Don’t Let Your Favorite Onscreen Characters Drink Alone This Weekend

In the pilot episode of Apple TV+’s already acclaimed sci-fi series Pluribus, there’s an early scene at a bar. This is always an immediate plus, as far as I’m concerned: As someone who has spent many years writing about beer, spirits, and cocktails, I love to dissect pop-cultural depictions of these types of places, and the way we drink at them. The Pluribus bar is an oddball doozy: A neon-soaked, color-contrasted bar and grill with an odd cowboy theme, accented by a huge, truly inexplicable Al Capone mural on the outside wall. What does the famed Prohibition bootlegger have to do with the otherwise western theme inside the Albuquerque, New Mexico bar? I couldn’t possibly say. What’s more important to me is that in the minutes before an alien virus converts the entire human population of Earth into a sort of hive mind, our prickly alcoholic protagonist Carol bellies up to the bar and orders herself a black Manhattan.

I immediately lit up on the couch. One of my very favorite cocktails to make at home, suddenly making an unexpected appearance in one of the hottest new shows of the year. I paused the stream, my task clear in mind: I had to get up and make myself a black Manhattan as well. How better to commiserate with poor Carol, as she watches the world melt down around her?

Carol, a black Manhattan, and a very odd western bar with a surprisingly deep cocktail program.

I don’t know if there’s a name for this behavior (I’m afraid I don’t have a therapist to consult on this), but for the sake of shorthand, let’s call it “mirrored drinking”—the act of wanting to replicate some element of the drinking happening on screen, for the sheer delight of channeling the appropriately same experience as the characters. It works in other ways too, of course—you could certainly spend all day cooking an Italian feast to pair with something like 1996 restaurant dramedy Big Night, but that would take extensive prior planning. The joy of mirrored drinking is that all it requires is for you to have a well-stocked home bar, and well … it’s safe to say I’ve got that.

In pop-psychological terms, “mirroring” already has a certain connotation, and it’s fitting in a way. To mirror someone means to unconsciously mimic some of their behaviors, mannerisms, and body language, in a way that fosters an emotional or social connection between you. For me, consuming the same drink almost does the same sort of thing, except in a conscious way—it allows me to fall back on two decades of learning about alcohol in order to form new perspectives on the character, or the person who wrote that character. In the case of Pluribus, a black Manhattan is hardly the sort of drink you’d expect to find on the menu of a suburban bar and grill, but it speaks perhaps to Carol’s taste for the finer things, accumulated over a career as a successful, internationally traveling (but hacky) romance novelist.

It also almost certainly means that series creator and episode writer Vince Gilligan is a fan of the cocktail; why else would he specifically call it out rather than something more generic? As I sit back and sip my own homemade version, I find myself mulling over what kind of conversation about cocktails I might have with Gilligan, and the ways they’ve intersected shows like Breaking Bad and now Pluribus. Mirrored drinking invites this sort of contemplation, and an appreciation for the way that artists enjoy inserting their favorite things into their work, just to delight other fans. I’d argue that it also fosters a deeper immersion in that piece of media, to feel like you’ve entered the boozy headspace of a character.

To be clear: The act of mirrored drinking is about capturing some small spark of the spirit of the activity happening on screen, rather than trying to simply replicate it, which would often be either painful or deeply irresponsible. When I watch Edgar Wright’s The World’s End, as in the photo at the top of this piece, I’m not trying to somehow keep pace with Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and the rowdy boys’ night crew as they stumble through 12 pubs. But I will absolutely find some lager or British bitter to accompany it, and it will undoubtedly make me feel more like I’m standing there at the rail next to them, lost in the camaraderie. This extends to all the many other pairings one could invoke: French wine and films like The Taste of Things or even Ratatouille; Blanton’s Bourbon and John Wick or Barry; beer from Chicago’s Revolution Brewing and director Joe Swanberg’s indie romcom Drinking Buddies, which was actually filmed at the brewery in question. Lord only knows how many old fashioneds were stirred up because of Mad Men in its heyday. The sense of appropriateness brings me an odd satisfaction, like a far more effective and calorie-dense alternative to virtual reality.

Mirrored drinking might even get you to sample something you would never have thought to try before: In 1993’s Groundhog Day, Andie MacDowell’s Rita memorably asks the bartender for “sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist,” which she describes as her favorite drink. Seeing the scene through the eyes of Bill Murray’s narcissistic time-looping protagonist, we view her request somewhat dismissively—it sounds exotic and ornate compared to his utilitarian whiskey and ice, a foofy, feminine affectation of MacDowell’s that Murray visibly winces at when he takes a sip, although he’s still happy to exploit the knowledge of her taste as he pantomimes playing a worldly sophisticate, waxing on about how the drink “makes me think of Rome, the way the sun hits the buildings in the afternoon.” If we get past the chauvinism of a jerk protagonist, though, we can acknowledge the truth that nearly any resident of Spain or Italy knows: Vermouth on ice is a genuine delicacy, a ritual of daily community building that is an integral part of life in Barcelona, or Madrid, or the aforementioned Rome. It’s a delicious drink, and the fact that Rita favors it speaks to her warmth and openness to connection. Even the YouTube comment section somehow agrees: The only pair of comments on the video below are both from fellow mirrored drinkers, surprised by how much they enjoy vermouth this way. Try it for yourself!

Of course, this philosophy cannot and should not be applied to everything—there are naturally times you won’t want to be imbibing, and other media that highlight concoctions that no self-respecting person would ever want to ingest. Bad movie evangelist though I may be, there is no part of me that is tempted to make a 50/50 combo of vodka and scotch whisky while watching Tommy Wiseau’s iconic vanity project The Room, a drink that the film’s faithful lovingly refer to as “scotchka.” Ditto the many colorfully abhorrent cocktails that populate the universe of Adult Swim’s The Venture Bros., such as the infamous “Red Mocho Cooler,” said to consist of “Kahlua, Hershey’s Syrup, and a dash of red Kool-Aid.” Suffice to say, there are times when immersion in a favorite show or movie would not exactly be worth the agony of the experience.

Still, I won’t deny the giddy little thrill that I still experience when I see something I genuinely love pop up on screen; a lasting reminder that there are indeed other people out there who value the same experiences, a suggestion that perhaps we aren’t so hopelessly divided in every facet of society as we are often tempted to believe. Just last week, in the midst of absentmindedly watching gory Christmas action comedy Violent Night on a weekend afternoon, I was reminded of this yet again, thanks to the prominent appearance of a bottle of one of my favorite scotches, Oban 14. What was I to do but fetch a wee dram of the same? It may not have made me feel like I was a world-weary Santa Claus fighting terrorists in the mansion of a family of terrible, arms-dealing WASPs, but it was still delightful all the same.