CAGED - Fallout and Twisted Metal

Note: Very mild spoilers abound. Radioactivity level as cold as penguin piss.

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm either without an electronic infrastructure or rade rash on my nethers.

This week our caged hams are glowing green and smell like consoles. Welcome, Amazon's Fallout, and Paramount's Twisted Metal!

So, depending on which religion you belong to, of the 2 of these, the world has ended. The upper class has claimed their VIP seating behind steel walls, and the rest have to fight, steal, claw, and eat their way through the new world.


THE OPTIMISTIC LEAD

Our protagonists are both bright eyed, happy-go-lucky sorts, who get a big wrench thrown into their works.

Fallout's Lucy (Ella Purnell) has never known anything but her life as a 'vaulter', and is living her best one. A wedding night snafu results in a pile of corpses, and her father kidnapped, so Lucy sets out to the nuclear wasteland. Armed with her charm and a dart gun, her mission is to find her father and go home.

Twisted Metal's John Doe (Anthony Mackie) is known as a Milkman, a driver making supply runs between safe havens. When a mystery women makes an offer he can't refuse, John sets out farther than he'd normally go for one last run.


THE BOUND TO GET THEMSELVES KILLED LOVE INTEREST

Along the way, our heroes encounter 2 lost souls en route to likely self destruction.

Lucy's is Maximus, a rather sketchy member of The Brotherhood Of Steel, a band of robo-warriors bent on snatching some of that sweet Armageddon power for themselves. Max is merely a squire, who opts to deceive his way into a position of power. He shows glimpses of decency, but mostly comes off pretty heartless.

John's tagalong, dubbed "Quiet", is a marauder who has had a string of bad luck, resulting in the death of her brother. She's feral and bent on revenge when she meets John.

Both are really good and well acted characters, but I don't like the reduction of them to love interests. In an apocalyptic scenario, I can appreciate the allure of a warm body, but I can't help but feeling that a deeper friend bond would have served these characters better. John and Quiet pair pretty well together, but I'm not fond of the Maximus character at all. His motives are all over the place, and I feel like Purnell has to do all of the heavy lifting with the coupling scenario.


THE FREAK OFF THE LEASH

This area is where both shows shine bright.

Fallout got blessed beyond words when they managed to reel in Walton Goggins, finally shedding his "that guy" image into full blown leading man. In this he plays Cooper, a western actor turned apocalypse victim. 200 years after the fall, he's kept alive via a chemical cocktail, known as The Ghoul. Likely using his previous life's niche as a lifestyle choice, Goggins perfectly inhabits the western drifter to perfection. Normally flashbacks to "before the event that made the show interesting" can be tedious, but Walton's bearing witness to the beginning of the end is just as engaging as the rest of the show.

Twisted's resident freak among freaks is the wonderfully maniacal Sweet Tooth (voiced by Will Arnett), a beast of a man in a mangled clown mask. Driving around the wastelands of Vegas in an ice cream truck full of machetes is really a sight to behold. Arnett voices the character with both the curiosity of a child, and the psychotic glee when he gets to do what he does best.


THE HELLSCAPE

Both worlds presented in these shows are different, but very much the same.

Fallout presents this new world with a slightly more serious tone. Likely due to the video games having much more world building, it's given a lot more content to work with than TM. The soundtrack is appropriately somber, though at times some extra musical intensity would have been ideal. The residents are your typical who's who of cannibals, radioactivity strickened citizens, and just straight up murderers.

TM definitely takes the more fun approach, using 90s pop gems to set the stage, John's wit and the nonstop car action really gives this one more adrenaline. Despite being an apocalypse, the citizens of this one seem to be more well-to-do than Fallout's hopeless cases. Leave it to the world ending to bring out everyone's inner survivalist, I guess.


FINAL THOUGHTS

Fallout really is a well crafted series. It's kind of a shame that it may not get the viewership it deserves, with some discarding it as just another video game series, or others being turned off by the extreme violence. Amazon did make the right decision on content though. The actors elevate the material, and the story does have its twists and turns along the way. Season 2 sets up some really great plot line potential. I could also watch a standalone series of the twisted snake oil salesman all by himself.

Twisted Metal could have easily taken the Death Race approach to the generic cars vs cars plot the game is known for. I appreciate the terrific world building, and the various factions John and Quiet encounter. The show doesn't border on ridiculous, it takes a big leap over the line and takes a big piss all over everything. I truly mean that as a compliment. It's so much fun, and I can't wait for another season.

So the moral of the story? Rich assholes are likely going to sink our ship, but we will prevail, even if it means a little bit of radioactivity. Just have a Nuka Cola and relax.