MIDNIGHT REVIEWS Fallout S1 E6 Review
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
Fallout Season 1 Episode 6: ‘The Trap’
Series created by: Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Graham Wagner
Featuring: Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins
Synopsis: Lucy (Purnell) and Maxiums (Moten) begin to explore their new surroundings in Vault 4. Lucy finds them startling different to the vault she knew. Meanwhile, The Ghoul (Goggins) is hauled in front of the President of… Something.
Review: The premise of Fallout, in the same way that most apocalyptic stories do, grabs people’s attention because it allows us to imagine our lives away from the humdrum of normality. We can imagine what it would be like to live in the wastes, or in the vaults, and we can answer the question ‘What would I do?’ several times over. In fact, role-playing games like the one this show is based on are partly-built on this premise.
Of course, no sane person would ever really want to live in this scenario, at least not longer than it takes to see how quickly they would die. I enjoy my life. I can walk down the road without being shot at; I can drink from a tap without fear for my life; the threat of nuclear devices going off is only moderate (if you haven’t read the news lately… well, if I’ve learnt anything from the fictional Vault-Tec, it’s to ask you to like and subscribe before the bombs fall!)
In Fallout we have the compelling notion of mankind spending more than two hundred years at a standstill, scrambling around for pre-war technology or just trying to make it to the next day. What would humanity look like if this were to pass?
Multiple protagonists, of course, being used because an adaptation of an RPG could not encompass everything about the game with one single main character. Each character is different, enabling the show to demonstrate what happens with a violent character, say, or a character brought up under the culture of the vault.
Manages to intertwine two phenomenal parts of the Fallout story.
In a similar way, the games and the show would not be as interesting if all of these vaults were the same. This is the premise of the episode. The Trap isn’t obvious. It isn’t a door opening to reveal a giant mutant bear, or a raider with a gun at the end of a road. Vault 4 is unnerving and, as talked about in previous reviews, Fallout does its best work when making suggestions and implying with its smaller moments.
We have the hilariously deadpan Chris Parnell (you may have seen him as Dr Spaceman in 30 Rock, or indeed know him from his work with the Lonely Island crew), introduced as casually as you like before the reveal that he is a cyclops. It’s this, as well as other strange abnormalities in other Vault 4 inhabitants, where the show makes its first obvious suggestion that things aren’t normal. The visual effects on Parnell’s face are like if Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness did it well.
In fact all of the scenes inside this new Vault, where Lucy and Maximus are welcomed seemingly as guests, are a wild ride. Glimpses and conversations tease a mad science cult one moment, a sex cult the next, before we’re presented with what looks like a vampire cult, each step crazier and more unexpected than the last before the final reveal announces something that can’t possibly make sense, and yet this is what our pair have to deal with.
The entire episode is one great performance after another.
Ella Purnell does the hard work skulking around the secretive labs, but it’s Moten who gets to have some fun as we get to watch someone whose home was blown up and whose life has been one slog after another, get treated to a hot shower and a robe. As always, it’s these small moments of comedy that shine through. For eagle-eyed and bat-eared viewers, the mise-en-scene, set design and sound design in these sequences create an outstanding combination too.
The entire episode is one great performance after another. Walton Goggins gives wisecracks and sly looks a-plenty before we’re introduced to none other than Glenn Fleshler, turning up for a scene and improving an already-amazing episode by another few degrees.
The previous couple of episodes have decided to focus entirely on one or two characters, but The Trap manages to intertwine two phenomenal parts of the Fallout story and give all the principal cast something special to do.
For Goggins, we see both present-timeline and past-timeline, Ghoul and Howard, as he socialises with people he despises. We see a staunch capitalist, ready to plaster his own face all over a conglomerate’s advertising hoardings, somehow have his world upended and his mind with it. In a few short scenes Cooper starts to turn his back on everything he’s relied on. His wife, his way of life, The American Dream — they all start to seem to take on a dark, twisted version of themselves in front of his very eyes.
Forget ‘What would I do?’ I’m on tenterhooks until I can grasp episode seven in my power armour grip and find out what Lucy, Maximus and The Ghoul do next.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on movies whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Smith_M_D
