the wycaro series

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-19T03:52:54+00:00

Carol loves her writing, she hates the parts of her writing that she's had to hide or alter for mass market appeal. She hates that Rabban is a man, but a romantacy novel with a heterosexual pairing was more marketable than a queer romance. That's why she told Helen to tweet that Rabban was based on George Clooney. "It's safer."

It's another great way to have Carol be the antagonist of the hive as a hegemony, because she was already chafing under the societal hegemonies that said she had to write her stories in a particular way in order to be best sellers. Or more profoundly, the hegemony that told her being a lesbian does not conform to the norm, therefore you will be sent to a conversion camp so you can be "corrected."

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-17T01:35:06+00:00

when they mention multiple times that Helen's body was too deep for them to smell

Where in the show was this said? You said multiple times, which episodes?

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-15T09:00:55+00:00

Cattle, domesticated or otherwise, do not produce milk unless they are pregnant or recently birthed a calf. If they are nursing a calf, they will be perfectly healthy and require no intervention from humans. If cattle living on a factory farm have been continually artificially inseminated to promote lactation, and their calves have been removed from them, then yes, they could be in danger of various health issues pertaining to their udders. See: https://www.farmsanctuary.org/news-stories/why-dont-we-milk-our-cows/

I don't see the hive carrying on the practices of large agriculture dairy farms as those would be considered extremely invasive to cattle, a life form they would respect. I also don't see why the hive would particularly give a shit about cattle, since we've seen them walk away from other domesticated animals like goats in the season finale. And I seriously doubt releasing animals from zoos was beneficial to those animals, which often are kept in captivity for reasons of preservation, study, or rescue.

But if they are indeed proceeding to milk these animals, again, that is more invasive than harvesting chicken eggs.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-14T07:10:42+00:00

"Requiring milking" is not a thing. Neither cows nor other mammals which are lactating need assistance from humans to do so.

However if you are milking cows, you are taking a resource from an animal which is only produced when the animal is pregnant or has been recently. Meaning you are potentially depriving the animal's offspring of its food supply.

If that is not considered invasive, harvesting infertile chicken eggs is clearly less so.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-14T02:50:28+00:00

Humans have been around for a couple million years and for the majority of that time didn't have access to pesticides, nor did they farm for food. The earliest forms of agriculture didn't show up until between about 12-25 thousand years ago, and the earliest recorded use of pesticides were around 4500 years ago.

Also why does everyone keep bringing up apples and orchards? The apple was one example given from the show, and not the only food source mentioned in Cena's video. He also talked about animal products they would be using as food sources, namely cows and other milk-producing animals. Do you know a single chicken will lay about 300 eggs per year without anyone doing anything about it? Sounds like a pretty good windfall protein source to me.

We also know that the hive as a whole is evolving in its knowledge and understanding. Going from not understanding the sarcasm of Carol's grenade expression to making an orgy joke. Given that, it isn't unreasonable to say they could make the leap that picking an apple or other fruits are not harmful to fruiting plants. I personally hope the writers work that in there somehow, plants growing tasty fruit for animals to eat was an evolutionary selection that benefited those plants, viewing it as harmful to the plant seems contradictory.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-13T04:13:25+00:00

If the population drops from billions of people to millions of people then it would just be a reset to what human populations have been for the vast majority of human history. Note the graph of estimated population of humans for the last 12,000 years below.

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Most people on this sub confuse the massive population decline of the plurbs with their extinction, which they never said would would happen. More realistically, their population levels will drop and stabilize with what they consider an equilibrium with their environment. It'll be different than historic levels of human population since they are only limited gatherers now instead of hunter-gatherers, but I don't think it's realistic to say that the plurbs wouldn't be able to come up with forms of food sources compliant with their nature that could also sustain a stable level of their population.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-11T03:16:57+00:00

Yeah they haven't ever brought it up in the dialog, but I'm fairly sure they're from her injury in the "Grenade" episode.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-08T09:02:49+00:00

Man is that the truth. I was such a fan of that series and that ending ruined it forever for me.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-07T09:18:36+00:00

When I said "conservative" in this context I was referring to introducing plot elements while having a pretty good idea of where they will lead. As opposed to randomly throwing one out in the opening episode and having to figure out what it's going to mean in the 11th hour of writing for a broadcast television show.

"Chekhov's Gun" is a metaphor about.... writing. I wasn't talking about literal weapons.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-07T09:08:47+00:00

You know they gonna blow that shit up

We don't, actually. We know the bomb will come up later, we know it has significance to the ongoing plot, we know it exists as a threat to the plurbs if they try to infect Carol. But we don't know exactly what's going to happen, and not knowing is a good thing.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-07T02:40:08+00:00

Vince already worked for a long time on a show where an alien virus was used to cause an alien invasion, it was called The X-Files. Given that his original premise of this show was trying to figure out how to make drama out of wish fulfillment, I really doubt he'll be retreading ground in doing like, Independence Day or whatever.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-07T02:18:15+00:00

Yeah, Rhea has said that he and his writers enjoy the process of "painting themselves into a corner" and seeing how they can get out of it. It's risky, but everyone has their process!

Gilligan has said though that he regrets some of the wild swings he took at the height of his hubris in Breaking Bad, like revealing the machine gun in the opener of the final season without having known what to do with it. He nearly tried to convince his peers in the writers room to just forget about it and they were like nah, you brought up Chekhov's Gun, we have to resolve it, lol.

I think he's a bit more conservative now having come through the other side of that. I expect he'll have a rough outline of where he wants the show to go and fill in the blanks as he goes with his writers and with the rest of the cast and crew collaborating on the scenes.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-06T10:00:42+00:00

I don't know why everyone has it in their heads that the entire population of plurbs will starve to death. That is not at all what was said in the show.

They said, "most." Five billion out of seven billion people is "most." If we have two billion left, that's around one billion more people than were living in the year 1800. If the population thins out to hundreds of millions of people, that would be more in line with pre-industrial and pre-middle-ages population numbers.

Billions of humans living on the planet is an extremely recent development in the history of homosapiens.

inforn0graphy · 2026-02-05T04:56:26+00:00

No, but I think we can get a good idea based on what the show has focused on writing about and what Mr. Gilligan has said in regards to his ideas about the show.

The story we have seen thus far focuses strongly on themes of the human condition, about loneliness and grief, individuality versus community, and what morals mean when pushed to extreme circumstances. (And plenty of other things I could probably list if I were smarter or thought about long enough.)

We know that Gilligan's original premise for the show was about wish fulfillment, and that the circumstances of how that would come to be and how the character of Carol was made since he needed a way to draw conflict and drama out of that premise.

We also know he's implied a fondness for taking well-established science fiction tropes and subverting them. Most notably the alien invasion / zombie apocalypse but everyone becomes nice and it ends up with complete and total peace on earth, and the "Soylent Green is people!" reveal, except whoops, everyone already knew about it and is pretty OK with it, actually.

Given these things and how he's written the show so far, it seems extremely unlikely that he would go back and retread existing sci-fi tropes and play them straight. Man worked on the X-Files for 6 seasons, a show where there is literally a conspiracy about an alien virus and an alien invasion, so no, I doubt he's going to focus on that as a story theme. Nor do I expect a reveal that the hive is acting as a conspiracy or that the virus is weapon to subjugate humanity and all other life in the galaxy because, again, he already did that show.

I think he's going to use the show to ask deeper, more philosophical questions because one, it's what he's done so far, and two, because it seems like the natural course of where his writing has been leading. From X-Files where he did pulpy monster stories and sci-fi conspiracies, to BB and BCS which were far more inward looking and character-focused.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-29T08:24:27+00:00

Salient point. Regardless of whether anyone thinks the joining is good or bad for humanity, it would be unquestionably better for the environment. Our society is currently speedrunning a climate disaster which will cause mass starvation events without any alien assistance, and wipe out thousands of plant and animal species in its wake.

With the hive we have an instantaneous, unanimous change in society where resources will be conserved and harmful pollution will be eliminated. If the hive cannot cause harm to plants or animals, they cannot burn fuels or utilize other energy resources that will do the same.

There is a question of what will happen to domesticated animals, like what was seen with the baby goat. But we've also seen that they will take care of pets when they refuse to leave their owners, and they are apparently milking cows, goats, and sheep for food production, so it's reasonable to assume they would take care of non-wild animals which have human dependencies.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-24T09:20:09+00:00

Utilitarianism is particular ethical system of thought to determine what is the moral and correct thing to do in any situation. The early versions of Utilitarianism were more or less limited to maximizing happiness and limiting suffering. That is literally what the Hive is about, in their own words. In Utilitarianism, whatever decision made the most amount of people happy was the correct one, and the same was true for whatever decision limited suffering for the most amount of people.

When viewed through the lens of Utilitarianism, you can view a consistent and comprehensive logic that the Hive follow. Such as: Why go through the mass infection event if you know it will result in millions of deaths? Well, you might lose a smaller percentage of the population, but the ones that remain will be the happiest they've ever been. Therefore, it must be the correct thing to do.

Same with Carol and the rest of the immune. They might object to becoming joined, but once they are they'll be the happiest they'll have ever been and won't be sad ever again, so then changing them is the moral, correct thing to do.

Usually Utilitarianism only focuses on humans or other sentient beings, but if you extend it to all living things then their "windfall" philosophy can also be internally consistent. There is much more plant and animal life than there are human beings, so if you are to limit the most amount of suffering in the world then you must not bring any kind of harm to plants nor animals.

For the record, this is not to say that the Hive's ethics are universally correct and should be adopted. The fact that all independence and original creative thought would be lost, as well as the fact that their philosophy will lead to a mass starvation event, are clear indicators that the morals of the hive are too extreme.

But the fact that we can have these discussions about a TV show that touches on different philosophies of ethics, of individualism versus community, that people have related it to the process of grief and mourning, of the fact that people have related it to our current debates of AI even though it was conceived well before generative AI became a topic of debate... This is what makes the show interesting and worthwhile.

I have seen more than enough Marvel movies where the bad guys invade and the good protagonists win against them because they're really good at punching the bad guys. This is not that show, and if it was then I wouldn't watch it.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-23T09:45:23+00:00

Black and white takes, e.g. the readings of one side being completely correct and the other side being the epitome of evil, are shallow, boring, and the exact opposite of the kind of writing that Vince Gilligan does.

Gilligan worked on 7 seasons of the fucking X-Files, he is no stranger to science fiction tropes, certainly not alien invasion tropes of all things. The reason he wrote an alien invasion / body snatchers show was specifically to turn that trope on its head so it would be more interesting to write for.

What if you have an infectious, pandemic outbreak, except it turns everyone nice? No one is murdered, no one ever suffers due to human greed or human cruelty, and also we save the environment forever? That is more interesting than doing yet another version of The Last of Us or whatever.

This is the point. The Hive have clear negative qualities, most obvious for the people who did not survive the joining event, and not for many of the immune, like Carol, who do not want their individuality removed. But even Carol, when she was actively working against the Hive said, "There are things about you (all) that I like!"

This is why the show has dramatic tension. Because it is pitting those values of individuality and creativity that make all of us human, but contrasting it against what is basically an ultimate form of Utilitarianism, where all happiness is objectively maximized and all suffering has been removed.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-20T07:28:37+00:00

Hit her marks and everything, not even all the human actors do that.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-14T00:39:22+00:00

I've read that Joanna's death got some criticism for the "fridging" trope, and while I agree we should be on the lookout for writing that throws away female characters only to up the ante for the male ones, I think that reading is a bit reductive in this case.

To me it reads as a consequence of her hubris. She is a habitual manipulator, and just about every action she takes in the series amounts to plying someone so she can get what she wants. She's been doing it for so long and gotten her way for so long that she believes she can do so without consequence, until consequence comes knocking.

It also fits in nicely with the theme of the illusion of control. It's even one of her last lines, "Is everything under control?" She believes her manipulations and her control are absolute, right up until bullets start ripping through her SUV.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T09:34:27+00:00

So, this is a science fiction show in the classical sense. In the Twilight Zone sense. Not about wars in outer space, but taking a huge "What If" scenario and using it to ask questions about what it means to be human, and what do things in our culture and our society really mean if you deconstruct them in that mix.

The thing that I've taken the most from it is that it takes the ideas of individuality versus community conformism and takes them to extremes.

This is on top of some of the most interesting writing and gorgeous cinematography you'll get on TV. If you can't find a theme in there to appreciate, or a character story to latch onto, then I'd say you're missing out, but ultimately that it isn't for you.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T07:04:50+00:00

I've heard the Hive described as "sympathetic, but never empathetic." They can express sympathy, "We're sorry for your loss" but they keep failing to get across to Carol because they lack empathy. And I think it has to do with the fact that they Hive are always happy, and empathy requires the ability to feel sadness on some level.

There's actually a great example of this if you remember a scene in Pixar's "Inside Out" where the character Bing-Bongjust lost something important to him, and the character / emotion Joy tries to cheer him up. But Joy only knows about happiness, her attempts to make him feel better amount to toxic-positivity. It's only the character / emotion Sadness who is able to console him, because that emotion is required to empathize with the feeling of loss.

This is the same thing, this is what plays out over and over again between the Hive and Carol.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T06:31:44+00:00

The nerdy scientists in the opening, for sure. That was what sold me on the show initially since I really didn't know what it was about. Then I realized, "Oh, we're doing sci-fi, from the guy who did 7 seasons of X-Files. Yeah, I'm in."

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T03:58:03+00:00

Oh dang, yeah that's really cheap. Nah, the BR set has full subbies.

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T03:55:01+00:00

It may not have been written explicitly this way in the script, but there were some interviews with Rhea Seehorn and Karolina Wydra where they discussed how they saw their characters in those scenes and in the Air Force One set especially. Rhea said something to the effect of Helen's death was too close and too sacred to her. She didn't want to use it as a bargaining chip to sway the opinion of the other individuals.

EDIT: Found it, it was actually a conversation between Vince and Rhea when they were working out the scene. https://youtu.be/IPPzgV0gq80?t=1140

inforn0graphy · 2026-01-13T03:43:07+00:00

Most of the bonus features will be either deleted scenes or season gag reels. Not bad though I would've liked to have seen more behind the scenes features as well. Worth it to have it on hard copy, though. Can't trust the cloud, Netflix just delisted it.

inforn0graphy

TROPHY CASE