Fallout recap: Welp, that’s one of the grossest things we’ve ever seen
In episode three, the show forces us to contemplate crushed craniums and giant lizards with human fingers for teeth
TV Reviews Fallout
[Editor’s note: This is a recap of Fallout episode three. The recap of episode four publishes April 15.]
When you watch a lot of genre TV and movies, you tend to build up a stomach for fucked-up stuff. Eyes where eyes shouldn’t be, brains blowing out the back of skulls;, blood and viscera in abundance: These are the pigments with which deliciously nasty sci-fi and horror paints. Still, the giant lizard with human fingers for teeth, which is then induced to vomit up its entire stomach lining? That one got to us, just a teensy bit!
It’s to Fallout’s increasing credit that it can, in its third episode, do some real character work alongside its gleeful urge to gross out viewers. Take the early scene that sees Lucy chatting placidly with Wilzig’s severed head, so recently liberated from his neck at his own request. Ella Purnell has a serious knack for projecting Lucy’s cheerful acceptance of the horrors around her, curiously chatting with the head while hunting around for whatever MacGuffin is lurking under the skin. That optimism might find itself tested later on in the episode, but it’s vital to making her character both weirdly admirable and very funny. Walton Goggins was the bigger name going in to the series, and Aaron Moten does fine work as Maximus, but of Fallout’s three leads, Purnell is the revelation here: The show’s delicately balanced tone just wouldn’t work without her selling the way she’s smiling through the horror.
Speaking of Goggins: We spend quite a bit more time with his Ghoul here than we have previously, revealing that he’s ultimately driven far more by pragmatism than outright cruelty. (Note the way he immediately shifts gears once he realizes that Lucy’s struggles with the gigantic Gulper have ruined his supplies of whatever that yellow medication he inhales is. Bounties are nice, and there’s always time for a bit of casual meanness, but survival is clearly everything for him.) At the same time, prolonged exposure to the character raises some questions about depth, which are only mostly papered over by Goggins’ undeniable charisma. At this point, the Ghoul is operating almost like a parody of the most memorable villain from Jonathan Nolan’s previous show, Westworld, a comparison only highlighted by Fallout’s decision to demonstrate the character’s nuances through flashbacks showing him before the fall. In the present, Goggins is playing someone who borders on a cartoon—the stock badass, complete with accent—and we can only hope the show knows how to pull back from that brink as we get more time with the man Cooper Howard has become.
Splitting the difference, as usual, is Maximus, who maintains his status as the only one of Fallout’s three leads whose behavior we (happily) struggle to predict from moment to moment and scene to scene. Maximus, cut off from the other two, gets put through the ringer in this episode, first forced to sell a tooth to get his broken armor fixed, then getting the shit kicked out of him by some yokels hoping to steal it. After exploding one dude’s head (in a delightfully gnarly effects shot, Moten playing the moment for shock) to save his stuff, the young Squire gets even worse news: Not only is the Brotherhood sending him a new Squire to replace the “dead” Maximus, but the new recruit is Thaddeus, one of his previous tormentors back at camp.
The subsequent scenes, with Maximus finding himself taking sick pleasure in bullying his former oppressor, are what we mean when we say we find the character pleasantly unpredictable: We would have taken equal odds on Thaddeus ending the episode as a smear on the Wasteland rocks, instead of actually finding ways to bond with his “Knight,” the two ultimately reconciling (albeit, with the Squire still in the dark about his boss’ true identity). Along the way, Johnny Pemberton (whose “Hey It’s That Guy!” cred is already strong at this point, despite being relatively young) manages to give a weirdly sweet eulogy for the “dead” Maximus, expressing his wish that his victim could have lived long enough to find someone to victimize himself. These are the moments that make Fallout work: absurd on the face of it, but cut with a genuine vein of relatable emotion. It’s enough to make you root for these two survival-challenged bros, even if at least one of them is almost certainly doomed as soon as the truth about Knight Titus’ death comes out.
And then, meanwhile, down in Vault 33, things aren’t looking a whole lot less doomed. It’s an interesting decision, on the part of showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, to pull us back to Lucy’s home so abruptly after it felt like we’d be leaving the Vault behind forever—especially in an episode that already feels like it’s mostly rooted in set-up and moving pieces around the board. The show’s first episode showed that most of the Vault Dwellers were too thin to be much more than comedy caricatures, something Zach Cherry and Rodrigo Luzzi, as “co-Overseers” Woody and Reg, re-demonstrate here (to comedic effect, but not much more). But there are interesting threads lurking underneath the plastic and metal sheen, mostly in the eyes of Leslie Uggams and Moisés Arias, the latter of whom (as Lucy’s brother Norm) seems ready to kick off a civil war to execute the raiders the Vault is currently keeping alive. Arias mostly hung out in the background of the premiere, but he makes a massive, chilling impression here, demonstrating that he’s going to be pretty vital to whatever story Fallout is ultimately trying to tell.
Fallout has not been shy about establishing, as its primary theme, an examination of the old adage “adapt or die.” Michael Emerson gave some very nice speeches about it last episode, and the Ghoul exists, at least in part, to demonstrate what that concept looks like at its terminal point. In the video games from which the series pulls, that message was played to tragic effect: The first Fallout ends with your Vault Dweller returning triumphantly to their home, only to be told they’ve changed too much, become too violent and hardened, to be brought back within its safe metal walls. Fallout the show seems interested in pushing that concept even further, suggesting that violent pragmatism is something akin to an infectious agent. Note the way the community members most receptive to Norm’s cold-blooded entreaties are the ones who suffered the most violence in the attacks—lending credence to the idea that, in this world, you’re either a killer or a fool.
Which brings us back around to Lucy, who’s neither—at least, not yet. If Fallout’s third episode is mostly about moving pieces around the board (and can, thus, be a bit boring in spots, giant lizard monster notwithstanding) then it’s mostly interesting for where it leaves Lucy: a forced student in a masterclass on pragmatism, delivered courtesy of the ultimate survivor. We’re excited to note that we have no idea where her education will go from here.
Stray observations
- Just as a reminder: I’m writing these recaps as I’m watching the series, so I have no idea where this will all wrap up. I’m excited to find out with all of you!
- Fallout Games Corner: The medicine the Ghoul is fixated on seems pretty likely to be Rad-Away, a blatantly magical drug from the Fallout universe that soaks radiation out of the human body. As a ghoul, The Ghoul would be immune to radiation—but prolonged exposure to the stuff can increase the likelihood of a ghoul devolving into a feral, zombie-esque creature, which would explain why Cooper is so desperate to keep himself dosed up. (Note that he was also receiving the drug while he was buried, per the IV that was running down into his grave in the premiere.) Meanwhile, the Gulper doesn’t have a direct analogue in the games, but it seems to fill the same niche as the carnivorous Geckos—albeit with a body-horror element that speaks to some of the F.E.V. mutants that pop up in the nastier zones of most of the games.
- Correction: As people in the comments of this review have pointed out, The Gulper is pulled from the Far Harbor DLC of Fallout 4. My terrible secret is thus exposed: Although I’ve probably spent 500 hours, all told, playing Fallout games throughout my life, I think 4 is pretty profoundly mediocre, and so have never played its DLCs. Apologies for the error!
- As I noted in a previous stray observations, the broken water chip is the MacGuffin from the first Fallout and the catalyst for that game’s Vault 13 opening its doors for the first time in centuries.
- The opening flashback to Cooper in Hollywood is a little on the nose with all its “new kind of Western” stuff, but at least it does confirm that he’s on the right side of history vis a vis lavender-flavored candy. Yuck!
- Goggins’ goofy little run right before the cut back to the present is extremely cute.
- Honestly surprised it took the show this long to use the Ink Spots’ “Maybe,” perhaps the most iconic Fallout soundtrack song.
- What do you do with a prop of Michael Emerson’s severed head when a show like this is over? We hope Emerson gets to keep it; what a conversation piece that would be.
- This episode establishes that Vaults 31, 32, and 33 are all connected to each other, which was one of the weirder things from the premiere. (In the games, each Vault exists in total isolation, but it makes sense if this interdependent structure is one of Vault-Tec’s various “innovations” in human behavior.)
- A nasty argument breaks out in the Vault about how to handle the captured raiders: Do they rehabilitate them by teaching them Shakespeare, Kant, or introductory calculus?
78 Comments
You really missed that the show is playing the Vault Dwellers for buffoons, particularly in the debate over what to do with the prisoners. Anyone with an inch of common sense understands there can be no “reintegration to society” for the raiders. The vault dwellers are presented as a parody of liberal academics as conservatives would see them.
“the show is playing the Vault Dwellers for buffoons,”I mean not really, in the vault dwellers mind humans are scarce, you can see that from episode 1 with the marriage between vaults things, and the ummm cousin play eww. Every person is needed, so trying to reform the raiders and reintegrate them into society is very important to the survival of the human race. These are mostly isolated populations of people, in the vault, so you need new people so you just aren’t inbreeding within your group.
Neither of you are wrong. People are needed for genetic diversity, that has been established since the whole thing opened with discussions about taboos against inbreeding. But integrating The Raiders by reading them Shakespeare or teaching them calculus is absolutely poking fun at Ivory Tower Intellectuals. They’d be better off just going the A Boy and his Dog route with them.
Fair point, to be honest I haven’t yet watched the episode, I am part way through Episode 2 lol. That said so far I am digging it.
Guess they’re too “nice” to harvest sperm from the males and…well, you fill in the blanks with the women.
Well to be fair, even though it takes place in the future, and the were advanced for their time, IVF may not have been a thing. Besides it’s more fun the old fashioned way haha.
The show clearly isn’t taking the position that they should all just be killed. The show’s primary theme is how do you be moral in a world that’s inherently violent. That’s the entire plot line with Lucy’s journey on the surface — even when she learns that she cannot trust anyone, she still strides to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Her decisions keep blowing up in her face, but the show doesn’t criticize her for trying.
The Gulper absolutely does have a direct analogue in the games: it’s a creature in the Far Harbor DLC for Fallout 4.
Haven’t seen it yet. Just a couple of more days, then it’s booze bingin. Maybe I’ll mix up some Battle Brew. With any luck, I’ll have this perk before Sunday…
You would think if they’re gonna bother doing reviews and recaps of the show they’d find someone who actually played the games and the DLCs. Not knowing the gulper is in the same is pretty bad.
And it’s a bummer that it clearly missed him, because Far Harbor is one of the best DLCs ever, IMO. I don’t think it’d be a hot take to argue that the story/side quests of Far Harbor are better than the actual base game of Fallout 4 (and I say that as someone who really, really enjoyed Fallout 4).
My terrible, horrible secret is that I don’t like Fallout 4 (which means I only played, what, 80 hours of it) and so I never played the DLC. I missed the Gulper, apologies!
Totally understandable. But, I’d highly recommend giving the Far Harbor DLC a go sometime. It’s fantastic. One of the side quests is one of my absolute favorite things Bethesda has done. (For those who’ve played it, yes, I am OF COURSE talking about the quest at the hotel, which is all I’ll say so as not to spoil for anyone who hasn’t played it yet because once you realize what you’re getting yourself into, it’s GLORIOUS.)
Just make sure you download the mod that allows you to skip “DiMA’s Memories.” That was such an annoying slog. Not difficult at all, just incredibly tedious.
It was fun the first time (very 1980s cyberpunk; a bit like Interplay’s own Neuromancer game from the 1980s), but yes, the memory puzzles got old quickly.
I’m really excited to play it now. I’m on my first playthrough of 4 now. I didn’t play many video games when they came out so I’m making up for lost time now.
If it’s the weak main story that you dislike from Fallout 4 rather than the engine, I’d recommend checking out the DLCs. They are of a higher quality than the main game.
Yeah, because there really is a moral choice to be made — the various factions in Far Harbor have all good and bad sides. Which is rare for these games — mostly you either get to pick the obvious good guys or the bad guys. (New Vegas at least had a third/fourth choice with Mr. House/replacing Mr. House, but still, it was obvious that siding with NCR was the “right” choice).
For context: I’ve probably played through Fallout, Fallout 2, and New Vegas three or four times apiece; I’ll admit I’ve only played the Bethesda games once each, and didn’t do any of their DLC. My apologies for missing this enemy from the DLC of 4!
I vastly prefer this experience spread to someone more familiar with the Bethesda games aka Oblivion With Guns
This is the AV Club, what do you expect?
Thought DLCs didn’t count, like how Ellie isn’t actually gay because that’s DLC.
I hope you get to have sex one day, sir.
I’m just glad they got someone who doesn’t think the series started at 3, unlike some people in these comments
Also found in Fallout 76… while named “gulpers” they are also referred to as “salamanders” by at least one NPC.
I forgot about that one; I only spent a few hours playing 76 and, honestly, got bored. (I’ve read it’s gotten better but at the time, it just didn’t do anything for me.)
That’s sizeable salamanders to you!
That’s because they are salamanders, or rather their ancestors were. Pretty much all Fallout monsters are mutated real-world animals of some kind or another.
Thank you kindly. Was a little put off on that as well.
‘”Fallout recap: Welp, that’s one of the grossest things we’ve ever seenIn episode three, the show forces us to contemplate crushed craniums and giant lizards with human teeth for fingers”’Should read:‘”Fallout recap: Welp, that’s one of the grossest things we’ve ever seenIn episode three, the show forces us to contemplate crushed craniums and giant lizards with human fingers for teeth.”’There fixed that for you. And it kind of makes you wonder how exactly is it able to eat with fingers for teeth.
From all the undigested stuff still in the stomach when it throws up I’m guessing rather than chew it just swallows stuff whole then slowly digests it, hence the name gulper.
So, what you’re saying is it just fingers everything and waits for it’s gut acids to corrode all of that stuff.
Pretty much. It basically eats like a lot of fish where they just swallow stuff whole then either the acids do their work or they swallow a bunch of gravel/debris to break down the food.
Honestly surprised it took the show this long to use the Ink Spots’ “Maybe,” perhaps the most iconic Fallout soundtrack song.
I’ll go ahead and say I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire is more iconic.
The headline has transposed “teeth” and “fingers”. The Gulper has human fingers instead of teeth.
Good catch, thank you! Fixed now.
I just want to know how the thing trims all of its mouth-fingernails.
heh… thought that’d have been obvious. It chews them.
I’m not a video game guy in any way, shape or form but this is sounding pretty fun.
Very surprisingly, it’s turning out to be a pretty good show.
My wife, who knew nothing about the games going in, liked it a lot. It helps that the production values were quite high.
Never played any of the games but watched as I am a huge Goggins fan and Jonathan Nolan still has a lot of goodwill with me from Person of Interest. Finished the season today – thoroughly enjoyed it. Really impressed with Ella Purnell as she was great and IMO outshone Goggins a bit.
“The wasteland has its own golden rule. Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.”That is literally what happens with every Bethesda game , you have one main quest , and end up getting sidetracked by every damn sidequest on earth/Tamriel.
Bethesda’s Preston Garvy rule.
Dammit don’t say his name he’ll show up in season 2 telling Lucy about a settlement that needs her help
It would be great if they threw in an Easter egg for the game players by having someone say “There’s another settlement that needs your help. I’ll mark it on your map” and have Lucy shoot them.
>Honestly surprised it took the show this long to use the Ink Spots’ “Maybe,” perhaps the most iconic Fallout soundtrack song.Are you crazy? If any Ink Spots song is the most iconic song, it absolutely is, “I Don’t Want To Set The World on Fire.”Following that it is the “Main Theme” of Fallout 3 by Inon Zur:Which is remixed as the Main Theme of Fallout 4:It even got incorporated into the Main Theme of Fallout New Vegas:
I think my oldness might be showing here – “Maybe” is really central to Fallout 1, playing over that incredible ending, and so it’s the song I most closely associate with the games. “World On Fire” is also a biggie, but “Maybe” will always be THE Fallout song for me. Zur’s soundtrack is a whole other, great thing – we’ll talk about it a bit more when the show actually uses it a couple of episodes down the line.
I love the ambient tracks Zur came up with for the games.
>“Maybe” is really central to Fallout 1, playing over that incredible ending, and so it’s the song I most closely associate with the games. I can understand that. But if I had to bet on which Ink Spots song is most closely associated with Fallout, it would have to be Fallout 3 “I Don’t Want To Set The World on Fire.” The game sold 12.4 million copies whereas the combined sales for F1 and F2 probably only total a million. It stands to reason then that far more people recognize the Ink Spots from F3 than the previous games.
Plenty of people can date their involvement with the Fallout games to before they became bad actually
Amen to that.
What on earth is this, “Maybe” is quintessentially Fallout. That the rest of their catalogue was cannibalized for the rest of the series is nowhere near as poignant.
“Maybe” is the original, granddaddy Fallout song. That’s what played in the opening of the very first Fallout in 1997.
Really telling on yourself here, the main theme from the first game is where it all started
I played Far Harbor DLC at least once and had no recollection of the gulper. Same with the ghoul and Radaway. I thought he was a Jet addict like one can become in the game. I guess adding new twists and surprises was intentional so it’s not all a rehash of A Boy & His Dog. I guess I put away those games as soon as I finished them.
I’m with you. Even with hundreds of hours into Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I genuinely couldn’t get into Fallout 4, either. Maybe lasted fifteen hours before I just about died of boredom.
I liked Fallout 4, but it did become too easy too quick but giving you power armor early.
4 is a Fallout theme park. I like it but it feels almost impossible to actually love.
For what it’s worth, I have over a thousand hours in Fallout 4 and have also never bothered with the DLC, so I didn’t recognize the gulpers either.
I just play the Sim Settlements mod and make pretty little post-apocalyptic towns that I fill with every settler I can download off of the Nexus, that game’s story content is near-unaminously butt and ass.
I mean it hasn’t exactly been complex thus far, but any show that gets Goggins to play some kind of cowboy is doing God’s work.Water chip dude cracked me up though. I know it’s from the game, but what even is a water chip any how? How does a chip magically produce water?
I think it just controls the purifier/recycler.
Crazy that they seem to just have 1 water chip with no back up/s when it means that any breakdown with the chip means they’re out of water in just a few weeks (and the vaults are meant to last centuries). Also- my first thought was that surely Vault 32 still had their water chip intact that 33 could just take? Or at least have some dialogue explaining that they checked to see if they did but it turns out it was also broken or taken by the raiders?
“Marlowe, twat, or non-Euclidean geometry?”
I’ve got a lot of philosophy in my educational background, and that’s honestly the immediate joke I made.
Quick question, when and where is this set? Maybe I missed it or maybe they didn’t say. Edit: nevermind I just had to google better. L.A. in 2296. I guess I should have figured out the L.A. part at least but “philly” threw me.
It’s actually Filly, because the town was built on landfill. It’s an unnecessarily confusing name though, I agree. The show really could’ve come up with a name that wasn’t the nickname for a completely different major US city. And yeah, 2296, so the show is set after the events of all the games so far. Four years after FO4 and about twenty years after New Vegas, which is the last game that focused on this region of the US.
It’s on brand for Calfornia though. That’s a state that has a town named Ontario meaning it is referred to as Ontario, CA despite the fact that this could equally be interpreted as Ontario, Canada.
Not being a gamer, I also though “Filly” was a corruption of “Phillie.” Glad to have that clarified.
Ah, see I watch everything with subtitles so I saw that it was “Filly” and thought the town’s name was related to horses and the western theme. But you’re totally right- just going by ear, without seeing the spelling, it would be very easy to confuse the setting with Philly/Philadelphia.
Having Thaddeus reveal that he had no hard feelings against Maximus was a nice touch, but the reason basically being “just because” was an excuse I found unsatisfying. They certainly could have mined more character conflict from this in the build to Maximus getting found out. Things like this, as well as Max wondering about the water refill, when, as a squire himself, it seems like something he should know, has me side eye how they are approaching The Brotherhood. Also strangely, the show continuously uses nostalgic needle drops for his character- the one raised in the military his whole life- who would absolutely not have that nostalgia.I’m still having a problem with the Brotherhood of Steel side of the story, and I think part of it (besides their general clownishness) is them having been revealed so early, rather than a faction we build up to. A large part of their impact is meeting a powerful, organized group after all the disorganization and lawlessness of the wasteland. What the show has been missing for me, that was pivotal to the experience of playing Fallout, was that sense of discovery. I’d prefer really seeing the world through Lucy’s eyes first.That said, everything with the Gulper was pretty good.
I think the portrayal of the BoS so far is pretty true to the games. While they are pretty powerful and have decent organization compared to other factions they are also notoriously fractured, getting their asses kicked due to overestimating their prowess, and prone to abandoning their people in the wasteland to fend for themselves. Aside from some more pragmatic groups you run into, their general zeal is also always portrayed as a bit clownish. I’m actually not quite clear as to how the BoS has such a big presence in California again in the show or what happened to the NCR. 20 years earlier the BoS were decimated by the NCR. Having watched the whole series, it establishes that things have definetely changed in the intervening 20 years but it doesn’t go into much depth. I can’t really say more without spoilers for the show.
I’m sorry but the most iconic Fallout soundtrack song is “Butcher Pete.”
He’s choppin’ up the women’s meat.
Johnny Pemberton (whose “Hey It’s That Guy!” cred is already strong at this point, despite being relatively young)His screen credits are endless, and start in his mid 20’s.
But according to his IMDB, despite the apple-cheeked, gap-toothed Huckleberry farm-boy thing he has going on (speaking to his appearance, not dismissing the nuance he brings to various roles).
he’s actually in his early 40’s.
So the cred is years too, not just mileage.
The brotherhood of steel guy’s name being “Petty Officer Shortsight” was quite fun I thought. Monty Python-esque
This series is proving to be great fun. I’m restricting myself to one episode per day and loving it.
What’s even better about the Maybe needle drop is that the image on screen of Lucy walking into the desert when it starts matches up almost perfectly with the image of the Vault Dwell from FO1 doing the same, to the same song