There’s something almost perverse about a show called Pluribus—from the many, one—becoming the most watched program in Apple TV’s history while being, at its core, a meditation on radical aloneness. Vince Gilligan, the architect of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, has once again managed to convince millions of viewers to sit through something they might ordinarily flee from: a character study that moves at the pace of grief itself, where entire episodes pass with barely a handful of dialogue lines, where the protagonist spends her time doing yard work and sitting in the back of economy class out of spite.
What Pluribus asks of its audience is patience—the kind of patience that TikTok and Instagram Reels have supposedly murdered in the modern attention span. And yet here we are, watching Rhea Seehorn’s Carol stare into middle distance with that expression of profound isolation that wrecks you if you’ve ever felt truly disconnected from the world around you. The show has surpassed Ted Lasso and Severance, two programs that became genuine cultural phenomena, and it has done so by refusing every instinct that made those shows accessible. Where Ted Lasso offered warmth and optimism, Pluribus offers the existential horror of being the last person on Earth who can think for themselves. Where Severance invented a new genre of office horror with its crisp mysteries and memeable moments, Pluribus lets its central mystery languish while it watches its heroine spiral toward something that looks alarmingly like suicide.
The premise—a hive mind has consumed humanity, leaving Carol as one of a handful of unaffected survivors—sounds like setup for alien invasion spectacle, the kind of thing where someone eventually picks up a weapon and the music swells. Gilligan has no interest in giving us that satisfaction. Instead, he’s made a show about what it feels like to be surrounded by people who cannot truly see you, who speak in unison about how “important” you are while their collective gaze slides right past your humanity. The hive isn’t evil in any conventional sense; it’s accommodating, even solicitous. It will restore an entire grocery store at Carol’s request. And Carol will still eat TV dinners anyway, because accepting anything from her captors would be a capitulation she cannot bear.
This is television as character study, and if that sounds like a warning label, for many viewers it is. The complaints are consistent and not entirely unfair: the plot is stuck in mud, what six episodes accomplish could be done in two, we don’t learn anything new. There’s a certain comedy in watching devoted fans insist that the show is genius while simultaneously admitting they’re not sure anything has happened. People are watching, they say, because they trust Gilligan—his track record earns him leeway that would sink any first-time showrunner. The first seasons of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were slow too, the faithful remind each other. This is just how Vince works.
Maybe. But I think something else is happening here, something that explains why millions of people keep returning to watch Carol do mundane things alone in a world that has left her behind. We are living through what public health officials have labeled a loneliness epidemic, and Pluribus is its mirror. The scenes that move viewers to tears—and they report weeping, repeatedly—aren’t action sequences or plot revelations. They’re moments of Carol walking through public spaces feeling invisible, of going through the motions of a life that no longer has anyone to share it with, of clinging to the fantasy of her previous existence even as she recognizes the fantasy for what it is.
The show understands something fundamental about contemporary isolation: it’s not that we lack for people around us. The hive is everywhere, attentive, helpful, endlessly communicative. And yet Carol remains utterly alone, because connection requires more than proximity, more than words, more than offers of assistance. It requires being seen as a particular individual rather than a problem to be solved or a holdout to be converted.
Apple TV has positioned itself as the new home of prestige television, the successor to HBO’s golden era, and Pluribus is its statement piece—a show that demands you sit with discomfort, that trusts you to find meaning in watching a woman play golf by herself or refuse favors from entities who don’t understand why she would possibly object to their benevolence. Whether Gilligan can deliver a payoff that justifies this patience remains to be seen. But the fact that audiences are showing up, week after week, to spend an hour in Carol’s desolate headspace suggests that the loneliness she embodies is no longer niche subject matter.
We are all Carol now, or fear that we might be. And there’s something almost comforting about having a show that understands what that feels like—even if what it feels like is terrible.
