The Real Reason Carol Never Asks The Plurbs To Shorten Their Phone Message In Pluribus

Late last year, nearly half a decade after he’d wrapped up the Breaking Bad saga in a neat bow, Vince Gilligan treated us to another groundbreaking TV masterpiece. Pluribus is just as fiercely original, deeply compelling, and emotionally riveting as Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul were, but in a completely different way. Rather than telling another gritty crime story, Gilligan went back to his sci-fi roots and offered up a wholly unique vision of a strangely benevolent apocalypse.

Pluribus used its wild high-concept story of a happiness epidemic, whereby an all-loving alien hive mind essentially creates peace on Earth by body-snatching the entire human race and forcing us all to be excellent to each other against our will, to explore all the things that make us innately human. In a world where everyone is homogenously happy, Carol Sturka — one of the few immune people unaffected by the hive — is the most miserable person on the planet.

While the plurbs treat her with kindness and adoration, Carol experiences a much broader spectrum of human emotions — anger, frustration, fear, repulsion — and when she expresses those negative emotions one too many times, the entire city of Albuquerque just ups and leaves. The plurbs decide to give Carol some space, and leave her all alone with no other human beings around for miles.

During this breakup period, the plurbs still provide Carol with everything she asks for, but she has to call a designated phone number, sit through a long, tedious phone message (recorded by Howard Hamlin himself, Patrick Fabian), and leave her request. This is one of the few things that fans have bumped into in an otherwise meticulously crafted show: why would Carol not just ask them to shorten the phone message?

Carol Might Be Listening To The Plurbs' Phone Message Out Of Spite

The first season of Pluribus made it crystal clear that the plurbs have to give Carol whatever she asks for. Her wish is their command. The finale ended with a weapon of mass destruction being delivered to Carol’s doorstep, just because she asked for it. So, if she asked them to shorten that phone message, or delete it entirely, they would have to do it. And yet, she keeps listening to that message in its entirety.

Hello, Carol. This is a recording. At the tone, you can leave a message to request anything you might need. We'll do our best to provide it. Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol. But after everything that's happened, we just need a little space.

She might be listening to the message out of stubbornness. Maybe she’s just too petty to ask the plurbs to shorten it. She’d rather listen to it every time, and show them that it doesn’t get a rise out of her, than continue to depend on their help and support. But I think there’s a deeper, much more heartbreaking explanation.

It's More Likely That Carol Craves The Sound Of Another Human Voice

Carol might keep listening to that message out of spite, but I think it’s more likely out of a desperate need for human connection. She craves the sound of someone else’s voice after being left alone for so long. When she has the city to herself, Carol initially has a ton of fun — just like Kevin McCallister, but on a much larger scale — but she eventually begins to feel debilitatingly lonely. The isolation gets to her, and she finally begs the plurbs to come back, and embraces Zosia with a big hug, because we need human contact.

If Pluribus has one single message, it’s that human beings need to connect with each other; we need friends and loved ones to help get us through the day. Even the most hardened, closed-off lone wolf needs the company of other human beings, just for their own sanity and survival. The real tragedy of Pluribus is that Carol is in a lose-lose situation, and she’d rather have a facsimile of human connection than none at all.