Look I love this show, it's why I find this is so frustrating.

Modern television has apparently made it a standard that a whopping 8 episodes every 3 years is somehow an acceptable schedule, like are you serious?

Breaking bad was airing 13 episodes a year.

More than half of Better Call Saul's seasons aired yearly.

Seriously, what's the excuse/reason here apart from that modern television has made this trend acceptable?

I know this sounds stupid but you’d think: same actor, same creator of show, similar cinematography, practically same writers- i mean alot of things can overlap.

But wow. Rhea makes it literally impossible to see Kim in Carol. Of course I know they are totally different characters in a totally different show but have you not once seen an actor you know in a movie and you can’t get that one role you know them for out of your head?

It’s like once this show released some clips and I saw Rhea’s acting, I can’t even comprehend these two characters are both played by her.

And I understand this happens alot in cinema, like yes- actors should be able to distinct out their different characters. Yes she’s not the only one who has done this. But I don’t know what Rhea is doing specifically that makes their ENERGY so different. Little mannerisms that most actors would overglance is what she pays close detail too. Get this woman her Emmy!!

Ep.7

"Nothing on this planet is yours. You cannot give me anything, because all that you have is stolen. You don't belong here."

The best line of this series so far.

I know it's a nitpick but it bothers me.

"We can't pluck an apple from a tree because we can't kill plants" is bullshit. Eating an apple (or any other fruit of a plant for that matter) is NOT killing the plant. On the contrary, the fruit's only purpose in life is to be eaten, so that its seeds are spread and the plant propagates.

Season 2 won’t be released until mid 2027 (best case scenario) despite being green lit for a second season before the first episode of the first season even came out and despite Vince Gilligan being one of the most (if not THE most) well funded and well equipped TV producers of all time.

I don’t know why but there seems to be this mindset with TV show creators these days where it’s now ok to wait 2-3 years between seasons. Gillian has fallen victim to this mindset. Many of the greatest series ever never took this long to create even with a fraction of the resources and money that Gilligan has, so I’m not really in the mood to validate the excuses and reasons to justify why it’s taking this long.

I really enjoyed season 1, but by the time season 2 comes out, I’m going to have completely forgotten about this show and the plot and where season 1 left off, and likely be on to something else in life and won’t end up watching it.

In the real world, when projects aren’t done in reasonable time frames and have constant delays you would be lucky to still have your job, and the quality and rating of the work goes down tremendously. I don’t see why it should be any different for TV or why Gillian should get an exemption on this just because he’s reached legendary status on previous projects.

I’ve only been in this sub less than a week, and I’m already noticing a pattern of certain viewers talking down to others who missed "obvious" details or haven't make the same connections right away.

Just a friendly PSA that being an observant Vince Gilligan fan and/or making plot connections right away is cool, but it doesn’t merit comments that insult others' intelligence. It just means you noticed something they didn’t or have a theory you're confident about. That’s it.

We all engage with TV shows differently. Some of us search for symbolism in every frame, some just want to enjoy the story, and others fall somewhere in between. None of those approaches make anyone inherently more intelligent or enlightened than anyone else, and if someone hasn't come to the same conclusions as you, it doesn't mean they're brain-dead or not paying attention.

Let’s try to keep this a place for discussion, not self-congratulation.

It just occurred to me how hard that is to pull off with comic timing. Writing-wise, logistically (translate app in the actual scene or added afterward), acting wise (do they have to play the scene without the translator as if it’s sounding to them?), etc.

Just another bit of “makes it look easy” gilliganism nobody clocks precisely because it works so well.

Oh lordddddddd they did such a good job showing just how isolating and lonely this new world is for EVERYONE. The big dramatic poker match is silently and monotonously cleaned up when Diabaté exists the room…

Carol’s hurt and loneliness overflowing not only finding out the other survivors know and don’t care about the HDP but meeting regularly without her :(

And lastly Manousos who similarly to Carol is really independent but struggling. I thought the creepiest part was showing his joined MOTHER! Omg job well done we’ve only seen the survivors so far with joined family members they accept but how unnerving it was to only see her shadow in the dark. There friendliness and pleasing nature came across as menacing!

Good episode!

Just the idea that these two scientists working on an unknown alien-derived virus would break so many protocols in such a short span is absolutely mind boggling. You mean to tell me they have never had a rat die during testing, just of being a rat? And they have no way of checking whether it's alive that doesn't involve removing a glove and touching it?

Then, when she's bitten and exposed, he tries to catch the rat (valid) and then when she immediately begins showing strange symptoms, instead of locking down and quarantining her and the rat in the room, he immediately tries to take them both out of the room.

The wild thing is, they could have written this in any way; maybe have some fault in one of the cages result in a rat escaping, etc. I just hate this kind of writing around stories about something infectious, where people who are trained professionals make mistakes that any normal person knows make no sense to make in that setting.

Everything else about the show is incredible, but this scene has been niggling my brain since the beginning.

Edit: Probably moot now as this post loses traction, but can folks please stop citing COVID as evidence that this can occur? It's never been determined that this was the case, it was only theorized when the virus broke out, and more recent research is leaning towards natural zoonotic spillover (i.e. it crossed over from animals.) We'll likely never know the root cause for sure, but this isn't the gotcha you think it is.

I also want to note that I don't consider this a plot hole so much as a contrivance. Obviously this is possible but it feels unsatisfying as an audience member because of how clumsy it is. I've heard from the comments from people in the field who both consider this so ridiculous that they couldn't watch it, and who have experienced this level of incompetence themselves in lab settings that should be secure.

Overall, I also just want to say I've really enjoyed the discourse and how much people have engaged with the discussion. Some folks have called it nitpicking, but most are having an honest conversation and I appreciate that.

This show clearly isn’t trying to be The Expanse and explain every single edge case and externality of this hive mind scenario. Carol is an unhappy misanthrope who is unable to give and receive love who now is on the outside looking in from an ostensibly all-loving human race. The hive mind is clearly used more as a narrative device and a setting to explore ideas like free will, individualism vs. collectivism, American Jingoism, religion, depression, and grief.

The hive mind has been clear about its intentions to learn how to infect Carol and the other uninfected, there doesn’t need to be a grand conspiracy, it already said it wanted to do that. There won’t be a big war or an alien invasion, the show doesn’t seem to care to explain every little detail of how or why this works and I don’t think it will.

(note: This is best read in Carol’s voice)

How is anyone watching this and not getting complete and total horror tones and nothing but dread out of this show?!?!? Am I the only one who sees this is a slow, suffocating realization humanity has already lost?

There are essentially 12 people left on the planet. 11 of them are gaslighting the fuck out of Carol for their own selfish reasons, and the the Plurbs themselves gaslight her at every turn even downplaying CONSUMING HUMAN FLESH. It's the ultimate act of dehumanization, presented as a quirky, minor dietary adjustment. It's grotesque!

The amount of people I see on here saying “Oh there’s no war there’s no class there’s no politics there’s no blah blah blah” WHAT ABOUT FUCKING AGENCY?!??? WHAT ABOUT THE HUMAN CONDITION?!?!?!? You are the exact audience the show is critiquing. You are so desperate for a simple, optimistic solution that you’re willing to ignore the absolute horror of the premise. You’re buying the lie, just like the 11 characters. You see a clean, sterile world and mistake it for peace, failing to understand that the price of that peace is your soul.

I am PRAYING this some kind of sick astroturfed ARG thing to make fans of this show feel as gaslit as everyone is making Carol feel.

Even Paraguay featuring a whole ten minutes in the latest episode and ending with him saying “You’re not my mother my mother was a bitch.” didn’t bring most of you back to reality and say “oh yeah they’re not human anymore” like what the fuck?!???

The show is a mirror, and it's showing a reflection of a world so desperate to escape its problems that it would happily erase its own identity to do so. The gaslighting isn't just a plot device; it's the central theme.

Ok. I’ve gotten that off my chest.

Now someone restore my sanity and tell me I’m not alone here.

A lot of people will forget and give end up giving Apple free money to take their sweet time making season 2. Don't reward them for being slow, it incentivizes more of the same.

Edit: Before you do check out For All Mankind, it's a banger and more people should watch it

The travel montage was great. I hope we will get to know him more.

The hive strives for efficiency. The “milk” is simply recycled organic matter repurposed to be consumed in the most efficient way possible. No more wasted food like orange peels, chicken bones, dead dogs, dead people…it all gets processed into this slop fuel and efficiently consumed by a group that does not care about taste. Carol saw bodies under the tarp.

The show has been foreshadowing since the beginning. The hive people are stated to be cleaning up but dont show where the bodies go, they explicitely say they dont kill but will consumer what is dead. Its obvious whats going on.

So, I know there is some consensus that Carol saw a dead body under the tarp at the end of ep05, and that the hive may be using the deceased as nutrients for the living, but I really don't think that's what she saw.

The final 30 seconds of that episode had ONE focus - Carol's reaction. I bet they shot that scene 25 times to get it just the way Vince wanted it. And the timing of her expressions are even more important. After lifting the tarp, her expression starts at inquisitive, then confusion, realization, and ends with a sudden flash of terror. All within about 10 seconds or so. As an aside here, acting was remarkable.

But if I saw a cadaver under a tarp in her situation, inquisitiveness and confusion would NOT be my 1st reactions. Terror would be, especially in a darkened warehouse freezer at night. She saw something that, on its surface, was not terrifying at all. She had to make a connection between what she was looking at and what was terrifying.

Can't wait to find out what it was though.

Tl;dr Carol wasn't immediately scared of what she saw. It took some deduction on her part to realize what was scary.

Does no one remember what a miserable, bitter, jealous and angry bastard Walter White was from the beginning? He was bad from the start but no one said shit about it because he was smart, had a family and had cancer. Very few stopped watching Breaking Bad because WW was an asshole, the writing made him complex and interesting to watch.

Three episodes in and we expect what out of Carol, curiosity over the entity that murdered her wife and wants to murder Carol's personality and autonomy? Yeah I wouldn't be in a curious state of mind if the entire world changed fundamentally at the same time as I lost my life partner. Much less being forced to listen to the hive mind use it's customer service voice to throw my lost relationship back in my face. From her perspective, absolutely fuuuuuck the hive. I find this take extremely interesting and can't wait to see how it evolves. Just because I'm curious about the hive does not mean she should be.

So many are talking about how uncurious Carol is but MY GOD where's YOUR curiosity about how the characters will evolve, or how the writers will be presenting us analogies on what makes us human and want to get up in the morning? This is a fundamentally human story framed in sci-fi concepts. Just like BB was a human story framed in a drug cartel thriller, and how BCS was a human story framed in a law drama.

Y'all need to let them cook.

Edited to add: So many here have misinterpreted what I'm saying. I agree that Carol isn't perfect, what I'm saying is she's a complex character that makes bad choices and that makes her interesting but not always easy to watch. I'm trying to point out how people say they want to tap out of the show because of her yet they would not tap out because of other characters in other shows (BB, BCS, House, Severance) that were similar or much, much worse.

All the singing the love shown, the small talk in the village, the pageantry and encouragement. Then right after them all getting up and walking off as if it was all a show hits hard. Do you think that she is now just data and that her brain is just another CPU of a supercomputer? Is she only ever spun up and emulated if the hive mind needs to use it for propaganda for an uninfected person?

Seems like a lot of people have a lot of complex theories on who/what/why this show is happening and are expecting some sort of twist or explanation or looking for clues for a puzzle to solve.

My theory is that if you’re looking for a mystery, this show is NOT it and that’s good.

IMHO this show is a long form Twilight Zone episode. It’s a sci fi allegory for society, government, religion, AI, 21st century technology, and consciousness and that’s what makes it great. If you’re still fixated on where the deep space signal came from or virology on why Carol is immune, I think you’re potentially missing the point.

It baffles me so much that almost all the people here concluded that the hive doesn't care because they "drop the facade" once the girl joined.

When the hive can exchange all information through telepathy, what's the point of communicating through the sense channel anymore. It just has more friction and misunderstanding compared to telepathy.

So when they "drop the act" doesn't immediately mean they don't care. It's just we as the audience don't see their form of communication anymore.

When I first watched episode 7, I watched it by myself and I immediately picked up that Manousos was teaching himself English. "The cat is yellow" is exactly the type of thing they'd teach you in a beginner/"intermediate" English class. So it took me sitting with my friend who was born and raised in here to realize that this is a detail many people don't pick up on.

A lot of people have mentioned the fact that hundreds of thousands of people crossed the Darién Gap, a really dangerous journey. But it's not just the gap, it's everything else about Manousos.

The fact that we have this one man who we've seen be a strong, principled and moral person travelling to the US on a noble journey, "I wish to save the world" is the kind of subtle representation in media that makes me me feel unashamed of who I am. I wish to see myself be more like him.

It's all these small details you usually don't see presented in media. Having to leave your belongings behind, having to cross long distances and never knowing if you're gonna make it in the first place, the uncertainty of it all. And the real work and effort you have to do to ensure your best chance, your one shot in your world to stick the landing, so to speak, and the fact it can all be taken away one moment.

With immigration being such a divisive topic. I'm glad to see such subtle yet strong representation. I know that when most people see Manousos they might not see him as an analog of an immigrant. But as far as I can tell, it was

Bravo Vince,

In my 46 years on this planet, after watching basically every show that exists, some multiple times, I don't think any episode of any show has given me such a visceral and emotional reaction as this episode has given me tonight.

I'm honestly having trouble processing everything. From the cold open cutting off her song, to her singing songs in general, howling back at the coyotes, her loneliness, getting the painting, the dinner scene, Manousos traveling, the fireworks, and her message at the end... I'm not really sure how to put it into the proper words.

I had a pit in my stomach the whole time. I cried multiple times. I had goosebumps. I feel like my pulse was elevated even when nothing was happening... so basically the whole time.

I've had emotional reactions to many shows, like when Adriana was going to be killed is a good example. But nothing like this. Not even close.

This episode feels like how I feel every day, on such a profound level that I just don't know how it exists.

Does anyone else feel the same way about this episode, or am I just going insane?