“I understand the HOW; I do not understand why”. Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984He’s a smart guy and grasps the contours of the nightmarish, oppressive regime he serves quite well. He just can’t understand because It works the way it does. What possible ideological justification can there be for giving oneself absolute power?
The answer was right in front of his face, which is what made it so hard to see. You don’t give yourself absolute power for any other reason. You give yourself absolute power because you really want absolute power. And once you have it, you build a system that makes it impossible to ever give up that power.
The Party, the group formed with this idea in mind and in permanent power after its successful implementation, is Orwell’s riff on Hitler and Stalin, projected into a future in which similar trends also topple the English-speaking world toward tyranny. In the final episode of FallIn the first season, we get a capitalist answer to all that, one in which the people who name themselves god-emperors for life are not the vanguard of a revolutionary party but the CEOs of the most powerful corporations in the United States. Joined. Ask yourself what is most likely to happen here. Ask yourself which is more likely it has already happened here.
Anyway, all of this information is transmitted to poor, naive Cooper Howard via the listening device he connected to his wife’s wrist computer. But that is not the worst. As peace negotiations hurt Vault-Tec’s bottom line, Barb and her boss Bud Askins (Michael Esper) offer a deal to the assembled CEOs. If you invest in Vault-Tec, you will be given a number of Vaults to run as you see fit, no questions asked. Everyone immediately starts fantasizing about ways to torture the residents to death, one way or another. All in the name of progress, of course, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Of course, an investment like this requires some kind of guaranteed return, and peace negotiations prevent that guarantee. Unless, Barb says, they cut out the middleman and drop the bombs themselves. The death of the planet is a small price to pay for being the undisputed rulers of the ashes. “War never changes,” Vault-Tec executive Barb Howard says of the situation on planet Earth. Yes, not if she can help it.
Coop is horrified. So is Lucy, who learns her own version of the shocking truth from Moldaver when she brings the head of warlord Wilzig in exchange for her father’s freedom. The head contains the secret of cold fusion, and with it limitless power of a literal kind, enough to light up the city for the first time… well, probably since the nuclear destruction of Shady Sands, ordered by none other than Hank MacLean. Like all the other residents of Vault 31, he is from before the war, a secret class of executives called “Bud’s Buds”, cryofrozen and thawed to be rulers of the future when necessary.
(Norm, who’s braver than you’d ever believe, discovers all of this firsthand inside Vault 31, where Bud’s brain in a jar seals him with his frozen overlords. A brain in a jar, man.) Of the old school!)
Unfortunately, Maximus doesn’t get the message about Hank in time, freeing him before Lucy warns him that they don’t want to take dear old dad with them. Hank not only erased Maximus’s childhood, but Lucy’s as well. When his mother learned the truth, he fled to Shady Sands with both children, whose vague memories of that time are all that remains of their brief lives on the surface. Hank recovered them and then killed them all. The only way to guarantee peace is to kill everyone who isn’t us, he explains helpfully.
Needless to say, this is all great for Kyle MacLachlan, who can be very scary in his typically American way when called upon, and for Ella Purnell, an actress with eyes that seem designed to register and process this kind of momentous information while is overflowing with tears.
There are other future fighters in the fray. After being returned to the Brotherhood and nearly executed, Maximus finds favor with the High Cleric for his courage. He is also saved because Dane, his old friend, admits that they sabotaged his own shoe out of fear of the mission, not even realizing that Maximus would take the blame.
Both end up on the front lines of the Brotherhood’s brutal assault on the Moldaver compound, which unfolds with maximum blood splatter, surface-to-air missile explosions, and road house–Body style chaos through wooden tables. It’s the visceral reward the season needed.
Maximus heads to the command center, where Hank grabs the armor of a murdered knight and knocks him unconscious. The Ghoul arrives in time to spare Lucy the pain of executing her own father, branding Hank’s face, confronting him about her past connection, and demanding to know where her family is. (Check Vault 31, Ghoul!) Hank flies off to return to the nerve center of the entire sordid operation: the Enclave. With Maximus out of action, Lucy and Ghoul team up to pursue Hank. Dane praises the finally revived Maximus (incorrectly, as I suspect you know) for killing Moldaver and hailed by the entire Brotherhood as if he were the King in the North.
Fall It may be the first show I’ve seen that really benefits from the standard streaming model of a full-season simultaneous release. Watching this show, going from level to level and world to world, following Lucy, Maximus, Ghoul and Norm on their side missions and seeing those flashbacks to Cooper Howard scenes: Fall It’s like spending the weekend trying to beat a video game.
By the way, I mean that as a complete compliment. Making no effort or showing any desire to hide his roots in an art form that prioritizes entertainment, Fall is that rarest of beasts: a post-apocalyptic game with a sense of humor too dark to be cute. In the process, a real star turn is provided for Ella Purnell in particular, the only protagonist whose face is visible for everyone to read at all times and who therefore has to carry so much weight on her shoulders. . I want Lucy to win this game and I’ll be happy to see her try.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York TimesandAnywhere that has it, In fact. He and his family live on Long Island.
