Fallout recap: Now we’re talking
The Prime Video show's second episode is hilarious, bloody, and damn near perfect
TV Reviews Fallout
[Editor’s note: This is a recap of Fallout episode two. The recap of episode three publishes April 12.]
Now that is significantly more like it.
Of the many ways Fallout’s second episode is an improvement on its first, the most important, by far, is tone. Make no mistake, Vault Dwellers: This is, at least for now, a pitch-black comedy with some dramatic elements, not, as “Maximus” tried very hard to suggest, something that would occasionally try to get genuinely grim and joyless as our characters tromped across the wastes. The chicken-fucking joke is a good indicator, as they so often are. But the real, improbable Rosetta Stone to this episode is guest star Michael Rappaport.
As a performer, Rappaport tends to work in a very narrow lane—the uncharitable might term it “loud-mouthed jagoffs about 10 percent less sympathetic than the loud-mouthed jagoffs played by Bill Burr”—and the reveal that it’s his nasal voice lurking underneath the iron helm of Knight Titus is the big turning point for Maximus’ whole story. (To the point that it would have made a great punchline to an episode, had all of the Brotherhood material from this installment and the last been presented as a cohesive whole. Just sayin’.) In an episode that has some extraordinarily good casting, Rappaport’s is the masterstroke, skewering all the built-up pretension of the Brotherhood by revealing that, underneath all that mysticism and armor, they’re just another crew of whiny assholes with chips on their shoulders trying to get an easy ride through the apocalypse. And while it’s getting a tad concerning how often people who get in the way of Maximus’ ambitions have a bad habit of suffering extremely bloody consequences, it’s hard to feel too bad when he allows Titus (who does himself no favors by trying to bully his squire into injecting him with magical healing chemicals while possessing absolutely zero leverage) to bleed to death so he can steal his fancy armor.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, as Fallout’s second episode opens with a pairing that’ll be near and dear to fans of director/producer Jonathan Nolan’s previous show, Person Of Interest: Michael Emerson and an adorable dog. As mysterious runaway scientist Wilzig, Emerson does all those things that have made him one of the most charismatic performers of the last decade-plus of TV, blending detached irony with a knack for sobering sincerity that makes him a fitting mentor/MacGuffin for Ella Purnell’s Lucy, who’s now determined to get her new friend to the enigmatic Lee Moldaver so she can exchange him—or at least some of him—for her kidnapped dad.
The hunt for Wilzig is what ultimately sets our three protagonists on a collision course with each other, as Lucy, Maximus, and the Ghoul all converge on Filly, the only “civilization” for miles, in a quest for the renegade dog lover. Lucy wants information and gets a load of anti-Vault hostility and a brand new quest for her trouble. Maximus wants to play hero and gets a smile from a pretty girl and an incredibly thorough ass-kicking in response. And the Ghoul? He wants to collect on the bounty and kill a whole bunch of very over-ambitious gunfighters—half of which he manages to handily achieve, while picking up a new pooch in the process.
The confrontation between these three central characters gives us the best look yet at what Fallout actually is when it’s doing everything it wants to do. And it turns out to be a pretty intoxicating blend of comedy, strong performance, and luridly inventive violence (including a sequence that cutely mimics the V.A.T.S. aiming system from the Fallout games, as the Ghoul casually disassembles an entire town’s worth of optimistic idiots with a series of extremely critical hits). The eventual showdown between Lucy and the Ghoul might have been slightly compromised by being heavily spoiled in the show’s promotional materials, but it’s still a great showcase for Purnell and Walton Goggins, who radiates malevolent amusement as this bright-eyed stranger tries to talk him through the steps of conflict de-escalation amidst the dying and the dead.
Maximus, meanwhile, remains something of a weak link, not because Aaron Moten is doing a bad job—his joy at getting to play with his shiny new toy is genuinely charming—but because he’s up against two extremely heavy hitters. (It’s also worth applauding character actor veteran Dale Dickey, who gets some of the best lines of the episode as a Wasteland junk merchant who knows just enough about Vault Dwellers to know that they’re a massive pain in the ass.) It’s easy, two episodes in, to see how Lucy and the Ghoul fit into this world, the naïve outsider pitted against the perfectly adapted survivor. It’s going to take a bit more work to fit the third leg onto the tripod, especially since it’s still not clear what Maximus actually wants, beyond getting to be treated like a hero.
These are quibbles, though: Fallout’s second episode is everything we were hoping for from its first, a laugh-out-loud funny dose of darkness with
just enough heart to not, say, actually kill the adorable and heroic German Shepherd just two episodes in (even if the episode does open with an underweight puppy getting dumped in an incinerator by a bunch of heartless scientists, one of the most casually dark openings to a TV episode in recent memory). It’s not every piece of streaming television that can joke about the surprisingly tasty banana flavor of mass-produced cyanide pills, or follow a bloodbath by featuring an enthusiastic huckster (Jon Daly, killing it) trying to sell a recent amputee victim on snake oil that will supposedly re-grow an entire foot. But that kind of gallows humor has always been an integral part of the Fallout brand, a franchise not afraid to see the funnier sides of nuclear annihilation.
Seeing the show settle into that vibe—with Purnell a consistently bright delivery vehicle for many of these mega-dark jokes, issuing an only slightly hesitant “Okie dokey!” before preparing to decapitate a Very Important Corpse—is a sign that Nolan, and writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, get Fallout in a way that goes way beyond making sure the plasma rifles look right, or making Nuka-Cola jokes. The premiere showed that this creative team could assemble the rough building blocks for a really great Fallout show; episode two makes it clear that they actually have a pretty decent idea of what they’re trying to build.
Stray observations
- Sorry, Groucho: The opening shot of the episode proves that the inside of a dog isn’t too dark to read.
- Yes, it’s silly to see Stimpaks work the same way here as they do in the games, fixing internal injuries in just a few seconds. But at least it’s balanced with the medical horror of the sawblade/tourniquet that gets shoved on to Wilzig’s leg after the Ghoul shoots it off.
- Emerson’s line about the cyanide pills being “the most humane product Vault-Tec ever made” is both very funny and a red flag that all might not be well with the company that essentially designed Lucy’s entire life.
- Game nerds: That’s obviously a Ripper that Lucy is wielding at the end, and the monster that kills Titus is a Yao Guai. For the life of me, though, I can’t place the Ghoul’s single-barrel, giant-bullet gun. (This is what I get for going Energy Weapons in every Fallout game.)
- Filly is an absolutely gorgeous piece of set design. The effects in Fallout can look a little hokey sometimes—Maximus’ armor is fun, but rarely looks totally convincing—but seeing the actors move around on a real recreation of some of the beautiful trash towns from the games is a delight.
- If Wilzig has a name for his pet pooch, I couldn’t catch it; I’ll refrain from referring to her as “Dogmeat,” the beloved canine who appears in each Fallout game, until the show does.
- Thank goodness those Enclave turrets are better at shooting logos than puppers, huh?
- Dickey—who has a million credits, and worked with Goggins in Justified and Vice Principals—is so damn funny in her utter indifference to Lucy’s Vault Dweller cheerfulness. “I thought all you sardine fuckin’ dipshits were dead!”
- Game nerds: I think the symbol on Ma’s ledger is a slightly altered version of the logo for the generally good-natured Followers Of The Apocalypse, which might give some idea of what Moldaver is actually up to.
- “I’d offer you one of these cherry tomatoes…but you’ve got a hole in your neck.” Does anyone deliver a potentially cheesy line of dialogue with more casual cool than Walton Goggins?
- Filed in the same spot, when Lucy tranqs him: “Now that is a very small drop, in a very, very large bucket of drugs.”
- “Fuckin’ Vault Dwellers.”
53 Comments
Agreed this episode was fantastic no notes
I’d like to watch this, but knowing this is done with a heavy Bethesda influence (as well as this is what Chrissy Nolan’s little brother is doing INSTEAD OF THE FUCKIN’ PERIPHERAL)….eh.
It’s a good show, but you will probably greatly dislike what they do with New Vegas setting elements. I think the cold hand of Todd Howard is behind that
The ghoul’s gun resembled a gyrojet pistol – a gun that shoots rockets. Not actually in the Fallout games (unless you count mods, which maybe the people behind this series have used!) but it is an oddity firearm from the 1960s so it fits right with the whole vibe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrojet
I was thinking maybe they were just different types of rounds he had for a single shot shotgun since there’s plenty of NV in here. It seems like some of the shots from that gun blow something up, some ricochet normally if they miss, some go through like a normal bullet.
2 episodes in and no Ron Perlman narration! other than that, its pretty pretty good.
Yep. I’ve loved the three episodes I’ve watched so far, but I admit, I was pretty damn disappointed that the first thing we heard wasn’t “War… war never changes.”
Seems like it’d be better to have Goggins say it later.
Yeah, like when it’s at all relevant? As far as I can tell there is no war going on on the show.
Not really in the games either (although you can find ghoulified Chinese soldiers that don’t know the war ended centuries ago). Like in the show, the war is the backstory for how the world got the way it is.
I’m only really familiar with New Vegas but it is definitely about a war.
Okay, yes, that one does. But in general, the whole “war never changes” monologue isn’t about a current war in the games, but rather that war from the era of cavemen to nuclear weapons only changed tools but that the underlying motivations were the same.
“especially since it’s still not clear what Maximus actually wants, beyond getting to be treated like a hero”He doesn’t want to be treated like hero, he wants to *be* a hero.
Dale Dickey, Michael Rappaport, & Mykelti Williamson! This is a Justified-heavy series.
I could not for the life of me remember when Dale Dickey popped up in Justified. I think I’d blocked that entire Orange is the new black-lite plotline out of my mind.
Through Episode 2, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the suspicion this may very well end up working out better as an adaptation than TLOU did.The V.A.T.S. crits aside (and even those felt more Matrix-y than ‘Critical!’), I’ve not yet felt the video game-y ‘Objectives’ and ‘press A and triangle to sneak!’ aspects that were some of the downsides of TLOU’s weaker episodes.Fallout’s setting is of course ridiculous from a world building standpoint, but within it, the story we’re being told feels like it’s native and consistent within it rather than grafted onto it by force, which is all you can ask for from a series like this.
This doesn’t have the urgency that TLOU has, the characters are just shells, the 50s soundtrack quickly became grating since it adds nothing to the storytelling, and the whole thing is cartoonish. TLOU was basically the TV event of last year and this isn’t that.
Since the soundtracks are pretty much my favorite thing about the games, I will respectfully disagree.
I also feel like the TLOU and FO shows are taking two entirely different approaches, with TLOU’s being “let’s take this video game premise and tell it as realistically as possible” and Fallout’s being “make a new installment in the game franchise, only in a linear format without the interactive element.”
i don’t know why the 2 series would even be compared, tonally they are nothing alike.
People feel they must form camps even when there’s no need to and it makes no sense to.
Xbox property versus a PlayStation property, the console wars continue
To be fair, by nature, Fallout is a less-urgent tale than TLOU. And to be fairer, Fallout has always had its share of cartoonishness about it. But I agree this is not on TLOU’s level.
The soundtrack is essential to the entire vibe of Fallout because the saccharine sentiments and unironic optimism of Tin Pan Alley is a great foil for the bleakness and depravity of the wasteland. A lot of the humor in both the games and the series comes from stuff like that, so you probably just don’t like Fallout in general
Yes. This really feels like an adaptation of a video game in a way that I don’t know anything else has achieved? There are health packs, weird power-ups, loot, side-quests, and the best part? It’s not ashamed of that fact.I’m on episode 3, and the about the only two problems are:The tone isn’t quite right yet. It’s like a 65%-35% drama comedy, when it should be closer to 55-45. The Brotherhood of Steel is the biggest culprit. The Brotherhood is taking itself as serious as they do in the games – but the games make it point to show you just how dumb that is.A few too many slow motion montages set to 50s hits.
“The Brotherhood is taking itself as serious as they do in the games – but the games make it point to show you just how dumb that is.”Rappaport eating shit almost immediately after saying “I’m bored. I want to shoot something” isn’t dumb enough for you?
Thats fair. I’m referring more to how it’s portraying the brotherhood as an overall unit as opposed to the individuals within.
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IDK man, the Brotherhood of Steel is portrayed as a pretty obviously bad organization in this series. Their members don’t even know how dicks work
so glad michael rapaport only got a short death scene and dind’t stink up the scene withi his angry new yorker shtick for a moment longer
I hated seeing Rapaport. I liked seeing Rapaport made to play a whiny coward bitch that dies an early, painful death.
I know he was in “Higher Learning,” “Bamboozled,” and “Mad Men,” but personally I’ve only seen Michael Rappaport in “L.A. Noire.” And no matter how much the game wanted me to hate his character (and I could tell the game wanted me to hate his character) it just couldn’t help showing how he was the only (police) detective in the game trying to do his job.
It’s strange how I’ll see him and think “It’s that guy who’s in all those things,” and then I can’t think of any. True Romance (where his character is likeable against type) and his recent turn on Only Murders might be the only ones I’ve seen.
You might also have seen him in Friends, as (again) a police-detective who dates Phoebe.
In Copland he’s the shithead cop that every other cop is covering for.
Unfortunately I haven’t seen Copland. Just L.A. Noire, and there he was the cop carrying the entire Automobile department (it’s set in 1947, when cars, and vehicular crimes, were so new they had their own detective department).
Kind of disappointed there’s no fun intro for this show (at least after two episodes). I love a fun intro!
Also, did the dog come back to life and then befriend the dude who just stabbed it to death? No loyalty??
My take was the Ghoul revived CX404 a/k/a “4″ so she could lead him to Witzig.
The ‘chicken sexing snake oil salesman’s’ hair and general vibe had me spending so much time wondering ‘that’s not Tim Minchin, is it? Looks like Tim Minchin, but clearly it’s not . . . Who is that, if not Tim Minchin,’ that it totally eluded me that it was Jon Daly.
Saaaaaaaaame. I was slightly disappointed when it wasn’t.
The dog is named CX404. That’s the identification number stamped on her as a puppy, and later the subtitles refer to her as such. I thought it was cute when she was given a teddy bear. In Fallout 4, if you give Dogmeat a teddy bear, you’ll occasionally catch him playing with it.
Trying this tonight
Masterstroke of dialogue here, (and I’m paraphrasing)“If you’re going to stay up here, you’re going to have to adapt. But will you still want the same things after you’ve changed yourself to fit in with this world?”I viewed this as a clear reference to the fact that all the games have a clear main quest, but you sometimes (all the time) get so involved with the side quests that the main quest loses its importance.Man, the details in this show. I’ve WALKED through those ransacked Vault rooms filled with toppled baby cribs and corpses. I’ve come across the two dudes fighting and tried to intervene, only to find out one of them is a chicken rapist. The tone and visuals of the show are just spot on.The only thing I miss is the fantastical rocket age futurism of the Fallout world.It’s there in small bits, but the main thing that’s missing are the vehicles. All these old derelict cars just look like regular cars. They need to look like rocket age hover cars designed by people from the 1950’s.
“If Wilzig has a name for his pet pooch, I couldn’t catch it;”. Pretty sure he called it Four
Abbreviated from her laboratory name “CX404.”
This is more for later episodes but I really want this show to explain their rules for ghouls. Some can heal like wolverine apparently. That’s new.
The Yao Guai was pretty cool to see, but the setting sure is lush for a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, no?
Its been 200 years since the bombs fell, and the one thing that would most definitely return is vegetation. France nuked the shit out of French Polynesia, and its gorgeous. The people and animals living there are heavily affected, but the vegetation doesn’t give two shits.
It’s not really the fact that it exists that I thought was weird, but just how the two genders of terrain in this setting seem to be “lush overgrown forest” and “utterly dessicated wasteland”, and it was very confusing to my understanding of the setting’s geography that you would just see characters going from one biome to another within the space of an hour or two. They should have had some scenes around Filly take place in a more “intermediate” sort of space, with maybe a couple of plants and trees here and there or some crabgrass but otherwise pretty arid. Then I’m a lot less confused when the next scene takes place in a forest
When we watched the episode yesterday, we wanted to know how they got from this lush cave to the deserts outside Filly so quickly. Everything else around post-apocalyptic LA appears to be sand.
Nature is thriving around Chernobyl.
michael rappaport? the mentally ill zionist and social media troll? they put him in a middling streaming TV show that nobody will remember in 2 weeks??
I thought episode 1 was solid but this episode really was exceptional. The fight between the ghoul and Maximus in Filly made me grin so hard my jaw is still aching. Just please give me a Deathclaw before the season is over.
Michael Rappaport is a terrible human being and I suggest you look at the things he’s been saying and doing in the past 6 months before you compliment him. His dialogue in this episode is pretty reflective of his world view on a certain group of people. They could have easily gotten someone who is a decent person that can also act like a piece of shit, rather than someone who actually is.