The Ghoul does not 100% work for me as a villain. I find his shock-value tough guy talk, the whole “I’m you, sweetie, you just give it a little time” business, to be the kind of stuff that makes “video game dialogue” an inherently pejorative phrase. I’m not sure what kind of lesson he’s trying to impart.
It was around the time he was calmly, methodically slicing off Lucy’s finger as payback for biting off one of his own that I realized this is the point: He’s not trying to teach Lucy anything. You want to believe he’s trying to toughen her up, shake her out of her naïveté, but you can’t square that with the way he pours his water out right in front of her, or gloats as she guzzles down radioactive animal piss or whatever the hell it is, or chops off her finger and then sells her to organ harvesters, presumably never to see her again.
He’s just being mean, because he’s a mean person. He’s a villain, as described by his old fully human self in a movie just prior to blowing a bad guy’s head off via “an old Mexican eulogy” about how a person “was ugly, strong, and he had dignity.” Cooper awards the baddie two out of three before putting one through his skull. But now, the Ghoul, too, is nothing more than ugly and strong. His dignity died out long ago, as his senseless cruelty to Lucy demonstrates.
I reviewed episode four of Fallout for Decider.
Tags: decider, fallout, reviews, TV, TV reviews