📺 Pluribus is our idea of happiness. It’s hard now to remember that a drama about a milquetoast science teacher’s evolution into a drug kingpin was anything but an easy sell, or that the story of its sleazy side-character lawyer warranted six seasons, but Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are the masterpieces that made screenwriter Vince Gilligan’s newest project, Pluribus, the subject of a multi-network bidding war.

Pluribus is a sci-fi-infused character drama that’s simultaneously creepy and weirdly funny — thoroughly original even when it echoes classics like The Twilight Zone, and more specifically, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Gilligan has teamed up with Rhea Seehorn of Better Call Saul once again, offering her the role of a lifetime in Carol Sturka, who inadvertently becomes the last unhappy person on Earth. To say more about the plot would be risking spoilers.

Gilligan is not a one-trick pony — his first venture beyond the Breaking Bad universe in over a decade proves that easily enough. What begins as a tense sci-fi thriller — complete with foreboding countdowns and clinical laboratory scenes — quickly transforms into something far stranger and more difficult to categorize. The opening episode works like a first-rate disaster film before spiraling into territory that’s part horror, part philosophical, and part dark comedy.

Seehorn delivers a stunning range of emotions — from grief and confusion to fear and rage. The gulf between the unnervingly pleasant populace and Carol — wonderfully thorny and relatably disillusioned — creates both humor and genuine unease. Gilligan wrote the part specifically for Seehorn, and the chemistry between actor and character is undeniable. She makes Carol simultaneously maddening and sympathetic. In moments of solitude, we glimpse the pain beneath her defensive exterior. Seehorn navigates these transitions with impressive skill, moving from hardened skeptic to vulnerable mourner and back again, often within a single scene.

What elevates Pluribus beyond just a high-concept thriller is how earnestly it engages with its own premise. The show poses genuinely challenging questions, and try as you might, the antagonists — antagonist? — are hard to hate, presenting a persuasive argument for their existence. Their reasoning isn’t easily refuted, making Carol’s opposition seem almost cruel at times, and giving the show a troubling moral complexity. There’s something almost selfish about her determination to restore a world that was — by most accounts — functioning quite poorly. But there’s also something deeply troubling about a contentment that obliterates individuality. And Gilligan, master craftsman of the gloriously offbeat, makes us sit with the tension.

With only two episodes currently available, the story’s direction remains wonderfully unclear. The show’s refusal to telegraph its intentions is refreshing, and thanks to Seehorn’s performance, the intrigue will not waver as we wait for each week’s episode.

WHERE TO WATCH- Pluribus is streaming on Apple TV, and you can watch the trailer on YouTube (runtime: 2:03).

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