Finally got a chance to watch both episodes...and holy shit, it's intense. I figured it wouldn't be light fare or even "just" a dark comedy, but damn, Gilligan doesn't pull any punches.
I find myself agreeing with Carol, at least on an abstract level. Yes, she's abrasive as hell but can you blame her? She lost Helen during the Joining and she barely had any time to process her trauma before the Others contacted her with intimate details that they drew from Helen's memories. How could Carol not react with fear and disgust and angry and distrust?
This is the thing that stands out the most about the six uninfected that we've met so far: Carol appears to be the only who one lost someone when the Joining occurred, whereas the others (at least Laxmi, Kusimayu, Neu, and Xiu) still have their closest loved ones near them (the jury is still out for the hedonistic Koumba).
For Carol, she's terrified that the Joining means the loss of agency, autonomy, and consent and she thinks the rest are in denial about what seems blindingly obvious to Carol. Unfortunately, while Carol has her heart in the right place in trying to convince the others of her perspective, she does so in such an riling manner that none of them will genuinely consider her point of view.
Of course it doesn't help that Carol was indeed cruel when she deliberately provoked Laxmi by not only asking her son, Ravi, questions he would never know, but ones that Laxmi would be disturbed to hear her son say. Nor does it help that Carol keeps allowing her fear and angry to bubble out in rage to a degree that causes the Others to have global seizures that kills hundreds of millions.
Here's the crux: While Carol raises an excellent point that the Others didn't give humanity the chance to consent in Joining, which unintentionally lead to hundreds of millions to die, Carol has also unintentionally caused massive amounts of death. Are either of them at fault?
Furthermore, there's the point that both Laxmi and Koumba raised: Carol hasn't actually asked the Others (and specifically Zosia) what the Joining is like and what the Others' existence means to them. Instead, Carol is stuck on her own assumptions and prejudices.
That's what I love the most about this show so far: It doesn't offer any easy answers.
