UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)

5 thoughts on “558 – Cotton Clad Calamity

  1. Yup, he’s a bastard XD

  2. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Are those pajamas available in XXXL in the gift shop?

  3. It’s been a while, so let me ask: Did we get a reason for him to WANT Susie dead? Not to backseat, but if we didn’t, I’m worried were about to move into “Stupid Evil” territory. Now, stupid happens, don’t get me wrong. It’s not bad storytelling for that to be the case here.

    You’ve just done a good job NOT having that be a driving factor, so the “Kill off the stars of my successful reality TV show.” seems shortsighted, otherwise. Oh, I guess I could be mistaken about the in-story reality TV show’s success. Like, if the company behind them is losing money, or they think a change in management at the ranch would make the whole thing more popular/profitable, then I can see the above scenario happening as well.

    I REALLY think I’m just forgetting something important, but that I don’t have time to deep dive to remind me of, hence the comment. >_<

    1. It certainly has been stretched out over quite a while, but there have definitely been hints from quite near the beginning that whoever is running the reality TV show definitely wants her dead.

      But I certainly don’t recall any reason why.

      1. Yeah it’s fair to not remember since it’s been a hot minute (many, many minutes) but if you feel like a refresher the most relevant bits would be the beginning of Episode 8 and the end of Episode 15. We haven’t explicitly spelled out exactly what The Exec means by his “side hustle” or who was on the other end of that phone call, though.

        I’m hoping that when the whole thing is eventually available it will make sense, or at least enough sense to have hung this narrative on.

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558 – Cotton Clad Calamity

What would you call this? Armchair assassination? Merk-from-home?

Well, Suzie ain't dead (or undead) quite yet, so we'll just have to see if his gloating is justifiable.

It’s pretty rad.

As a rule, I don’t binge watch shows. Maybe three episodes in one sitting would be my record before I feel the urge to take a break. Most of the time it’s a single dose.

I binged the Fallout tv show.

Oh not completely start to finish, I did take a break after Episode 1. But Episode 2-9 ended up as a seven hour or so marathon as I got sucked in. Wham, bam, allakazam. I wasn’t even particularly hyped for it, it looked pretty good in the trailers but then so did The Phantom Menace. You can’t trust trailers. And video game adaptations? The Last of Us was good and by accounts pretty faithful to the source, ditto for Arcane with League of Legends, but in the overall scheme of things they still seem like exceptions to the rule. And neither of those were dear to my heart the way the Fallout franchise is.

So I skipped the Amazon Prime premiere on April 11th, and only later as word of mouth started to build did I begin to allow myself some measure of excitement. Did they do it? Did the showrunners manage to bring the violent, darkly humorous world of Fallout to live-action life?

Well, I’m keeping this entry spoiler-free but I’ll just spoiler that bit and say: they did. Immaculately (if that word can be applied to post-apocalyptic grime).

Sometimes I’ve reviewed a series in this blog after watching a few episodes and gushed about it only to then see it go off the rails, but here I’ve now watched the whole thing not once, but twice. I even showed my 80 year old dad and my sister and they know nothing of the setting but were hooked into the story and that lovely balance of ridiculous and sublime that the series managed to faithfully recreate.

“They stole your plot!” my sister half-jokingly mused at one scene that certainly had a bit of Zombie-Ranch-ish flavor.

“Nah,” I replied. “This setting has been around since 1997. If anything it’s Fallout that inspired *me*.”

And then there’s the properties that inspired both, which you’ll definitely catch if you’re a fan of Spaghetti Westerns.

Anyhow, it’s not only fun and full of giddiness-inducing easter eggs, it’s got dramatic heft to go with the humor and is a real masterclass in “show, don’t tell” exposition even where some really weird things have to be introduced to an audience that might not necessarily take them for granted.

Fan of the Fallout franchise or not, watch it if you can. Though maybe try not to binge like I did, as the worst part is that there’s a long ways off until Season 2.