After an opening episode that took the time to introduce its three main players properly, Amazon’s adaptation of Fallout, is now free to start building up a plot made up of intrigue and violence that feels like it’s going to be a hugely enjoyable watch.
After spending extensive run time with Ella Purnell’s gusty but chronically naive Lucy – a woman who has spent her entire life thus far shut away from a nuclear dystopia in a vault full really, really nice people – Maximus – a squire of the battle suit wearing Brotherhood of Steel – and The Ghoul – an unkillable mutant cowboy – we now get to the story that’s going to drive the show from here on in, and while Fallout doesn’t seem to be a show that’s afraid to flip the script whenever it can, its second episode surpises by keeping everyone, especially us, on their toes without a moment’s respite.
However, there’s just one more origin story we’ve got to get out of the way first….
While Lucy heads out into an insanely harsh wasteland in order to find her kidnapped father and Maximus begins his squirehood with the Knight Titus, we indulge in a quick flashback that takes us on an abridged trip through the life thus far of CX404, an experimental dog specially bred by bespectacled scientist Dr. Siggi Wilzig. While working for something named the Enclave, Wilzig has not only raised CX404 in secret since birth, but hes developed a strange blue liquid that does…. something. It must be something special, because he injects it into his neck to keep it off the books, but when CX404 is discovered by a colleague, Wilzig goes on the run with his mystery prize.
Of course, whatever it is, it’s the reason the Brotherhood and the ghoulish gunslinger, Cooper, are trying to track him down, but before they do, Lucy finds him first.
Of course, she doesn’t mean to, but after surviving her first night on the surface (dog-sized cockroaches and all), she reaches the bartering town of Filly to try and get any info on her fathers kidnappers.
Meanwhile, Maximus is beginning to realise that the Knight Titus isn’t particularly interested in upholding the ideals of the Brotherhood and after a battle with a mutant bear goes South, the young squire climbs into the armour himself to carry on the mission. However, while Lucy is finding Filly a rather unfriendly town, the Ghoul zeroes in on Filzig once he shows himself and calmly narrows the chances of the scientist escaping by calmly shooting his foot off.
However, his swagger has to take a rain check when Maximus arrives in his sweet new ride and while to two have a brawl that leaves Filly looking far more fucked than when we found it, Lucy finds herself locked into a side mission that could have major consequences.
If there was a downside to Fallout’s first episode – and if you could call it that, it would be a very, very minor one – it’s that in the midst of its trifecta of detailed introductions, there wasn’t a lot of time to detail the main plot thread that would be the main drive of the show. I mean, obviously Lucy searching for her father is going to be a large part of it, but there obviously much more brewing in the wings. Well, with The Target, we finally have the episode that ties our main characters together and the fact that it’s only the second one means that Fallout isn’t afraid to keep things moving.
It’s something of a relief, especially considering how slow Halo’s first season took to get going (if it ever did), but the fact that this episode gives us sizable, status quo shifting twists so soon means that it moves like shit off a shovel. Also, the centrepiece of the episode is that all three (four, if you count CX404 – which you absolutely should) of the main characters collide in a massive action sequence that just proves that the show runners have no problem giving their viewers the good stuff ASAP.
Literally no character is left behind. Lucy has more run ins with the exceedingly deranged dwellers of the surface world while trying to remain as endearingly up-beat as possible. Meanwhile, Aaron Moten’s Maximus continues to take even larger steps to achieving his dream of becoming a Knight after Titus (a cameoing Michael Rappaport) is gravely wounded after brawling with a bear. However, the fact that Maximus willingly let’s Titus bleed to death without offering the medical help that would have saved him is showing a side to the character that could lead down a dark path and his insistence that he didn’t sabotage the person originally meant for his squire position is starting to seem incredibly suspect.
Elsewhere, we also get to see Walton Goggins’ Ghoul strut his stuff as he struts into the story firing bullets so powerful they spectacularly pop heads like brain-filled balloons and blows perfectly round holes through sternums like something out of a cartoon. It’s awesomely visceral stuff and beautifully shot and edited and it even manages to take Wilzig off the board in double quick time.
However, this in turn leads to a magnificent brawl that shows that Amazon is dead set on making Fallout as slick as it can be. It’s not everyday you watch a guy in a hulking robot suit throws giant metal hands with a noseless, zombie cowboy in a dystopian western town and the fact that Fallout has coughed this up as early as episode two hopefully they have a lot more gas in the tank.
Still, while we’re getting Iron Man quality battles, the most intriguing aspect of the episode is CX404. Animal lovers may be cool with the human related gore – is there no easier way to put on a prosthetic leg? – but the fact that CX404 was born in the midst of a lab rife with experimentation (puppies born too small are tossed in a furnace with an audible, heartbreaking yelp) maybe genuinely distressing for a show with humerous intentions. However, it does succeed in making you have a vested interest in whether the pooch remains unharmed and when she takes a knife in the ribs from the Ghoul, it’s a shocking moment, but one that shows how twisty the show is going to be.
The damn thing simply can’t stay still, but the good news is that it’s paced perfectly so you don’t get lost among all the surprises. In fact, the episode ends with Wilzig, arguably the lynchpin to the entire plot, committing suicide with cyanide and pleading with Lucy to decapitate him in order to make delivering him far easier as she’ll have only have to carry his head.
Where Fallout goes from here is anyone’s guess, but its precisely this sense of unpredictability that’s got me desperate to launch straight into the next episode.
Basically, thus far, Fallout is far out..
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