It’s the end of the world as we know it in Vince Gilligan’s ambitious new sci-fi series, *Pluribus*, and nearly everyone feels fine. Everyone except misanthropic author Carol Sturka (Emmy Award nominee Rhea Seehorn), who takes it upon herself to save the world from a sudden outbreak of universal happiness.

The project—which was wrapped in an impenetrable shroud of secrecy at Apple TV+ until its two-episode premiere on Friday, Nov. 7—marks a major change of pace for Gilligan. He dedicated the better part of the last two decades to peddling crime-related thrills in the *Breaking Bad* universe, which ultimately expanded to include the sequel film *El Camino* and prequel series *Better Call Saul*.

“This is the first time in all that time that we’re starting over from scratch, if you think about it,” Gilligan’s longtime composer Dave Porter recently told me over Zoom. “Everything we’ve done [up until now] has been very different, but they’ve all had some commonality and some threads that went through them.”

While *Pluribus* stars a *Better Call Saul* veteran and takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it’s still as different as one can get from the chaos caused by Walter White’s meth empire.

“There’s really not a lot between these shows that looks or feels the same by design,” Porter said. “That was exciting and a little terrifying. The first and most important mandate was that it be absolutely new and fresh and different for us. I think this applied not just to me, but to every member of the creative team. We really wanted to set this apart from all the work we’ve done in the past.”

### So, what exactly is the show about?

***WARNING: The following contains minor spoilers for the first two episodes of *Pluribus*!***

If you’ve seen the first two episodes, you know that *Pluribus* tells the story of an extraterrestrial virus that transforms nearly all of humanity into a hive mind (à la *Invasion of the Body Snatchers*). But don’t expect them to open their mouths and shriek at you like Donald Sutherland when they find out someone hasn’t been assimilated.

In fact, they are literally incapable of harming any living organism, no matter how small.

“I was comforted by the fact that, in part, we’re having fun with those [genre] tropes,” Porter admitted. “We’re intentionally leading our audience a certain way here and reveling in [it], because it’s fun. That crazy world-turning event is exciting, wild, unexpected—and parts of it are not new to us as a viewer, but where this show goes is also very new to the viewer. It’s a little of us winking at the audience, but also taking it seriously at the same time. Because the stakes are so big and so crucial as a background to everything that follows in the show.”

As one of the few individuals with immunity to the eerie infection, Carol hopes to find a way to reverse the process, though she seems to be the only one interested in achieving that goal. After all, there is something to be said for a world without hate or violence, albeit at the expense of individuality.

“I wanted to embrace the scope and scale of the show in a different way than I did with the music in *Breaking Bad* and its companion shows,” Porter said. “Not that those shows weren’t big too, but in a way, they’re a little bit the inverse. Those shows start out very personal and very centered around one individual [before expanding] into a viewpoint that is inclusive of a much larger global phenomenon and feeling. Whereas this works the opposite way around. This one starts massive and huge with global implications, and as the show goes on, it becomes more intimate and more personal.”

To that end, he wanted the *Pluribus* score to sound more “human… a little more natural and organic” as a way to reflect the wholesale loss of humanity all around Carol.

“In the other shows, I was working hard to squeeze organic-ness out of sounds and textures that weren’t that way to begin with,” he added. “[*Breaking Bad*] has this science nature to it and it’s very biting and gritty. Here, I think *Pluribus* has a little bit more emotional resonance [at the forefront]. It’s funny at times in a way that’s more overt than in previous projects. It’s warm in some ways that we never were in those other shows. And so, I wanted to be able to express that through the score.”

Despite all that, Porter did not want to paint a definitive line, musically speaking, between Carol and the “Others,” who are “not necessarily your typical sci-fi boogeyman story,” he emphasized.

“There’s a lot to be said and a lot to think about, on purpose, for what the other side has to say in this argument. Using music to help blur those lines helps and tell that story anywhere we can is so important.”

Nowhere is that blurred line more apparent than in the slightly unsettling a capella that constitutes the main theme song (listen below).

“It is very simple, very spare. Just a two-part vocal piece intentionally sung by the same woman,” Porter said. “In a nutshell, that is the devil and the angel on each shoulder. The groupthink versus the individual, and all those kinds of dichotomies we’re setting up; those confrontations we’re setting up emotionally and cerebrally.”

The theme was performed by Kenya Hathaway (daughter of soul legend Donny Hathaway), whose voice “has a strength and a professionalism about it, [as well as] classical training,” he continued. “But at the same time, it’s got an incredible amount of soul and a little bit of a childlike quality—a little innocence that you don’t normally find in someone that does something professionally.”

In sum, there are no easy answers to be found in *Pluribus*, which has already been renewed for a second season. As of this writing, the show holds a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

For Porter, the show’s success lies in its clever exploration of what it means to be human, using genre storytelling as a societal mirror—much in the same way Rod Serling did on *The Twilight Zone* (of which Gilligan is a big fan) more than half a century ago.

“What I hope the score does is show a wide range of what we think of as feeling human,” he concluded. “I think if there’s any message for me, it’s that there’s so much commonality among us. That no matter how we think differently about things, there are just some fundamental human-nesses (to make up a word) that, in the end, trump everything else.”
https://bitcoinethereumnews.com/finance/pluribus-composer-talks-moving-away-from-breaking-bad-universe/