• 12 Dec, 2025 *

Husband started watching it a few weeks ago and told me I would like it. I put it on the other day while the kids were at school. I’m up to episode 5 at this point. It’s a great show. It’s made by the guy who wrote for the X-Files back in the day.

If you haven’t watched it yet...

This is your cue to hit the back button or back out of the page.

I am about to talk spoilers.

Alright.

Here we go.

So I go online to see what other people are saying about the show and what they think about the sliver hive mind and instead of colorful discussion on food logistics and such I find a sea of people who don’t like the show or gave up after the first episode because - checks notes - Carol is unlikeable.

Hang on because I know some of yall will think I’m overreacting so I’m just gonna copy/paste a few from Reddit alone:

"Carol is a miserable jerk. And not in a lovable or even very sympathetic way."

"I think people are confusing "likable" with "interesting". And so far, Carol isn’t super interesting. And when people are comparing it to the male protagonist of Walter White in BB, just remember the pilot. The agency that Walt had versus Carol just being a character where things are happening to her."

"Carol is a rude, angry women - and is hard to watch."

"She never listen (even to the ‘sane’ ppl she met, she kept pushing her agenda, and not once, listening to others.. )and she managed to kill people with her anger on the spot too AFTER knowing that her anger kills."

"Carol has everything. She behaves like a spoilt, entitled little girl who thinks the world revolves around what she needs and wants."

"Were three episodes into this show and our lead is literally just a caricature of negativity and mopiness."

"I definitely dislike Carol so far and I find her frustrating to watch. What she did with the grocery store situation felt like a 5 year old throwing a temper tantrum and had me rolling my eyes."

"Carol is not just unlikable, she is aggressively miserable.

She snaps at absolutely everything. I haven’t yet seen one shred of anything that would make me like her.

It made for a miserable viewing experience, so I dipped midway through the third. If I wanted to suffer through a nonstop miserable person, I’d get back in contact with my father."

"She’s a total curmudgeon. The end of Episode 3 symbolizes her unwillingness to accept the beautiful gift that this collective consciousness brings."

---

Yall. Are we watching the same show? Is the AI so good over at Apple that they are showing me specifically a different character?

Just for clarity, our main character Carol is a middle aged woman who makes a living writing commercial genre fiction. She has a drinking problem and distain for the fact that in order to make a living writing books she has to write genre fiction instead of the more serious stuff she really wants to. She also has to hide the wife from the fans or possibly lose them too. They live in a nice house in a neighborhood where the HOA will fine you for having gopher holes.

But our girl Carol isn’t happy. She doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t have pride in her work. To have one thing she has to give up two things. It’s a simple concept.

Then her life is upended by a radio virus from space that has transformed all but a handful of humanity into a hive mind run by the cheapest tier of chatGPT. The hive mind has strict rules that it will follow to a fault. No killing to the point it will allow itself and other creatures to starve. Giving the humans whatever they want to keep them happy because being happy supersedes individualism for them. The hive mind talks non stop about how happy it is and how happy Carol will finally be when she joins them.

Carol is one of a dozen or so people that was immune to the hive mind virus. The virus attacked the majority of humanity all at once and in the process many people died during the conversion - including Carol’s wife - one of the few things that did make her happy.

Other surviving humans still live with their families and friends who are part of the hive. The hive pretends to still be these people to keep them happy. Because being happy is the most important thing. No sad. Only happy. Life is great. Life is everything. No death. No killing. No lies. No negativity.

Negativity is toxic to them. When Carol gets angry about them trying to be fake nice to her it causes chaos and tons of them die. So Carol being an emotional mess from suddenly losing everyone and everything demands that they leave her alone for the sake of everyone involved.

Carol meets up with other survivors and finds out they are complicit with living with the hive people because it makes them happy and she needs to get over herself. They want her to sit back and wait for the hive mind to figure out a way to assimilate them all and be done with the issue. So obviously Carol gets mad about this.

She spends a few days in her house watching TV and drinking, whatever she can do to ground herself from what has happened and figure out what her next steps are. She doesn’t get along with the remaining humans and they don’t want much to do with her because they are fine. She becomes an absolute mess in the process.

Apparently this is where these people run into the issue with her character. She isn’t jumping up and working with the hive to make herself happy. She isn’t instantly plotting a way to save the cat. The hive sends a cute girl over to try and make her happy and it backfires spectacularly.

People claim that she is a grump and a fuss and unlikeable. For this reason they drop the show because they don’t want to watch someone be upset. BUT. Carol isn’t the only remaining person out there who is upset at things. There is a guy in South America who also wants nothing to do with the hive people and yet - crickets about him. He throws away the food they give him and forages for his own scraps. He blocks their attempts at communication to the point when they get him on the phone for Carol to try to talk to he yells at her.

So clearly it’s acceptable to be angry about what is going on. It’s acceptable to not do anything about the hive mind people and just go about your boring life and wait to join them. It’s acceptable to take advantage of the hive mind humans for your own personal happiness.

But not if you’re Carol?

In the show they talk about Carols books. They were super popular because they made the readers happy. But because Carol is writing them to market and make money they don’t make her happy. At one point she asks the hive mind what her wife thought of the books. To her shock she finds out that her wife also didn’t like the books and considered them to be like cotton candy. All joy and no substance basically.

And here we are with the people watching this show complaining that the main character isn’t written to make them happy.

(I’ll probably update this as the series goes on.)