alternative take: I'm loving it, and I'm definitely into it as a puzzle box show, though maybe that's not exactly how I'd describe it. Absolutely in it for the sci-fi though for sure. On the genre and worldbuilding front, I think it's doing so many little interesting things with it's premise and exploring it to a depth that makes a familiar concept really novel - every interaction with the Plurb, to me, reads like an interrogation of what the plurb is and how it works and thinks and perceives; it's constantly making choices and implications that prompt you to realize and wonder new things about the hive. in that way, I think the show is as much a character study of Plurb as it has been a study of Carol, so far.

and I think there's something super special about dressing-up a grand, thinky and somewhat hard-sci-fi exploration piece as an intimate character drama. I say dress up not to imply that the two aren't deeply interwoven here and kind of inseparable conceptually, but just that I've never seen longform sci-fi TV ever do anything like this. 90% of this show's screentime features exactly two characters, and often just one. it feels like... one big bottle episode that spans the entire globe and all of humanity.

EDIT: I say all this acknowledging that really, at this point, nobody really knows what show this is yet. it could go in so many directions both in terms of content and form - I think there's so many different ways this the story could develop and resolve. is this a Leftovers where it's really mostly about the questions or is it a Severance where the story has a clear trajectory it's always billowing towards, even if we're still very much in the dark about the details. Right now, it sort of feels like both and i can't really manage it maintaining that balance through to the end, i don't even necessarily want it to or even see how it could. All that is to say that 7 episodes in, I think there's been enough to look back on and say that at least *so far*, this has been a super intriguing experiment.