Everyone’s ready to go Feral as we hit the endgame of Fallout’s second season. Episode 6 sees Ghoulp losing control, Barb getting her time to shine (as a piece of garbo), Thad-Max bro’ing it up, and our first sighting of one lovely, Ron Perlman-looking and sounding Super Mutant. It’s Enclave time, Hank’s mind control is in full play, and Vault 33 is a complete sh!t show.
Photo Credit: Lorenzo Sisti / Prime
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Pitch Meetings
How does one sell the end of the world? Vault Tec is all in on capitalistically capitalizing on the thought of a nuclear holocaust. Barb Howard starts us off, as she spends her days listening to truly insane people sounding as excited as can be at how they’ll monetize and sell the end of civilization.
Barb and Coop go back and forth over this one, as they finally discuss what a massive piece of crap Barb must be to offer up nuking the US as a viable solution. It turns out, as we’ll see later on, that the good old Enclave Doctor from season one is the very man who threatened her into having that idea. I love the plot threads being woven throughout this season. There are so many ways that things can go.
Coop asking Barb, “Who could possibly be worse than you?” hits hard. You see the struggle as she knows how horrible the company she works for is, but has no idea who really controls them all. We, the viewers, will get to find this out later, and I think most of us have already guessed. Coop gets through to his wife, and after drugging an already drunk Hank, she helps him remove the Cold Fusion from Hank’s neck.
We know Robert House never gets it, as in New Vegas, it was the Platinum Chip that he needed to upgrade his missile defense systems. Cold Fusion is a construct of the shows, though the showrunners and writers have been careful not break canon where possible. With this wonder, Mr. House wouldn’t have been the cold, broken husk we found in the game.
Sugar Bomb
Lucy awakens in the New Vegas management vault, finding herself surrounded by incredibly kind, cheery, and helpful surface dwellers. Her papa Hank has been busy, taking control of Fallout’s worst and rehabilitating them into happy little drones.
Lucy and her sense of justice compel her to take Hank back to Vault 33 by force, to pay for his unbelievably long list of crimes. She hasn’t even seen how many he killed just getting to this point.
Things come to a head when Hank’s cronies set up a scenario where the old NCR Ranger that Lucy and the Ghoul met is attacked by a Legion prisoner. Hank’s ploy works, and Lucy is eventually forced to turn on their mind control to save the NCR’s poor scalp after he’s viciously stapled a few times.
Snack Club… I mean It’s OK to be a product of incest!
Betty has had it up to here with the Incest Support Group. They’re eatin all the food, drinkin all the water, and those weird, hot cousins keep almost making out!
A tense stand off hit its head after an impromptu, and entirely in the group leader’s head, dance number. Betty brings Vault ICE to start intimidating the populace, and the people aren’t happy.
In Vault 32, Steph has decided that she and Chet are going to be married. Also, sadly, Woody has gone missing. I’m worried about Zack Cherry’s character, please be OK! These side plots are starting to feel a little bit like a diversion. I’m not sure that where it all ends up will be nearly as interesting as our main plot threads, speaking of.
Ghoulper Makes a Friend
The Ghoul is starting to turn feral as he is impaled post Lucy’s power fisting. With his satchel just out of reach and an indifferent populace, he relies on trusty old Dog Meat, who takes his hat and books it.
Ghoulper does his best to climb out of his predicament, thinking only of his daughter. Makes one think his relationship with Barb wasn’t fixed before the nukes started dropping. He fails, and when all hope is lost, a gigantic, monstrous being saves him.
A clean snap of the light pole and a long, painful journey to an abandoned church give us the first look at a Super Mutant. I might be old, going blind, and kinda dumb, but hot damn if that didn’t look and sound like Ron Perlman.
My screener copy looks and sounds like butt, with unfinished deep fakes on Hank in the past and all, but I bet I’m right. The Mutant warns Ghoulp of an upcoming war between their kind and The Enclave.
Hearing that name put a hop in mah giddy’up or whatever dumb crap fake cowboys like to say. Dog Meat, as it turns out, isn’t a dummy and has brought Coop’s hat to Thaddeus and Maximus. Thaddeus really wants to sell Cold Fusion, but Maximus is like, nah, give it to pwetty lady! (Lucy)
Dah End
The episode ends as they find Ghoulp healing after the Mutant stuffed his tummy full of uranium. What a nice monster, and that’s the end of a solid, setup-focused episode 6. We got some answers, more questions, and know where our climax is going to take us.
As always, some plots are more interesting than others. We also go entire episodes without seeing threads in a way that is a little jarring in this weekly format. How is Norm after his near suffocation?
This is the last of the pre-release screeners. My reviews will be coming a few hours after everything airs. That is at 3 AM my time, so expect a review roughly 4 or 5 hours after that at best.
Fallout S02E06
Played on
Amazon Prime Video
PROS
- Super Mutant Ron Perlman!
- The Enclave Name Drop
- A Focus on Barb
CONS
- Vault subplots are spinning their wheels
