Do you ever watch an episode of a show and realise that it could be building up to something huge? Well, after a season premiere that caught us up with all the players involved in the crazed world of Fallout, we couldn’t help but notice that extremely conspicuous by their absence were the Brotherhood Of Steel,the religious order that aims to try and bring order to the dystopian American wasteland with Knight’s clad in hulking robot armour. With Lucy, the Ghoul and the nefarious Hank MacClean were already well on their way to discovering what horrors season 2 has in store, it seems that poor old, newly knighted Maximus had to wait an entire extra week until he regained the spotlight – but once we do, we discover that something big and noisy could very well been on the horizon.
Still, until then, the season keeps moving those pieces around its ruined and decadent game board to highly enjoyable effect…
By now, the ruthless and inhuman lengths that Vault-Tech and Hank MacClean go to to ensure their interests are placed higher than basic human life when we witness the disaster that saw human settlement Shady Sands get nuked into orbit on the orders of Hank back in 2283. We’re handily reminded that the only survivor to make it out of the level city was a young Maximus, and as we zip back to the present day of 2296, we finally get to see if being a Knight of the Brotherhood Of Steel was everything he was hoping it would be. Unsurprisingly, it’s all been somewhat bittersweet – while the fact that he obtained the secret cold fusion and mistakenly claimed the responsibility for the death of Lee Moldaver means that he’s the Brotherhood’s MVP and seemingly gets the respect he’s been due, he now can’t unsee the corruption of Elder Cleric Quintus as he attempts to consolidate power at their new base at Area 5. Brazenly inviting Elders from the Coronado, Yosemite and Grand Canyon chapters to discuss launching a civil war against the Commonwealth. However, all Maximus can seem to do is try and do the right thing with what limited pull he has.
Meanwhile, Norm MacClean is finding that his plan to escape Vault 31 by waking up all the cryogenically frozen executives is only causing more panic. But after digging his heels in and telling a shitload of white lies, they all start pulling together and make it to the surface world much to Norm’s awe. However, while he’s managed to pull a group together, his sister, Lucy, is finding her strained relationship with the Ghoul getting ever more tough to maintain. After their moral differences pit them against each other when they find a wounded couple, an attack from poisonous Redscorpions leaves both one of the couple and the Ghoul wounded, Lucy chooses to heal the stranger over her cold-blooded companion. But will her good-hearted decision simply lead her into deeper shit?
With Aaron Moten’s Maximus barely mentioned last mentioned much, there’s a sense that The Golden Rule is placing the Brotherhood Of Steel firmly in the centre of proceedings and pushing their plot threads into territory that’s getting increasingly epic. Not only are we seeing more of the chapters as Quintus invites the more rebellious branches to wage open war, but the budget now allows for us to allow for some good, old fashioned, dystopian military porn as we get some impressive shots of their helicopters docking with their large airships and large fans rise out of the dessert to blow the sand off the infamous, alien storage centre known as Area 51 – yes, there’s an extraterrestrial joke. However, while the scale of the Brotherhood’s operations are impressively expanded, the main focus here is how Maximus’ is seeing the world through more cynical eyes after he got a first hand experience of how corrupt this shithole knows as earth has become. While he’s now BKOC (big Knight on campus) due to dishonest means, we find Maximus doing everything he can to use his new position to look out for his fellow members despite a lot of them being grenade juggling halfwits; however, Quintus isn’t above putting him in shitty situations, like having to metaphorically measure dicks in a knife fight with a champion from another chapter. Obviously, as a running theme of Fallout is the more innocent members of the cast slowly having their ideals beaten out of them, and Maximus is finding his leaving him at an alarming rate.
As a result of the Brotherhood taking centre stage this week and more chapters being introduced (nice to see one being led by Brian Thompson and the introduction of Kumail Nanjiani’s new character), there’s a sense that the other plotline are forced to slow to a creep, even when major changes occur. Kyle MacLachlan’s Hank barely gets more than a montage of exploding laboratory mice as he tries to get his mind control project off the ground and Norm’s escape from Vault 31 end with the rather noticable shift of having yet another MacClean sibling from Vault 33 manage to reach the surface after marshaling the talents of all those executives he thawed out in an act of desperate defiance. However, we also find that the truce between Lucy and the Ghoul turn sour already after their run in with some humongous scorpions.
While we bask in memories of the original Clash Of The Titans as the hefty stingers come out and stalk their prey, it’s all really an excuse for Lucy to put her decency to the test when she has to choose between giving her last stimpak the poisoned woman they’ve saved, or heal a wounded Ghoul. Reasoning that the Ghoul’s recuperate powers will save him in the long run, Lucy picks the stranger over her admittedly dickish companion. Of course, this leads her to meeting the woman’s people who seem to be dressed in roman clothing (doubtlessly the introduction of the cruel Caesar’s Legion) which can only spell trouble, but there’s a feeling that Fallout’s second season is taking its time to properly wind up its pitch. The importance of the Brotherhood this episode minimalises the rather sizable amount of flashbacks that we saw in the previous installment which helps things flow a bit better and gives Ramin Djawadi’s score and some epic shots some room to breathe – but while the main plots all get some progression, there’s a feeling that the showrunners are relying on a coiled spring season to build up to something potentially gargantuan.
A solid second serving for the second season, Fallout doesn’t seem to be experiencing a drop-off any time soon. However, it’s still far too early to really get a handle on where this trip to Las Vegas is really headed. However, with all the players on the move, the coming weeks should build to something more devastating than what befell the doomed Shady Sands.
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