Pop Culture Diary: This Week's Reviews, Reads and Roundups: 'Pluribus,' More

What's I've Been Into...

"Pluribus" I'm very taken by, and nearly done with, the first season of this sci-fi series from "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" creator Vince Gilligan.

Rhea Seehorn is fantastic playing the demanding role of fantasy novelist Carol Sturka, who finds herself as the last person in North America bestowed with her own personality and free will.

Everyone else has "joined" as the result of being exposed to an alien virus, and is essentially part of a hive mind. They essentially have one, all-encompassing brain and they work together like drones serving some unknown cause.

They like Carol, though, and want her to be well and happy, even as she treats them like the enemy and wants to restore everything to the way it was before. The joiners aren't sure why Carol wasn't affected by the virus and are trying to figure it out. In the meantime, they go out of their way to provide her with anything she wishes.

Carol learns she isn't the only one left out. There are a dozen or so other folks on the planet left with independent thought and most of them don't mind the new status quo at all. Koumba (Samba Schutte), of Mauritania, for one, loves it. He assembles a harem of attractive joiners who act on his whim, moves into a huge Las Vegas hotel suite and has the join set him up with a fleet of expensive sports cars, a different one to drive on each day of the week.

At the same time she resists, Carol finds she needs human connection, even if the humans aren't quite human anymore.

The show shares elements with "Lost," "The Prisoner," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and other sci-fi shows and movies, but is very much its own, fascinating, thing. And it's very fun in a very smart way.