Episode One of the Fallout TV series concludes . . .
We’ve ignored Goggins long enough. Let’s look at that opening scene with Cooper Howard.
ONE
Wearing a flashy cowboy outfit, he sits on a horse, performing lasso tricks. Nat King Cole plays, over, which is wonderfully Fallout. So far, so good. Cooper is entertaining poolside at a suburban child’s birthday party. In a matching outfit, a girl smiles and applauds. (We assume, rightly, that this is his daughter.)
Briefly insert a radio, broadcasting tense international news. Indoors, adults watch a TV reporting on trouble in Anchorage, Alaska (easter egg from Fallout 3) and the threat of nuclear war. Birthday Mom shuts off both devices.
A beautiful, Technicolor-dream shot of the yard gives a semi-futuristic view of the city skyline. (It feels like this is California, one of the classic Fallout New Vegas locations.) Cooper finishes his rodeo trick and invites birthday boy for a picture on the horse. Two fathers gossip about Cooper doing party side gigs to meet his alimony payments. As they snap pictures, they ask Cooper to do his “thumbs up”. Cooper demures, even though he’s “famous for it”. Birthday Mom pays him, the fathers look on with snide faces, and Cooper leads his horse and his daughter away from them.
The fathers refer to Cooper as a “Pinko”. (The nuclear enemy in Fallout are stereotyped Chinese communists.)
Inside, the kids have cake and turn the TV back on. Cooper’s daughter, Janey, watches from outside the picture window. Birthday Mom changes the channel when the weather broadcaster protests he can’t forecast for next week if there may not be one. The new channel presents a “Grognak the Barbarian” cartoon, sponsored by Sugar Bombs cereal. (YAY!) Children watch and eat cake.
As Cooper and Janey pick up their things, she asks why he wouldn’t do the thumbs up. He explains: when he was in the Marines, they taught that if a bomb dropped, look at the blast with your thumb. If the cloud is smaller, run for the hills. If the cloud is bigger than your thumb, running won’t help. (He has a good relationship with his daughter.) When she asks if he thinks it will happen, he comforts her by saying, “But us cowpokes, we take it as it comes, right?”
She asks for a piece of the birthday cake, and he goes inside to get one..
In the reflection of the window, we see a huge blast of light. Janey, alone outside, holds her thumb up to it. When Cooper returns with cake, she says with urgency, “Is it your thumb, or mine?” Slowmo as Cooper processes. We see the city as fire billows. While the party continues inside, Cooper watches as the mushroom cloud forms. Here comes the shock wave. He grabs Janey as the pool furniture flies and the big window crashes. They run.
The family heads into its basement shelter, Birthday Dad punching the father who tries to follow him. Others race to their cars. Cooper and Janey ride off on the horse. In the distance, we see the city as multiple nuclear bombs hit, one after another. (It’s a powerful, disturbing image.)
Roll title: Fallout. We won’t see Cooper again until the end of the episode. Lucy and Maximus crosscut storylines before then.
After the Maximus story is over . . .
A man stands watch at a wall. (We’re not sure whose story this is. The scenery looks a lot like Lucy’s location.) He starts to roll a cigarette and he’s hit. We see a baby doll leg sticking from his chest as he falls down dead. Three Men from below have shot him with a Junk Jet. (It’s a perennial Fallout classic invention, a weapon that fires any bit of random loaded trash. YAY!)
The Three Men enter a rustic cemetery. They’re looking for someone whom “Dom Pedro” tortures periodically. IV bags hang from a cross marker, their tubes feeding into the grave. The men dig.
The chicken they brought as a test is let loose.
They hoist out the coffin and stand it on end. Suspense as they yank open the lid, keeping their distance.
Gloved fingers reach around the lip. Out he stumbles, coughing. It’s Cooper, and he’s a hairless, noseless ghoul. He picks up the hen, holding it rather than attacking it (passing the test). The men state their business: a bounty. Someone made a run from the Enclave. They show him the bingo picture of a man and his dog. Would he like to join their gang and track down this fugitive?
Cooper is no longer the suburban cowboy from before the war. He’s now cynical, confident, and morally deficient. He asks: Why should he care about this?
The escapees are headed to find Moldaver — (Vault 32’s fake overseer from Lucy’s story) — in California. The bounty says different. The Three Men think this will tantalize Cooper. When he dismisses their offer, they threaten to bury him again.
Cooper kills two of them, using one of them as a shield while the other mistakenly shoots his fellow with a screwdriver from the Junk Jet.
Title card: THE GHOUL.
He shoots the third man backwards into the open grave. “Us cowpokes, we take it as it comes,” he says. Walking away, he leaves the chicken behind.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
It feels like a stretch to find an Enneagram in this, either the bookends as separate stories or as one combined story. It’s funny because the chicken feels so random, like it wants to be a weird Three/Six. I can’t make it work. The repetition of the “cowpoke” line in completely different settings and attitudes would have made a lovely mirror. The positioning isn’t right, though.
The first bookend has movement, as if it has a structure. A beautiful Three/Six and Two/Eight aren’t really there, but they could be with minimal tweaking. Cooper’s time with his daughter is sympathetic and interesting. The suburban world is brimming with easter eggs and expectation. The nuclear holocaust is dramatic. It has a realism that is disturbing.
The second bookend is in trouble. Cooper has radically changed; the how and why will be part of the rest of this season. They show him as he is at the end of the story, with his sarcasm, bitterness, and brutality. We’ll need to keep watching as they justify this transition in his character.
When I saw the trailer for this season, The Ghoul reminded me of Hancock, a ghoul in Fallout 4. He’s mayor of a crime town, but he also loves freedom. He’s a bit of a hero, pushing back against The Man. He’s an unrepentant drug addict, but his outlook has a cheerfulness and a sense of fair play. Cooper’s Ghoul, at least at this point, is no Hancock. In this introductory scene, we only see Cooper as a villain, not as a multi-dimensional person who’s chosen a darker path.
I keep coming back to the stupid chicken. Anyone who’s held a hen knows that the feathers are unbelievably soft and fluffy. The showrunners have Cooper lick his lips when he sees her, as a feint to frighten the Three Men. Eating isn’t a ghoul priority, and certainly it’s low on Cooper’s list at this moment. And then, unexpectedly, he picks her up and almost cuddles her. That was the chance for a Three, with a gentle release of her at the Six. (Set her down in the graveyard and, in true Fallout style, show her feasting on a juicy corpse worm. Give us the “cowpoke” line delivered to the chicken!) A man buried alive, even a ghoul, would find a quietly clucking hen irresistible; she’s a moment to touch something comforting and non-threatening, breathing and warm-bodied. That would’ve been enough to offset his violence. I can tell by the editing that someone thought the chicken was a crux point. The shots never came together, though.