Escapist Routes #37

We’re back to a normal (“normal”) TV week, and I’ve started Pluribus. And given that it is most effective if you go in unspoiled — or, at least, that spoilers for the specifics of the premise should be an opt-in experience — I’m going to put that section at the bottom, and then mark out the bit where I’m going to get into spoilers. For you. I do it all for you, Mulder.

Fallout, season 1

I watched Fallout when it dropped last April, at a time when I owned a copy of Fallout 4 that I had never opened. I’ve since played it all the way through, and thought it would be interesting to revisit the TV series ahead of its second season, this time with context.

Obviously, Fallout-the-streaming-series holds up even if you don’t know the game, although I do recall spending at least two episodes trying to figure out where the atompunk pseudo-'50s alternate history diverged from reality. Answer: it actually doesn’t matter.

Truly, the difference knowing the game makes is that I have a new appreciation for how much video game nonsense made it into the show. Not just the humour, but things like using bottle caps as currency, and injections which heal all injuries. No one in the Fallout writers room was going, “Okay, we need to be realistic here.” Video game rules apply.

Which is not to say the series adheres too strictly to video game canon — the idea that ghouls need regular infusions of chems to stay sentient is new, and doesn’t really hold up against what we see in the game. But I also don’t care? This is a franchise where dogs are effectively immortal because no one wants to think about the alternative.

This is also a streaming drama where eyeballs are fair game. Seriously. I had a broken ankle when I watched it last year, so I was particularly struck by all the gratuitous violence against feet, but eyeballs fare nearly as badly. If the absurdity of the video game world is intact, so is the violence — and in much higher definition.

What made it particularly worth rewatching was the characters and the story, which are all entirely new to the setting. Ella Purnell and Aaron Moten are extremely charming and do a lot of heavy lifting as vault dweller Lucy and Brotherhood of Steel aspirant Maximus. Their characters have great chemistry and traits which are equal parts strength and weakness, which makes them fun.

But then there is the older generation, and they are all centuries older — Kyle MacLachlan as Lucy’s father, Sarita Choudhury as wasteland warlord Moldaver, and most of all, Walton Goggins as Cooper Howard/the Ghoul, a pre-war movie star turned deathless monster.

My most hinged and normal opinion is that Goggins is only attractive when he’s made up as the Ghoul. I’m sorry, some men were not meant to have a nose. Although actually I think it’s because the Ghoul’s teeth are yellowed and therefore less alarming than Goggins’s pearly whites. (This is extra unfair because Walton Goggins has dental implants because he lost his real teeth in an accident — for once, his unnaturally bright smile is not the result of Hollywood’s war on normal faces. But there you have it.)

Anyway, we go on a full journey with Howard/the Ghoul, whose (late?) ex-wife was deeply involved in the events which created this whole post-apocalyptic situation, and his story sheds a lot of light on the history of the Fallout universe. Did Vault Boy need an origin story? Turns out yes.

Where Fallout rejects the idea of realism in terms of radiation, dog mortality and the amount of injury a human foot can take, it also uses its setting to tell a story that feels emotionally true, about democracy, privilege and even family violence. So I’m glad I gave it a second round, I’m eager for season 2, and I guess eventually I’ll buy and play Fallout: New Vegas.

Down Cemetery Road, season 1, episodes 4 and 5

We’re past the midpoint in the series, and everything is chugging along nicely. Sarah has transformed from a hot mess into a mostly competent mess; Zoe continues to Emma Thompson her way through Oxford and London, infiltrating medical clinics and stealing laptops as she goes. The bad guys continue to be bad, and are also getting their personnel management tips from ChatGPT, which is a different sign of evil.

Mostly these episodes give us more insight into Downey, the former soldier for whom the missing child is being used as bait. Last time I watched, he saved Sarah’s life and then kidnapped her; now she’s Stockholm syndroming her way into his heart. Is that a reverse Stockholm syndrome? It doesn’t matter, because Stockholm syndrome is fake, but the important thing is that SHE says they’re a team, and he feels differently but also can’t shake her off.

I will say that at this point, Down Cemetery Road is no Slow Horses, but it is its own thing. Mostly. And I appreciate that, but I also have a new appreciation for how much the Slow Horses ensemble are interesting and (semi) competent in their own right. Sarah is okay as a POV character, but by this point in the story, she is less interesting than Zoe and Downey. If I was the sort of person who gave star reviews to TV shows, I’d say Down Cemetery Road is on course to be three stars and no more.

The Morning Show, season 4, episodes 9 and 10

Welcome to The Morning After The Morning Show, the fake morning show where we celebrate making it to the end of The Morning Show’s fourth season. Joining me one last time, it’s Liz!

Thanks, Liz! It’s so good to be here. We made it!

We did! Did the finale justify all that has gone before?

Absolutely not. From the opening scene of the penultimate episode, where Bradley enters Belarus and faces a cruel, inhumane border control regime exactly identical to that of the US under the Obama administration, I knew we were in for a rough ride.

But Liz, she’s white! And blonde! And a journalist!

Am I allowed to make a jerk-off motion in this time slot?

I’m not sure that a fake morning show in a newsletter is the appropriate medium, but go ahead.

Look, I feel like there’s a way this whole subplot could have worked on a character level. Bradley feels terrible guilt for handing Claire over to the FBI, so she goes to Belarus, puts herself in danger, and this time refuses to betray her source.

But none of that is on the screen. I had to do the work, because no one else seems to care that Bradley gave up a source. It’s old news.

And meanwhile, Alex is also going down an ethical rabbit hole by trying to make a deal with a sanctioned Russian oligarch to get Bradley out. Why? She says she feels responsible for Bradley being in Belarus, but they’ve been at odds for most of the season, this trip was unauthorised, the story Bradley is working on has had no editorial oversight…

Is it guilt over the Iranian fencer issue? That Alex wanted to save her, and instead had to let the State Department do all the work?

I guess? Once again, we’re doing the work of making the show make sense.

I do wonder if season 4 is another victim of the 2023 strikes. This show has always been a hot mess, but it’s usually been more or less internally consistent.

Or at least fun.

Yeah. Or maybe it’s that the stories which were over the top and fun a few years ago are a little too real now.

Speaking of which, I kind of owe Alex and Bradley an apology, because if there’s one thing I’ve realised from every single piece of Olivia Nuzzi discourse over the last week, it’s that, if anything, The Morning Show is too flattering a depiction of the American media landscape.

Okay, which Morning Show character would have an affair with RFK Jr?

That’s a trick question, the answer is all of them.

Except, of course, Amanda (Tig Notaro), who makes her triumphant return this week, and it’s refreshing to have a character who manages to both own her amorality and have even a shred of common sense. I guess we’re meant to be shocked and appalled that she sabotaged the oligarch deal, but actually, I think all billionaires should have an emotional support lesbian whose job is to stop them from doing stupid shit.

Speaking of billionaires and oligarchs…

Oh boy.

I just find it kind of off-putting that, through this whole season, the real villains have been foreigners. Celine comes in out of nowhere and turns out to have masterminded events going back to before the show started. Paul Marks is a friendly billionaire, unlike those bad and corrupt Russian oligarchs.

But I also think I’m reading too much into it — mostly I think that season 4 of The Morning Show and season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds have the same problem.

Okay, you’re gonna have to unpack that.

I think, in part, both suffered from the strikes and the impact that had on the writing, which in both cases was notably poorer than in previous seasons. But also, both are very much products of the Biden era, and the sort of wishy-washy centrism it engendered. And now the times have changed, the culture has radically shifted, and suddenly, “looking like you’re saying the right things while actually saying nothing” isn’t enough anymore.

The Morning Show has always presented itself as a show that’s About Something, while having nothing meaningful to say. That used to have a sort of unintentional charm, but now the charm has worn off.

Pluribus, season 1, episodes 1 to 4

Pluribus is a wild ride, and honestly? By the end of episode 2, I wanted to get off.

Which is not to say it’s bad — I think it’s very good — but I was unprepared for how deeply I would dislike the main character. In promo interviews, Vince Gilligan has been talking about how he was tired of anti-heroes, and he wanted to write a show about a good person.

And I was like, “Okay, Vince, and is this good person in the room with us?” I spent the better part of the first two episodes, and a good chunk of ep 3, hoping that Carol would die and put us out of our misery. Which is kind of a problem, because she’s not only the protagonist, she’s almost the only individual character in this entire series so far.

And yet, by the time we were into episode 4, I was completely ride or die for Carol. I would kill for her, or at least get into fights with Redditors to defend her honour.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here is a non-spoilery reaction to the first four episodes of Pluribus: the first episode is outstanding, although also so tense that, after weeks of carefully avoiding spoilers, I had to get out my phone and look at the summary on Wikipedia. The second episode is … good, but I did not enjoy watching it, save for the cold open. The third episode pulled it all together and left me feeling better about where the series is going, and by episode four, I was fully on board.

Okay, it’s all spoilers from here on out.

Okay, so. The bare premise is that, for some reason, everyone in the world is suddenly happy except Carol. I’ve always been like, “That sounds flimsy as hell, but I assume there’s gonna be some sort of Twilight Zone nonsense happening.”

And sure enough, the series basically opens with some Twilight Zone nonsense. Astronomers detect a message from space, and eventually realise it’s an RNA code. Naturally, because humanity is deeply curious and also stupid, scientists start building the RNA strands and injecting them into rats, and the “virus” (it’s “something like a virus”, we are eventually told) crosses over to humans — slowly, at first, and then all at once, creating a hive mind with all of humankind’s memories and experiences.

This was where I had to check Wikipedia, because I love this sort of outbreak narrative, but ALSO I need to know where it’s going.

This was also the moment I remembered that I did not click with Breaking Bad for most of the first season, and dipped out of Better Call Saul after the first episode, and maybe, just maybe, I should have tried to hold off and binge Pluribus.

Instead, I tried to turn off the part of my brain that asks annoying questions like, “So what’s this ABOUT? What is this a METAPHOR for?” Because the answer was, “Oh, okay, it’s about an artificial virus that was created in a lab and is going to turn everyone into mindless sheeple except one brave white woman who knows the truth,” and frankly I do not need that sort of nonsense in 2025.

Unfortunately then we meet Carol, the protagonist. Everyone has been raving about Rhea Seehorn for years, and she is indeed very good, but my first impression of Carol is that I hate her. Because we meet her in a Barnes and Noble, where she is touring her latest, wildly successful romantasy novel, reading aloud to an audience of people who look like me and my friends, and her contempt for her readers is palpable.

So I hate Carol, but trust me, the feeling is mutual, and then the annoying part of my brain started trying to figure out if the series itself holds these readers in contempt as well. And honestly, I don’t know what’s in Vince Gilligan’s heart, but I would not say it was a sympathetic portrayal of romantasy fans, and honestly owes a lot to stereotypes: they’re dowdy, fat, middle-aged, weird, pedantic, entitled and — in the case of one of the few men in the audience — gay.

Regardless of intent, now we had multiple layers of subtext that need unpacking, and I was not having fun.

Now, of course, there is more to Carol than her thinly-veiled dislike of her audience and the “serious” book that’s “not ready” to be shared. Her manager, Helen, turns out to be her partner; we eventually learn that her series was conceived as an f/f romance, but Carol changed the love interest’s gender — and that this decision was made in the ‘90s, so she’s been at this for a really long time. (I do not think it’s entirely coincidental that Carol’s main competitor for shelf space turns out to be Diana Gabaldon, another long-time pro who is said to be difficult.) By episode four, we learn that she was sent to a conversion therapy “camp” in her teens, and has a history of substance abuse, including heroin. Carol does not make a good first impression, but she reluctantly reveals herself to be a complex and interesting character.

I don’t think it’s a mistake to slow-drip this information — an expositional info-dump would simply be bad writing — but speaking just for myself, I’m glad that I held off watching long enough to get the first few episodes in quick succession. Getting to know Carol over three or four weeks instead of one would have been unpleasant — I deal with a lot of Prickly Geniuses Who Are Insufficiently Appreciated in real life, and I do not recommend the experience. And Helen, whose role in their marriage seems to be indulging and softening Carol’s foibles dies in the initial spread of the virus, leaving Carol to manage her grief and navigate the new world alone.

Speaking of problematic subtexts: is killing Helen a use of the Bury Your Gays trope?

Jessie Gender says yes, and I think it’s worth reading her whole thread on the subject.

I agree with her, but I also don’t — I don’t think the story works if Carol has a loved one who is part of the hive mind. Carol needs this isolation, and it’s an extension of the isolation she imposes on herself by staying in the closet and hiding her true inspirations.

But at the same time, with Carol alone, she’s not a fun character to watch at first. She’s a tangle of free-floating rage and grief, and that’s fair, but also it’s not terribly different from what we saw of her before Helen died. I’m usually a champion of cranky women in fiction, especially if they’re over 40, but “rich white woman whose biggest problem up until now was her own choices” is not a sympathetic character. Especially in 2025.

This finally starts to change in episode 3, first with a flashback where Carol’s shell cracks just a little, and finally with a scene at the end, where her attitude goes from pure rage to something more analytical. That I can get behind. By episode 4, she is a fully-realised character, and like I said, I would kill for her. But getting to that point is a whole journey, and while it’s worthwhile, I wonder if maybe we could have taken a slightly different route.