'Pluribus' review: 'Breaking Bad' creator Vince Gilligan's funky show for thinking viewers

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Albuquerque bestselling novelist Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn, "Better Call Saul") is just back in town from a promotional tour when the unthinkable happens — the entire population of planet earth has been turned into automatons, each person able to share the thoughts of everyone else. Not everyone survives this apocalypse, including Carol's wife, Helen (Miriam Shor) but otherwise, these billions of Stepford wives (and husbands) seem friendly enough, also well-meaning and even happy. They also want Carol to become one of them. Exactly 11 people have not changed, however. A disparate lot, these include a Mauritanian playboy (Samba Schutte, "Our Flag Means Death") and a freaked-out guy in Paraguay (Carlos-Manuel Vesga, "The Hijacking of Flight 601”). Carol decides to recruit them to fight this global scourge. They are resistant.

This 9-parter comes from "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan (and it has already been picked up for a second season).

MY SAY One of TV's most esteemed showrunners sure has come up with a funky pivot. An alien invasion/zombie series that's not really about zombies (or aliens) but with enough parallels to at least make this zombie/alien adjacent? A show that feels like a spinoff of a "Twilight Zone" episode, or maybe one of those "monster-of-the-week" ones on "The X-Files" for which he once wrote? (Seriously? Seriously.)

There are some Vince Gilliganisms here to keep you from wondering whether you've stumbled into someone else's apocalyptic fever dream (like Craig Mazin's "The Last of Us," for example). Best examples are the cold opens of most episodes — intricate set pieces that make absolutely no sense on their own, but set up everything to come, and which were so effective on "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul."

While funky, you don't have to look too far for parallels. There's a "Severance" vibe here, and "The Leftovers," too, along with a touch of "The Last Man on Earth" (this does have a desolate sense of humor). Otherwise, "Pluribus" — meaning "of many" — is essentially an elaborate thought experiment untethered to what has never been nor will ever be (hopefully). A nesting doll of "what ifs," those begin with, what if everyone on the planet was suddenly mind-melded? And what if those so melded are superfriendly? And what if they are all militant vegans who wouldn't hurt a fly?

Perhaps the biggest "what if" of them all: What if this tangle of "what ifs" and nutty premises and solicitous Chat GPT zombies ("that's a great question, Carol!") turns into an unwieldy unwatchable mess, as might seem likely?

Improbably, "Pluribus" does not. There are a few reasons why. Foremost, this is a thinking viewers' show, filled with plump, meaty ideas — just not too plump or meaty. "Pluribus" flirts with some of our current obsessions, like the political divide and artificial intelligence. The entire human race, or what's left of it, has essentially become an AI chatbot. Everyone has the answer to everything. Politics are extinct because (hypothetically) they'd vote for the same candidate anyway.

Inevitably, this all leads straight to sci-fi's singular, age-old obsession — what it means to be human — and that's where Seehorn's Carol comes in (Seehorn is excellent, by the way). She's an incorrigible sourpuss and self-loathing alcoholic, who has higher aspirations than those bodice rippers she pumps out. These sweaty, carnal doorstops have given her and her wife a life of opulence — a hilltop spread with a view of the Sandias — but she's been too busy staring at the bottom of a bottle to notice. She's a fully human specimen adrift in a sea of pod people, now with one mission — to turn them all back into the squabbling, environment-degrading humans they once were.

And here's the funkiest thing about "Pluribus": You hope she succeeds.

BOTTOM LINE A (funky) winner.