Fallout 2×05 Review: “The Wrangler”

Lucy and the Ghoul have finally caught up with their quarry–but they’re further from justice than ever.

After so much great material with Maximus and the Brotherhood of Steel, we’ve been given another episode without any Maximus whatsoever. Where do I file my complaint?

It’s not that “The Wrangler” isn’t a great episode–it is. And it’s not that Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins aren’t delivering amazing performances–because they are. But Fallout is at its best when we have all three of the main characters contrasting each other with their complex moral universes, so things just feel wrong when Maximus isn’t around. Plus, Aaron Moten is consistently giving the best acting performance out of a show rife with fantastic performances, so I’m greedy for more.

Well, that’s not the episode we got.

We do get a little bit of Norm with his management trainees. We learn that Vault-Tech was doing something with a so-called “Forced Evolutionary Virus.” I haven’t played the games, but apparently this is how we end up with super-mutants. Yikes.

Norm is left on a bad note, looking kinda dead aside from one gurgle. I don’t think he’s dead. He just looks dead. Right?

Anyway, most of this episode belongs to Coop/The Ghoul.

In flashbacks, Cooper Howard has arrived in Vegas with his wife Barb. That puts him in Mr. House territory. We finally learn what’s up with the two Houses, which means, inevitably, more insane old man yaoi sexual tension. Why do Mr. House and Coop always look like they’re a heartbeat away from hate sex? Not complaining, mind you. Just observing.

Cooper has refused to kill Mr. House, even though Moldaver asserts it’s the only way to save the world. Mr. House, however, insists that he’s not the one who will drop the bombs–but it’s somehow tied to Janey and Barb.

What?

I’m not what you’d call a fan of Justin Theroux, but he’s really perfect as Mr. House. He’s great at being neurotic, bizarre, ominous, and a little bit scary all at once.

Learning that his family has something to do with the end of the world makes Cooper crash out hard. There’s absolutely nothing homoerotic about drunken Cooper riding Mr. House’s rocket, though, probably, I guess.

In our current timeline, Lucy and the Ghoul have safely made it inside the civilized part of New Vegas. The Ghoul gives Lucy some caps and points her toward Addictol so she can clean up off her drug addiction. He’s familiar with a good crash-out, after all.

Unfortunately, all the good vibes between Lucy and the Ghoul are on a countdown to disaster.

Since Addictol costs more caps than she has, Lucy tries to steal it. Then she finds the shop-owner was killed and replaced by an imposter. She tries to shoot to disable him–but kills instead.

After all that time spent carefully aiming for kneecaps and butts instead of heads, Lucy’s a killer after all. It’s played as an accident. She clearly didn’t intend to murder him, and he wasn’t a great person in the first place. But you have to wonder how Lucy, who is such a crack shot, could shoot someone fatally without intending to do so. At least on some level.

The Addictol makes Lucy very sick. She’s still throwing up when she gets back to the hotel room where she’s staying with the Ghoul. The show gives us about twelve seconds to appreciate Ghoul being gentle with Lucy (he actually touches her back without violence! his first non-violent touch since the war!), but then it turns out the Ghoul has only brought Lucy to New Vegas so he can barter with Hank for his family.

And boy does the Ghoul feel bad about it.

The editing on this episode is really cleverly done. There’s a lot of interpolation between flashback and current day, so we can see how Cooper is becoming The Ghoul emotionally as he takes on the burden of the end of the world via his family. Meanwhile, in modern day, The Ghoul is becoming more like Cooper again, and he’s emotional about surrendering Lucy. He’s looking almost on the brink of tears, giving her up. He hasn’t had a real relationship with a human in so long, and he’s messed it up.

In defense of The Ghoul, the exchange is “my family will die unless I send Lucy back to the Vault, where she will be safe,” so it doesn’t feel like a villainous decision. It’s a betrayal of Lucy, but one that’s easy to make.

But Lucy is definitely devastated by this, and she punches the Ghoul out the window for it (!!!!).

The episode ends with Cooper (in the past) having a terrible hangover, on the brink of divorcing his wife, and The Ghoul (in the present) hanging off a skewer, divorcing his travel buddy because he hurt her feelings.

My heart needs the next episode to begin with Maximus peeling shishkaGhoul off his stick and reassurance that Norm is fine.

This was an outstanding episode. The character development, mood, and editing is all top-tier. My emotions are wrecked.

Fallout season 2 is making me count the seconds between episodes every week and I love every minute of it. You can stream this show on Prime Video.

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