You're not supposed to like Carol Sturka, so great - the writing worked.

I consider Pluribus to be one the really great shows in the last decade, and I also do not like Carol. Often, I'm annoyed by her actions, and once or twice I was really pissed at how she interacted with the Others, because IMHO, there was just so much unnecessary hostility, or she was just being a dense cunt.

Why would a movie, a TV show or a play require the audience to like the protagonist? Outside of these fictional depictions, I'd probably not be acquainted with someone like Carol - but here, I want to watch her. I want to see how she deals with the overall situation, how choices made by someone who is fundamentally different from me play out, how she grows as a character, how she overcomes her flaws, of which there are many, or how she might completely fail. There even is the option I eventually grow to like her. Wouldn't that be great, an actual character arc?

Carol is an alcoholic who doubts her self-worth and has just lost her love, a death which she directly blames on what she considers to be the alien invaders she now has to interact with on a daily basis. She was also recently promoted to one of the greatest mass murderers in history and the isolation she suffered as consequence of her actions made her realize she really can't exist in complete solitude, leading to a complex relationship with an entity she wants to hate. I think she deserves some jagged edges.

I don't think the show is trying to convey that point, no, but Carol is definitely a self-centered, hypocritical asshole. Thing is, though, a whole lot of people (maybe even most people) are self-centered, hypocritical assholes. I quite like the fact that the main protagonist of the series is someone who was very much not cut out to be a hero, and who does what she does for completely ignoble reasons. I think it grounds the story and makes for complex characters; this isn't "Twilight" or one of the other YA fictions. It's convincingly real people put into a really fucked up situation and trying to understand it and deal with it to the best of their ability.

It's fair enough if that's not your bag, but I really like that about the show.

The show is a metaphor for AI.

The indian mother can't accept that the chatbot isn't an actual person (her son is not her son).

The guy flying Airforce One knows what's up and loves it, just taking full advantage of it.

The guy from south america hates modern technology and doesn't trust it. And his life is now fucked because everything relies on it.

Carol is a writer, and AI is basically stealing people like her's jobs in real life. They show how she loses her life that she knows differently in the show, but she hates it just the same. And she has a reason to hate it.

The whole part about them starving in 10 years cause they can't create new food is AI not being able to self sustain if everything is AI cause there would be nothing AI can learn from.

I think what gets missed a lot by folks who don't like her character is that it's good to have a character who is flawed and that sometimes those flaws arise from what they're going through.

She definitely has her issues, for sure. Yet it read to me that her issues arose far more from the combination of this world-changing event and losing her romantic partner in a very traumatic way. Not a lot of time has passed, at the end of the series less than three months have passed since "the joining" and Carol losing her partner. These traumatic events combined: losing the person you trusted and love the most and the whole world changing overnight with everyone thinking the event that killed your loved one is the best thing that could possibly ever happen. She has not had a lot of time to grieve and she obviously is grieving badly partially because her entire world has been turned upside down and she lost the person she loved. Carol's partner isn't one of the "others" waiting to be pulled out of their joined state back to normalcy, no she's dead and gone forever.

None of this justifies her being kind of an asshole, but I think that's the point. That she's imperfect, she knows something is wrong, but she doesn't have the skills to do anything about it, and she is spiraling from grief and loss of not just her loved one but her entire known way of life. She can't even do simple things like go to a grocery store and have it bustling with individuals anymore. Every aspect of life that was normalcy and comfort has been torn from her and she's in a bad way. This new world leaves her uncomfortable and feeling alienated. I can see myself spiraling and making selfish bad decisions in a similar situation as well, especially when only two and a half months have passed.

The entire story seems to be "I'm unhappy, so nobody should be happy". Amazing show 👏 Had she been a side-character, OK, but to making her the main character is just completely boring. What are we going to have this episode, oh another tirade? How original. Maybe we'll have her nearly find love again but some even will remind her that she has to be unhappy!

The only interesting thing the show has going for it is the mind meld, but beyond that it's just a tiresome show. If I wanted to watch people have no hope, I'd watch the news about the US.