Fallout (Season 2)

 

Fallout season 1 was my introduction to Fallout. I was aware of the games but had never played them. I had a general understanding of the premise. Nuclear bombs were dropped, people living in vaults survived, and chaos occurred on the earth's surface with mutated animals, people, etc. Post-apocalypse settings have never been my thing, nor has first person views on games, and thus I never played the games. Season 1 got really good reviews, so I decided to give it a watch and I really enjoyed it. This led me to play Fallout 4, which I also really enjoyed, so much so that I made a trip to Boston to visit the Commonwealth. With this enjoyment and newly found love for the Fallout universe, I was really looking forward to watching season 2 of the show. I was only a bit disappointed. From ChatGTP:

Season 2 shifts much of the action toward the Mojave Wasteland, bringing in major factions and locations familiar to longtime fans:

• The New California Republic (NCR) emerges as a fractured but ambitious power trying to restore order.

• The Brotherhood of Steel faces internal conflict as its ideology is challenged.

• New settlements and rival warlords compete for control of technology and territory.

The season explores how different groups interpret “rebuilding civilization”—through democracy, militarism, or brute force.

I didn't include ChatGTP's expanded character summary, but basically Lucy traverses the Wasteland, arriving at New Vegas to find her dad. She struggles with her own moral code in how it conflicts with survival in the Wasteland. The Ghoul goes with her to find his family, but learns they've left their vault. Most of his important scenes are from the past, however, when he is Cooper Howard, interacting with Vault-Tec executives learning that they are responsible for dropping the bomb. The scenes from the past are great, but the show pulls the rug out from under itself when it first frames Cooper's wife as being the bad guy, but then retracts this by saying she was forced to move the bomb dropping forward by an unidentified external power (the enclave maybe?). 

The entire plot and writing of season 2 seemed to be a bit off. A lot of time seemed to be spent on inconsequential stuff, asking more questions than it answered, and feeling like it was purposely leaving questions unanswered in order to have something to discuss for season 3. Some of the side plots especially felt rushed, and it seems like this is a show that would benefit from a longer season as 8 episodes forced some rushing of the plots.

Not everything was bad, however. As always, the music was fantastic. The video game nods were amusing, even for games that I've never played like New Vegas. I enjoyed seeing New Vegas and Mr. House, and the slow-mo bullet shots were cool and featured in Fallout 4. The flashback scenes were very well done too, and some of the more enjoyable scenes of the season. I just think the season progressed somewhat slowly, and left a lot of important questions unanswered, but not in a good cliffhanger kind of way. I'll likely watch season 3 (though we're dropping Amazon Prime - more on that in a future post) and am excited about potential remakes of Fallout 3 and/or New Vegas, games not currently playable on the PS5.