‘Fallout’ Season 2 Finale Ghoulishly Chases Our Attention, When It Could Be Winning Our Hearts

After a season focused on plot extensions and world-building, Episode 8, “The Strip,” succumbs to a troubling Hollywood trend: It’s easy to watch, and easier to forget.

[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “Fallout” Season 2, Episode 8, “The Strip” — the finale.]

Despite my initial reservations over “Fallout” Season 2, the finale cobbles together a fitting conclusion for our primary characters.

Lucy (Emma Purnell) fulfills her stated mission by bringing her father, Hank (Kyle MacLachlan), to justice. It’s reciprocal justice, sure, but foiling Hank’s plan to pacify the Wasteland via mind control is a clear win, just as leaving him in New Vegas to start anew — without his memories, surrounded by the very people whose minds he meant to wipe — is the twisted form of comeuppance “Fallout” prefers.

The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), meanwhile, just wanted to find his family, and he did. Kind of. With an assist from his digitized nemesis, Robert House (Justin Theroux), the cowboy formerly known as Cooper succeeds in locating his wife and daughter’s cryogenic chambers… only to discover they already left. A leftover postcard indicates they’re in Colorado, so that’s where the Ghoul will look next.

Withholding their reunion reeks of the kind of water-treading felt throughout the first five episodes, but Cooper’s search for his family is a series-long arc, not a seasonal one. When he says, “For the first time in 200 long-ass years, I know my family is alive,” the nihilistic antihero’s chosen optimism is enough progress to make his Season 2 journey rewarding. And it sure helps to have Goggins delivering the line — his earnest, patient performance puts the scene over the top.

If only the same could be said for the finale as a whole. While effective enough in getting its messages across, “The Strip” lacks heft in its big battle scene, tension in its father-daughter showdown, and resonance beyond what literally happens. That sounds may sound like a lot of mistakes, but they all come back to the same problem: over-editing. Episode 8 is chopped to shit, bouncing between its trio of stories with momentum-sapping speed and careless, imperceptible logic. The result is that even though all the pieces are in place for a sturdy season-ender, each climax is spread too thin to deliver their deserved impact.

This isn’t a “Fallout”-specific problem. It’s just the latest example of how Hollywood tries to cater to shrinking attention spans at the expense of sound, emotionally-driven storytelling. But before getting into all that, let’s take a look at why the Season 2 finale is easy to watch and easier to forget.

The long-hyped Deathclaws fight feels like the finale’s clearest example of what could’ve been. You’ve got Maximus (Aaron Moten) going toe-to-toe with dozens of mutant lizard-monsters. He’s wearing a Power Suit equipped with rockets, sure, but he’s also trying to protect an unprepared group of innocent Vegas residents, and there are so many Lizard-monsters.

As written by Karey Dornetto, the battle is a classic war of attrition: Maximus starts out hot — invigorated by his weaponry, which makes quick, bloody work of the first few Deathclaws — but the sheer number of Bowser-wannabes soon overwhelms him. He needs an assist from his one-armed best friend Thaddeus (Johnny Pemberton) and only survives thanks to a last-minute save from an unidentified sniper (the NCR Ranger from the game, “Fallout: New Vegas”). By the end, Maximus’ armor is shot, his body is battered, and he’s physically exhausted.

We know all that because we’re explicitly told as much: The armor sparks and beeps. Maximus is bleeding and breathing heavily. We get what’s going on (except for the significance of the whole sniper thing, that’s my bad). But do we feel it? Do we feel anything (you know, besides nerd pride in recognizing a scene from the video games)? It’s difficult to appreciate the cumulative effects of a lengthy, exhausting fight scene when said scene is divided into four sporadic chunks.

The beginning and end of the sequence work well enough — setting up the challenge and seeing it through — but the middle parts barely leave a dent. The main development in the second segment sees the New Vegas residents placing bets on Maximus’ survival, which is decent enough color (good to see Vegas hasn’t changed that much), but it never pays off. (Maybe we’ll see Thaddeus hauling around a crate of caps in Season 3?) Then the third part ends with a Deathclaw biting down on Maximus’ head, a cliffhanger that’s resolved when we cut back, 90 seconds later, and the monster is just… dead.

Not seeing how, exactly, Maximus survived may not matter in the long run, but it illustrates how “Fallout” treats the finale’s climactic action sequence: like it’s just there to kill time. Separating the eight-and-a-half minute battle into four parts may help to break up other plot lines and hold viewers’ attention via constant changes (more on that in a minute), but it neuters the emotional impact of Maximus’ accomplishment. When he’s relieved of duty (by the New California Republic), we’re supposed to feel as spent and triumphant as he does. Instead, Maximus’ big ending (complete with a flashback to his dead dad) only succeeds in fulfilling “Fallout’s” gore quota.

His story isn’t the only one tripped up by distrust. When the Ghoul saves Lucy from being turned into a zombie by her dad, the surprise of his nick-of-time arrival is undercut by the scene being split in half. One second, she’s being strangled by Hank’s mind-controlled thug, then we drift off to visit other characters for a few minutes, and then we return to that same moment, like nothing happened. The Ghoul shoots Lucy’s attacker 10 seconds after the scene resumes! Like, what? Why not draw out the tension? Why not live in Hank’s sick decision to brainwash his daughter into loving him? Why not keep us in that twisted perspective long enough to appreciate being saved from it?

I won’t pretend to know the answers. Only showrunners Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Graham Wagner, as well as episode director Frederick E.O. Toye, could say why the finale is so jumbled. But they’re not alone in making television that prioritizes holding our attention over earning it. The ongoing content era has devolved from Netflix producing TV shows as supplements for social media to something called “vertical dramas,” which gamify serialized stories by making you pay to watch each new episode. Thus is the fear invoked by TikTok: Some studios submit to its power, some conform in the hopes of stealing it.

Too few stand their ground. Whether it’s choppy editing that steals focus like a flashing light or built-in gimmicks that call for a close eye on elements other than the story, many modern TV shows feel like stimulus delivery devices instead of naturally unfolding narratives. “Stranger Things” fills its feature-length runtimes by creating an Easter egg hunt for ’80s movie references. “Landman” falls back on provocation (renewable energy is a scam! wokeness is a plague! women are annoying!) when episodes run short on drug deals, explosions, or weirdly sexualized family members. “The Beauty” ends whenever Ryan Murphy gets bored with the episode — the premiere runs 45 minutes, the next just 24 — and treats its characters with the same random intuition, sampling and dropping its human subjects as clinically as swiping left or right on a dating app.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe these choices aren’t driven by a fear of ceding audience attention to TikTok so much as by fear of letting a taut story go slack. Maybe fretting over fading attention spans is a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, even good shows like “The Pitt” rely on the classic protocols of a medical procedural to send new patients careening through the emergency room doors at a realistically rapid rate.

But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the latest TV sensation bucks the trend of bowing down to the attention economy. In fact, it flies in the face of conventional wisdom for what a streaming show should be. “Pluribus” is patient, not rushed. It’s methodical, not repetitive. It shows immense trust in its own story, as well as in the audience watching it play out. 

Vince Gilligan’s latest hit also shares an idea or two with “Fallout.” Just like Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn) rebels against “happiness” when it means ceding her sense of self, her individuality, her humanity, Lucy rejects her father’s plan to achieve post-apocalypse pacifism when it requires turning the Wastelanders into mindless servants. Both characters ask what price is too high for peace on Earth. Both characters weigh what they’re willing to sacrifice in order to survive. And both characters decide global harmony isn’t worth it if that means losing the chance to really live. 

Life is worth paying attention to, and life is exactly what’s missing from too much of our entertainment. It’s not enough to know a story clicks into place like a puzzle. We deserve to feel each satisfying snap. 

“Fallout” Season 2 is available on Amazon Prime Video. The series has already been renewed for a third season.