The Most Miserable Person In The World Must Save The World: TV's Newest Twist

“How much misery would you endure to save the world from happiness?” That’s the mind-bending premise behind Pluribus, the new Apple TV+ series that has Ben Rogers, Jeff “Skin” Wade, Kevin “KT” Turner, and Krystina Ray buzzing. In this episode of The Ben and Skin Show, the crew dives deep into the show’s shocking concept, its Vince Gilligan pedigree, and why the first two episodes feel like a mix of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and a David Lynch fever dream.Ben and Skin debate whether it’s sci-fi or psychological thriller while KT breaks down the jaw-dropping twist that flips the apocalypse genre on its head. Krystina weighs in on the bizarre book themes—dragons, pirates, and romance—and the gang shares the most WTF moment from episode two that had Ben rewinding multiple times asking, “Is this even legal?”

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, we got a news queakie coming up. How
many spots do you have at your spot? We'll explain
in ten minutes, but right now it's time for this.
I feel like we haven't talked about TV in a while,

(00:21):
so we should do that. Who all has seen Pluribus
on Apple TV?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Me not? I Ben.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
I watched it last night, both episode one, just the
first episodes, yeah, and it was so good. I tried
to watch episode two but it was late and I
was yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Yeah, it's sci fi, right, I've seen that listed is
sci fi. Some call it sci fi.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, you said that weird.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Like you say it like my wife says Taco Bell.
Did I say Taco Bell Fi?

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (00:50):
I would say, yeah, science fiction, psychological thriller maybe if
you want to go that in there, I or just
you know, drama, you know yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Uh the tagline, oh no.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
He's right, Yeah, you got you gotta throw the sci
fi fi.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Yeah, it is suffice to say it's yes.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
I think the tagline is is as simple as this,
the most miserable person on Earth must save the world
from happiness. So the story is about it's by the way,
it's on Apple It's on Apple TV.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Plus Max.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Yeah, it's just TV now, right, I think so with
the Easter colors on.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
The list, Yeah, they changed it.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, and every Friday they'll drop a new episode. They
dropped the first two. The creator of the show is
Vince Gilligan, who made Breaking Bad. I think the first
thing he's done since Breaking Bad. Well, no, he did
Better Call Saul. Oh yeah, well he didn't do that.
I don't think he did all of that. No. I
think it was other like directors of Breaking Bad episodes.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
But I could be wrong. I could be wrong. For sure.
You think he just let people take his characters and
just create something new with it. Maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
Okay, he's on Better Call Saul. I mean it comes
up when you type in Vince Gilligan.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
I guess he didn't have the overarching like it was
all he used a lot of the people.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
That I mean, it's the same thing, yep. So sure.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
So the first episode she is an author. The lady
is ray Seahorn is her name in real life. She's
Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul. So she's in the
Breaking Bad universe. And by the way, the show is
shot in Albuquerque. It's the setting of this place is
an Albuquerque. It looks like breaking Bad. It's pretty awesome.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Is it modern time? Yeah? Okay, so it's current or
I should say current time. It's not the future. Yes, okay.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Her name is Carol and she's an author, and she's
very unhappy. She writes these like romantic fantasy books that
all women love this, right, Christina, dragons are having sex
with women.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
It doesn't say what her books are about, but you
can kind of guess that it's along those terms.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, Game of Thrones. Would you read the book he
just described?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
No, I wouldn't, but there's pirates involved in her book,
and I think I would read it.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Okay, there's pirates. Yeah, you just read that whole thing
about that island recently.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
I did Wager Island Never Forget.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
So meanwhile, while you see what her character is going through,
she's doing book readings and things like that, there's also
a whole other element of characters we'll probably never see again.
Because a lab experiment has gone wrong and you immediately
are thinking about COVID.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Something went wrong with a.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Rat rat bit of gal rat gat loose, And I.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Don't want to give away too much. I'm kind of
I don't know how much I should give away.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Here, right. I just love a twist on a type
of apocalyptic world. It's a twist that you've never seen before,
even heard about before, read about, and it's it's really
it's funny on top of.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Just being good. Yeah. I love a good funny apocalypse.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
It really is. Yeah, I think episode two is funnier
than the first one?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Did you like episode one?

Speaker 4 (03:53):
Ben?

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I loved it.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
To Christina's point, it's it's a new spin, a new wrinkle.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
I'd never considered anything like that. Who is there anybody
else in it that I would know besides Kim Wexler,
by the way, that is such a great lawyer name.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, right, And she's awesome. She was awesome and all
of that before. She's awesome in this now. And I
don't think I've ever seen her in anything else other
than these things.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
I would say, through two episodes, I can't tell you
that I knew anyone else.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Okay, so we'll see what happens.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
There's a huge twist in here that happens in episode
one and into episode two where you're just like, whoa,
that's what they're doing and you still kind of don't
know what's going on.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
How similar is it to watching Scrooge at the end
of the Chair.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
The Chair Company on HBO just wrapped up episode five.
It's got three episodes left today night, and don't look
at her. After episode four, I was like, man, I'm
really feeling good about where this show's going. And then
episode five happened and I'm back to the I'm back
to the foundation it built me up and tore me down.

(04:58):
I have no idea what's got and I know we
gotta rap up, but I want to say one thing.
After watching episode five, because I told you guys, I
was sitting there going, Okay, this guy basically he's schizophrenic
and he's created all these alternate realities and so eventually
we're gonna see everyone's gonna After watching episode five, I
was like, I'm not sure I believe that anymore.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Basically, this is just turning into a David Lynch movie. Yeah, Like,
this is so much like a David Lynch movie. It's
just has the Tim Robinson weirdness comedy element. What happened, God, no,
you ahead what happened at the end of.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
This latest episode confused me beyond belief where I was like,
I don't understand what's happening anymore?

Speaker 2 (05:38):
And also is this legal? Like? How is this?

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Is probably the most shocking thing I've ever seen on TV?
Can I say something about why it's legal because it's
a prosthetic.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah, it's clearly a PA that's allowed. You can you
can do things to prosthetics if you What were your
thoughts on it?

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Christine?

Speaker 4 (05:58):
At the end?

Speaker 2 (05:59):
I have gotten to see it? OKAYO does this make
you want to watch it immediately?

Speaker 3 (06:03):
It's I mean, it's intriguing just because of all's confusion.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Maybe maybe we'll talk about it play. I know we
got a houstle real quick.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
Ben, how many times did you rewind to watch it
again to see if you could figure out what was
going on?

Speaker 1 (06:13):
I rewind, I rewounded a couple of times, and then
I was like the next day, I was kind of
hazy because I watched it late, So I went back
and rewatched the ending again.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Last night, I'm like, did I did I see that through?
How did they get to that? I kept skipping back
and making my wife watch it over and over.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
It was such a whole hum thing, and then all
of a sudden, wait, what you can do that anyways,
uh yeah uh Coming up next, it's the news quickie.
How many spots do you have at your spot? We'll
explain in three minutes.