The third episode of “Pluribus” drops a bomb on things

If you’re not clear about Carol’s (Rhea Seehorn) hapless character, Episode 3 of For many Certainly makes it clear. The film begins with a flashback, where Carol and her partner Helen (Miriam Shor) are on a dream vacation at an ice hotel in Norway, and all she can do is complain about how cold it is. When Carol sees the stunning aurora borealis, her only thought is, “It looks like a screensaver.” But this cynicism may also be her greatest strength as she prepares to solve the apocalypse that has descended on Earth.

In addition to showing how strange Carol was back home before she became one of the only humans without a hive mind on the planet, the episode also showed how difficult it would be to live independently of a hive, as well as the lengths a hive will go to to make her happy. Including, uh, maybe giving her a nuke if she asks? Anyway, here are the things I wonder about.

Apparently being one of a dozen or so members of the outside of the hive is pretty isolating. But things got worse in the second episode when she tried to communicate with the English-speaking survivors, and they had little interest in changing the world back to the way it was. But maybe there’s some hope: a man living in Paraguay named Manosos (Carlos Manuel Vesga) seems to hate the cell more than Carol does. The problem is that he’s on the other side of the world and only speaks Spanish. Their first phone call ended with a lot of screaming. However, Manosos seems to be Carol’s best hope of finding another human being who sees the problem of supposed universal happiness the same way she does.

How will you coexist with the cell?

Currently, Carol, the rest of the unaffected people, and the cell share the same planet. That is, at least until either side figures out the “cure.” But in the meantime, this creates some tension for Carol, who considers herself an independent person, yet is mostly dependent on the hive that provides for her needs. The problem became apparent when she tried to get food from a grocery store and had to wait for it to be restocked.

Can a cell say no to anything?

The flip side of this tension is that the cell seems unable to do anything that might upset Carol. This means fulfilling her requests, no matter how ridiculous they seem, and so the episode ended with a grenade exploding inside Carol’s house, wounding her companion, Zosia (Karolina Wydra). Before that, Carol was able to get the cell to see how far it would go. “We will move heaven and earth to make you happy, Carol,” they told her when she asked if they would give her a nuclear weapon. “He was Do you like the atomic bomb?” It’s very strange how she uses this to her advantage.