*FALLOUT* Ep 4 Reaction | Film Student's First Time Watching

[@alricfremanosrs1509]

The mercy kill is so well written at the start of this episode. The ghoul has had 200 years to see people die. He knows most of them die terrified and in pain. He really does care about that other ghoul, and knows that if he leaves him alive he will lose his mind and essentially become a zombie. He perfectly steers the guy into a beautiful moment of thinking about things that make him happy, and then ends him painlessly before that joy can fade.

[@JackOiswatching]

The show writers understood the assignment on this one. Nothing good ever happens in a Super Duper Mart in the games!

[@HoundMonkey]

A few scattered supplies and a sh*t ton of trouble every damn time.

[@flatcat6676]

I love it when the Ghoul tells Lucy that their little finger swap was most honest exchange they've had so far. He's spent nearly two episodes teaching her about the world as it is vs. the world as she thinks it should be. At the end of the episode, you can tell she's taken some of the lessons to heart, doing what she has to do to survive, but still holding on to the part of her soul that values the lives and dignity of other people. Fantastic character development & world building!

[@JDCheng]

And a nice callback to Ma June in Filly - "...all ten fingers..."!

[@mikeyb2932]

Actually, he simply followed the golden rule just how she explained it. "Do unto others..." She took his finger, so the golden rule, as she explained, meant she wanted him to take hers.

[@TheBmweed]

When looting, you take the items IN the box, never the actual box.... no matter how much sense it makes. A great lil nod to the game!

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Ah gotcha! It annoyed me in the moment, but now I appreciate the reference. Thank you!!

[@TimoRutanen]

The loot is in, a lot of the times, in old ammo boxes just like that one, too.

[@erikbjelke4411]

"You are carrying too much and cannot run."

[@SpaceEngineerErich]

I've been watching interviews with Ella Purnell and apparently 'okie dokie' has become part of her every day vocabulary. Which makes her just that much more adorable. =)

[@prollins6443]

"Oh, im you, sweetie. Just give it a little time!" It's probably the most badass yet terrifyingly horrific line in the show. Truthful, but not something you want to dwell on!

[@dwimrel]

The three main characters are set up as players would be in the falout games. Lucy is the high intelligence high karma player. Maximus is low intelligence, high endurance, force solves all player. The ghoul is a vats build with a renegade play style.

[@rmhartman]

"vats"?

[@TexasNight]

@@rmhartman - The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System, or V.A.T.S., is a queuing system for Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 4, inspired partly by the ability to shoot specific body parts in the turn-based combat system of Fallout and Fallout 2. V.A.T.S. is also used for a cinematic combat experience.

[@prollins6443]

​@@rmhartman Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System = V.A.T.S. It's why the ghoul is so good at shooting people and fighting power armor

[@woolenthreads]

IMO Cooper is the representation of a player who has and is doing every side quest in the game.

[@090giver090]

Maximus also gas Luck pretty much maxed out.

[@PythonDad]

One of the lore things about the way robots behave is that in the years since the bombs fell, people have had to mostly tweak existing robots to diversify them. There are a lot of crossed wires in most functioning robots in the wasteland as a result where they sort of "remember" their original job or other previous jobs on top of whatever is their current priority.

[@dominicksermeno8751]

One thing from "WestWorld" was the idea of the black hat cowboys and the white hat cowboys. William "The Man In Black" you see transition from wearing the white hat when he was young and idealistic, but eventually as he keeps visiting the park he becomes more cruel starts the wear the black hat and become the "Man in Black". Showing his descent from a hero to a villian. Here you can see Cooper Howard "The Ghoul" wearing a white hat at the kids birthday party when the bombs fall, and then a black hat when he becomes "The Ghoul"; however, there is a subtle difference. If you look closely you can see, he didn't switch hats, in fact he is wearing the same clothes from 2077 in 2296. It is the same hat, it's just gotten dirty showing that underneath this exterior of villainy he puts on Cooper Howard is still there. He is an actor, and the Ghoul is just another role he must play. He is still at heart a white hat, its just that age, time, and wear has made it darker, like him. A couple of his actions can be viewed from both lenses: Healing the dog: Black hat - use the dog as a tracker: White hat - save an innocent animal Deny Lucy water from his canteen: Black hat - be a jerk and cruel: White hat - he drinks irradiated water that heals him, but will kill her Kill Roger: Black hat steal his supplies and survive off what left of the vials in Rogers system: White hat - mercy kill a friend

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Oooooooh! A Westworld reference I didn't catch! I love the white hat/black hat reference. I remember that from WW, hadn't noticed that connection here, so thank you for pointing it out! 😍

[@commander515]

Such a good episode...definitely one of my favorites of Season 1. Once again, the showrunners got the tone of the game world down perfectly, just nailing that juxtaposition between the horror and the resulting dark humor of this post-apocalyptic hellscape. So, in the initial lore of the games, ghouls were humans who were exposed to extremely high levels of radiation during and immediately after the Great War, and somehow didn't die (they are described as having been mutated rather than killed by the extreme exposure). The result is functional immortality - they don't age and can regenerate wounds (though trauma to the brain can kill them) but they tend to look like burned and/or decaying corpses as a result. So they are looked upon essentially like zombies, especially if they go feral, like the ones at the end of the episode (which is caused by slow degradation of their brains until they lose all higher functions). Later games and this show have expanded on the lore, introducing other ways that normal humans can be turned into ghouls as well as the vials that prevent intelligent ghouls from going feral. (Some of these new lore retcons are controversial amongst the old-school purists who believe that the Bethesda-made games are inferior to the original two made by Black Isle). They are typically subjected to alot of prejudice and racism by 'normal' people ('smoothskins') and often live in their own communities, isolated from non-ghouls.

[@eqgilethan]

The show got the green light for season 2 not too long after it was released. The actor/stunt performer that played Martha in this episode, also played the raider in "The End" that Lucy shot in the eye with a tranq.

[@yannickg6904]

I loved this show and re-watching it with Jacqui is a treat. Can we all agree that Lucy is how you should write a strong willed and capable female character without making her a Mary Sue? Kudos to Ella Purnell, she is a gem.

[@JounLord1]

I've heard people say Lucy and Maximus are Rey and Finn from the Star Wars sequels done right, Lucy doesn't come off as a Mary Sue and Max isn't a completely wasted joke.

[@eddiejravannen]

​@@JounLord1 That's a perfect description for them!

[@joeb918]

She is a Mary Sue in the vault though. It’s all in her introduction at the beginning of the show, it is all about how great she is at everything she’s put her mind to, phys-ed, shooting, teaching, being a dutiful daughter and expectant wife to continue the goal of keeping civilisation alive. What the show does after that is that all that inside knowledge with a heavy dose of naïveté means sweet feck all in the outside “real world.” However she’s quickly adapting to that world too, so I disagree she’s not a Mary sue, she is but the show is telling her she needs to quickly adopt a different set of skills to survive. The conflict arises in that she doesn’t want it to change who she is as a person.

[@magicbrownie1357]

Coop taking Lucy's finger is one of the gnarliest things I've ever seen in a TV show. And I agree that the music in this is fantastic.

[@prollins6443]

Most of these songs are in the game! There are a couple just for the show, but most of them can be played during the game.

[@newlexican]

The Mouse Utopia experiment was a real thing and worth learning about.

[@rmhartman]

And directly applicable to the vaults.

[@kieransanders2133]

Nice touch that the first time lucy has to pull the trigger and kill someone, she doesn't do it with her oen finger, but with the new one she got in the wasteland

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Great catch! I love that!

[@thomasmills331]

My guess is that Snip Snip was a medical assistant robot before the bombs. And was re-programmed to harvest organs after. He does mention he had a temporal malfunction 'about a week ago'.

[@davidkeye9334]

Fun fact, John McLean from Die Hard also has a daughter named Lucy.

[@Elementarian]

This episode was when I fully fell in love with the Ghoul and Lucy as characters, their interactions, the glimpses of backstories and growth for both characters. Phenomenal episode.

[@syngyne]

"Can't get much worse!" Cut to scene of people hanging from the ceiling :)

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Haha exactly!

[@eddiejravannen]

One of the great things about this show is that Ella Purnell herself said she didn't want to be treated with kid gloves, she wanted Lucy to go through hardship for greater character development.

[@JDCheng]

Believe it or not, many of the songs used in the soundtrack for this series was used as background music for the games - though it feels like mostly Fallout 3 and 4. It will be interesting to see if the music for next season comes closer to what they used in Fallout: New Vegas.

[@Dedmeetdm]

I love the evolution of Lucy in this show. She starts off very naive and sweet, and over the course of the season becomes more of a realist. She still tries so desperately to hold on to that sweet girl that left the vault, in a world that is not for that type of person anymore.

[@dougvantilburg9173]

The robot was Matt Berry.

[@generalmortars7557]

Lol, "dude, just take the box". That's actually on brand with the gameplay, in the games you never take the box, just its content.

[@joeb918]

The greatest thing about this adaptation is that all little details that tie this to the game are shown not told, so many video game to movie adaptations are in your face about what they’re referencing. It’s like “we said/did the thing, did you see us do/say the thing!? We are going to do/say the thing again now, we did/said it, notice me senpai!” Like in the very first episode you see a man unalived by a baby doll leg. It’s jarring to newcomers, but the gamers know that it came from an improvised device that basically makes use of all the useless junk you find in the wasteland. Nearly every other adaptation would put the weapon on a pedestal, with all this pomp and circumstance around it, maybe gave a character give some random forced monologue about it and some other tedious exposition. All this show did was play the sound and show the after effects and we got it, it’s blink and you miss it reference, but it ls so effective and so much better. They also use so much sound from the game, the slow look fights using some of the in game effects and music effects for a mode called VATs that lets you target various parts of enemy NPCs, again, they don’t tell you that’s what they’re doing, they just show it with auditory context clues and it’s wonderful.

[@DavidCookeZ80]

You may remember snip-snip's voice actor, Matt Berry, from [redacted]. He's also Laszlo from "What we do in the shadows", and Douglas Reynholm in "The IT Crowd", and various other british shows.

[@ericswanson411]

Fallout is one of the best shows made and I can't wait to see your reaction to the rest of the season! To think it gets better in the rest of the season.

[@KevinF923]

You should check out Sweetpea. Another Ella Purnell show where she starts off kinda sweet, innocent, a little doormatish, but then.....turns........serial.

[@movienightwithjacqui]

I don't think I've ever heard of it! Thank you for the recommendation!

[@SleepySlann]

15:15 I somehow love that the robot is whistling. It beautifully underlines the absurdity. Cooper finding the tape and seeing the old him right after Lucy kind of proved him wrong, really seem to make him realise how much he has changed. The old him had objections to killing a fictional character Fallout as a franchise is really good for juxtaposing the prewar Americana with the apocalypse for some seriously dark humour.

[@Kaos9696]

I love how realistic Lucy feels. She acts in a way that just makes to her upbringing, situation, and morals.

[@erikbjelke4411]

02:23: It's at this point I'm realizing how clever the show is. Even casual fans like me have probably heard Ghouls talk about regular humans as "smoothskins," so we just knew "smoothie" was a contraction of that. But for someone with no knowledge, like you, Roger drops the term in, then casually and naturally relates it to Lucy, letting you make the connection that its a slang term for non-Ghoul people. I love the subtle touches like that, respecting the audience to make the connections without having The Ghoul have to turn to Lucy and say "Smoothie, Smoothskin, Ghoul slang for someone like you." Trust the intelligence of your audience. 06:25: In the games, water is plentiful in the Wasteland. . . _clean_ water, substantially less so. You can drink a lot of stuff you find, and it'll heal you, but also add to your Rads. It's a tradeoff. Now, last time, The Ghoul wouldn't give Lucy any of his water, probably because it was irradiated too and not safe for her to drink. Yet here, he almost seems to enjoy seeing her get so desperate she'll drink water she *knows* is irradiated. I have a hypothesis as to why. This really didn't crystalize for me until I was watching The Media Knights' reaction, and they mentioned that, while being kind of an ass, The Ghoul was trying to coach Lucy in how to survive. And I thought, "Kinda, but not really. I think his motivation is more Joker-like. He feels the need to prove to Lucy that she'll need to become what he is to survive. Not a Ghoul per se, but someone who only cares about their own immediate needs, and to hell with anyone and everyone else. Because if not, then it means The Ghoul became who he is for nothing." And then that's carried out at the end, Lucy choosing to do the right thing when she has every reason to leave The Ghoul to his deserved fate, or kill him herself. She chooses to be kind to him because, roles reversed, she'd want someone to show her some kindness. And then it's punctuated by The Ghoul watching his old movie, and remember when we saw the behind the scenes on that? That Cooper Howard was uncomfortable with the idea of even *pretending* to kill a man in cold blood? The Ghoul literally has to face the man he used to be. For probably the first time in a very, _very_ long time, Cooper Howard looks at The Ghoul, and is disgusted by what he sees. That's why I think The Ghoul watching Lucy drink irradiated water was so important. The Golden Rule has nothing at all to do with that, yet he brings it up. Why? Because despite stating "sidetracked" as the Wasteland's Golden Rule, what The Ghoul *really* believes is the Wasteland's Golden Rule is "do whatever the fuck you have to do." And Lucy rejects that idea at the end, choosing to believe that you can still be a decent person and survive. Whether or not she's *right,* well. . .

[@pctech714]

Superman: Must...save...Martha! [no, wait, too late]

[@keithmcdonnell4485]

21:15 Yup, when I watched this episode of Fallout I was yelling "just take the box" at the screen :)

[@alittlecreepywhenyou]

Matt Berry. Is the bots voice. So cool.

[@LibrarianMichael]

3:29 I'm with you 100%. It was merciful to let him go while on a happy memory.

[@dawidscheffler7152]

FUBAR sums up the world of Fallout very very much (Well... "Post-FUBAR, now rebuilding after the damage is done). Yes, season 2 has gotten the green light and it can NOT get here soon enough.

[@JamesWhoMakesGames]

Foreshadowing in reverse... Hindshadowing??

[@movienightwithjacqui]

😂😂😂 I'm pretty sure it's just a metaphor, but my brain didn't seem to want to come up with that in the moment. I think "hindshadowing" sounds way cooler anyway!

[@firstelderd]

In the 2D games, ghouls are slow and not much to worry about, there are some you can talk to. The most notable one is named Harold. In the 3D games (and show) feral ghouls are basically zombies. There are still a lot of normal ghouls you can talk to. In the games the ghouls refer to normal humans as 'smooth-skins' I don't remember 'smoothie' used at all. Related to your last comment I've seen the characters described like this (and I agree): Lucy is a beginner Fallout player, Maximus is an intermediate player, and The Ghoul is a done everything veteran player.

[@LibrarianMichael]

11:17 the robot at Super Duper Mart is voiced by Matt Berry from What We Do in the Shadows and The IT Crowd.

[@movienightwithjacqui]

It's been years since I watched it, but I love The IT Crowd so much! That's definitely where I knew him from 😃 Thank you!

[@LibrarianMichael]

@movienightwithjacqui You're welcome! I watch the series a couple times a year and the What we do in the shadows series finale was a couple days ago so his voice is still fresh in my head.

[@kevenpinder7025]

If I understand correctly, Season 2 is either already filming, or soon will be.

[@LibrarianMichael]

So happy this won the best game adaptation award. Well deserved.

[@davidbergfors6820]

They are Indeed renewed. I am so excited to see your reactions! thank you for your brilliant insights and fantastic laughs!

[@markcarpenter6020]

Every time i hear that line about boys peeing on the wall i can't help but think a woman wrote that line. All guys are dangerous when angry. Smart ones just do more damage.

[@trol68419]

My two favorite shows this year are Shogun and The Penguin, but this is a close 3rd. Glad to see you're enjoying this.

[@atticstattic]

Whatever the record is for Jacqui sitting there with her mouth open - this ep beats it!

[@jamesdee759]

I know the last names are spelled different but in Die Hard John McClane has a daughter named Lucy McClane.

[@cstains5543]

To catch up on Fallout lore you should check out a few vaults to get an idea how Vault Tec operated in some of the vaults... Vault 77 or Vault 11 for instance.

[@prollins6443]

GARY!

[@090giver090]

@@prollins6443 GARY?

[@Hare_deLune]

@@prollins6443 Gaaaary!

[@Educated2Extinction]

And all of this is just setting the table for what's to come. As fun and entertaining as it's been so far, the conclusion of the season is even better.

[@dallassukerkin6878]

The first time in a long time that the media industry has done something that is actually good! I have to say that there is very much a Lara Croft energy to Lucy but that's likely only because of the combination of physical 'robustness' and intelligence with eloquence.

[@FlamingRobzilla]

Great reaction video. Thanks. It's always so much fun to see someone get what that franchise is about. Thanks again.

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Thank you! I'm glad I get to share the experience with others who love it 😊

[@HoundMonkey]

Love the videos, keep them coming!

[@stevencavanagh7990]

Another Great Reaction, I think the reason Norm lacked enthusiasm is that he was is smart that nothing felt like a challenge for him. Could I recommend the Amazon Anthology Series Secret Level, it's by the same people who did Love Death & Robots.

[@lethargiceffort2058]

I believe the character you're thinking of from superstore is named BRUH BRUH BRUHHHHH. Or Bo for short.

[@Lordmaniax357]

Jacqui... I'm convinced you need a "DUH duh dunnn!" sound effect for when the "suspicious revelations" happen. LOL! Plus.. I'd love to see you, at least, try to play the games and explore the game worlds.

[@AdrianGell]

Seeing you enjoy this makes me think you'd appreciate The Magicians. That show spans two settings tied to eachother, a Narnia-analog that seems like it's from the same writers as this, and ... the closest I can come up with is "Dan Harmon's Hogwarts Toronto" (I'm open to a better descriptor). If any Patrons agree, I'd love to see you give it a bump in polls for future shows.

[@MartijnVos]

I'm getting a strong impression from you that maybe I should watch Westworld.

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Yes!!! Absolutely recommend it! Westworld unfortunately fell into that trap of “started strong, then fizzled out,” but the first season is genuinely one of the greatest seasons of TV ever, and the second season is a strong follow up. And it’ll definitely make sense why they wound up doing Fallout next.

[@morbidangel2424]

Yea in the game what happens in the vaults are far more disturbing. But all the nods to the game are great

[@slayskool777]

If they ever remake X-Files, you'd make a hot Dana Scully. Good lord.

[@DrakeAurum]

This definitely felt like a level-up for Lucy.

[@DaniBeee420]

The cousin was down bad 😂 I'm glad he linked up with the other girl

[@Wayazaexa42]

Damn, I'm early today! 😊

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Welcome to the party!

[@ErisianThreeFourteen]

Redder is bedder, had to drop a comment and sub~

[@gregadams558]

It maybe giving her growth but destroying her innocense.

[@thetragicschoolbuspodcast]

0:27 Kid? Johnny Pemberton is 43 years old

[@Milton2k]

Making a movie or a series out of a videogame was a cursed endeavor. So glad that it has been broken recently with some like ARCANE, Fallout and The Last of Us. For sure there are retractors, yet I think they are only nitpicking.

[@TerryNutkins3]

Save Martha!

[@JustTechGuyThings]

If you like this and Westworld, you may like Jonathan Nolan's other series called Person of Interest.

[@antonmaier5172]

Lesson: Don't bite off other peoples fingers.

[@ArfurFaulkesHake]

Back when Black Isle Studios made the first Fallout in 1997, it was exactly this kind of dark and sarcastic humor that brought the games such love, starting a franchise lasting 21 years till Bethesda killed it.

[@090giver090]

Fallout 1 was much more dark than sarcastic. It's Fallout 2 where sarcastic tone really took up to 11.

[@DuskoDugousko84]

Ella Purnell is so good in the show. But she is even better in the "Arcane". Any plans in reacting to that?

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Yes! Season one of Arcane is already on Patreon, and I'm going to be starting season 2 there soon. It'll be the next series on KZbin, after I finish Fallout 😊

[@ddk6549]

You are obsessed with symmetry 😅

[@movienightwithjacqui]

Haha it's just such a great visual! It makes everything look too perfect and it's unnerving. Perfect metaphor for the vaults 😅

[@woolenthreads]

The yellow fluid is not actually a cure for going feral, though it may help. I think it's actually the shows representation of either Jet or Mentats. Given how the effect of Mentats is supposed to work, from the games, it would seem likely it is a liquid version of Mentats if it helps the Ghouls maintain their Mental Capacity. The active ingredient is a powerful nootropic that increases memory-related functions, and speeds other mental processes. It's a little hard to tell and hopefully the showrunners will provide a reveal in season 2.

[@greenrevolver30]

For people saying Roger was a mercy kill. It really wasn't. The Ghoul saw that Roger had taken several vials of the medication. That is why he was eating Roger, to get some of the chems in Roger's blood, to hopefully slow down his own change. But he did do it in a merciful way by giving Roger a good memory. The reason the Ghoul doesn't take the box of chems is he is leaving some in case other ghouls come needing them. I think it is interesting that Lucy finally starts changing after she gets the new finger. Symbolizing the waistland is now a part of her. She is now irreversibly "infected" by it. But giving the Ghoul the chems was her keeping to her core self.

[@Hare_deLune]

He wasn't leaving the vials for other ghouls. He was leaving the vials because he was stone drunk.

[@bpora01]

The whole vials thing is a bit of a concern to the hardcore fallout gamers

[@craignellist7277]

It makes sense that someone would have been looking into a way to prevent feral ghouls and the show is set 9 years after the most recent game not to mention it could be mostly a west coast thing that got developed after New Vegas.

[@JDCheng]

Does it have to be? None of the games so far have you play as a ghoul. They are, for the most part, background NPC's you interact with briefly. At most, you have one as a companion - like Hancock. And Hancock, unlike other companions, doesn't mind the player using chems. (Well, there's Cait, but that's a different story). Besides, having vials as a survival mechanic makes sense to me for a potential future version of the game where you could actually play as a ghoul.

[@arminwolff1748]

Why? It is never explained in the games, just how and why some ghouls turn feral and some don't for a long time. Just some basic speculation about their brain slowly rotting away. Then again, there are ghouls that must have turned within *days* after becoming a ghoul or even going straight to feral (like the missing NCR troopers in New Vegas), and then you meet several pre-war ghouls even in the games that have been keeping their identities for an eternity... As ghoulification seems to be a mutation from radiation combined with some low level FEV exposure, AND ghouls in game are actually HEALED by radiation, it would imo make perfect sense that there is some biochemial remedy to postpone the turning feral process. And that this remedy is *not* universally known either, as there is really little in the sense of a nationwide news or information network... Oh, and I *do* consider myself a hardcore Fallout fan. Played em all since 1997. Actually, you could say that played them all since Wasteland in 1988 😛

[@Dimetropteryx]

@@JDCheng There's a ghoul kid that's been locked in a fridge since the bombs dropped, he certainly hasn't been doing any vials. It is a problem, but it's not one they couldn't fix with about one sentence of dialogue.

[@bpora01]

The thing is that according to the show Cooper trades Lucy for a 2 month supply of vials which they confirm is 60 vials or about 1 per day. Cooper has been around for 200 years meaning that at 1 vial per day he has needed over 70 thousand vials. And he's one ghoul. These vials don't appear easy to create so.... I don't know guys. This would appear to be one of if not the biggest post war economic activities right up there with clean drinking water.