The story of Vince Gilligan’s gripping new Apple TV show Pluribus explores the human condition through an inventive sci-fi premise that not only keeps us guessing but forces us to think deeply about the nature of free will, happiness, and what it means to be alive. And, in Episode 6, “HDP,” Pluribus also briefly becomes a massive James Bond homage. Here’s what’s going on in the opening moments of Pluribus, and which specific 007 moments are getting referenced.
Warning! Mild spoilers ahead.
After the opening moments, in which Carol (Rhea Seehorn) confirms that the strange milk-like substance is, in fact, made from human remains, the title card rolls, and then, suddenly, we’re in Las Vegas. Koumba (Samba Schutte), one of the few humans immune to the Joining, is living it up in a casino, playing a high-stakes poker game against a man with an eyepatch.
Koumba (Samba Schutte) goes full retro Bond.
For several minutes, this scene plays out almost as a dream sequence. Are all these characters acting of their own free will? Or is something else going on? After Koumba defeats a character called TK, all the “Others” are allowed to break character. But before that happens, the Bond references are plenty, some of which are buried in the credits of this episode.
The man Koumba beats at cards (Francois Guetary), the one with the eyepatch, is called “Blofinger.” This is a reference to the two famous Bond villains, Blofeld and Goldfinger. That said, the eyepatch and poker scene reference a game of cards that Bond (Sean Connery) played against Largo (Adolfo Celi) in the 1965 film Thunderball. Meanwhile, the Las Vegas setting, with Koumba living it up, so to speak, seems to reference the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever, the only time James Bond ended up in Vegas. (The 1956 book version of Diamonds Are Forever is much better, by the way. But, obviously, the movie version is more iconic!)
Sean Connery and Lana Wood in Diamonds Are Forever.
The musical score in this scene is full of suspicious guitars and low brass and strings, reminiscent of so many John Barry James Bond scores. And, one of Koumba’s companions, played by Anna Mhairi, is, in the credits, named “Vesper.” This is a reference to the character Vesper Lynn, created by Ian Fleming for his first novel, 1953’s Casino Royale. (The Vesper is also the name of a famous cocktail, which, at least in name, originates from that book.)
Koumba’s Bond fantasy is, of course, eventually broken by the arrival of Carol, who demands to talk to him about the grisly nature of the HDP. But, in truth, the fantasy is broken before that, when many of the Others break character after Koumba leaves, picking up broken glass, and generally, resetting the world to the way it was before.
As a brief Bond send-up, it’s all pitch-perfect, but as part of Pluribus’s ongoing themes, there’s something else interesting here. Carol can judge Koumba for his fantasy all she wants, but it’s also interesting, considering she herself is a romantasy author, another kind of titillating escapist fiction parallel with something like James Bond. Only a few episodes previous, we learned that the Others put Carol’s books on the same level of esteem as Shakespeare. Clearly, with this episode, they’re capable of doing the same thing with Ian Fleming.
There’s a subtle sense of artistic democratization in all of this. Just as we were able to laugh at Carol’s romantasy fiction in the first episode, Pluribus does the same thing with Bond in this episode. The show is clearly making a comment on our various hang-ups and escapist ideas. But, if you lived in a hivemind world in which all of these things were okay, would that make all of these things okay? Or, is Pluribus suggesting something else: Perhaps the line between farce, good art, and bad art is simply nonexistent.
