I understand where this viewpoint is coming from, but this episode had both action and story. We saw just how defiant Manousos is, willing to torch his car in defiance. We saw how determined he was during his hike, repeating his mantra that he’ll deliver to Carol. We saw him fail, fall into the tree, try and recover, and fail some more. For Carol we saw her grow truly alone to the point of suicide.

The slow scenes are slow so that you really feel them.

I was “disappointed” with the lack of development in what we know about the others, but the episode was very good. I am not sure how to say that without sounding judgmental but if you feel the need to fast forward scenes without talking you’re probably unaware that in a visual medium images tell part of the story. Possibly not an accessible series (I hope there are audio tracks for visually impaired folks) but flushing half of it down the toilet says more about what dopamine-factory-media did to our brains in the past few years than it says about pluribus itself.