With only a couple of episodes left to drop, Fallout’s second season finds itself in something of a strange place. While there hasn’t been a bad episode on the bunch, I can’t help but feel that I have no idea where it’s trying to go; now that’s not to say that I have a problem with the show being unpredictable, but with so many plot thread hanging in the air without any resolution in sight, there’s a fear that the entire season has just been a set up for later storylines.
Of course, having so many different threads in play simultaneously means that it’s virtually impossible for Fallout to be truly boring, but it would still be nice if it was all actually building to something.
Still, a lack of clear focus doesn’t stop “The Handoff” from delivering left-field revelations and some audience pleasing payoff and while it leaves the season finale with a lot of work to do, tell me you don’t want to watch a smackdown between a Deathclaw and some Power Armour?
After reconnecting with her father, Lucy MacClean has something of a moral conundrum. While Hank’s mind control programme has succeeded in making a sizable amount of violent surface dwellers quit their savage wage and don shirts and ties in something approaching a office job, it does so at the complete expense of the victim’s personalities. While Hank’s daughter admits that fractions like the Legion could stand to lose their own thoughts, the fact that Hank wants to control everybody let’s Lucy finally make her mind up.
Meanwhile, after some revealing flashbacks concerning the bloody origin story of Steph, the one-eyed dictator of Vault 32 finally convinces a desperate Betty to give the the mysterious lockbox located in Hank’s old safe. However after Steph’s reluctant husband to be, Chet, drops some truth bombs at their wedding (she’s probably killed Woody and (gasp!) she’s actually Canadian), the horrified Vault Dwellers under her rule turn on her for answers. While this is occurring, Norm MacClean’s plan to lead to defrosted executives of Vault 31 has well and truly backfired and despite getting a message out to both his sister and father, things are looking pretty grim.
Finally, after yet more flashbacks reveal that Cooper Howard turned to Congresswoman Diane Welch in order to do the right thing concerning cold fusion, we find that the union between Maximus, The Ghoul and… Thaddeus… I guess, means that if they’re going to want to get into the Lucky 38, they’re going to have to tool up to fend off some vicious Deathclaws. But after securing a big-ass gun for the Ghoul and a vintage NCU power suit for Maximus, the battle is joined. But after Ghoul finds a port to insert the cold fusion and Lucy finds the unexpected source of her father’s mind control, anything could still conceivably happen.
While the chance that Fallout season 2 will have something approaching a conclusive ending gets more remote with every episode, the fact that it’s one of the most busy shows currently running still means that every episode, including this one, manages to keep my attention locked on even if payoff seems mostly thin on the ground. The fact that so many plot points (the Legion, the collapse of the Brotherhood, the introduction of Mutants) have been revealed to merely be minor stepping stones that’ll probably pay out further down the road means that the second season is curiously experiencing “middle film syndrome” while simultaneously still delivering entertaining, fun stuff. For example, if you’d told me that the penultimate episode was going to feature Steph so much after the Vault stuff was starting to feel like an after thought, I would have extravagantly rolled my eyes. However, after finally having confirmation thanks to flashbacks that Steph has been a card carrying psycho long before she was hired by Vault-Tech finally gives the Vault storylines the pep that they’ve been missing. OK, so the crowed nature of the show meant that Chet’s slow freakout actually moved pretty fast in the end, it’s yet another sizable shift in status quo the show has delivered in a way that’s weirdly matter-of-fact, and yet carries noticable weight.
Elsewhere, in the moments between Lucy and her father, the show drops in some amusing daddy/daughter moments despite the sinister nature of it all. Yes, Hank is responsible for numerous monstrous acts, but he still finds time to teach his little sugar bomb how to drive his golf cart – but it’s not enough to convince Lucy that sapping wills and erasing personalities is the way to go.
However, in a perfect example of cross storyline pollination, we find that the item powering the brain draining devices is actually the severed head of Congresswoman Welch, who we see back in 2077 urging Cooper to hand cold fusion over to the President of the United States (guess that must have totally backfired, right?). Of course, this gives Lucy the latest in a long line of moral dilemmas – because what’s Lucy without a dilemma – but those rapid fire surprises are proving to be the show’s major saving grace. I mean, while a big, neat, season finale is virtually impossible at this point, getting a cameo from Clancy Brown as the 2077 president (along with that Ron Pearlman voiced mutant I failed to identify before I wrote last episode’s review) and the fact that Thaddeus is now sporting a detaching arm and second mouth growing on his clavicle suggests that his decaying ass isn’t a Ghoul after all.
However, despite the dense nature of Fallout, episode 7 still also proves that the powers that be are pretty good at balancing a metric ton of plot threads with the occasional big moment and it’s almost orgasmic when we get the Ghoul and a Power Suited Maximus striding toward the Lucky 38 like some mismatched, fucked up western. It gets better too as Maximus goes head to horn with a Deathclaw while finally getting the hero worship he hoped would come with the Brotherhood Of Steel. Of course, despite defeating one (via decapitation no less), his celebration is short lived as the fight takes him out of the walled off zone and into a populated area which will no doubt be addressed next week.
So, with the end in sight, is Fallout still a good show? Taken on an episode by episode basis – yes, very much so. The sheer amount of separate stories to keep track off and the steady drip feed of big moments and bizarre turns is rarely ever boring and even if it is, another plot lines will tag in soon enough. However, as a season, it strangely feels as if we’re building to absolutely nothing and I’m genuinely uncertain as to how I’m supposed to feel about that. Maybe, in the distant future, a possible season 3 makes all this set up make sense; or maybe next weeks finale locks everything together and gives each a rousing pause point – but as it stands, it’s strange to thoroughly enjoy a show and yet have zero clue as to what the point of it all is.
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