Just finished the third episode. Early comments were that it was a show about a “woke mind virus” or regular Burgerlander anti-communism, but I’m not so sure now.
spoiler
Protagonist had her drunk rant about “why are you so special, you think you’re all so great, knowing everything about everyone all the time, the amalgamation of all human knowledge and understanding SO WHAT” etc etc. Paraphrasing obviously.
I’m starting to think that this whole thing might be a big rant from Gilligan about AI. In the sense that it attempts to amalgamate all human knowledge and experience into one giant blob that we all share from together, but at the cost what makes us all unique as human beings.
I could be wrong - it’s still early in the show, but that’s the vibe I get at this point and it definitely strikes the nerve that Gilligan seems to be feeling at the moment.
They did put a “This show was made by humans” disclaimer at the very beginning, after all.
The core theme of BrBa was pride and how it destroys everything. I can see the theme of this series being cynicism and how to fix it. Like the end goal has to be to make Carol actually happy even if she never ends up as part of the Entity.
Reading one of the interview articles Gilligan sums up the concept as “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness.” From that I can see it going either way, perhaps affirming that negative emotions are a defining characteristic of human life, or the opposite. Carols wife was definitely a sponge for her negative emotions and I think now that the only people she is left with either wont or literally cant handle negativity (For now, I suspect her mirror in Paraguay will show up in some point to give her a taste of her own medicine) she is beginning to spiral. I suspect next episode she will begin to take advantage of the hive mind in an attempt to push it to its limits.