Between the opening nuclear bomb detonation and the closing duel to the death, there was a lot of cool stuff in this episode.
It was, however, mostly set up and not a lot happened beyond that.
We expand on the world a bit more. We learn more about the Brotherhood of Steel and their disparate chapters across the Wasteland. We are given our first live-action look at another mutant enemy, the Radscorpions. And near the end of the episode, Lucy stumbles upon another deranged faction, Caesar’s Legion, one of the main antagonists in Fallout: New Vegas.
To Polish Dirty Steel
Maximus was missing from the last episode, so I’m glad this one gave him a lot of focus.
The opening showing us the destruction of Shady Sands from his and his parents’ perspective was quite sad and disturbing; made even more disturbing when it cuts to young Hank washing his hands back in Vault 33, after doing the deed. And the following present day sequence with Maximus helping the Brotherhood unearth Area 51 and all its glories was a fantastic visual spectacle.
I like how Max is positioned from the start. He has a lot more seniority and power now that he’s an official Knight and protege to Elder Cleric Quintus, leading missions and commanding others. It’s what he wanted for most of last season. But the dude is clearly as miserable as he was before. He hates life in the Brotherhood, but sees it as the best option to bring order to the Wasteland. He thinks he can change the system from the inside, but is repeatedly disheartened by their tribalistic cruelty and rampant infighting. His stubborn commitment to the faction is probably how he copes with the absence of a certain doe-eyed vault girl who gave him hope for a better future, as Dane hints.
That hope is growing fainter in light of Quintus’s ambitions. Quintus is using the cold fusion resource to manufacture an endless supply of fusion cores, which you need for things like power armor, hovercrafts, facilities, etc. And he’s using that big stick to persuade other West Coast chapters of the Brotherhood to unite against the Commonwealth chapter that rules the East Coast and calls the shots. Everyone including Maximus can see that Quintus intends to take over the entire faction. The stage is set for civil war, especially when a Brotherhood liaison from the Commonwealth drops in unannounced.
Gals and Ghouls
The stuff with Lucy and Cooper, while fun, was less interesting this time around. This episode lets us know that, while they are companions, they aren’t exactly friends yet. He’s still a patronizing dick to her and refuses to soften his ruthless nature, and she still stubbornly refuses to abandon her moralistic ideals.
Their philosophical differences end up biting them both in the ass here. Brutalizing (and cannibalizing) people and generally being a selfish bastard results in Lucy abandoning him after he’s hit with a venomous scorpion stinger. And her willingness to trust and risk her life for total strangers gets her captured by one of the most horrific groups in the Wasteland.
I still love the way this show makes the RPG mechanics of the games part of the show’s plotting and characterization. Lucy, Cooper and Maximus are all still experiencing the consequences of sticking to certain play-styles.
Enter Hank
The same can’t be said for Hank, a Vault-Tec company man who no longer seems to be playing by the rules. While his younger self was quite shaken at having just obliterated an entire city, present-day Hank is a casual monster. After testing the mind-control tech on lab mice to no avail, Hank decides to thaw out pre-war people who paid for VIP treatment and use them as test subjects.
While there’s naturally some cheeky sadism going on here, I couldn’t help but think Hank is working through some issues in this scene. I get the feeling he’s grown to resent Vault-Tec, since it essentially caused him to gain and then lose a family. I also wonder if some self-loathing thoughts are creeping in. The rich guy he thawed out bought a cryo-pod for himself but left his wife and kids behind to die in nuclear war, and Hank lectures him on the importance of family before popping his head like all the other subjects. This coming from a man who killed his own wife and lied to his kids their whole lives.
Whatever’s going on in his head, he seems really committed to this mind-control thing. Maybe that’s his solution to people on the surface who refuse to die. Just turn them into your obedient slaves.
Exit Vault 31
Norm’s arc with Vault 31 leads me to believe his dad’s agenda might be pointless. He unthaws Bud’s Buds and we see that most of them are panicky and easily led. I like that Norm used the information he’s just recently learned — specifically that he was bred for management — to take over this group of pre-war geeks and get them to find a way out of the vault for him. Was not expecting them to reach the surface; figured Norm’s plot would be confined to the three connected vaults until Lucy returned one day.
There's some genuine progress on this end, with Norm now leading a group into the Wasteland, an environment they are unprepared for in different ways. Still, it mostly conforms to the episode's purpose of setting the stage for the season. Not a bad thing, just not a whole lot to chew on plotwise.
Caps and rads:
* Music: “Lazy Day Blues” by Bert Weedon, another familiar tune from Fallout: New Vegas. Also, “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive” by Johnny Mercer and the Pied Pipers when Norm starts managing Bud’s Buds in Vault 31.
* Not sure if we’ve seen a Brahmin (cow with two heads and too many legs) in the show before, but one appears early in this episode. They don’t look nearly as gross as they do in the games.
* The Brotherhood completely ignoring an Area 51 alien corpse in favor of the icebox it was preserved in was pretty good. To them, I guess it would just be another abomination.
* At first I thought it was kind of dumb that Maximus’s dad was not only the one in Shady Sands helping to establish clean water, but also the man who tried to disarm the nuke. But, in hindsight, most Fallout protagonists tend to be important figures in the world of the Wasteland for one reason or another. Maximus being the son of an important NCR figure and later becoming an important BoS figure makes as much sense as Lucy being part of Vault-Tec’s endgame or Cooper being so intimately connected to various aspects of the lore.
Quotes:
Brainwashed Trader: “Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.”
A funny line from the game, but has an entirely different impact in the show.
Joseph: “You are a good boy. And one day, you will be a good man.”
Elder Cleric Quintus: “Together… we will fulfill our promise to make better this… this fallen world. My son.”
Lucy: “Look, your family may very well still be out there. I’ve seen enough by now to know that nearly anything’s possible, but one thing I wouldn’t count on is them appreciating the kind of person you’ve become. I mean, you want ‘em to like you, right?”
Cooper/The Ghoul: “You wanna know what I was like before the war? I was just like you. Stupid.”
Maximus: “Sometimes in order to make a big problem something you can handle, you gotta make it small. So we start by bettering ourselves. And you can do that in all sorts of ways, you know. Self-discipline, generosity, valor. And not smelling really bad.”
Maximus: “If the Brotherhood can keep history from repeating itself… my job is to help them do that.”
Yosemite Elder: “The Codex does say that violence against a fellow Brother is forbidden. But I suppose the Codex is open… to interpretation.”
Cue literal duels to the death between Brothers of Steel.
Slave: “You should go home. I wouldn’t want to see you get raped by the wrong people.”
Lucy: “I’ll bear that in mind.”
Vault 31er: “I want to go back. How do I turn my cryo chamber back on?”
VIP guy: “Ah, okay. I think there’s been some sort of mistake. I signed up for the Vault-Tec Premium Elite Plus.”
Hank: “Did you read the fine print?”
VIP guy: “Yes.”
Hank: “… Well, I didn’t.”
Norm: “It’s beautiful.”
Three and a half out of five band-aid merit dots.
No comments:
Post a Comment
We love comments! Just note that we always moderate because of spam and trolls. It's never too late to comment on an old show, but please don’t spoil future episodes for newbies.