By SteveJack
In an era where dystopian tales flood our screens — zombies shambling through The Walking Dead, surveillance states choking Black Mirror — Vince Gilligan’s Pluribus arrives like a sly whisper in the dark. Premiering on Apple TV just days ago, this sci-fi psychological thriller, starring Rhea Seehorn as the perpetually scowling Carol Sturka, doesn’t bombard us with overt horrors. Instead, it lures us into a world of enforced happiness, where a mysterious extraterrestrial RNA formula, transmitted from deep space, infects humanity through water supplies and petri dishes, transforming billions into a monolithic hive of unrelenting cheer. Carol, one of a handful of those immune — a grieving, cynical writer in sun-baked Albuquerque — becomes the reluctant rebel, navigating this “utopia” like a ghost in a candy-colored nightmare.
At first glance, Pluribus reads as a clever riff on pandemic-era anxieties, echoing The Leftovers or Invasion of the Body Snatchers with its pod-people conformity and eerie normalcy. But peel back the glossy veneer of Gilligan’s Albuquerque (a far cry from the meth labs of Breaking Bad), and you’ll find a razor-sharp allegory for the perils of socialism. Not the straw-man version peddled in soundbites, but the seductive promise of collective bliss that erodes individuality, innovation, and truth under the guise of equity and harmony. In Pluribus, bliss isn’t a gift — it’s a virus, and its spread mirrors how socialist ideologies can metastasize, promising paradise while devouring the soul.
Consider the setup: Humanity receives this cosmic “gift” — a formula for universal optimism, distributed en masse by brainwashed factory workers into the very infrastructure that sustains us. Sound familiar? It’s a chilling parallel to socialist central planning, where a benevolent (or not-so-benevolent) authority engineers societal “improvement” from the top down. Think of the Bolsheviks’ Five-Year Plans or Mao’s Great Leap Forward, reimagined as a feel-good directive from the stars. In Pluribus, the infected don’t march in lockstep to gulags; they skip hand-in-hand to communal sing-alongs, their personalities homogenized into a singular, grinning “We Is Us.” The title itself, a Latin nod to “e pluribus unum” (out of many, one), twists America’s founding motto into a warning: Unity at the expense of diversity isn’t strength — it’s stagnation.
Carol Sturka embodies the endangered individualist spirit that socialism so often crushes. As the “most miserable person on Earth,” she’s a stand-in for the dissident, the entrepreneur, the free thinker who refuses the collective script. Her cynicism isn’t a flaw; it’s her superpower. It allows her to question the narrative, to see the rot beneath the rainbow. This is socialism’s fatal blind spot: By prioritizing the group’s emotional equilibrium over personal liberty, it silences the very voices that drive progress. Who innovates when conformity is contagious?
Apple TV is the perfect home for Pluribus — after all, the company’s slogan is Think different.
The show’s satire bites deepest in its portrayal of this forced felicity as a counterfeit equality. The infected aren’t just happy — they’re uniform, their quirks sanded down to a uniform sheen of positivity. No more artists raging against the machine, no more Jobsian inventors tinkering in garages, no more messy human debates that birth real solutions. It’s a world where conflict is eradicated not through justice, but through infection: Lick a donut, share a water bottle, and poof—your revolutionary fire is doused in dopamine. Gilligan, ever the moral cartographer, maps this onto real-world collectivism’s track record. Soviet Russia’s suppression of kulaks (independent farmers) to enforce communal agriculture didn’t yield abundance; it starved millions. Venezuela’s oil wealth redistribution under Chávez and Maduro promised shared prosperity but delivered empty shelves and silenced critics. Pluribus asks: What if the “workers’ paradise” succeeded in making everyone equally content? The answer, delivered in Seehorn’s haunted eyes and the infected’s vacant smiles, is a resounding no thanks.
Critics have already hailed Pluribus for its audacity — The Guardian marvels at Gilligan’s chutzpah in imagining a world where “everybody just… got along?” — but they miss the deeper indictment. This isn’t mere anti-utopianism; it’s a cautionary tale. As debates rage over universal basic income, wealth taxes, and “equity” mandates, Pluribus reminds us that the road to hell is paved with good intentions — and in this case, with viral vectors of virtue-signaling. The RNA formula, after all, arrives unbidden, a deus ex machina from the cosmos that humanity eagerly adopts without a vote or a trial run. It’s the allure of the nanny state on steroids: Why struggle with markets’ chaos when an algorithm (or a starman) can optimize joy for all?
Yet Gilligan doesn’t leave us in despair. Carol’s immunity isn’t luck; it’s a testament to resilience, to the grit that socialism’s cheerleaders often dismiss as “greed” or “selfishness.” Carol’s existence a subtle nod to capitalism’s unsung heroes — the outliers who bootstrap solutions, from Steve Jobs’ garage to Elon Musk’s reusable rockets. In Pluribus‘ world, the real threat isn’t scarcity; it’s sameness, the socialist fever dream where innovation flatlines because “fairness” demands we all hum the same tune.
Of course, Pluribus is too nuanced for pat labels, blending off-kilter Twilight Zone unease with Severance-style corporate confornist dread. But, in a time when some politicians romanticize centralized, one-size-fits-all control, Gilligan’s series is a wake-up call: True freedom isn’t found in orchestrated hive-mind bliss, but in the right to be gloriously unique, unpredictable, and inventive.
Stream Pluribus on Apple TV and let it infect you — not with viral bliss, but with provocative questions. In Carol Sturka’s fight, we see our own: Against the tide of tidy tyrannies, holding fast to the messy miracle of the individual. Because true bliss only really exists when it’s chosen freely.
SteveJack is a long-time Macintosh user, web designer, multimedia producer and a semi-regular contributor to the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple TV is available on the Apple TV app in over 100 countries and regions, on over 1 billion screens, including iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 4K, Apple Vision Pro, Mac, popular smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, VIZIO, TCL and others, Roku and Amazon Fire TV devices, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation and Xbox gaming consoles, and at tv.apple.com, for $12.99 per month with a seven-day free trial for new subscribers. For a limited time, customers who purchase and activate a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or Mac can enjoy three months of Apple TV for free.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Steve J., you’re always a thoughtful guy, and I appreciate reading what you have to say, even if I don’t agree.
I agree. Plur1bus is very cool and wry. I don’t, however, see it as a treatise on “socialism,” but I get your thesis. The problem is that socialism, like any other political or social, or religious belief system, lies on a spectrum. You warn against “pat labels,” but I think throwing around a huge concept like socialism, as if one size fits all, weakens your point.
I don’t know one American who is willing to give up their Social Security checks, or healthcare benefits, financial aid for college, or free K-12 public education. These are all forms of socialism. No American in their right mind would choose Stalinism or Mao’s re-education camps. These are all horrific extremes that have more to do with authoritarianism.
I agree that the concept of a universal income seems to defy logic. I don’t get it, but I’m fine with exchanging ideas. I’d rather see the Medicare eligibility age lowered, because data on people not having to spend thousands of dollars a month to protect their families seems to bode well for the economy. I don’t see that killing the desire for innovation and creativity Jobs’ style.
But the bottom line is that all of these ideas, from liberal extremes to conservative extremes, exist on a spectrum. The good stuff, the grist for the mill, exists somewhere in the middle. Pat labels don’t serve anyone, much less the dialectic exchange and debate of ideas.
Now you know one American who’d gladly give up social security. There are millions more of us. You should try to get out more; discuss things with people outside of your warm puddle of groupthink. Public schools K-12 in America are, in general, NOTORIOUSLY BAD. And, what “healthcare benefits” are you talking about? If it’s Obamacare, you’re sadly misinformed:
Obamacare was built by Democrat lobbyists to enrich the health insurance industry: $40 billion in subsidies/year straight to insurance cos to keep the boondoggle afloat. $200 billion a year total to insurers and hospitals via myriad tax breaks. Obamacare is a scam.
You can take your central-planning bureaucratic socialism and insert it with force.
Actually, I agree that Social Security is very conservatively invested and—major market corrections aside—a 60/40 IRA would definitely do better.
However, I was speaking of people ALREADY RECEIVING BENEFIT CHECKS. The people who had no choice but to contribute to it and are damn well going to cash those checks. I know hundreds, maybe thousands of people who don’t like seeing it deducted from their paychecks. I know zero who would turn down the benefit checks when they start arriving in retirement.
But all the name-calling shows a lack of creativity and imagination. Something Jobs abhorred. Besides, I wasn’t defending anything other than getting away from pat, insulting, jingoistic categorizations, which you dove right into. They’re boring, two-dimensional, and don’t advance real dialogue one inch.
Actually, I agree that Social Security is very conservatively invested and—major market corrections aside—a 60/40 IRA would definitely do better.
However, I was speaking of people ALREADY RECEIVING BENEFIT CHECKS. The people who had no choice but to contribute to it and are damn well going to cash those checks. I know hundreds, maybe thousands of people who don’t like seeing it deducted from their paychecks. I know zero who would turn down the benefit checks when they start arriving in retirement.
But all the name-calling shows a lack of creativity and imagination. Something Jobs abhorred. Besides, I wasn’t defending anything other than getting away from pat, insulting, jingoistic categorizations, which you dove right into. They’re boring, two-dimensional, and don’t advance real dialogue one inch.
Do you know that Nixon started the HMOs?
I think the blame came be spread. But yes, a pension (defined) would be better.
Actually, I didn’t remember that!
I do recall he enacted and proposed a lot of things that would be considered “socialist” or “liberal” in today’s one-note conversations, where ad hominem attacks are often used to avoid a deeper discussion of the issues.
Nixon created the EPA, signed the Clean Air Act, and established OSHA. He also expanded Social Security benefits, providing cost-of-living increases. He supported affirmative action for federal employees and government contractors, proposed healthcare reform requiring employers to provide health insurance to all employees, and introduced a minimum tax on wealthy individuals.
I was wholly unaware of this, but he actually proposed a guaranteed minimum income for the poor (🤯), though the plan was not enacted.
Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and the Bush men would be considered far too liberal for today’s GOP.
Crazy alignment with socialism (do your homework)
You 100% got it. Great article.
This is so dead on correct – amazing.
The younger gen is said to be embracing socialism… Maybe. But if so, the ONLY reason they would do so is they have no context of history whatsoever. Socialism is simply the tool of Marxist Communism to order society – top down indeed. 100%. Step out of line, well you do not fit, so away you go…
To embrace Socialism, one must – quite literally – reject freedom in all its areas of effect. How many children, marriage, your own business, free-lance, what car, what products will or will not be made, you cannot vote – well you can, it’s just the same outcome if the State feels it needs to still have voting to keep any riots or detention down… On and on it goes.
There is a phrase I heard long ago “When you no longer worship the Creator, you will worship the creation.” Expanded, you will worship self, the Universe, Government, Money, Sex or Power.
Something will always be worshiped, and people will always worship. They are known as… wait for it… Idols. Not out of wooden statues anymore on you mantle. It is your career, your sports, your money, your compfort at all costs, your relationship, your materialism overall, you name it, we have the ability to make anything an idol.
And with Socialism, Government is the idol, the cheap replacement for God. It decides as it is all powerful.
With Socialism, it is not “We the people…” It is “It, the Government” who now decides. Not you. Not the society.
NOTE: The phrase “American Exceptionalism” isn’t about American’s being “better” than other people. That’s an uninformed/ignorant understanding… Rather, American Exceptionalism is talking to America being the exception to the rule – the rule of Governance. We govern ourselves with our voting from the bottom down. The power is with the people, not the powers from on top. We have a Republic where we pick our rulers, and if we don’t like them, we throw them out. We have the power. Not leadership. It is indeed a massive exception, and thus American Exceptionalism.
Where is Pluribus going? Who knows… it is a Severance of a different form. In this world, we know the time, the date, what happened – or we think we do. But the direct correlation to Socialism is right there.
But again, Socialism is the tool of the Marxist play out of Communism, AKA, the ruling of all. So this begs the question, these rulers that produced this sophisticated RNA… What is their end-game? I think I know, but we’ll see…
Maybe the young people in the US are looking at Socialism (democratic) on the basis that they have been well and truly failed by laissez-faire, corporate capitalism.
Rubbish. Socialism is not communism, it is capitalism with large social programs like social security, medicare, and so on. IF America had national health care its health support would be vastly cheaper than what exists today.
This version of cutthroat capitalism we have today means rich jerks like Musk eventually have the same wealth as the bottom half of the economic pyramid. Socialism would mean that the poor workers get the same medical care as the richest of the billionaire caste.
The libs and progressives coming to this board are going to get a cold shower on what socialism is about. Trump is going to git rid of it one deep-stater at a time
Definitions:
Socialism: The government owns and controls the means of production, gets all the profit.
A softer version exists in countries with national health care systems like the U.K., where doctors and nurses are government employees and hospitals are mostly run by the state.
Corporatism or state capitalism—fascism—is when private companies technically own the means of production, but the government controls the decisions. For example, China. Some of China’s biggest companies are for-profit enterprises: the China Construction Bank, China Mobile, and Air China. They are technically not government agencies, but the government is a massive shareholder and steers corporate decisions.
Somewhere in between, you find social democracies like Sweden or Denmark, where the government levies taxes and redistributes them as welfare and social programs. And then there is crony capitalism, where powerful companies get favors and subsidies because everyone plays golf together.
The Trump administration has negotiated deals that give the federal government significant ownership stakes in private firms. Odd, but not unheard of. Many public pension funds do the same.
However, the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan’s Nippon Steel is little more sketch. The federal government demanded a “golden share,” giving it extraordinary influence, including a seat on the board of directors and veto power over major decisions like shutting down plants, relocating headquarters, etc. This isn’t socialism. But it’s a flavor of authoritarian economics.
What emerges looks much closer to corporatism: an economy where the government becomes a direct player in business decisions rather than a neutral referee. And that is a big problem. When federal bureaucrats have a direct leadership role in the corporate governance of a private company, they will steer that company toward political decisions rather than business decisions.
Trump’s reasoning seems to be, “Instead of giving money to big companies for free, we should be getting the most out of the deal, so let’s have some stock and dividends.” But the effect of these acquisitions is that America is inching toward an economy in which the government doesn’t play referee; it’s a player on the field. And the government is a really, really stupid player.
Summarized from a recent article on Reason.
Nice nuances and distinctions.
Japan is another country where medical care is nearly free, but there’s plenty of capitalism going on, too. They also face debt issues stemming from their swelling entitlement programs, so it will be interesting to see what they decide to do.
I agree that the government holding a financial stake in select companies will get messy. It’s not quite nationalization, but it seems to be inching there.
And that’s really why having better conversations about this is worthwhile. Both extreme ends of the spectrum can end up doing the same thing for different reasons. We might be better off treating the spectrum like a circle, and not a line.
I see the US Steel investment more as a way of protecting our interest in a vital industry rather than a company. Yes, Japan has been our friend for decades now, but we still need certain means of production to ensure our national defense as we found out during COVID when we realized our pharmaceuticals are being controlled by China.
In a weird way, Trump got the Japanese to invest the money in US Steel rather than our government….
Japan was going to invest (i.e. buy!) U.S. steel anyways, no intervention was required from the US government. If a company is on life support, the government should not artificially prolong it’s existence, unless it does so by getting rid of dumb regulations, unnecessary red tape, onerous taxes, or short-sighted trade barriers.
Giving the government a “golden share” in the company is a terrible idea. Company policies will then be guided by political calculations instead of by economics, or innovation. CEOs begin to look for political favors instead of building the best product and trying to compete.
They were going to buy it with no guarantee to keep it open rather than shift production somewhere else.
And once again, steel is a vital national interest, just like chips, prescription medications and food. Some industry needs to be protested but I DO agree with removing some of the red tape.
Also, huge industries are always looking for political favors. Try to keep up…
What is meant by socialism today would be better described as conscious capitalism. That is, a system that allows everyone at least some opportunity to compete with some degree of equality and fairness. Quality education for all through college or trade school, not just for the rich; excellent daycare and pre-K, not just for the rich; access to healthcare without the threat of financial ruin, not just for the rich; removal of corporate political donations, to return political power to the individual not just the rich oligarchs, to name a few. A strong entrepreneurial capitalist culture where many more people can experience the opportunities, means, and benefits of capitalism is the goal toward which we strive.
I’m guessing you meant “capitalism with a conscience,” as capitalism is mostly unconscious.
I agree with much of what you’ve said, and that if we’re really a “1st World Nation,” then education, healthcare, and daycare should be a right. It will give us a much better crop of young entrepreneurs to face the challenges ahead.
“Conscious Capitalism” – removing wealth from one group of people and giving to another is NEVER conscientious. It’s called stealing.
The idea that government needs to be a solution is not part of capitalism, it’s statism. Socialism is the statist cousin of communism. They are all shades of government control, which either means stealing and redistributing wealth poorly, or downright mismanagement. As Reagan said, if someone knocks on your door and says they are there from the gov to help, run.
I hear what you’re saying, but there are different ways along the spectrum to “steal” from taxpayers. I can see why different people prefer one or the other—or a blend of the two—but they still amount to income redistribution through government interventions and policies.
Conservative American policies have been found to contribute to a form of wealth redistribution that tends to disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower- and middle-income individuals. This is achieved through specific fiscal and regulatory mechanisms that concentrate wealth and economic power at the top of the income spectrum.
Key mechanisms include:
Tax Cuts Skewed to the Wealthy: A primary mechanism involves reducing top income tax rates, capital gains taxes, and estate taxes, while sometimes making tax cuts for lower- and middle-income families temporary. This results in higher post-tax incomes and greater wealth accumulation for the richest Americans, while the tax burden on the majority remains the same or even increases relative to time.
Cuts to Social Programs: To offset the revenue lost from tax cuts or as a separate policy goal, conservative agendas often propose or enact significant cuts to social safety net programs like Medicaid, food assistance (SNAP), and unemployment benefits. This reduces the household resources and living standards of low- and moderate-income families.
Deregulation and Weakening Labor Protections: Policies such as a refusal to raise the minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, lax enforcement of wage and overtime laws, and measures that make it harder for workers to form unions shift bargaining power from workers to capital owners and corporate managers. This wage suppression for the bottom 90% contributes to a massive upward transfer of wealth.
“Trickle-Down Economics” Theory: Conservative policy is often based on the premise that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will stimulate investment and job creation, leading to broad-based economic growth. However, analyses by various economic bodies suggest these policies have often failed to deliver the promised benefits to the working class, instead leading to outcomes such as stock buybacks that further enrich the wealthy and exacerbate inequality.
Policy Alignment with Wealthy Interests: Due to the disproportionate political influence of wealthy donors in political campaigns, policies often align more closely with their views, such as a preference for lower taxes and less government redistribution.
In contrast to traditional notions of wealth redistribution from rich to poor (e.g., through progressive taxation and social programs), critics argue that conservative policies effectively create an “upward” redistribution of wealth.
Both sides of the aisle do it, while who it tends to benefit differs.
Nope. Misconstrued, maybe unintentionally, but still.
You americans are so funny and so naive when it comes to the vast spectrum of governance around the world.
By your bizarre logic, so would every episode of Star Trek that involves the Borg reflect the ‘nightmare’ that is socialism… give me a break!
as others have noted, informed commentary would be more useful and informative than your chest-beating assertions that America is best…
Haha! Great reference! I thought exactly the same!
“We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.”
…still wishing for less boring, insult-free, one-dimensional dialogues about our differences of opinion and belief systems.
The creative genius of Rodenberry and Jobs craved that as well.
We are so naive, yet you are unable to speak up against your government without penalty, or speak out against atrocities committed against you, for fear of reprisal. Smugness is not becoming.
We fiercely hold onto what freedom and rights we have for a reason.
Magnificent film review with flawless analysis. Gilligan has planted a wonderful egg in woke Apple’s DEI nest!
SteveJack Neve disappoints. Just smarter, sharper and more honest than almost anyone I know. I love it!