Fallout tv Return to the Nolanverse Review ReDux
Episode 1 “The End”
- Show starts at “The End,” October 23, 2077
- The apocalypse happening in October was acknowledged in Fallout 4 with all the scattered
Halloween decorations, but this is a normal summer day in LA, with no signs of the fall or the
holidays.
- President was nowhere to be found for negotiations with “America’s adversaries.” At this
point the President is mid-flight to the Poseidon oil rig. Does this hint that the Enclave knew
about the Vault-Tec conspiracy? This presents a few problems to be addressed next
episode.
- Cooper lies to Janey about what the dads are saying. Cooper’s instinct is to shield Janey
from reality, yet he’s exposing her to incredible danger by keeping her out of the vault.
- Janey is looking in on the birthday party, regretting that she can’t be a normal kid as she’s on
the job with Cooper.
- Cooper hides the truth about why he won’t do the thumbs up and tells her how to eyeball a
mushroom cloud instead.
- First strike hits LA. Why is the explosion in slow motion? Flash 4:42, shockwave 5:52. It
takes a full minute, approximately, for the shockwave to reach from downtown LA to the
mansion in the Hollywood hills. Downtown > HH is roughly 9 miles. Fallout’s nuclear
warheads were smaller yields than in megatons but averaged a range of about 500 kt. A 500
kiloton blast produces overpressures at 8 psi 9 miles out, which would be enough to destroy
the mansion. Overpressure also causes the blast to exceed the sound barrier, which
sometimes exceeds Mach 10. Even at Mach 1 it would take the blast 45 seconds to reach.
Detonations impact the ground but a simulation of a 300 kt ground strike wouldn’t reach the
Hollywood Hills from Los Angeles. A 15kt blast wouldn’t even get close. Other detonations
shown appear to be air bursts.
- Why do all of these details matter? Because the show doesn’t take nuclear bombing
seriously at all. This is the most terrifying event in all of human history, and it produces T-
Rated consequences in a show that later revels in excessive gore. 1:1 realism isn’t expected,
but the consequences are trivial. Nobody inside the mansion gets embedded with glass
despite the entire wall being made of glass. All those kids and adults should look like
porcupines. Even Fallout 4 has a more palpable sense of terror and urgency during the Great
War. In Fallout tv the effects of the bombs are trivial. Cooper and Janey must have looked
directly at three nuclear flashes while getting away ON HORSEBACK, without being blinded
or feeling any heat. LA doesn’t get set on fire from a heat wave. No death and misery, no
earth-shattering kaboom. If a British propaganda program for tv like Threads could portray a
more terrifying nuclear exchange in the 80s then what’s Fallout tv’s excuse? This is a
contrived scenario certain to be expanded on in season 2. We also know that LA was hit
with some ground bursts because of the craters seen later in the show.
- The show sets off on a bad footing and its failure to sell the horror of Fallout repeats
throughout the season. It depends too much on gross monsters and gross people to sell its
scares while not taking anything seriously. The horror only works when Cooper is being
inhumane, or during the gulper birthing scene; and the gulper birthing is undermined by that
episode’s horrible plotting and lame punchline.
- 2296, Vault 33: Lucy is pitching her skills to the council. Tag skills: repair, science, speech,
melee, unarmed, small guns.
- Norm was jaded and unenthusiastic about vault life before the events of the show.
- Lucy says no marriage partners are suitable since she’s related to everyone in vault 33. This
doesn’t stop them from being sexually active with each other doing “cousin stuff.” Lucy is
offering herself for marriage in the triennial trade. Council unanimously approved.
- Steph is helping Lucy get dressed and made up, and was with Lucy in the pipefitters
association. Lucy and Steph were friends for a while but at no point does Lucy express that
she misses Steph.
- Marriage ceremonies are corny affairs conducted like a picnic in the agricultural field.
Dwellers grow corn in rows to approximate rural living arrangements instead of performing
more efficient underground agriculture (this is consistent with Vault-Tex’s ideological aims).
- Lucy has a brief moment of hesitation when Lucy talks about raising their kids in the vault.
Lingering memories of the surface, probably.
- Seeing everyone working on the marriage spread with Hank brightens Lucy up.
- The Nebraska skyline is being projected in 3 directions from the ceiling.
- Hank DOES mention he’s from 31. Claims to have never stepped foot outside of it before the
triennial trade.
- Norm is trying to psyche Lucy out. “He could be a cannibal, or crammed with tumors.”
- Chet stalls at opening the door because he loves Lucy. “Messing around with your cousin,
it’s all well and good for kids, but it’s not a sustainable long term practice.” So really the
vaults are an elaborate incest fantasy.
- Moldaver comes in and Hank doesn’t recognize her. Moldaver’s cover story is that there was
a grain blight, but they leave the door wide open. Lucy’s hubby is named Monty.
- Vault dwellers have no idea there’s something off about the 32ers. They even sit at mixed
tables, yet nobody recognizes each other, nobody asks about 32, nobody gets rad spikes on
their pip boys, the bandits all have horrible table manners, one of the bandits has a neck
sleeve tattoo while others have scarring and so on.
- Hank says radiation levels are declining fast enough for Lucy’s generation to recolonize.
Lucy & Monty consummate. This is the most sexually charged scene in the whole show and
it’s rape under false pretenses.
- Norm is the only guy who checks out 32. Norm finds 32 abandoned and in disarray. Leaves
when he finds a dead body.
- Lucy can hear gunshots. The raiders are moving on the armory. Lucy uses her pip boy to
detect Monty’s rads. They fight. Strange to note after 2 other viewings that this is the best
choreographed fight of the season and it’s also the first. There’s a good sense of space and
action with convincing athletics and improvised brutality. It’s all downhill from here.
- Lucy is stabbed in the abdomen. She sticks herself with a stimpak in the bathroom. The
alarm has gone off in the vault with red alert lights. Raiders cleared out the armory and Lucy
takes the tranq pistol.
- The raiders kill without mercy and revel in the slaughter. The battle is a nonsensical melee.
Norm sneaks away.
- A couple dwellers are still bringing jelly molds despite the alarm going off. Woody tells them to
“get that jelly mold out of here!” This is the first big joke of the series and it falls totally flat.
Why would they ignore the alarm like that? And then they’re slaughtered.
- Moldaver is being escorted through the vault looking for Hank but takes no precautions to
protect the lives of Lucy & Norm, despite her previous relationship with Rose.
- Steph loses her husband and goes berserk. Loses an eye but takes out one raider while in
late term.
- Chet is closing the door to 32 while a raider bruiser carries a security guard up and takes a
hit of jet before attacking Chet. What was he bringing the guard into 32 for? The raiders
don’t end up claiming any slaves or hostages other than Hank. Guard trips the raider and
he’s split in two when the door shuts. Chet doesn’t have any inclination for violence despite
his huge frame.
- Lucy saves norm and leaves him in a maintenance hatch. Monty is back and gets brained by
hank with a shovel. Then gets drowned in pickle brine.
- Hank gets the inter-door breach alarm on his pip-boy. Again, why didn’t he get the alarm
when Norm was in 32? Is it the bomb blocking the door?
- Moldaver tells Hank “everyone knows who I am,” but we the audience still do not. Chet and
Steph are among the hostages. Hank chooses to save Lucy and is tranq’d. Moldaver gives
the hostages a chance to run before the bomb seals 32.
- Cut to Maximus at the Brotherhood. He’s getting his shit kicked in by a pack of superior
recruits. Including Thaddeus. Maximus is shown later to be a dumbass and an assholr so it’s
hard to believe this is mere hazing.
- Dane arrives to pick Maximus up. I don’t comment on Dane much in my other notes, but
Dane is a compelling character who is well acted by Xelia Mendes-Jones. The void of info
we get on the Brotherhood could have been alleviated by making Dane a POV character in a
mirror of Norm. Or rather, Dane should have been a main character and not Maximus. Dane’s
actions reveal that he has an aversion to violence and is willing to hurt himself to avoid the
knighthood career track. Dane’s support for Maximus is an expression of empathy which
Maximus is seemingly incapable of.
- “Flesh is weak but steel endures.” - a brotherhood tenet
- This brotherhood chapter is based out of a defunct air field. Destroyed military planes litter
the tarmac. Life is regimented in a permanent barracks culture. Quite similar to war
communism, in fact. Children are seen on base. Women are also on base. The brotherhood
has produced their own children and recruited orphans from the wasteland. The Brotherhood
is likely operating out of air bases across America in order to set up an airship resupply
network.
- Brotherhood class. Cleric Felix is teaching the aspirants about the brotherhood’s purpose,
which is to find and secure pre-war technology. For what end is not stated. Maximus gets
switched in the mouth for not recognizing a diagram. The Prydwen arrives with a dispatch of
knights & clerics from the commonwealth. 5 knights are dispatched in T-60 power armors
with squires selected from the local aspirants.
- I have to admit my bias here. Fallout 4’s approach to treating power armor like a vehicle was
one of the best innovations Bethesda brought to the series, and seeing power armor
depicted as hulking metal killing machines that could stomp you to death was the right way
to go. If they had gone with the idea to make them cgi instead of physical props it would
have looked like shit.
- In style and culture the Brotherhood seems to have had a fundamentalist turn since Fallout
4. They’re no longer straightforward fascists with a historical mission but a militant cult like
they were in the original games. Although the Brotherhood does retain its fascist policies
from Maxson, such as its mutant exterminationism. However, the show doesn’t not explain
why the Brotherhood does what they do, only what. Nobody seems to take the
brotherhood’s religion seriously even though it’s a cult that indoctrinated them from
childhood. Even the highest ranking knights from the Commonwealth like Titus don’t give a
fuck about anything but themselves. Jonathan Nolan projected his nihilistic playstyle onto
the whole faction.
- The brotherhood is receiving transmitted codes that describe Wilzig as the target.
- Maximus is pulling latrine duty. Dane shows Maximus the power armors, which were left
totally unintended despite their sacred value. Maximus flashes back to Shady Sands. This is
the first of several times we see the clip of Maximus and the fridge. Brotherhood officers
take Dane to tell him he’s been selected as a squire.
- Brotherhood aspirants are playing basketball with bricks and a chain basket. Life on a
brotherhood is extremely austere & Spartan, with no toys or luxuries. Guy jerking off under
the covers in the barracks.
- Maximus is jealous of Dane for being selected. Dane says they’re being sent to the wilds.
Maximus freaks out while working latrines at night.
- Dane injures himself with a razor in his boot, but all suspicion is on Maximus. Maximus is
taken to be interrogated by Cleric Quintus.
- Back to 33. Everyone is engaged with cleanup. Dead raiders are being dragged into the
composting room. Lucy is stapling her stab wound, which for some reason wasn’t fully
healed by the stimpak.
- Lucy proposes to the assembly that they send a party to the surface to find Hank. Everyone
hates that. Woody says “there’s no bad idea in a brainstorm” but shoots it down anyway.
Betty says the vault’s security is their priority and they have to keep the doors closed. Norm
says they don’t want to find Hank because if they did then they couldn’t be overseer. Lucy
leaves the assembly to silence. Everyone heard Norm say that so Betty is already aware that
Norm is a jaded skeptic.
- Lucy is inspired by a vault boy poster saying “don’t lose your head” and resolved to leave on
her own. Norm immediately begins prepping to help Lucy. Chet collaborates since he has
the door codes and loves Lucy. Norm takes the opportunity to look down the elevator shaft
and it’s shown that the vaults are buried deep underground. Chet wants to go outside with
Lucy and she tranq’s him. The elevators close as Davey and Reg come up to try and stop
them. Lucy tells Norm she’s bringing Hank home.
- Lucy steps out into the brightness of the wasteland. The vault entrance door is exposed to
sunlight with dead bodies littering the entranceway. Bodies appear to be victims of the Great
War who could not make it inside. The vault entrance is within eyesight of the Santa Monica
Pier and right along the coastline, which places it directly west of the Boneyard.
- There’s an additional problem with the vault entrances being above ground besides the fact
the Master and anybody else would have found them. Being above ground with
standardized concrete casings makes the vaults an easily identifiable landmark from the sky.
Chinese intelligence should have been aware of these vaults and targeted them with ground
bursts to destroy the bunkers, like they did to “The Glow,” a West-Tek facility known to be
where FEV was developed.
- Back to Maximus’s interrogation. “Why did you join the brotherhood?” “To hurt the people
who hurt me.” Quintus refers to Dane as “they” when I was almost certain Dane was a trans
man. Kind of odd for the Brotherhood to have complex gender identities when they’re so
reactionary in every other regard. Quintus says the aspirants suspect Maximus hurt Dane.
Aaron Moten does the most acting he’s allowed to do the whole season as Maximus
struggles with his emotions. Maximus would never hurt Dane as a comrade but Maximus is
also glad for the chance at being selected for squire. Ultimately he can’t explain himself and
says that he was glad it happened. This is the first hint that Maximus is inarticulate and
incapable of communicating his inner thoughts. Quintus: “violence is merely a tool. We use it
to bring order to the wasteland, but violence against a brother of steel is a sign of weakness.
Are you? Weak?” “I don’t want to be.” Max expresses gratitude to the Brotherhood. “Eden or
whatever.” Affirms that he’d lay down his life if the brotherhood gives him meaning. Quintus
assigns Maximus as Knight Titus’s squire.
- It’s obvious now why Maximus seemed like a more complex character at the beginning of
the show. The serious and somber tone of brotherhood life keeps Maximus grounded within
a system where his actions are limited. Once he’s out in the wasteland and capable of
anything, Maximus is reduced to a bad joke. The showrunners let their comedy writing
backgrounds get away with them, and Nolan’s vision of Maximus as an impulsive player who
wants cool stuff ends up defining him more than the character itself as someone who
actually lives in the world and isn’t just a stand-in for how players approach Fallout.
- Maximus visits Dane in the medical tent and looks guilty. Dane mentions that they don’t steal
rations in Medical. “I told them you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
- Maximus is branded with Titus’s sigil. The brotherhood sanctifies its questing brothers with
elaborate ritual. The brotherhood uses artifacts of no practical use as icons of worship. A
propellor engine is used in place of a cross.
- Quintus announces the objective of the mission. The brotherhood seems to know intimate
details about Wilzig, his plan, AND the existence of the cold fusion core. “May the shape of
the future be cut by your sword!”
- Somewhere in Mexico, probably the Baja coastline. A bandit is killed by the bounty hunters
with a junk launcher. They’re here to recruit Cooper. Coop is being held captive in a
graveyard by some desperado named Dom Pedro, who we never see. Honcho says Pedro
digs up cooper once a year to cut pieces off of him. Honcho says that he knew “of” Cooper
because his dad worked with him. This is an important detail to bring in because it proves
that Cooper has worked with others in the past, and Honcho’s dad left Cooper amicably
enough if he lived to tell about it. “How long has this asshole been moldering in the ground?”
[shrug].
- Honcho thinks feral ghouls are attracted to chickens because they can’t help themselves. Is
this a hint that Chickenfucker is a ghoul?
- They dig cooper up and bust him out of the casket. Cooper was being kept alive with IVs of
glowing liquid. Which begs the question of how Cooper didn’t go feral while being buried
underground? He wasn’t getting vials under there, and he’s been indisposed for years or else
he’d know about Moldaver. This is too obvious of a problem to leave unexplained, which is
why there needed to be a Dom Pedro scene. Cooper has to unstiffen every muscle in his
body from near-rigor mortis.
- “Is this an Amish production of the Count of Monte Cristo?” Cooper thinks everything is a
cruel joke and embodies that cruelty in how he conducts himself with others. Instead of
thanking his liberators he’s practically calling them freaks.
- Honcho is amused and introduces himself. Honcho tells cooper about the bounty. Cooper
licks his lips and calmly picks up the chicken just to fuck with them. Honcho says the bounty
is big enough to retire on even if they split it.
- Honcho has a hand-drawn sketch of Wilzig & Dogmeat. Honcho knows Wilzig is from the
Enclave and that he’s heading to Moldaver in California. “That’s where you from ain’t it?
Originally I mean.” Cooper doesn’t like this line of questioning. Honcho says that’s not
grateful and threatens to let Dom Pedro put Cooper in the ground for another 30 years.
Honcho doesn’t mention that Cooper worked with his dad, which was the whole reason he
even tried this.
- Big Problem: why does the Brotherhood know so much about Wilzig, and why does Honcho
know so much about Wilzig? The brotherhood is a big enough faction and long lived enough
to have spies in the Enclave, but Honcho is just a two-bit bounty hunter. The Enclave is the
only group who should know all this stuff about Wilzig, and they issued the bounties - which
means the Emclave announced to the entire wasteland about Wilzig, where he was headed,
that he was traveling with a dog, and maybe they even put the stuff about the cold fusion
core in the bounty notices too. The Brotherhood could have simply read about it. If the
Enclave knew that much about Wilzig’s plans already they could have hunted him down
themselves. They have vertibirds, armed guards, trained hounds. Should have been a simple
matter. Even an Enclave team inserted into Filly could have intercepted Wilzig. This is the
inciting incident of the whole fucking series, and the Enclave doesn’t even act
consistently with their own interests as a faction. The big hook that draws all the main
characters to Filly is bullshit.
- Cooper concludes that the bounty hunters don’t have their hearts in the game and he
dispatches them. Honcho is left chained to the casket as it falls back into the empty grave.
“Us cowpokes, we take it as it comes.
Shocking as it is to admit this I actually like this episode more now than I did on the first review.
Even if there’s some inconsistencies and the story breaks itself as soon as it introduces the big
hook, this episode actually took itself seriously and paced itself to let things develop naturally.
The jello mold tray is the only really bad joke I can think of. Compared to later episodes which
are non-stop goof fests where people act out of character just to set up a punchline, the
serious tone comes as a huge relief. The main reason I hated this before was because of the
lame PG-rated nuclear bombings.
