>IMPLYING
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 14, 2022
It was meant to be an understatement lmao. I hated this episode. There were elements of episode 1 I could defend from a certain POV (which may end up not mattering depending on writer choices later on but still)
I thought the episode was exceptionally bad, maybe on the same tier as the Vault 4 episode from season 1. It contained the same bizarre infantilising of character intellect as that episode and more or less revealed that, yeah, the entire Brotherhood is now just fucking stupid and childish, and it's not just an affliction burdened on a handful of characters. Maximus is trying to be serious now and it's already better than 80% of what we saw in season 1 regarding him. But the improvements to Maximus do not overshadow how awful the Brotherhood is.
The hospital sequence was bizarrely slow in pacing, as though something worthwhile was waiting at the end, but again, IQ points drop by about a hundred. The Ghoul standing like a gormless idiot as the radscorpian half-heartedly tries to get through the door whilst looking through the window was vexing. The Ghoul slits the throat of an escaped Legion slave (though it was possibly a Legion soldier, so it might get retroactively justified later), doesn't elaborate on why, then eats a chunk out of him, "dinner", before spitting him out because he's poisoned. Then during a fight with the radscorpian proper, he grabs the other slave and uses her as a human shield. Lucy then takes the slave off of him, allowing him to get stabbed - the music and lack of focus on it makes it feel like it wasn't supposed to be comedic. She uses a stimpack on the female slave (they can cure poison now) and then leaves the Ghoul to die, and whether he'll survive or not is something she leaves the hospital being certain of but then doubts once she's outside. Obviously the Ghoul will survive, telling us that, yeah, he's pretty much immortal so long as he isn't torn apart or blown up or something (it also explains why Lucy felt comfortable leaving him to hang in episode 1, since it probably wouldn't have killed him).
Hank is meant to be experimenting on improving the brain control chip, but his experiments (far as we can tell) all involve repeating the same thing over and over with no variation. Like, what the fuck is he even doing? He also does the same thing but on a human subject, which is on-paper horrible but is low-key morally allowed due to the guy only saving himself and leaving his family behind. Again, even when a character does something that's on-paper horrible, if it has any justification whatsoever presented to the audience, then they're leaving wiggle room for the audience to argue his innocence or something later. It calls into question other shit they did and is meant to make any sudden acts of good or evil handwavable later on. Before Jamie Lannister was retconned in the very last season of GoT, him fighting the bear to protect Brienne and losing his hand preceded the reveal of his most dishonourable act (Killing the previous king) as being motivated by honour (Protecting the people). Hank is constantly being emphasised to care for "family" as a concept, so this is all meant to precede some shift in audience perception later on. I think Hank will die at the end of the season or just before for Lucy's sake, and this is meant to give way to that. The nuke stuff is still vague enough that we won't know whether Hank was pressured into it off-screen or otherwise cajoled. Either he left the vault to create the jury rigged denotator himself or someone did it for him - we don't know. (Maybe he already has a perfected version of the mind control technology in his head already or something).
Norm: "Merit dots."
He at least seems aware of how easily duped these characters are. They're also competent (the only ones in the show if we stop here lmao) so at least Bud didn't just drop 1:1 corporate managers into the vault. They're physically able, and can be directed to a task. Also, I couldn't tell if Bud had been killed or was simply immobilised. Norm already told them he's dead so when/if they discover he's still alive they might not react well. I don't have much to say except any complaints I can think of would be beating a dead horse (ubiquitous idiocy/immaturity), so take me having the fewest things to say on Norm as him being the most consistently tolerable aspect of the show and I hope they don't ruin him by turning bronze into shit.
We also got the introduction of The Legion (though the audience doesn't know that yet) and they're intimidating - so far. I hope they the necessity of making them a threat/bad guys means they'll be spared infantilising but I already know I'm asking too much.
Also pre-war Shady Sands was tidy but then the skyscrapers being bombed out husks meant they had simply colonised an already destroyed city and not built it up themselves. The NCR ranger duster looked really cheap, like it was made out of felt and not leather, which in order to make it look like a duster they would need to make it really it really heavy, which gives it a more orange-look instead of a brown look.
