(Episode One: The Innovator)
ONE
Robert House tries out his mind control device on some thugs (although it explodes the man’s head).
Lucy snipes Coop’s noose rope, saving him from a gang, then they’re headed to Vegas.
TWO
Cooper, after hearing what Barb said about dropping the bombs, takes Janey for Bakersfield. A neighborhood alert blocks their way.
Vault life: Reg starts his club, Davey gets lost, and no one knows what happened to Norm.
Moldaver wants Cooper to kill House on the Vegas trip.
Norm unfreezes Bud’s Buds.
Lucy and Coop, following Hank, find the vault where he’s installed a mind control device in the food truck’s son. Another brain explodes.
THREE
Hank happily reaches Vault-Tec’s bunker. He cleans himself up and broadcasts his message: he’s continuing their work from before the war. He discovers the miniaturized devices.
FOUR
(Episode Two: The Golden Rule)
Flashback: the thriving Shady Sands is nuked by Hank; Max is safe in the milk refrigerator.
The BoS rediscovers Area 51.
Lucy saves the Legion woman and leaves Coop. Norm pretends to be in charge of the thawed Bud’s Buds.
Hank tries out the mini mind control devices on the mice.
Meathead Knights vs. Max. (This season for Max is about his heroism and idealism. It’s possible he can believe in this because he was raised by a loving, safe family.) Quintus holds his rebellious meeting. He bribes them with unlimited fusion cores.
Norm motivates the unfrozen to find an escape from the vault.
Hank tries the device on an elite human, but he explodes, too.
Lucy in the Legionnaire camp. The Golden Rule won’t cut it here.
The thawed vaulties brainstorm an exit from the vault.
The Commonwealth arrives.
(Episode Three: The Profligate)
Thaddeus and his child labor, including ghouls, accumulate Sunset Sarsparilla caps.
Lucy’s brought before the Legate. On the cross she goes.
Coop removes the poison tissue from his leg and remembers the veterans’ award dinner where he meets Welch.
The Elders debate whether to rebel. Xander pulls Max aside.
Coop sees Lucy’s predicament and heads to the NCR camp, but it’s mostly deserted.
When Coop negotiates for Lucy’s release, he notices the explosive barrels. Later, the dynamite sends the two Legion camps into fighting each other.
Xander wants to shoot Thaddeus’ ghoul worker children. Max kills him.
(Episode Four: The Demon in the Snow)
The Alaska campaign. Coop in janky armor. The deathclaw. The battle is won.
Thaddeus pretends to be Xander.
The two NCR holdouts treat Lucy with buffout, giving her a drug addiction.
Lucy kills Elvis ghouls on the Strip outskirts.
SWITCH
Max stands his ground against Quintus. Dane gives Max the cold fusion.
FIVE
Woody reports Steph to herself. Chet finds her Canadian identification.
Deathclaws in Vegas.
(Episode Five: The Wrangler)
Coop and Lucy escape to Freeside. He explains that a management vault is hidden inside Vegas.
Flashback to the corporate meeting in Vegas. Young Hank, cuffed to a Vault-Tec case, meets Barb and Cooper. Moldaver wants Cooper to poison House, but he refuses.
Cooper meets the real House in his suite.
Norm and crew reach the Vault-Tec corporate highrise.
Snake Man comes for Lucy, and Coop gives her over. Crosscut with drunk Cooper.
Coop impaled. Hank takes his daughter.
(Episode Six: The Other Player)
Manager Barb hates her job.
Coop fights against going feral. Lucy explores the Vault-Tec sub-level bunker, meeting the happy workers. She takes Hank hostage.
Max will bring the diode to Lucy, a good person.
Mysterious Super Mutant rescues Coop.
Hank introduces Lucy to his workers and tells their backstories. She decides to free two men who immediately start fighting. She pushes the button, activating the mind control devices.
Coop drugs Young Hank and Barb removes the diode behind his ear.
Dogmeat takes Max and Thaddeus to the recuperating Coop.
(Episode Seven: The Handoff)
Steph is a vengeful Canadian.
Lucy, when confronted with the happy workers, still wants to shut it down. But the Legion . . .
Cooper meets Steph the maid. He discusses with Welch a plan for the diode.
Max gives Coop the diode in exchange for the NCR power armor.
Lucy, having dinner with Hank, cuffs him to the stove.
Norm, rescued by Claudia, broadcasts to his father (who doesn’t hear him).
Chet refuses to marry Steph.
Cooper gives the diode to the President while Coop gives the diode to House’s machine. Lucy discovers the pickled head of Welch.
(Episode Eight: The Strip)
Legate Macaulay Culkin retrieves and reads Caesar’s note, crowns himself the new king.
Computer House agrees to show Coop his family’s vault.
Freesiders hide as Max confronts the deathclaws.
Welch asks Lucy to kill her.
Ronnie tosses Claudia against the elevator door button. Radroaches attack.
SIX
As Coop proceeds through the utility tunnels, House claims that Vault-Tec’s investors planted Hank, their acolyte.
SEVEN
Cooper unwittingly gave the Enclave the diode via the POTUS.
Hank married Steph.
Hank tries to implant the mini device in Lucy’s neck.
Thaddeus shoots a deathclaw.
Ghoul Coop rescues Lucy and walks away.
Max leaves his broken power armor and confronts the deathclaws with a roulette wheel shield.
EIGHT
The NCR arrives, saving the day.
Hank has an unactivated mini in his neck. He explains to Lucy that the vaults weren’t the experiment; the surface is. He’s already sent mind-controlled people into the Wasteland. Telling Lucy he loves her, he cranks his dial and wipes his own memory.
Max and Lucy, finding each other on the Strip, hug. In the Overseer’s locked office, Steph uses an Enclave Pip Boy to call for Phase 2 initiation. Alaska hears it all.
Norm rescues Claudia.
Cooper, taking responsibility so Barb and Janey will remain safe, is arrested. Coop finds Barb’s Colorado postcard. His family is alive.
NINE
The Legion marches on Vegas, Max and Lucy watching from the penthouse windows. Unnoticed by them, House appears on the monitor that previously said, “No Signal”. Coop crosses the desert and heads for the mountains.
CRITICAL NOTES
While looking back over my episode reviews, something stood out to me. Although they’re structurally sound, they contain a lot of fat in the Fours and Fives. They were boring to recap. I’ve touched on this in my Enneagram books, but not so much on an episode review. More than structure goes into a successful project. You need a personality Enneagram and an active, motivated arc for major characters.
And then you need a compelling Four and Five. These beats don’t move the story forward the way the others do. They give flavor. I’ve watched the first half of Notting Hill dozens of times. The birthday party scene — where Julia Roberts’ superstar character has a meal with regular-guy Hugh Grant and his friends — is endlessly funny. I don’t continue watching when the party’s over. The Five isn’t as enjoyable to me.
Or, the reverse. The Four for Mrs. Doubtfire — building the disguise — is fine, but the real enjoyment is watching the Five. Daniel becomes a better father while pretending to be the housekeeper and throwing fruit at his ex-wife’s new boyfriend.
For me, the Four and Five are the hardest sections to write, requiring a lot of freewheeling. The writer needs to build pipe for the Eight, of course, but that can’t be all. An audience/reader can tell when the writer is checking boxes. The is the section where the writer will say, “My characters talked to me.” They act independently within the writer’s imagination.
This is what’s missing for me in Season Two, particularly in the second half. It was my complaint at the very beginning of the first episode, if you recall. The showrunners started laying pipe — the mind control devices — before we’d even had a welcome-back moment with our heroes. When I think of this season I’ll remember the awesome Eights. They’re knocked out of the park. But the middling parts, the connective tissue, won’t last in my memory. It’s murky because the showrunners stuffed so much content about the corporate agenda into the episodes. The Fallout quirks are fewer this season.
Okay, but what about this Story Enneagram as it’s delivered in Season Two?
The Switch is clever. Cold fusion is a background issue before the Switch. The Brotherhood has it and uses it as leverage, but we’re more interested in the dynamics between the factions than we are in the science of the diode. After the Switch, though, the cold fusion becomes a forefront issue. Once it goes to Max, the diode’s end point is anyone’s guess. Good use of the Switch as impetus for the Five.
Overall, the season’s Enneagram is balanced. The Three/Six is fun because it’s about Hank. At the Three, when he’s in his jolly phase, we marvel at his happiness. When he uses the radio to broadcast his intent to continue Vault-Tec’s work, we don’t know his target. We guess Robert House (but we’re wrong). At the Six, when House identifies Hank as an Enclave plant — an “acolyte” — the Three comes full circle as we receive new information. In the Eight when Steph initiates Phase 2 with the Enclave, everything we’ve gleaned from the Three and Six completes.
The Seven is impressive. Every storyline, beat after beat, gets its decision moment, even the ones taking place in the past. It unwinds very smoothly, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
The Eight is glorious. Giving chills at the NCR reveal is what any showrunner seeks. I don’t think they could’ve delivered more fan service — the enjoyment is peak. Also, the message of Max’s Eight is wonderful: if you’re good and brave against overwhelming odds, you’ll receive help. And Hank leaves the story in epic fashion. Again, off the chart feelings.
Which means that all of my complaining about the Four and Five of this season are probably of little consequence. When your Eight hits that hard, people will want to rewatch. Perhaps the confusion about House vs. the Enclave, which is the underlying plot for this season, entices us to rewatch because we want to understand. It’s not a writing choice I would recommend — chaotic, overstuffed storytelling as a hook — but it works.
The season’s Two sets up all the plotlines that resolve in the fabulous Eight. However, none of the beats has a tingle, a premonition of where the season is heading. Who cares about Reg’s snack club! The season’s Two, all delivered in Episode One, is boring. Bringing in Moldaver — whose double appearance in the past and present is still unexplained — talking to Cooper in a diner is unbelievably dull. We stick with the show because it proved itself in Season One. It proves itself again in the out-of-the-park successes of Season Two. I’ll be watching Season Three, of course, but my enthusiasm will be tempered. I’m hoping for more Fallout wackiness and less convoluted plotlines, but I’m not expecting that. The Enclave suggests intricacy and complication . . . but we also have Liberty Prime coming. Prepare for delight and spectacle.