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REPOST johanna_coelho IG: THE PITT 207 - Behind The Shot

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Barb and Cooper (married) in a hotel room in Vegas being all domestic (Barb helping him through a drug hangover - yes alcohol is a recreational drug) before Coop turns around to confront her on her betrayal aka trying to kickstart the apocalypse. (Divorced).

...

My favorite parts of S2 were where Lucy learned how Cooper knew her father & their shared history with Vault Tec, a deeply evil company, as a direct payoff for this moment in the S1 finale........ OH WAIT 🙄

S2 had some cool moments, but imo it was largely rushed/underwhelming and lacked the depth of S1. But most of all, I'm just baffled that Lucy still knows NONE of this??? I'm honestly not sure I even understand the point of them traveling together for multiple episodes if it was going to be 90% small talk while neither learned anything surprising/substantial about the other. So much wasted potential.

thinking about how cooper's long walk to his family's cryopods is so character revealing, because he's got house nattering in his ear the whole time, trying to convince him to give up, trying to dredge up the ghosts of his past, remind him of his mistakes: that he gave the diode to the wrong person, that things would be different if cooper had listened to house, that it's cooper's fault the world ended, and he gets back five words in return:

"I am what I am"

thinking about how those words have such history behind them, though. thinking about how cooper is who he is because of the choices he made pre-war, sure, but also because of everything that came after.

thinking about who cooper is. A soldier. A family man. A guy who's loyal down to the bones, who spent so long trying to make the choices that would protect the people he loves, who trusted the wrong people over and over again and then spent 200 years living in the aftermath of all those people (moldaver, house, vault tec, the US government) being so desperate to win the game they don't care who or what they wreck in the process. They don't even realize they've already blown up the board.

thinking about how he tells house they don't have business. how he tells house he's wrong, that he was right to bet on hope.

The Ghoul has said he and Lucy are the same person. He mostly says it like, I was stupid and you are still stupid.

What this really means is that both of them suffered extremely intimate, world-ending betrayals from important people they thought were their moral compasses.

This was devastating to Cooper Howard and profoundly changed him. He has been broken about this for centuries. Plus, the behaviors/motivations of Wasteland people are so screwy, amoral, and upsetting that he’s really stopped thinking about it at all. People aren’t people to him anymore. They are obstacles to finding his family.

But his situation is very much like Lucy’s, so being around her is reminding him of this prewar trauma that shattered him from a ship into planks.

He literally cannot help but see Lucy as a person. Even without a theory of mind, he can fully project himself onto her. He knows what she is going through because he’s done this.

He CARES about her because he can’t NOT care about her. Her mere proximity is forcing him to find his way back to himself. She is humanizing him.

So there’s a lot of complex interesting character work going on here. She is not a daughter to him; she IS him. She is a whole entire person when nobody else is. There is no avoiding it. Changing each other is inevitable.

If I’m Coop, I’m thinking I destroyed the first bit of human connection I’ve experienced in 300 odd years, sure. But I’m also thinking she’ll probably be physically safe. So…

Like, yeah my crush hates me now but I can probably save all 3 of my girls. It’s just only 2 of them are under immediate threat and can’t protect themselves.

It’s all about strategy.

But then your crush punches you out a window and now you’re sitting on a pole thinking, damn, I turned into my ex wife.

Granted, the consequences of Cooper’s decision are much, much more serious than Lucy’s. His actions have completely destroyed her trust in him. And while the old Lucy might have forgiven him, the current Lucy - because of his influence - is much more unforgiving.

When he shoots her with the tranq dart

Look at his eyes. They are wide, blank, and empty, as if he’s disassociated and is on auto pilot. He’s emotionless, which is a far cry from his usual self. This is the guy who becomes a freaking drama queen whenever he fires a shot. Think Filly, the Observatory, the Khans. We don’t see any of that here. None. Nada. Zilch. Instead, there is something akin to… fear?

When Lucy looks at him after being shot

Now notice the quick upturn in the corner of his lips, plus the clenched teeth. He looks like he’s in physical pain. She’s the one being shot, but she doesn’t even flinch. She’s still shocked at the betrayal, so the pain hasn’t registered yet. But Cooper, oh boy, he’s acting like that dart went straight through his chest instead of hers. You know his fondness for her goes deep when he starts to associate her pain as his own.

Bonus

The man looks like he’s one sec away from spilling tears the whole time. His glassy eyes say it all. This whole thing is killing him inside.

When Walton said Cooper ‘cares deeply’ for Lucy, he meant deep deep. Just look at the agony Cooper experiences when he has to pull the trigger on her. Not bad for a dipshit vaultie - who he doesn’t even like eh?