Pre-apocalypse. Barb sits through different Vault-Tec presentations, each more ridiculous. She looks like she’s about to lose her mind.
Title card: Barb
Young Hank enters the meeting between Barb and Fake Robert House to take notes. Opening a briefcase, House shows the remote mind-control device. “The automated man”, he calls it. Hank leans in for a better look. Barb tells House he has a number of vaults for his experiments, but House responds that Vault-Tec is trading him cold fusion for this.
When the meetings are over and Barb is alone, she closes the blinds so she can have a nervous breakdown. She looks at a photo of her family and weeps.
Lucy and Ghoul Coop stare at the deathclaw emerging from the Gomorrah casino. Two more deathclaws approach from opposite ends of the street. Lucy and Coop dodge behind a car. Looking like Jurassic Park’s T-Rex, the deathclaw sniffs for them as it climbs on the roof.
Dogmeat runs away; Coop and Lucy follow, sliding under the security gate just out of reach of the (slowly) chasing deathclaw.
Roll title card.
TWO
Lucy and Ghoul Coop stand in Freeside looking at the boarded up section of Vegas. She wonders why her dad would go in there. Coop explains that a special vault, one for management is in there. His wife and daughter are in that vault. Of the handful of management vaults spread around the Wasteland, Coop has found them all and each one was empty.
It’s the pre-apocalypse Battle of Anchorage. The Marines wear the janky T-45 power armor. Charlie’s left arm starts sparking and malfunctioning. Cooper orders him to return to base. Instead of following him, though, Coop continues his search for the missing unit. Falling snow and burning equipment in the dark make it hard to see.
TWO
Gunfire and approaching troops. Cooper tries to return fire, but his left leg armor sparks and locks up. He falls over like a tree. The Chinese soldiers approach and mock him as he lies helpless. Behind them, through the flames and snow, Cooper sees a beast approaching. We know what it is, although Coop doesn’t. He tries to signal with his eyes as the deathclaw comes up and eviscerates the troops. He’s terrified as the deathclaw breathes on his face. It leaves without touching him, though, and word comes over the radio that the battle is won. Cooper tries to say that it wasn’t the soldiers that routed the Chinese, but no one is listening.
Title card: Fallout
An overhead shot of Cooper lying on his side, helpless in the snow, is mirrored here as Max looks down at Xander’s dead body. It’s the moment immediately after Max drove the super sledge into Xander’s head at the end of the last episode.
Thaddeus’ ghoulification has progressed. (He was briefly Max’s Squire, remember.)
TWO
He oversees children, some ghouled, whose job seems to be to drink Sunset Sarsparilla. The bottlecaps, Wasteland currency, are collected after the bottle is opened. He’s sympathetic and kind as he cracks the whip.
Title card: Fallout.
Lucy is a captive of the Legion. Slaves are tortured. Tunic Lady, who “lost her Legionary”, has her throat violently slit. Lucy reacts in shock.
Title card: The Legion.
THREE
She’s brought before Caesar. The Legate who cut Tunic Lady’s throat takes off his helmet in a prolonged reveal. It’s Macaulay Culkin. He refers to Lucy as “Profligate”.
In Season One we learn that Shady Sands, a post-apocalypse, thriving community, is nuked by Hank. He wants only his controlled vaults, 31-33, to lead the world. Anyone not beholding to middle management should be stopped.
ONE
Episode Two of Season Two opens with the healthy Shady Sands. Boy Max lives here. His father invents a water purifier. The radiated water everyone’s been forced to accommodate is clean. Hope pervades the settlement.
A caravan man and his cart enter town. He robotically repeats the same phrase. Blood coming from his eyes, the man collapses in the center of town. People surround him, trying to help. When he curls over, the mind control device implanted at the base of his neck becomes visible. Max’s father quickly removes the tarp on the caravan cart. Underneath is a bomb.
(It’s an enlarged mini nuke design from the games with a Pip Boy interface. YAY!)
Joseph sends Max running for home and tries to dismantle the bomb’s timer. Closeup of the smiling Vault Boy as the Pip Boy screen informs him that by stopping the countdown Joseph has activated the fail safe. He runs.
You may remember that I greatly enjoyed Season One of Amazon’s Fallout, based on Bethesda’s game series. Not only have I previously gamed Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Fallout 4, I’m currently having a lot of fun in Fallout 76’s MMORPG that takes place in a post-apocalyptic Appalachia.
However, I’ve been disappointed with and worried about some of the episodes I’ve seen so far in Season Two. They seem a little scattered. You’ll see what I mean even here in Episode One. Since notating the structure that exists, I’ve become convinced that a better structure is possible.
First, here’s the episode as broadcast. After, see my Critical Notes for how I would re-edit it.
Needless to say, spoilers abound.
ONE
Title card: The Man Who Knew
Pre-apocalypse Los Angeles. Protestors take bats to Mr. Handy robots outside of RobCo. headquarters.
Helping Deek, the house elf who stays in my Room of Requirement, is optional. However, until I talk to him I have only one outdoor space for my beasts. As I need to feed and brush them in order to get armor upgrade materials, it’s a small pain to rotate them in and out. The beast room can only hold four species at once. An oceanside space opens up after interacting with Deek.
Also, I’m still barely holding my own with leveling. To give myself a buffer, I pursue his quest to rescue his abused house elf friend. Spoiler: his buddy is dead, surrounded by spiders.
(I’m not enthusiastic about fighting game spiders, but I can do it. Tough mission for those vulnerable to arachnophobia, though.)
Hogwarts is snowy and cold, but only now do the Christmas decorations go up in the castle and Hogsmeade. Although the UK has no Thanksgiving that marks the beginning of the season, they’ve sensed the appropriate time to bring out the Yuletide festivities!
I learn the fabulous Transformation spell from Professor Weasley. (I can turn enemies into an exploding barrel that I can throw at other enemies. So cool.) Strangely, at this mid-year evaluation, she says the exact same thing to me as she does to another me who has completed all the side missions. I’m excelling!
Finally I can find Amit, a fellow Ravenclaw, in the Astronomy Tower. Amit, bless his heart, is more wizard than warrior. He’s self-taught in the goblin language, Gobbledegook, which is why he’ll be accompanying me. Lodgok has found a goblin mine for me to explore, and there will be some papers and schematics that need translating.
And here comes some backstory: an ancestor of Ranrok’s, Bragbor, left journals that explained how he built magical repositories for a certain group of witches and wizards. (Yes, it was for our Keepers.) Armed with this information, Ranrok seeks any property connected with their names (such as Rookwood Castle). Perhaps this mine has plans that Amit can read. Lodgok will not join us; he can’t be recognized and have his presence reported to Ranrok.
The mine is a fun environment of steam power and accio-pull mechanics. We find a schematic for an enormous drill, helped by Amit’s translations. Although Amit fought well, he hopes to never have another adventure again.
After Amit leaves, Lodgok and I confer. Ranrok hates wizard-kind. At first Lodgok did, too. But then, when he was searching Rookwood Castle for the repository, he met a witch doing research. Without hesitation, she smiled at him and invited him to join her. She showed him a strange goblin metal canister. It was Miriam, Fig’s wife. Her kindness changed Lodgok. When he heard she had been killed (by either Ranrok or one of his minions), Lodgok was sad and wanted no more to do with Ranrok’s mission. However, not all of Bragbor’s journals have yet been found. Somewhere is a gigantic repository, one that will need the enormous drill.
Remember a while ago when Natty said she wanted to fight back against Harlow? She’s found his poacher’s lair and asks me to help her get proof for the constable.
We sneak in. When we’re halfway up the castle, we see a disturbing scene. Highwing has been captured by Harlow’s poachers.
Natty sends me to rescue the hippogriff while she continues to look for Harlow’s incriminating letter.
At the top of the tower I find Highwing and another hippogriff chained to the floor. Natty arrives and breaks the shackles. I climb onto Highwing, but Natty hesitates. She hasn’t bowed to the other hippogriff and it resists her.
In come the poachers. The other hippogriff takes off. Natty runs to jump on its back, but she isn’t fast enough. Highwing spreads her wings and grabs Natty with her talons as she flies.
Poachers shoot curses at us, including Avada Kedavra.
Highwing drops Natty onto the other hippogriff’s back, and we fly away.
(The flight mechanics are the same as for the broom. It’s delightful. Fan service off the charts.)
As a pre-Halloween treat I looked over my review of the MCU’s 2022 release of Moon Knight. I realized I never gave an overview of the season’s Enneagram. I’m a completion freak, so obviously I need to do that. Also, I thought the review was pretty chaotic. I began by liking the show, became more disgruntled as I wrote the review, and liked it all even less when I read back over what I posted three years ago. I really want to look at the whole thing again and see if I now hate it. Heh.
Alrighty, then. Let’s make it a Halloween post. If all else fails, I can still recommend the soundtrack scored by Hesham Nazih.
ONE
Introduce Steven and his sleep ritual. Although he seems to know more about Egyptology than his boss at the museum, he works in the snack shop.
TWO
Steven wakes in an Alpine meadow and faces Arthur’s judging ritual. He’s chased, he swaps bodies with Mark (although we only see Steven’s perspective), and he’s demeaned by Khonshu’s voice, unidentified at this time.
He finds the scarab in Mark’s coat pocket.
Steven notices more inconsistencies: the goldfish is wrong, and he misses his steak date, which devastates him. The hidden phone leads him to discover Layla.
THREE
In the museum, Arthur confronts Steven. Your scales won’t settle, he says, because you’re more than one person. He wants the scarab.
When Arthur’s beast attacks, Steven willingly turns control of the body over to Mark. The Moon Knight costume is revealed.
