Mandaris

As I write this, it has been almost a week since the end of season one of Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus. I think it’s a really nice addition to the media that I’ve been watching this year. This year has had a lot of opportunities for me to look at pacing. I find it to be a refreshing contrast to how many things have changed this year. They say the only constant in life is change, and I’m eagerly waiting for events to become boring. Pluribus has moments of stillness. Moments where “nothing” happens, and you get a chance to observe all the little things.

How did I get here?

This year, the media that I noticed pacing the most is Casablanca, Jaws, Gremlins, Sinners, and PeaceMaker Season 2. These all had different kind of pacing. What I define as pacing is the rate at which action and dialogue is shown on screen. For some, these are the moments that happen when the director yells “action”. All of these had moments where you have the actor contemplating or a pause filled with foreboding.

I feel that countless modern shows are pushing narratives where they explain everything to the audience, and the examples that I mentioned above leave some of this subtext up to you to figure out.

That is the point. You get to think.

More than a billion dollar screensaver

Pluribus has the most extreme version of empathy that I’ve ever seen on TV. You see millions of people coming together for one purpose. No violence. No Racism. No differentiating of social economic status. It allows you to think about a world where it doesn’t matter and what it would cost the individual.

I remember when I was unemployed, and I had my wife and two young daughters to care for. I was depressed and felt like a failure. The initial stance of The Others on providing purpose and happiness is tantalizing. If this option was presented to me, I would not have hesitated on the promise that my family would have everything they wanted.

I feel that is part of what makes discussions and thoughts about the show so engaging for me. When I think about the scenarios, I also think about who else would be in the hive mind, and it makes me question.

• Is my family in there?
• How many of my exes?
• Is the person who borrowed my 1996 Ginuwine… the BachelorCD and never gave it back in there?
• Can I have it back?
• What if I was the only one who wasn’t joined in?

That last one, really has me wondering. I’ve sometimes felt lonely at parties. I don’t know what it would mean to have that feeling and it being the entire world.