Fallout recap: Now we're talking

[Editor’s note: This is a recap of Fallout episode two. The recap of episode three publishes April 12.]

Now that is significantly more like it.

Of the many ways Fallout’s second episode is an improvement on its first, the most important, by far, is tone. Make no mistake, Vault Dwellers: This is, at least for now, a pitch-black comedy with some dramatic elements, not, as “Maximus” tried very hard to suggest, something that would occasionally try to get genuinely grim and joyless as our characters tromped across the wastes. The chicken-fucking joke is a good indicator, as they so often are. But the real, improbable Rosetta Stone to this episode is guest star Michael Rappaport.

As a performer, Rappaport tends to work in a very narrow lane—the uncharitable might term it “loud-mouthed jagoffs about 10 percent less sympathetic than the loud-mouthed jagoffs played by Bill Burr”—and the reveal that it’s his nasal voice lurking underneath the iron helm of Knight Titus is the big turning point for Maximus’ whole story. (To the point that it would have made a great punchline to an episode, had all of the Brotherhood material from this installment and the last been presented as a cohesive whole. Just sayin’.) In an episode that has some extraordinarily good casting, Rappaport’s is the masterstroke, skewering all the built-up pretension of the Brotherhood by revealing that, underneath all that mysticism and armor, they’re just another crew of whiny assholes with chips on their shoulders trying to get an easy ride through the apocalypse. And while it’s getting a tad concerning how often people who get in the way of Maximus’ ambitions have a bad habit of suffering extremely bloody consequences, it’s hard to feel too bad when he allows Titus (who does himself no favors by trying to bully his squire into injecting him with magical healing chemicals while possessing absolutely zero leverage) to bleed to death so he can steal his fancy armor.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, as Fallout’s second episode opens with a pairing that’ll be near and dear to fans of director/producer Jonathan Nolan’s previous show, Person Of Interest: Michael Emerson and an adorable dog. As mysterious runaway scientist Wilzig, Emerson does all those things that have made him one of the most charismatic performers of the last decade-plus of TV, blending detached irony with a knack for sobering sincerity that makes him a fitting mentor/MacGuffin for Ella Purnell’s Lucy, who’s now determined to get her new friend to the enigmatic Lee Moldaver so she can exchange him—or at least some of him—for her kidnapped dad.

The hunt for Wilzig is what ultimately sets our three protagonists on a collision course with each other, as Lucy, Maximus, and the Ghoul all converge on Filly, the only “civilization” for miles, in a quest for the renegade dog lover. Lucy wants information and gets a load of anti-Vault hostility and a brand new quest for her trouble. Maximus wants to play hero and gets a smile from a pretty girl and an incredibly thorough ass-kicking in response. And the Ghoul? He wants to collect on the bounty and kill a whole bunch of very over-ambitious gunfighters—half of which he manages to handily achieve, while picking up a new pooch in the process.

The confrontation between these three central characters gives us the best look yet at what Fallout actually is when it’s doing everything it wants to do. And it turns out to be a pretty intoxicating blend of comedy, strong performance, and luridly inventive violence (including a sequence that cutely mimics the V.A.T.S. aiming system from the Fallout games, as the Ghoul casually disassembles an entire town’s worth of optimistic idiots with a series of extremely critical hits). The eventual showdown between Lucy and the Ghoul might have been slightly compromised by being heavily spoiled in the show’s promotional materials, but it’s still a great showcase for Purnell and Walton Goggins, who radiates malevolent amusement as this bright-eyed stranger tries to talk him through the steps of conflict de-escalation amidst the dying and the dead.

Maximus, meanwhile, remains something of a weak link, not because Aaron Moten is doing a bad job—his joy at getting to play with his shiny new toy is genuinely charming—but because he’s up against two extremely heavy hitters. (It’s also worth applauding character actor veteran Dale Dickey, who gets some of the best lines of the episode as a Wasteland junk merchant who knows just enough about Vault Dwellers to know that they’re a massive pain in the ass.) It’s easy, two episodes in, to see how Lucy and the Ghoul fit into this world, the naïve outsider pitted against the perfectly adapted survivor. It’s going to take a bit more work to fit the third leg onto the tripod, especially since it’s still not clear what Maximus actually wants, beyond getting to be treated like a hero.

These are quibbles, though: Fallout’s second episode is everything we were hoping for from its first, a laugh-out-loud funny dose of darkness with
just enough heart to not, say, actually kill the adorable and heroic German Shepherd just two episodes in (even if the episode does open with an underweight puppy getting dumped in an incinerator by a bunch of heartless scientists, one of the most casually dark openings to a TV episode in recent memory). It’s not every piece of streaming television that can joke about the surprisingly tasty banana flavor of mass-produced cyanide pills, or follow a bloodbath by featuring an enthusiastic huckster (Jon Daly, killing it) trying to sell a recent amputee victim on snake oil that will supposedly re-grow an entire foot. But that kind of gallows humor has always been an integral part of the Fallout brand, a franchise not afraid to see the funnier sides of nuclear annihilation.

Seeing the show settle into that vibe—with Purnell a consistently bright delivery vehicle for many of these mega-dark jokes, issuing an only slightly hesitant “Okie dokey!” before preparing to decapitate a Very Important Corpse—is a sign that Nolan, and writers Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, get Fallout in a way that goes way beyond making sure the plasma rifles look right, or making Nuka-Cola jokes. The premiere showed that this creative team could assemble the rough building blocks for a really great Fallout show; episode two makes it clear that they actually have a pretty decent idea of what they’re trying to build.

Stray observations

• Sorry, Groucho: The opening shot of the episode proves that the inside of a dog isn’t too dark to read.
• Yes, it’s silly to see Stimpaks work the same way here as they do in the games, fixing internal injuries in just a few seconds. But at least it’s balanced with the medical horror of the sawblade/tourniquet that gets shoved on to Wilzig’s leg after the Ghoul shoots it off.
• Emerson’s line about the cyanide pills being “the most humane product Vault-Tec ever made” is both very funny and a red flag that all might not be well with the company that essentially designed Lucy’s entire life.
• Game nerds: That’s obviously a Ripper that Lucy is wielding at the end, and the monster that kills Titus is a Yao Guai. For the life of me, though, I can’t place the Ghoul’s single-barrel, giant-bullet gun. (This is what I get for going Energy Weapons in every Fallout game.)
• Filly is an absolutely gorgeous piece of set design. The effects in Fallout can look a little hokey sometimes—Maximus’ armor is fun, but rarely looks totally convincing—but seeing the actors move around on a real recreation of some of the beautiful trash towns from the games is a delight.
• If Wilzig has a name for his pet pooch, I couldn’t catch it; I’ll refrain from referring to her as “Dogmeat,” the beloved canine who appears in each Fallout game, until the show does.
• Thank goodness those Enclave turrets are better at shooting logos than puppers, huh?
• Dickey—who has a million credits, and worked with Goggins in Justified and Vice Principals—is so damn funny in her utter indifference to Lucy’s Vault Dweller cheerfulness. “I thought all you sardine fuckin’ dipshits were dead!”
• Game nerds: I think the symbol on Ma’s ledger is a slightly altered version of the logo for the generally good-natured Followers Of The Apocalypse, which might give some idea of what Moldaver is actually up to.
• “I’d offer you one of these cherry tomatoes…but you’ve got a hole in your neck.” Does anyone deliver a potentially cheesy line of dialogue with more casual cool than Walton Goggins?
• Filed in the same spot, when Lucy tranqs him: “Now that is a very small drop, in a very, very large bucket of drugs.”
• “Fuckin’ Vault Dwellers.”