When Vince Gilligan first announced that he and Peter Gould were working on a Saul Goodman-focused Breaking Bad spin-off, they initially described their new project as a comedy. During the development process, that plan obviously changed. But it’s not hard to see why Gilligan assumed he could go that route. Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are both filled with dryly funny dialogue and cleverly constructed, clockwork-precise visual gags—which crank up carefully and then go pop, like a jack-in-the-box.
It’d be a stretch to describe Pluribus as an out-and-out comedy. But the more time Carol spends alone, the more Gilligan and his team (including this week’s credited screenwriter Ariel Levine and director Gordon Smith) seem to be taking lessons from Looney Tunes. There are moments in this week’s “Got Milk” that play like a Jacques Tati film—or like Tex Avery’s old MGM “The House Of Tomorrow” cartoon—where modern technology goes haywire, making life more complicated for some overwhelmed dope.
The “modern technology,” in this case, is the Joined, who make a radical decision at the start of this episode. Unable to cope any longer with Carol’s surly, chaotic energy, they abandon Albuquerque, en masse, leaving behind only a skeletal drone army to respond to any requests Carol might have. The robots prove to be a poor substitute. We can see with our own eyes over the course of this episode the huge difference between the way a hive-run facility operates—like an eerily efficient, organic machine—and the clunky awkwardness of the literal machines assigned to run the city in their absence.
The first sign that things won’t go smoothly comes when Carol makes a call to the Joined around the same time we see them streaming out of Albuquerque in a convoy of cars and buses. The image of the vehicles rolling out, all in a row, is impressive…and kind of beautiful. The recorded message Carol gets on her phone is anything but. The voice on the line explains the situation, then thoughtfully adds, “Our feelings for you haven’t changed, Carol; but after everything that’s happened, we just need a little space.” For the rest of the episode, every time Carol calls, she has to sit through this entire answering machine recording with this same addendum. It runs on for so long. It gets funnier every time.
Carol’s requests aren’t handled all that well either. With the city emptied out and powered down, packs of wild dogs now roam freely through town, scavenging through the garbage. Carol calls to get the lights turned back on, then calls again to ask about trash pickup. When a drone comes flying in to haul her trash bags away, it struggles with the weight, before getting tangled on a lamppost. A lot of the framing in this episode makes Carol look small and alone, and this works to wonderful comic effect when she’s standing—all tiny—on the far edge of the frame and watching her garbage spill onto the street on the other edge, thanks to a clumsy drone.
The trash drone is actually the second one to come to Carol’s aid. Earlier in the episode, she records a video message for her fellow un-Joined, in which—after putting on a business-like jacket and making sure her booze bottles are out of the picture—she lays out what she’s learned about “these afflicted people, these Others.” She also issues a warning, saying that if her peers are of the opinion that the collective is making the world better, they should relish that opinion, because, “It may be the last one you ever possess.” She insists that the Others translate her message for anyone who doesn’t speak English and then send it to all concerned. “If you don’t do it, I can’t be held responsible for the biblically shitty mood in which I will no doubt find myself,” she says into the answering machine. Minutes later, the first sputtery drone arrives, to carry her message to the masses.
Or does it? Much as with last week’s episode, the true cleverness of “Got Milk” comes not just from its wry gags but for how they fit together and push the plot forward. With no confirmation that anyone’s listening or that anything she does matters, Carol begins relying on herself more, and the results are astonishing. I mean literally astonishing—as in Carol ends this episode with a look of astonishment on her face.
One of her “Carol taking care of Carol” moments is more character-building than plot-building. When the wild dogs return and begin digging up Helen’s grave—seen in a terrifying, jittery hand-held shot—Carol uses her purloined police car’s siren to scare them off. The next day she picks up some concrete slabs at the hardware store, to make sure Helen’s final resting place will remain undisturbed. She even paints a little headstone for the plot, as the sun sets. It’s lovely.
But earlier, when Carol suffers through her trash mishap, she makes a more significant discovery: The dumpsters in her neighborhood are filled with used milk cartons. We never see the Joined eat, but they do drink milk pretty regularly. Carol tracks their milk supply to a local dairy, where she finds a warehouse full of sugary grains in heaping, heavy sacks. She tests the final milk product, finding that it’s odorless and non-acidic and has a weird amber color and a texture like olive oil.
Then, in another example of Pluribus playing the “think along with Carol” game, we see her track the sacks containing the milk powder to a local pet-food packager, Agri-Jet. Inside the Agri-Jet warehouse—where it’s bitterly cold—she sees something that makes her gasp in horror. To be continued!
We don’t see what she sees, of course—just her reaction. But a crafty visual storyteller can do a lot with a good reaction shot, properly deployed and using just the right face. There’s nothing like a good pop of surprise at the end of an hour of cranking.
Stray observations
- • His name doesn’t appear anywhere in the credits, but it sure seems like the voice of the Joined’s automated recording is Better Call Saul’s Patrick Fabian.
- • It appeared to me that one of the reasons why Carol’s trash couldn’t get handled right was that she was trying to throw away one of those big metal serving dishes the Joined use. Foiled by their own hospitality!
- • I am very familiar with the old warning that analyzing comedy is like dissecting a frog. (It can be done, but at the expense of the frog.) Nevertheless, I want to talk a bit more about how the accumulation and repetition of small details creates conditions wherein things that aren’t inherently funny become hilarious. In this episode I’m thinking about Carol getting an angry call from Lakshmi, upset that her confrontation with Zosia last week “made my son cry.” I’m thinking about Carol still having one handcuff on her wrist for over a day before realizing that the key is on the keyring for her police car. I’m thinking about Carol struggling to remove a locked-down rifle from that police car, then realizing the next morning there’s a little button she can press to release the rifle. None of these little moments are necessary, but they all add to the ridiculous “oh jeez, what now?” pile on for Carol. They’re also evidence of a creative team thinking their way through every scene, finding ways to make each moment more vividly entertaining.
- • Along the same lines but somewhat different: I was impressed with the time-lapse sequence of Carol sleeping at the hospital while the Joined sneaks away. It’s easy these days to shrug and say, “Well, that was all done digitally.” But even so, the sequence really does make it look as though Rhea Seehorn slept on a lobby couch for hours while the sun gradually set.
- • Some gags though are just simple and timeless and need no explanation, like Carol reaching for a book to read and choosing Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None not long after the entire population of Albuquerque has fled.
