Pluribus episode 5, “Got Milk,” ends on a staggering cliffhanger when Carol makes a horrific discovery, ramping up the tension in this Apple TV series as the hivemind flees Albuquerque. Below, writer-director Gordon Smith unpacks the morally gray moments of the episode, in which Rhea Seehorn’s Carol mishandles a grenade and doses Zosia with truth serum, which triggers a mass crisis and the Joined’s dramatic departure. This episode, written by Ariel Levine, is the first Smith has directed that he himself didn’t write, due to the chaos in scheduling since the strike ended.
Key Turns of Events
- Carol resorts to desperate means to undo the Joining; Zosia suffers a cardiac arrest, and in response, the hivemind “times her out” by fleeing the city en masse, abandoning her in solitude.
That’s when filming caught Seehorn off-guard with the surprise cameo of Better Call Saul, adding even more meta layers for the fans of the Breaking Bad universe. - The milk-obsessed Others replace their live concierge with voicemail, which enhances Carol’s loneliness prior to the pallet reveal that so grotesquely horrified her.
Insights by Gordon Smith
Smith also defends Carol’s anti-hero activities on the basis of her self-awareness and her intent to restore individuality against the non-consensual hivemind. He teases future episodes will indeed subvert expectations but echoes Billy Wilder’s suspense philosophy without spelling out anti-AI themes. The milk twist and coyote howls foreshadow from prior scenes build to new dangers.
