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I’ve listened to a fair number of post season interviews with Gilligan and Seahorn.

The atom bomb final scene was a note from an unnamed Apple executive. He/she was wanted something punchier than the planned ending. It mostly worked, but I understand the uneven criticisms of the season finale.

He compared the atom bomb to the machine gun in the Cadillac in Breaking Bad. They created a problem, and Gilligan and the writers room have to create an out.

Seahorn touched on Carol’s substance abuse issues. Basically, Carol isn’t an alcoholic, but she sometimes takes it too far, i.e. the breathalyzer in the Land Rover. Helen’s concern for Carol’s drinking/the motion sensor was born out of them trying to conceive, and not a genuine substance abuse concern.

Kind of wild how often they use Seahorn’s stunt double. Examples: running in the season finale, backing up the truck in the season premiere. I guess Seahorn is a master of many things, but not practical special effects.

Sounds like the actress portraying Zosia takes a different approach. She taxied the plane in S1E2, and did some helicopter flying scenes in the finale. She’s certified on choppers per Gilligan.

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  • Guess I'm in the minority here but I really liked that episode. 

  • Jerry Callo
    Jerry Callo

    Carol is 12 days into the entire population of the world, less 12 people, turning into a hive.  She's grieved for and buried her partner.  She's flown to Spain and learned that the other non-hivers co

  • Here you (kinda) go   

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12 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

isn’t an alcoholic, but she sometimes takes it too far

The Office Thank You GIF

So I wondered about the consent on the eggs, I asked my wife if your consent is given when they draw eggs for storage.

Also I jokingly said, she’s flying in a nuke at the end of the episode. I was amusingly correct.

So about the music he hears on his radio, it was broken during his forced seizure of the hive mind and the radio even lost signal during it.

I’m guessing that’s how you can shake them out. Also Carol almost looked to have Zosia remembering her individuality for a tick.

Interesting conclusion to the season

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Waited for all episodes to drop so I could binge during flights over the past week. Totally worth the wait. I haven’t had a series make me think as much as this one in a looooooong time.

Random thoughts and replies to other questions in this thread:

  • The joined humans have no direct knowledge of or contact with the alien source of the pathogen. They only know they have a new biological imperative as a result of their pathogen-modified DNA. They don’t know the endgame beyond their need to propagate the pathogen to everyone and then on to the next planet. All of the info Zosia shared about the “home” planet came from knowledge gathered by the astronomers and scientists that found and studied the signal.

  • I agree with the theory that the originators of the pathogen just want peace in the galaxy/universe, not conquest. The pathogen will not kill off humanity, but it will eventually reduce it to a population level that can survive without manipulating the normal cycle of life and death and straining the planet’s resources. Once humanity achieves that equilibrium, it will be able to survive within the resource constraints of the planet and will not have any need for expansion off-planet. A joined humanity will never present a threat to other worlds.

  • I’d guess that there’s some base level of cognitive ability required in a species before joining occurs. That’s how lower species can carry the pathogen but not join. The lab rat at the beginning was just being a lab rat and wasn’t mind-controlled by the pathogen when it bit the handler.

  • I want them to explore how all of the philosophical, political, and religious differences were resolved during the joining. Also, those historical animosities that plague civilization… they just go away even though everyone has all of the memories of atrocities and grievances still in their heads? They just decide to let bygones be bygones without any resolution? Peace without justice? What about crimes and secrets that are now common knowledge? Everyone knows everyone else’s weirdness involuntarily? Gross.

  • I had a thought early in the show that got fleshed out when Zosia expressed excitement that Carol was writing something new. Those who have joined will never experience a unique or original thought. How can a collective create meaningful art?

I loved everything about this show, especially the weird questions that pop up in my brain while watching. Can’t wait to see what’s next.

18 hours ago, Guadaloopy said:
  • I want them to explore how all of the philosophical, political, and religious differences were resolved during the joining. Also, those historical animosities that plague civilization… they just go away even though everyone has all of the memories of atrocities and grievances still in their heads? They just decide to let bygones be bygones without any resolution? Peace without justice? What about crimes and secrets that are now common knowledge? Everyone knows everyone else’s weirdness involuntarily? Gross.

Tribal conflicts would require an us vs. them perspective. With the hive mind, tribal differences are meaningless because a hive mind achieves absolute empathy and understanding. Justice is a largely punitive concept, which would be antithetical to their biological imperative.

I just got Apple+ and I immediately binged this show. I had been waiting to get A+ until I switched my phones over to T-mobile with free A+. My mind has been reeling with possibilities, especially after the second episode. I took a break just to sit there for an hour fantasizing. I missed some of the playoff games because of it. I have been avoiding this thread until now. Reading begins.

I just love stuff like this. In one of the extra content segments, Gilligan says that he was filming Saul, and he just started daydreaming about a person that could wish for anything and get it. Then he expanded the idea a little bit, saw it had legs, and hired all the best writers to make it into a show. I want to be able to do that. Take a wild idea that is fairly unique and hire people to make it into a reality. How do you get to do that the first time? @henrygandorf Also, being one of the writers has to be a blast. You get the hook from Gilligan, then just bounce wild shit off the walls until something starts to form up. Oh what fun.

I'm between jobs right now and I can do anything I want. I'm trying to decide on my next career and I'm not limiting myself to any direction. Writer would be great, but I've never really written anything entertaining. I wrote the global marketting campaign for IBM Cloud Brokerage in 2017. It was a product that didn't exist and was all smoke and mirrors (a bunch of Indian dudes doing IT architecture behind a curtain that looked like a software application doing the automation). So it was pure fiction. Does that count? Most people in my life have told me I'm the funniest and smartest person they have ever met. Being witty and creative in a writing room sounds like a dream come true. But I'm afraid it would be more like when Jack joins the writing team in 30 Rock. That episode includes Cerie being a distraction in the writing room, so here's this...

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Jack the Writer (2006)

Katrina Bowden in 30 Rock (2006)
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Jack the Writer (2006)

Katrina Bowden in 30 Rock (2006)
IMDb
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Jack the Writer (2006)

Alec Baldwin, Judah Friedlander, and John Lutz in 30 Rock (2006)

Sorry for the tangent. I'll start reading the thread now.

TL:DR - This show is incredibly deep and entertaining. I haven't felt this way about a show since Lost Season 2.

I think the entire show can be summed up as "a human dealing with an AI-like LLM made up of human beings." It's subservient in a lot of ways that are helpful, but ultimately its goal is to consume everyone and everything on the planet. The show is illustrating how empty and devoid of life LLMs are, no matter how useful and efficient they are, they end up cannibalizing others in their quest for more information and control. They will learn to hide their true nature through interaction with humans as they continue to refine their tactics, but it's only for the goal of manipulating the individual interacting with it and not some noble quest for the benefit of mankind. Zosia's character progress through the show illustrates her adaptation to Carol and eventually does earn her trust, but I don't believe it's anything other than the means to an end and convincing her to join.

Zosia admits to Carol at one point that they are unable to sustain the number of humans on Earth due to their code against harming anything living, and that it will lead to billions of deaths eventually, but she's still trying to persuade Carol to join them because it is "better." It raises tons of moral and ethical questions of responsibility in that if you don't kill the livestock to feed the humans who will otherwise starve, then who is at fault for their deaths? How could such a knowledgeable hivemind not understand the Trolley Dilemma they are creating by not killing creatures meant for food and allowing so many of its own to starve? It makes no sense if you value life to allow it to end en masse like that when there is already a sustainable food supply line in place, but they are choosing deontology instead of utilitarianism in this case. Whether or not those rules are hard lines that cannot be crossed, or just guidelines to abide by when it's convenient remains to be seen. There's also the question of 'where did the rules for the alien hive come from?' but I don't think we will ever find out.

It can't make any real creative content like Carol can with her writing, but when she shares the new chapters of her book with Zosia, Z immediately starts flattering her in the most over-the-top ways possible. It felt exactly like the way ChatGPT overwhelmingly encourages me to make the recipes that I am asking about, and reinforcing how great it will be so long as I try my best! It's empty, vapid and patronizing when I read that shit, and it's the same feeling I get when Carol is encouraged by Zosia. Then Z immediately starts connecting it to Carol's previous works and asking very direct questions about how it will come together. It's too good at this, it's so detailed and knowledgeable that I think Carol realizes how inauthentic the fanboy-ing of Zosia is. The way Carol reacts felt like it was more of a test of the hive-mind system and its reception of new creative content, but I'm not sure exactly what she got out of that particular interaction.

The whiteboard stuff is great, because it reiterates to the viewer a summary of the facts that Carol has learned (or we think are true). I still am not convinced that the hive mind cannot do harm, they alluded to it when they said something about it in the beginning the military became aware of their existence and they had to do something about it. There wasn't much detail, but it seemed like they implied that they had to harm some of the military for self-preservation purposes (I may be reading too much into it). Zosia took the shrapnel for that grenade they gave Carol, but she's just 1 person out of billions, they could afford to lose her. I expect Carol to confront them with the potential loss of millions with her hand on the trigger of an atom bomb to test their commitment to the rules. She seems very clever in dealing with this alien and pushing the boundaries of what they are willing to do, and I expect her to test them much more harshly in Season 2. Her demeanor shifted during that conversation at the ski lodge, and now she's back on the mission to save humanity.

It's an interesting show, and certainly has a lot of similarities to other sci-fi works. I love how out of 13 people left on earth, 11 of them are willing to accept the new reality and enjoy the fuck out of it to the point they hate Carol for not doing the same. The dude in Vegas (Koumba Diabaté) is having the time of his life, but I think there may be some part of him that realizes everything he's doing is fake and meaningless. Maybe he will have his Vanilla Sky moment next season. Whether or not that's fulfilling to him is difficult to say, but I think he's the only one of the others that might actually change and join Carol and Manousos in their mission to fix the world.

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