we are indispensable to the world (Fringe, for example). This one actually acknowledges a reality outside the psyche.

It's in stark contrast to Steven Moffat's Emmy nominated Sherlock, starring the fantastic Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. The first few episodes are engrossing, but before long the show's tropes begin to grate. Superficial, flashy and endlessly self-congratulatory,  Sherlock's buoyed by a swelling musical score, ostentatious cinematography, frequent all-caps 'acting' moments,  and other pretentious affectations. Still, it barrels along at an incredible pace,  hoping to keep ahead of the plot holes, dazzling the audience with snappy dialogue and quick cuts.

Natural Sherlock is not. A Superman comic book would feel more real. The saving grace is Cumberbatch, who has great presence on screen. He rocks the role, and one hopes to see him get the opportunity to lead on the big screen. The shows are very different beasts. As a drama,  Sherlock can't reach the shins of The Wire. It's like comparing a glittering puddle to a deep,  quiet lake.

Different strokes for different folks.