Genre – Drama Series
Movie Total Runtime – 7 Hours 31 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes
While I want to start getting more episodes covered per article, I’m writing these as a I watch them, and tangents and predictions slow down the text. Plus, we’re still introducing characters. Episode 1 name dropped the Enclave, but didn’t say anything about them nor visit them. The pre-title sequence of episode 2 spends its time introducing our substitute Dogmeat for the show. Dogmeat is the main character of the mainline Fallout games, appearing in 1, 2, 3, and 4. New Vegas had to make do with Rex the Cyberdog instead, an inferior canine. Our substitute doggo is CX-404, an Enclave attack dog spared the incinerator by the Enclave Scientist who would later become the target of the Brotherhood search and the large bounty. But in this dialog-free sequence, he’s raising substitute Dogmeat personally, showing be his actions aspects of his personality and character without the cringeworthy dialog that introduced Lucy. We don’t know what the glowy thing he’s decided to smuggle out is or why. But we do get treated to the least precise minigun ever made. At a distance of less than fifty yards, it sprays shots in a six or eight foot diameter zone and is unable to hit a human-sized target or his dog moving at no more than a slow shuffle. I know the actor might not be able to run, but we can’t see his face during this sequence, so put somebody else in a lab coat and have them hustle better so that the minigun turret is less of a joke.
No, I’m not going to go into who the Enclave is unless the show does. I’m sure other people have spilled the pork and beans in the comments of the last article.
After the title, which the minigun turret does manage to hit, we get scenes of Lucy being clueless in the wasteland. Enclave Scientist shows up at her campfire and diplomatically tells her she’s being an idiot by lighting it and attracting attention to herself. Substitute Dogmeat kills a radroach and Enclave Scientist tells Lucy she should go back to her Vault before he disappears into the night. Do I really need to explain what a Radroach is? I think the name covers it.
And we’ve reached a scene where my cynicism and my eye for storytelling came to loggerheads. Let me start with what happens, then I’ll explain what I mean. Maximus and Knight Titus are out looking for Enclave Scientist and we get some abrasive interaction between the two. So far nothing beyond Maximus being overly familiar and Titus reminding him “We’re not buddies – you do the shit jobs until you earn a knighthood.” It would even be understandable had he used those exact words. They get off their transport to do some searching on foot and find sign of a man and a dog having stopped at a toxic waste dump that also has signs of being a monster den. Titus orders Maximus to check a side passage of the cave, implied to be using him as bait. Maximus uses witchcraft to summon a Yao Guai behind Titus. While they don’t use the name and just call it a bear, the character model for the Yao Guai is unmistakable. It disarms Titus, and after a few punches, the Knight runs away. The Yao Guai runs him down and throws him around until Maximus shoots the bear in the head. Titus then berates and threatens Maximus until the squire declines to provide medical aid and Titus dies.
From a strict plot beats perspective, there’s nothing wrong with the scene, especially if you are setting up the next step on Maximus’ villain arc. I had to include my running joke about his witchcraft, but the ‘declines to provide medical aid’ part was real. And here’s where we get the collision with my cynicism. I’m thinking you have a perfect setup to make Maximus a relatable villain. You’ve got this bullied kid who grows up still not fitting in but wanting to be the knight in power armor who makes the wasteland a better place. He openly admits in his own dialog that he joined the Brotherhood to “hurt the people who hurt him”. He raged at not being promoted in episode 1. You have ambition, impatience, wrathfulness, and a goal which can be used to excuse almost any action in his own mind – a perfect villain recipe. Let him be the one who installed the boot razors in the last episode. Let him choose to let Titus die because it furthers his own ambitions.
What did the showrunners do? They made the fight with the Yao Guai a cringeworthy exercise in cowardice. They made Titus irrationally abusive and derogatory towards the one person who could save his life. They were so hamfistedly over the top that my cynicism has gone “They are trying to cast Maximus as a hero.” And I think it’s just because he’s black. Villains come in all colors and creeds, and they had a fantastic setup, but they are trying to hard to make him look justified that I’m soured on the character. The fix for this scene is easy. Drop the panicked dialog from Titus. It was ADR-ed in anyway, and he’s wearing a helmet most of the time that hides his face. Just before he runs out of the den, add in a shot showing the giant pack Maximus has been lugging around that is sitting outside. Then, when he runs out, it implies he’s going for another gun rather than fleeing. Take out the comedy sound effect when his helmet hits the rock. Lastly, drop most of the dialog when Titus is demanding medical aid. Shift the “Do you know what they do to squires who don’t do their duty?” lines to after it is clear Maximus has decided not to render aid. You now have a dramatically improved scene.
But I suspect the showrunners think Maximus is a hero. So far, he’s a great villain. We’ll see what happens.
What happens is he intervenes in a fight between two wastelanders without gathering any information and ends up letting a committer of bestiality go free without punishment from the farmer who was defending his chickens. Oops. Though the sequence leading up to this rash act shows him simply revelling in the power portion of power armor, and he does not seem particularly bothered by the outcome of his actions.
Lucy comes upon the town of Filly, which cribbed so many of the design elements from Megaton that in the overanalysis of the previews it was mistaken for that town on the east coast. She continues to be socially awkward and fish out of water. I’ve never been a fan of fish out of water stories, but the circumstances here at least justify the tropes. Ghoul was already in Filly, and Enclave Scientist wanders in while Lucy is making a fool of herself.
I have been avoiding mentioning casual background references to the game world, as these earn no points beyond judging authenticity of adaptation. But the Brahmin in Filly looks too healthy and un-mutated (beyond having two heads). It is way too pretty a mutant cow.
Since the Ghoul want’s the Enclave Scientist’s head and his contacts in Filly would rather it not happen, a fight breaks out, a rather gory fight. Lucy finds out her tranq darts do nothing to the chem-resistant Ghoul (a personal trait of the character rather than a ghoul-universal one), and Maximus decides to rudely interrupt.
One thing I hate is a change that didn’t need to happen. Jetpacks for power armor canonically exist in the Fallout universe. They are back-mounted and look like the peroxide-fuelled real world jetpacks that have been around since the 1950s. The showrunners decided to copy the Iron Man movies in two ways – moving the jets to the arms and legs, and using an in-helmet shot to show the actor’s face. We don’t need the in-helmet cam, it adds nothing to the show. And the limb-mounted jets are lame. Aside from looking less cool, you can’t do flyby shootings when your hands have to be pointed down to provide lift.
The Ghoul exploits Maximus’ complete lack of power armor training to humiliate him, but the fight buys enough time for Lucy and Enclave Scientist to escape. The Ghoul ends up with Subtitute Dogmeat, tending the wounds he himself inflicted, and using the dog to track the fugitives. But, alas, Enclave Scientist is too far gone from his injuries. He gives Lucy a ripper to sever his head to bring to Raider Queen. A ripper is a knife-sized chainsword. Not exactly the cleanest implement for a decapitation.
Episode three decides to start with a “previously on” then flashback to the pre-war career of the ghoul and his relationship with the craft services lady at the movie studio. Cut back to him finding the headless corpse of the Enclave Scientist. We get a quick check in with each of the three major characters. Lucy loses the head to a mutated monster, the Ghoul finds Lucy, and Maximus realizes the power armor’s radio is still working when the Brotherhood calls. Maximus claims to be dead (pretending to be Titus), and the brotherhood says they’ll send a replacement squire. Proving he has the brains of a woodlouse, Maximus destroys the armor’s radio then takes a different part into town to get that repaired – leaving the armor unattended. Of course, this means scavengers are trying to get it open when he returns. Channeling his Brotherhood training, Maximus takes their beatdown like a champ. I suppose we’re supposed to assume in the last stage of the fight he got his arm into the sleeve of the armor and used that to crush one of the scavengers’ heads. But he’s facing the wrong way and so the thumb wouldn’t be on the control, so it looks like he used witchcraft instead. The new squire arrives and Maximus continues his villain arc by bullying the guy. I suppose he was one of the mob that beat Maximus for witchcraft at the start, but I can’t tell.
The Ghoul goes fishing for mutated monsters using Lucy as bait. Being a bit impractical, Lucy doesn’t realize it’s not about her until the Ghoul tells her. He takes too many words to get around to it. The fishing isn’t successful, and the Ghoul’s drug stash gets smashed, so he drags Lucy off in search of new drugs.
Maximus gets a character moment with the new squire where we find out that the beatings were unrelated to witchcraft, just cyclical hazing among recruits. This comes about from Maximus demanding Squire Dude say something negative about the supposedly dead Maximus. Not sure what he expected to hear, but it doesn’t sound like the character expected what he got. Nobody actually hated him, it was just institutionalized behavior.
There may be hope for the writers.
The episode closes with another prewar flashback where not yet Ghoul does promos for Vault-Tec. This is meant to tease some mystery about his enmity towards the company which led him to shooting one of their billboards during a hike through the wasteland.
I’m not convinced I’ll be able to squeeze episode 4 into this review, so I’ll say “To be Continued”. I still have mixed opinions on the job Amazon did here. They have five episodes to convince me one way or another.
It was about here I quit watching.
Everything started getting dumber and dumber and I just couldn’t take it anymore.
It’s a shame because it looked good in the beginning and I liked it when it was revealed the vault next door had been taken over.
I forced myself to finish watching.
Having recently re-read what I wrote, I don’t have much more to say beyond what went in the articles.
I don’t recommend the show overall.
I never played the games. I don’t care if the show abuses the source material.
I found it amusing. I am looking forward to season 2.
You need to fix that – go play the games.
I don’t play games.
You need to fix that.
😛
This is kinnath winning that game.
I’m not sure what corrupted values of “winning” you’re using. But it doesn’t test out that way.
I never played the games either, but there were too many instances where I wondered why the person was so stupid.
Then the Knight that had been built up as an ultimate badass turned into a bitch at the first sign of trouble.
Not to mention the incompetent squire was annoying.
Movie guns: They are there to advance the story, not portray reality. My response to that is NO SHIT.
It works because the majority of people really have no understanding of what firearms are capable of.
Not long ago my wife was asking about one of my rifles, a Ruger 77 in 338 Win.Mag (shout out to Animal).
“What does it do?”
“Well, I can shoot from a half mile away and with the right bullet it would go through our house from one end to the other and hardly slow down. You see that car down the highway? (about two miles away in a straight line abdut the size of an ant)”
“Yes”
“I can hit it from here without too much trouble. In fact, if you can see it you can hit it.”
“That is impossible.”
Wait – you didn’t armor your house?
“you can see it you can hit it.”
Betcha I can’t.
/Looks out the window at 5 feeding under the yard light
For you Sir there is this very nicely tuned Ruger No.1 in 7mm Rem Mag with a Leopold 3X9 that would prove you wrong.
Sounds like a lot of money. I paid $200 for my Ruger (10/22) and put a $300 red dot on it.
If you’re within 25 yards, I’ll plink ya!
/joking – I’ve got better options for hostile intents.
I will take my Walther KKM with diopter and globe, thank you very much.
Said eyecandy:
https://postimg.cc/jnQS99nv
That gun is too small for that stock.
Very fun channel. What firearms are capable of:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mark+and+sam+after+work
Ravens got royally fucked. I just want to note for the record that I was arguing that the league was intentionally creating 20 different “judgement” calls and fucking with the rulebook every year and making it all as subjective as possible to influence the outcome of games way before it was cool.
Coach Aviators AKA Coach Never Had A Losing Season aka Mediocre Mike Tomlin gets to thump his chest for another week as if his team still isn’t in the middle of yet another late season swoon. 5-1 to 7-6. Walked off the field like a Roman general receiving a triumph. Has the fucking nerve to blow kisses at the camera.
The day this mediocre sack of shit gets sent packing – and for the first time after waiting a decade plus for it it feels close – will be oh so fucking sweet.
To be fair, maintaining a long record of mediocrity does take some talent.
He’s not devoid of any positive attributes. You don’t survive two decades as a NFL coach with no ability.
But it’s really not that impressive to be stuck in the murky middle of a league where everything is designed for parity. Most teams…well, any other team would have tore down the roster and rebuilt it years ago because it was obviously fundamentally flawed and not going to win anything. The Steelers under the stewardship of Mike Tomlin, though, are stuck convincing themselves that if just tweak things and find the right QB they’re actual contenders. This statement is even more ridiculous at this point than it has been in the past given the state of the roster.
Basically, they are a team that goes all in to win every year whereas most franchises accept that you have to rebuild. They HAD the ability to identify talent and develop it, though that is dwindling as the years go by. They swing for the fences every year in their own minds and hit consistent singles and call it a success.
It’s really not that impressive at all. Even when they had an excuse to have a losing season with Roethlisberger’s injury, they inexplicably traded not one but two first round draft picks for a FS who helped salvage the season and produce more mediocrity. They obviously weren’t going to win it all that year, but they said fuck the future we have to maintain…you know, Never Had A Losing season. They then turn around and tell the fans that’s not their goal at all.
And then the league expanded the playoff field after that so now just shy of half the league makes it. No one has benefited from that more than Mike Tomlin and it was obvious that would be the case when it was being discussed (not that I think this was the league’s motivation, to throw Mike Tomlin a bone or something – just worked out that way).
Finally there is just the way Tomlin coaches. It’s just all geared around mediocrity. Keep games close, play conservatively and don’t beat yourself. It’s always been a recipe to win more than you lose, but their approach on offense has always held them back under him even when they had a top offense solely because of other worldly talents dominating. It’s Martyball essentially. The defense, his supposed specialty, has been a paper tiger since Dick Lebeau left (who he never hired to begin with)., The shit didn’t work two generations ago to win championships and it sure as shit isn’t accomplishing it in the modern NFL.
But yea, the wheels are very close to coming off entirely. Not a single star player on the team any longer. The guys they paid are nearing the end of their careers.
Long winded rant few here will care about. But to sum it up, yea this shit really isn’t impressive in the modern NFL. Mike Tomlin will *never* win anything of substance again. You could give him a Patrick Mahomes type prospect with a stacked team and he’d ruin him or get slightly above average results at best.
Every move they make as a franchise is designed to have a high floor, but keeps the ceiling low, as well. So they succeed at doing just that on Sundays. Winning ever so slightly more than they lose. Christ, they can’t even always do that. His “streak” includes multiple .500 seasons where he went 8-8.
Bro, you’re always so coy. I can’t really tell how you feel about Tomlin. Are you a fan?
OT: Not much interest in the TeeVee series. Played 3 and New Vegas, about 2 hours of 4. New Vegas was a great game, 3 OK, found 4 mostly mediocre. I have limited time and investing any in the TV program industries interpretation of Fallout seems a poor decision. Especially after seeing The Witcher butchered like it was.
Problem with the Witcher was it wasnt a show about the Witcher.
They have a policy of giving adaptations only to diverse people who hate the original source material and its fans.
Still gonna look foward to season 2. Like I said before, show carried my wife’s attention and she is a huge fan of Goggins
And he is carrying the show
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/12/assault-charge-dismissed-against-ice-protester-after-video-shows-no-attack-on-officer-in-portland.html
Take off and nuke it from orbit. Portland is completely out of control. Lawless shithole hellscape, burning to the ground. wtf world do we live in where someone isn’t prosecuted for a felony based on the lying testimony of a sworn federal agent? This isn’t Ruby Ridge or Waco or J6. These are noble officers of the glorious state merely trying to do their jobs.
Not that I agree with it, but merely brushing the arm of a regular old cop will get you the same sort of bullshit charges. Tense up? Why, that’s resisting. Anything more than that? Why, that’s felony resisting.
ICE is out of control and doing a lot of dumb shit. The Trumpsters are willing to support it because one, they have no principles and it’s their team. Two, they have watched the immigration laws flaunted for so long by the elites that they just don’t care.
There’s no way to get these people out of the country any other way, though. They’re right on that. It’s a matter of whether it’s worth it to you.
The left is winning the bullshit “hearts and minds” war.
As usual.
I see Notre Dame took a principled stand/had a hissy fit.
Meanwhile in the birthplace of democracy, Greek police have fired tear gas at protesting “farmers” who are demanding the god damn handouts they are entitled to. At what point in history did the Greeks become massive pieces of shit?
Subsidies from the EU are being delayed because they uncovered massive fraud. Fraud which, much like with SNAP or Medicaid, was pretty fucking obvious for a long time by anyone who took even a glance at the situation. A post on Reddit which is actually pretty fucking insightful, if you can believe it.
-Greece has on paper the most agricultural “producers” of any EU nation for its size.
-It receives more handouts than any other nation
-Despite this, it is forced to actually import most of its agricultural product from the rest of the EU.
The Reddit post makes it clear that the vast majority of farms would be completely unsustainable if not for these payments from the EU. Some of it is outdated farming techniques, but the reality is that Greeks are lazy fucks who don’t want to work in general let alone farm. You don’t need to look under the hood to know there’s massive corruption in these subsidies and that they’re basically just paying people not to work.
I seem to remember Greece being a locus of waste and graft from the earliest days of the EU and other members bitching about it.