Rambles, Rants, and Spoilers on FO season 2 π€
Ok, so, the finale left me with an empty feeling and lot of plot points that don't add up or have dumbed down certain characters.
My main beef with this season is the pacing and wasted efforts on side plots and characters that we didn't need instead of focusing on key plots and fleshing them properly.
The incest club and water chip scenario could have been cut down to a few scenes that explain the situation of Vault 33 in a more succinct way, thereby cutting the bs.
Norm and the 31 Vaulties needed better execution. Why didn't he tell them he's the son of Hank Maclean is beyond me. If he by now knows his father is pre-bombdrop, would his name hold weight on Ronnie and folk? Norm briefly says his name on the radio when asking for help, but there's no reaction from Claudia - I get that she's a newbie - or Ronnie and the others, who might have been in earshot before they caught them at the radio. No interrogation as to who he is or anything. Their arrogance got its comeuppance, but that plot armor on Norm and Claudia is thick!
The show does not give an idea of the passage of time at all. How long has it been since Lucy left the vault in season 1? Weeks? Months? So many qestions on the passage of time.... For example, from a feminine perspective, and in genuine curiosity, did Lucy even have her period or could she be pregnant with Monty's child? (Imagine if her breeding enthusiasm comes biting her in the ass now. It is a huge possibility.)
How was she handling her time in the Wasteland night after night, bodily functions and all. It was all portrayed hunky dory, and I'm bummed out, like so many others, that her interactions with Ghoup during night time, camping, etc. were not shown, to have an idea of their dynamic even further. How has she been digesting all the trauma and revelations, her inner thoughts on the past, her mother, "her makers", which Ghoup promised her to "come meet". I feel disappointed that the writing is keeping her facing moral dilemmas and still fixated on the golden rule. She really needs to crash out and release her built-up rage properly and start getting used to the rule of the wasteland. All the stuff they did with her in s2 went nowhere, except that she's "good for heads" when it's just ghouls.
Ghoup leads with the heart now...(insert brain somewhere)
I also feel sour about the way the writing handled Cooper/the Ghoul in the past and present. He has been making "stupid" decisions left and right, and the storyline of finding his family is really overstaying its welcome at this point. With all this buildup in finding B and J now pushed into s3, I hope they deliver something subtantial in the end and we get a really good twist, for better or for worse.
He practically handed Lucy over to Hank based on a whole lie. Lucy straight up told him they could not put trust in the "bargain ". I get it that between his family and Lucy he chose the lesser evil, esp. now that he was so close to his family, but he never seems to put into question whether this was all Hank's ploy and bluff ---which, hello, ding ding ding!!!--- it really was a bluff and B and J were not in Vegas to begin with! Come on, his calculating instincts should be better than this after 219 years wastelanding!!
Down to the friggin' Colorado bs postcard, which could have been an Enclave / Hank planted gimmick to lure him to them with open invitation. For all we know it could have been House himself to get him going and help out against the competing, dangerous Enclave; a proposition which he shot down immediately, because it is not his war and he is fixated on finding his family at the detriment of anyone else and common sense. So now we have Ghoup precipitating to Colorado, alone, without a word to who he left behind (with Lucy he seems to be cutting ties and reverting back to calling her "Vaultie", because he is solely fixated on his mission and scope for existing). He is practically headed to Colorado based on his hunch that the princesses are alive and in another castle. The execution has been rushed so much that they are not giving the show time to breathe and these once-smart characters time to digest what is going on before diving head-first into dangerous territory.
He got Dogmeat with him on his solo mission. So to find the dog he must have passed the people, Thad, and the NCR in Vegas, since Dogmeat was with the people at the shop during the Deathclaw/Max fight. Someone might have seen Ghoup (leave). But again, everything is rushed and done off screen.
Is the writing seriously dumbing down Barb's nefarious involvement with Vault Tec and the Enclave as a mere woman under pressure from "worse people than" herself, making her do a hard-to-swallow 180 and help her husband practically deliver cold fusion to the very same entity threatening her and her family!??? Come on!!! She is now letting Coop taking the fall, for Janey. It's all been about Janey, not the family unit, down to the friggin' birthdate and framing of her teary eye, with the pupil centred on Janey in the photograph.
The Enclave has eyes and ears everywhere and they have been pulling the strings and holding Barb on a leash, so this complete 180 from Barb to go against the Enclave and seemingly helping Coop with handing the MaGguffin to the President (presumably not knowing he is one with the Enclave) and acting all surprised when Coop is arrested and taking the fall is really not adding up. Because if she were actually oblivious about the President's involvement, would she still take such a risk and shake the Enclave's cage in such careless manner, putting Janey at risk!? Come on, Barb, you're smarter than this. So no, I do not buy her actions, least of all the planted postcard that we are supposed to think she had the foresight to leave for a husband wastelanding and surviving for two centuries. It all looks like fresh plans from an-all-seeing organisation who has been pulling the strings and planting acolytes all over the Wasteland. Even if it was recent and Barb is out and about planting clues, what is the end goal here exactly? Luring her devoted husband to enemy territory? The worst thing is Ghoup rushing over to Colorado without a plan or second thought. What the hell???
Hank and the automation chips
The "sacrifice" scene is tearjerkingly brilliant, no questions asked. Phenomenal acting by Kyle and Ella. My question is about the chips themselves and the ones sent out in the wasteland. The subjected folk within the vault were automated based on Diane Welch's personality, if I understood that correctly (and at risk of oversimplifying how they work), so with Diane as mainframe having been offed and shut down, what happened to all those people inside? Are they affected in any way? Is the chip on Hank and the ones he sent out carrying Diane's personality or does the device simply erase your memory and you're subjected to whichever orders you're given? What is automated Hank's personality now? Docile Diane or just Hollow Hank? (Here, again, I wonder if there is a twist and the small device does not have a lasting effect....Or whether he is faking it....π) And where did Lucy and Max leave Hank before they went inside Lucky 38? Did they leave him unguarded on the steps staring into the abyss before someone acknowledges him? Again, rushed!
Steph and Hank, hoooo boy! The guy has been catching wives like Pokemon. I am curious to learn of the conversation between those two when Steph was woken up from her Vault 31 cryo and finding Hank with Rose and two offspring, and she has to play along, make friends with his daughter, marry Bert and have his child. Is her boy even Bert's??
(Edit update: Steph was likely woken up a couple of years or so before the s1 pilot, still young-looking and befriending Lucy, marrying Bert, and getting pregnant, so Rose was way out of the picture at that point. But I do wonder, as viciously diabolical as Steph can be, how her conversation with Hank went down that he had kids with someone else and not woken her up way sooner to carry on plans/experiments side by side.)
Last but not least. I love those two, and their character development. It is good to see Max doing his own thing, away from the BoS poison, and being a good man, as his father told him. He is now a true knight, and most importantly earned. Thad brings the right amount of levity in any given situation. I hope we get to enjoy him more before he mutates further (into Centaur or whatever other possibility).
And btw, Thad took the shot using his (now healed) left foot, the very same foot Max had crushed in s1. Those ironic touches and callbacks are pure art. π
I have other points but this rant has gone long enough and I love this show and the FO franchise immensely that the above were glaring to me since the finale aired and I mulled them over before writing this post. Any errors or any detail in the show that I may have read wrong is on me.
I am hoping for juicy twists in s3 and, most of all, that the handling of key characters is written with depth and room to breathe and the episodes are not cramped with too many characters.
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