Fallout recap: A few great weirdos can’t save a mostly dull penultimate episode
“The Radio” feels like it's only here to set up the season finale
TV Reviews Fallout
[Editor’s note: This is a recap of Fallout episode seven. The recap of episode eight publishes April 19.]
When you design the pacing of a modern TV drama, there are, basically, two general approaches to how you can handle the penultimate episode of your season. One model (made most famous, probably, by Game Of Thrones’ “The Rains Of Castamere”) is the one that says that episode 7, or 9, or whatever number is “Your season order, minus one,” is the ideal time to blow everything up—knocking your viewers out of their comfort zones, and leaving you with a full episode in which your characters can wrestle with the aftermath of whatever horrible shit just went down.
Fallout…doesn’t do that. No, “The Radio” is a far more traditional next-to-last episode for this surprisingly strong first season of TV, slowly moving all of our characters into position to have their minds blown by whatever big reveals series showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet have been cooking up for the finale. Lucy and Maximus find out the (not as dark as it seemed) secret of Vault 4; the Ghoul finds out where Moldaver is hiding out these days; Norm follows some leads and gets closer to the mystery of Vault 31. If none of it sounds all that interesting, well…that’s kind of by design. As a show that’s built up a decent backlog of mysteries in its second half, Fallout, pretty much by definition, can’t tell us too much that’s interesting here, because otherwise the gratification it’s withholding can’t be effectively delayed.
An episode of this type, then, has to live in the smaller moments, which “The Radio” has varying success with. The material surrounding Lucy and Maximus, for instance, is a mixed bag, with the members of Vault 4 revealed to be so saintly, in both their overall intent and their treatment of those who’ve sinned against them, as to feel artificial, just to rub in how our heroes have been acting like heels. On the other hand, the series of subsequent confrontations between our two leads—first with Lucy successfully playing on Maximus’ better impulses to get him to return 4's stolen fusion core, and then forgiving him for lying about being a Knight—are genuinely heartwarming. Fallout is, at its core, a series about what goodness looks like on the edge of survival, and a lot of its most interesting character work happens in Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten’s eyes, as they decide those questions for themselves.
The Ghoul, meanwhile, continues his trip through a series of post-apocalyptic Quentin Tarantino vignettes, this time threatening guest star Erik Estrada and his kids into giving up Moldaver’s new digs at the Griffith Park Observatory. To repeat a common refrain in these reviews, it’s not that Walton Goggins isn’t good in these scenes, projecting amused, pragmatic menace as easily as breathing. But the character as written is such a rote “Western badass” cliché that it robs the scenes he’s in of any tension. Of course he’s going to goad young Tommy into going for a gun and trying to avenge his murdered brother; of course he’s going to cut the young idiot down in seconds. These are the things that happen when a Western badass comes to your house and sits at your table and eats your dinner, zombie makeup job or no. And Fallout always feels a bit like it’s painting by numbers as these scenes play out.
For once, our flashbacks to the Ghoul’s past life as Cooper Howard don’t offer much respite, either. After attending (and then performatively storming out of) the “Communist” meeting at the cemetery, Moldaver almost instantly convinces Cooper to spy on his wife via a bug that syncs up to her Pip-Boy. We don’t get to hear any juicy stuff, of course, because, well…this is episode seven of eight, right? Goggins and Sarita Choudhury have good chemistry together in their handful of scenes, but it’s a less fascinating trip to the past than the ones we’ve gotten before.
“The Radio” works, then, mostly at the edges, when it gives us more time to luxuriate in the wonderful weirdness of the Wasteland. The biggest delight is the return of Jon Daly as the snake oil salesman from “The Target,” hilariously re-introduced trying to blow his own head off with a long gun before getting distracted from his task when he sniffs out a new mark. Pausing his suicide thanks to the passage of Johnny Pemberton’s Thaddeus—limping across the Wastes after Maximus smashed his foot into a pile of lovingly rendered gore a few episodes back—Daly gives a hilarious hard sell for a panacea for all that ails the young squire, giving a mixture of goofball and genuine menace that’s right at the heart of Fallout the TV series’ tone. The show wouldn’t work if it was all top-hatted psychopaths peddling medicine that (spoiler alert) secretly turns you into a radiation zombie, but that level of unsettling comedy is at the center of the show’s best moments. (See also Fred Armisen’s cameo as radio-station operator DJ Carl, who does not take requests, and who’s ready to cheerfully decapitate anyone who doesn’t enjoy traditional, original fiddle recordings with a giant mousetrap. Hell, maybe we would just watch a TV show of Johnny Pemberton wandering the Wastes, running into weirdos like this.)
Ultimately, a TV show cannot live or die on plot alone. Big reveals are exciting; Spooky cliffhangers (like Norm disappearing into Vault 31, only to be confronted by…something…in its eerie halls) get the blood pumping as a matter of course. But these things are also a cheap carb—or a non-renewable fossil fuel—to dip back to Moldaver’s intellectual seduction of Coop. Character work is the cold fusion that keeps things powered for the long haul, and “The Radio” just doesn’t keep the lights on as well as it could. It has some fun moments, a few good gags, a nicely earned kiss, and one very good dog. But it can’t do much to transcend that fact that it’s an episode almost entirely about setting up what happens in the next episode. Alas!
Stray observations
- “I’ve got a little show-biz secret for you: A good bad guy doesn’t see themselves as a bad guy.”
- First dark laugh of the episode: Former Vault 4 Overseer Lloyd Hawthorne insisting—as he and his wife are devoured by their own monsters—that their deaths are not an argument against letting scientists rule the world.
- “What was the experiment in 33?” is the kind of question that’ll put chills down your spine, huh?
- “Pfffffffff. That’s the sound of your lower intestine falling… right the fuck ouuuuuut.” Daly is really good in this.
- Oh, and all the Raiders down in 33 got poisoned to death, Chet and Woody got moved to Vault 32, and Steph (also originally from 31) is 32's new overseer. I’ll be honest: The Vault material was the most placeholdery stuff in the entire episode. The visual effect of the vault assignments popping up out of the Pip-Boys was neat, though!
- “You’re a coward. “We all are, Norm. That’s why we live in a Vault.”
- Armisen can be a small-doses performer, but he and Pemberton are great in their little sketch together, including the “great job on these booby traps!” reveal of the dead bodies surrounding the station.
- Great sound work as Thaddeus breathes through the crossbow bolt in his neck. Pemberton is a great fit for this show; hope there’s more of him in the almost certainly-happening season two.
- A very cute touch: Lucy and Maximus kissing in such a way that the severed heads they’re holding kiss, too. This show!
- Fallout Game Corner: The hacking interface Norm uses to break into the Overseer’s computer is, of course, the hacking mini-game from the 3D Fallout titles. Good job guessing the password with so few mistakes, Norm!
81 Comments
One thing I still don’t understand is why Micheal Emerson’s character injected the macguffin into his head. Why not just hide it in your ass like a normal person smuggling something? We could have had a show where characters search for and then carry around a severed ass.
Well, here’s me hoping we get to see that in season 2.
Or just hide it in a pen or something. It was tiny. Although carrying around a severed ass is certainly funnier.
Coulda rammed that thing up his dong too
If it was in his ass, there would be a risk that it’d get turned into jerky.
It is a problem having a big glowing things in your neck if you want glowing thing to remain secret.
Sorry, I’m not quite sure where the neck comes into it? I do have some serious questions about the MacGuffin, but they’ll keep until tomorrow’s article.
He literally injects a glowing thing into his neck in episode 2. At least from the viewpoint of the viewer, it is visibly glowing.
ooh ok, I’d forgotten that detail and was thinking you were trying to point out a problem with my anus plan. I was like “how far did you think I wanted him to shove it?”
Easy. Because the head can become another character in the show in a way that an ass can’t — e.g. the kiss scene, the dog’s continued affection, etc. In any case, the ass is only good for one thing — jerky.
e.g. the kiss scene, the dog’s continued affection, etc. Wait, in your mind the idea of a severed head kissing a severed ass and a dog having continued affection for a severed ass are marks against my idea?
“People used to write movies WITH stories, so you knew who’s ass it was and why it was farting and I believe that time can come again!”
Obviously he’s never seen Pulp Fiction!
One theory floating around is that Thaddeus isn’t a ghoul now, but a super mutant. Both are plausible lore wise, but ghouls don’t really regenerate the way he did.
Except The Ghoul regenerates. And he’s a ghoul.
When did The Ghoul regenerate? He certainly didn’t regenerate the finger Lucy cut off. That should have healed immediately like Thaddeus’s neck wound did.
Yeah I thought maybe that was something from a later fallout game I didn’t play, because i never remembered ghouls regenerating. But then again, I can’t remember where super mutants came from either.
Super Mutants are failed attempts at creating super soldiers with the FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus). While that was pre-war tech, the games show creation of new super mutants using it, so I suppose it is possible that the quack infected him with FEV.
They aren’t failed attempts, that’s exactly what the FEV does – it makes a stupid, sterile, radiation resistant hulk. That the FEV isn’t terribly viable as a means to create an army is exactly why the project was abandoned pre-war.
Later on, the Master discovered it, and was unaware of the drawback of sterility, though he did succeed in mitigating the mental degradation somewhat. His alterations also created semi-super mutants, who have some of the properties of ghouls and super mutants. The Vault Dweller was at least the third resident of Vault 13 to venture into the wasteland. One of his predecessors, a guy named Talius who met the Vault Dweller later, became one of these offshoots.
No, that kind of Wolverine healing factor is something that we’ve never seen from ghouls before now.
The theory I’ve seen was that it might have been one of the serums causing mutations from Fallout 76, eg. the healing factor one.On the other hand the show is clearly messing with the ghoul canon established in the games, so making ghouls super-healers isn’t out of the question.
The theory I’ve seen was that it might have been one of the serums causing mutations from Fallout 76, eg. the healing factor one.On the other hand the show is clearly messing with the ghoul canon established in the games, so making ghouls super-healers isn’t out of the question.
My immediate thought was also super mutant. First, the show already has enough ghouls for now. Second, the chicken fucker instructed him to go to Shady Pines. I think he wants to unleash a supermutant on the city for revenge or something.
The scene where Maximus sees Lucy being dragged off and has a moment of decision between his bowl of popcorn or rescuing here was awesome.
And then grabs a fistful as he gets up.
That dude is a good actor. I don’t always like the character, but he’s really good.
Really? The constantly bored/emotionless look on his face even during action scenes doesn’t throw you off? I find his acting very distracting.
I thought the Ghoul’s dinner scene was more of a nod to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly if anything, although that’s certainly something Tarantino ripped off.
I definitely thought that and even expected a musical cue, but didn’t really get one.Also, I had no clue that was Erik Estrada until I read this. I haven’t thought about him in years and couldn’t have told you if he was even alive before now.
While watching I was like ‘wait a sec, that can’t be who I think it is?’ and went to IMDB to check while I paused.I’ve seen an argument made that they wouldn’t have cast him unless they were planning on bringing him back for a revenge arc next season, but I think it’s more likely that they just thought it’d be a fun weird little cameo like Armisen’s.
Estrada looks SPECTACULAR for 75. Good on him.Also, my husband clocked that it was a nice tip of the hat to have a guy most well known for playing a California Highway Patrol Officer playing a New California Republic Ranger.
He’s 75!?!?!? Holy hell…
Dude could easily pass for 50.
Estrada is apparently an immortal. He looks like he’s 50, but he’s gotta be on his 70s by now.
“Erik Estrada… now that’s a name I have not heard in a long time”
Very definitely a nod to the first big Angel Eyes scene in the Good, the Bad. I loved it.
“Hell, maybe we would just watch a TV show of Johnny Pemberton wandering the Wastes, running into weirdos like this.”I mean, you literally just described the entire experience of playing Fallout.
I’m mostly going to wait until tomorrow’s recap comes out for Ep8, but damn, somebody is going to sue Amazon….It’s pretty “Shift”y what they’re doing here….
What are you referring to?
So here’s the deal: I’m not familiar with ANY Lore from the games, so I’m trying to figure out what came from Fallout and what came from Hugh Howie’s “Wool” or “Silo” series. Yes, Fallout came before Wool, where humanity lives underground in bunkers, many bunkers, separated. What I don’t know is if the big corporation controlling everything with hibernating executives AND starting the very apocalypse that drives everyone into the bunkers is originally from Fallout or is it from “Shift”, the second silo book. Either way, “Silo” the TV watchers, who haven’t read the books, are sure going to be disappointed when they find that all of season 2 has been spoiled by season 1 of “Fallout.”
It’s a bit of a mishmash. The vaults and Vault-Tec as this vaguely sinister corporation, making money on and marketing the war, and running experiments on the vault dwellers, is lore going back to the early days of Fallout. I don’t think they ever explained canonically how the war started or if Vault-Tec was involved in that directly, just that they profiteered off of it. The original creators have stated at various times—outside the games themselves—that 1. China dropped the first bomb that kicked off the war, but 2. they were less interested in who started it (which is why it’s never mentioned in the games as far as I know) than in the conditions and attitudes that made people decide that the best option was complete annihilation. The hibernation pods the execs use in the finale were, I think, new to the series with Fallout 4 (2015). That’s a couple years after the publication of Silo–but with the leadtime to write and develop modern games, there’s really no possibility that it was directly borrowed from that. More likely from the plethora of other sci-fi movies and books that use cryogenic hibernation (e.g. Alien, Futurama, a billion others). I don’t recall anymore if FO4 explicitly mentions Vault-Tec execs using the pods, however. That game is from the perspective of a vault dweller who goes into hibernation just as the war starts, and wakes up many years later to try to find a spouse and child who were abducted from the vault. Vault-Tec are sinister yet again but in different ways from the show.I think it’s possible Fallout (the series) borrowed from the book you mention. But I also think it’s possible that they took a pre-existing world about a nefarious corporation who profits off of nuclear war and just added a fairly obvious twist to what was already there. Will also say that despite the boardroom meeting scene, it’s still not clear if Vault-Tec *literally* started the war, or if that was rhetorical/metaphorical. They may have simply contributed to the aforementioned conditions that made them make more money.
It’s just weird how many plot beats from the finale are just like those in “Shift.” I really feel like Hugh Howie may just come calling on AMazon about infringement…But what do I know?
He may, but I think he’d have a hard time winning that one. Quite a lot of the background story and world pre-dates his books. And most of these ideas probably pre-date both Fallout and Shift, in other science fiction. Start deep diving on the subject and you start to realize how hard it is to win cases like this when the authors involved are obviously swimming in the same waters, drawing from the same influences.
Except that many of the concepts in Fallout the TV show – have been present since Fallout 1 and 2 (which came out in 1998 and 1998 respectively) – or at least Fallout 3 (which released in 2008).Hugh Howey didn’t start work on the separate pieces of Wool (part 1 of the Silo series) until 2011 – 3 years after Fallout 3 – and almost every idea you mention was either directly there – or baked in as things you can find when you read the narratives.I love Silo (the show – and the books) – I also love Fallout (the games and the show) – you can enjoy both – and see them both as a different take on a similar idea without needing to assume outright theft of ideas. We can have both of these things.Honestly, I enjoy Silo as the darker take on The End Of The World As We Know It (brought to you by corporate sponsors)… And I enjoy Fallout as the lighter campy/goofy take on this same idea (but with nukes instead of – THIS PIECE REDACTED BECAUSE SPOILERS FOR SILO SERIES).
Some additional food for thought here:1. Howey was apparently, and admittedly, heavily influenced by the Fallout games (he says this in response to a question on Goodreads: “I loved the Fallout series. I played 1 and 2 dozens of times each. Turn-based RPGs are my favorite genre of games (too few of them these days!) I never got into Fallout 3 as much as I would have liked. I hope to return to it one day.”). The circularity of idea-borrowing here would probably undermine a lawsuit from him against them.2. Fallout was heavily influenced by Philip K. Dick’s novel, The Penultimate Truth. In which a nefarious superpower (not a company, but they even have a hyphenated name a la Vault-Tec) keeps their population belowground in “ant tanks” to fuel a war effort, for a war that has already ended. Not the same idea as Silo or the Fallout series, exactly—but you can see how, again, these basic ideas are just kinda… out there for general consumption, at this point. You’d probably have to have compelling evidence of rampant intellectual theft (including major plot incidents and characters) to win a case here.
Silo s1 was so fucking obvious to begin with, I doubt anyone will feel spoiled from watching or already being familiar with Fallout games/lore.
“We need to sharpen this.” Classic.
Am I the only one watching this show and thinking, “THIS is how Rey and Finn’s relationship should have been in the Star Wars sequels.”? Love the show and can’t wait for season 2.
Yes! I was thinking to myself, wow this guys is like a less-annoying Finn lol
1000000%. Hell, you could probably shoehorn the Ghoul in as a Kylo Ren-type to complete the trio, as a jaded badass whose traumatic past has shaped him into being merciless while some morality and humanity is very clearly lurking just under the surface.
I hadn’t thought of that but he does remind me of Finn in the way that he looks and speaks.
Just wait for the director’s cut where Rey offers to have intercourse with Finn, but he is afraid his cock will pop like a pimple.
Lol
The kiss between Maximus and Lucy, only to reveal the severed heads they’re holding are also kissing was one of the funniest moments of television I’ve seen in a long while
I have a couple of questions as I’m not a player of the games.1. Is the life expectancy of all humans 200+ years in this show? I know The Ghoul is that old, and Moldaver, and this doesnt seem out of the ordinary to anyone, and I’m just trying to figure out the ages/time periods that we have seen thus far. (It’s pretty weird that radiation is making humans live longer on the show, as opposed to what happens in the real world)2. What is the purpose of making Ghouls, like John Daly did to Thaddeus? Just because? He seems to almost NEED to do it tho.This show, man. It always makes me think of Z Nation.
1. No. People in general in the games live if anything shorter lives than we do. But ghouls can live basically forever (although they eventually lose their minds and become “ferals”; the idea that they can prevent this with drugs is an invention of the show). The other way people from pre-war can survive hundreds of years is by being frozen like in the show, but in this case they don’t really live through the time that they are frozen. We don’t really know what’s up with Moldaver — maybe some weird tech kept her alive without making her a ghoul.2. Normally ghouls in the games aren’t created deliberately — they just so happened to get the right amount of radiation in the War not to kill them but to mutate them. There are exceptions — Hancock from Fallout 4 became a ghoul in post-war times by taking some sort of drug.
I would only add that “making humans live longer” is one of the least unbelievable effects radiation has on the characters and wildlife in the Fallout universe.
Yeah, the Fallout universe is a lot like the old tabletop “Gamma World” RPG from the 1970s/1980s —giant mutant creatures, mutations that give you powers rather than cancer, etc. Not very realistic, but a bit more fun than playing a hypothetical Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” RPG.
I guess that drug got called out this episode with the squire’s apparent ghoulification.
Regarding 2, the original pre-War reason was because the US government was trying to create Captain America. Instead they accidentally created Super Mutants and, possibly, a form of Ghoul.
I suspect the good doctor is out of his mind, and provided the requested service in the way he thought his patient needed/wanted. His comment after the injection was pretty funny, because there’s a suggestion that he thinks Thaddeus understood he was going to be a ghoul (which obviously he didn’t). My wife asked me the same question, and I just said, “Well look how that scene started.” The Wasteland is chock full of maniacs doing crazy things for crazy reasons. If the question is, “Does he have a larger, logical agenda?” I think the answer is no.
To briefly broken record here: the pacing and characterization issues are hallmark Jonathan Nolan bullshit. He’s never met a needlessly drawn out character revelation or plot twist that he didn’t love.
And its unfortunate because these last two episodes are easily the worst of the series. The Evil Father revelation is particularly poor writing.
Knowing Nolan I’m waiting for some other dumb shoe to drop. Like all season I kept waiting for the Maximus flashback to reveal that a BoS knight shot and killed his mom or something and his statement that he wants to “hurt those who hurt me” was a hint that he’s working from the inside (which would also give justification to him hobbling Dane and seeming to hate most of the people around him). And to be honest despite the season being over and no such revelation I wouldn’t be *at all* surprised to see that happen in S2. “Oh, did you think we were done with his backstory? PSYCH!”
Well they couldn’t *completely* copy Fallout 3’s familial dynamics, even if they try very hard to echo the family impetus of that game here.
To be fair, the pacing of this series is perfectly fine if you elect to binge it in two nights of viewing, which is clearly how Amazon intended for the series to be viewed since they decided to release all the episodes in one drop.
Netflix style. I’m so glad they did it this way. Some shows are just better binged. This is one.
I didn’t have the slightest problem with the pacing of season one, but then I enjoy shows that don’t rush things along — Better Call Saul and The Leftovers being two of my all time favorites. Sometimes it’s just nice to soak in the atmosphere a show creates.
Better Call Saul always gave us some idea of where it was going. Which isn’t to say it never surprised but it didn’t tease the surprise the same way that Westworld constantly did and Fallout *kinda* did to a much less annoying extent. And with The Leftovers, the confusion and lack of concrete answers was part of the overall point. There’s no benefit to the Fallout IP generally or this particular set of stories to have held out information as long as they did. Even if the information wasn’t nearly as ridiculous as Westworld.Maybe I’m just still really salty about Westworld….
Important distinction:I also disliked Westworld (first season was okay but too self-serious about a relatively thin batch of ideas, and I bailed after the second season, which sucked). Nolan’s executive producer status on Fallout gave me pause, as a result. But he co-created Westworld and is a credited writer on a bunch of episodes. Fallout was co-created, show-run, and written in large part by two completely different people (Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet), neither of whom were involved in Westworld. And none of the other writing staff from Westworld is on Fallout. As far as I can tell, Nolan’s involvement is much more of a traditional exec producer role; he may weigh in here and there but mostly he is probably approving stuff other people are writing, if he even gets that involved. In any case, I enjoyed this first Fallout season far more than even the best (first) Westworld, and am no longer watching it to diagnose “Nolan bullshit,” because I don’t think that’s what this is after all.
That’s totally fair and I’m probably just jilted and looking for reasons to snark about Nolan. Between him and his equally overhyped brother I have a rattlesnake’s worth of venom.
Believe me, I get it. Westworld should have been right up my alley (westerns? sci-fi? violence? needle drops of anachronistic songs? Ed Harris? checks across the board!). Instead I had a squirming discomfort from the jump (“This should be better, why is it kinda… not that good?”) that evolved into outright loathing. Besides Nolan not actually creating and writing this show, I think it also helps that the creators are stepping into a world that was already built (the world-building on Westworld was so crummy, I thought), with a post-modern, throw-stuff-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach that will hopefully continue to protect it from getting as bad as Westworld did. Like, I can tolerate some stuff left dangling in the story, some pacing issues, some inconsistent characterization, if I am having a lot of fun. One thing Westworld resolutely refused to be was fun. It thought it was great and important art, which meant that it really curdled fast when the jig was up.
“Between him and his equally overhyped brother I have a rattlesnake’s worth of venom.”
Lol, you know how weird it is to be this passionately angry at two creative people you’ve never met, right?
You consider “moving the set pieces around” as a negative in the episodes where there is not a lot of action. That is still part of the story. No doubt you also complained when last-season Game of Thrones failed to do so and basically just magicked everyone to the place they needed to be. Pick a lane.
And I’m pretty sure several HBO series used the penultimate episode to pack a punch while the actual finale was a denouement, years, maybe decades, before GoT came along.
For the DJ, they missed a great opportunity by not casting Dave Foley.
It’s a great radio station, I just wish it would play Melanie’s “Brand New Key” more often.
I know I’ve already responded to this, but besides this sketch (which does have a lot of Fallout vibes), and all the other Kids in the Hall stuff, I just realized that Dave Foley voiced Yes Man (Benny’s robot in Fallout:New Vegas that you can get to work for you). Maybe you knew that and that was part of the joke?
Episodes 7 and 8 are easily the weakest and most hackneyed of the series.
Westworld had a similar approach to its finales and the penultimate episodes. Same creators so it’s not surprising.Mostly dull… What, no. I’m enjoying every second of this show.
Go figure, this is the most I’ve been into the Vault mystery all season. +1 for the hacking mini game. +10 for my favorite piece of set decoration so far
The music from Armisen’s radio station is the same music played from Radio Freedom in Fallout 4.