YES! Finally this scene is being talked about!
This cold open is actually my favorite of the season. It shows that Cooper is indeed multi-faceted. You'd think that he'd be the one to be so callous and immune im taking anothers life. I mean, we literally just watched him take down Filly and he was in delight the entire time.
So when he shows up to that family and their homestead, Cooper's still toying around. But still he see's that for just as many men, there's children. He's a father still looking for his own so I think that his intentions weren't to initially kill the teenager and that he really wanted to give him a chance to live without avenging his older brother that was killed in Filly. In my re-watch, I noticed that Cooper let the father take lead of the conversation with his son but it wasn't until the teenager stood taller and really looked Cooper in the eye that Cooper knew he wasn't going to live. The fact that Cooper could have (should have?) killed the father and the daughter if he was really worried about revenge also stood out to me too. He just walked away.
To wrap it up, why the encounter between the family and Cooper stuck out to me is in the very end of the scene, you see that he's been slightly shifted by the encounter. When he picks up his chem to inhale, just briefly, complete and humane sadness for the murder just washes over him -- you can see it in his eyes and the relief he finally gets. I like to think that Cooper does feel some type of remorse, maybe even some reflection too? Despite wandering around for 200 years, there still is *some* type of shock for having to kill, especially when it comes toa child who is technically only trying to do right by his slain brother. To me, "The Ghoul" isn't even a real person, moreso a toughened, drawn out persona that has allowed Cooper to put distance between himself and his Wasteland troubles; the *real* Cooper Howard is a man who still unfortunately feels -- that's why he allows Lucy to travel along, why he plays around with Max's power armor in Filly, why he comforts Dogmeat, and its why he lets Roger enjoy a nice memory before he too is shot down.
It really is a blink and you'll miss it...or perhaps maybe I was a bit too high while watching lol
>To me, "The Ghoul" isn't even a real person, moreso a toughened, drawn out persona that has allowed Cooper to put distance between himself and his Wasteland troubles; the *real* Cooper Howard is a man who still unfortunately feels
Are you ready for this? >!Cooper doesn't have much of an accent when he's in pre-war form. Even when he's talking to Matt Berry's character, he has a very light accent. He's totally just playing his old cowboy persona. You are 100% on the money.!<
There's a reason his actor says they're two different characters. Cooper 'plays' the Ghoul to stay sane. In the Filly scene he even 'breaks character' when Maximus knocks him off the scaffolding and onto the ground.
And more specifically, the character they had him playing after the rewrites. The audience wants to see that a good man can be pushed to violence.
>!We don't know exactly what happened with his wife yet, but strings were probably pulled to end him up where he is. How much you wanna bet Vault Tec rewrote his entire life story the same way they did his character's?!<
I think the Ghoul even has moments as well where he doesn’t even have the accent like when he yells fuck after losing the drugs or when he gets hit and yells out in pain
There’s another layer. The whole concept of cowboys as we know them today is a fabrication of Hollywood and the capitalist, individualism ideals of the Cold War. He is playing a character which was a fabrication of the system which destroyed the world and that character is how he survives.
This plays into the internal conflict he has in the past over using his catchphrase “Feo, feurte y formal” before killing someone
We later see him use the phrase without remorse after killing someone in the present
Walton Goggins absolutely killed this role. It could have been such a cartoony, throwaway performance: the outrageous makeup, videogame origin, intentionally campy dialogue. But he went above and beyond and crushed it.
I noticed it too. It wasn't just a casual murder of an innocent. Cooper realized that the teenager was going to hunt after him; the young man wasn't subtle about his future intentions - his body language, eye contact, refusal to answer, etc.
Want to hunt after Cooper to avenge my brother? Absolutely! It would be really hard for me to hide that fact as well. Savvy Cooper would riddle me with holes even faster than he did in this scene 😄
I had this exact same rationale regarding Cooper. It looks to me he's still playing his cowboy character from his movie. I think that's part of why the "feo, fuerte y formal" has been so significant. Cooper is the one who questioned if he really had to kill him regarding that scene. The Ghoul is the persona of him that does it.
Which i feel like is supported by the same examples you mentioned above and the one he's in the super duper mart and finds the tape. It shows him watching the same scene again but the finished version where he shoots. Cooper is still playing that character. It's kind of the only tie left he has to his prewar life. Unable to reconnect with his family for over 200 years. Acting is all he has left. Potentially part of his way of coping by masking himself as his character from the movie.
👏👏👏
Omg don't even get me started on "Feo, fuerte, y formal". I have a strong suspicion that throughout the series we'll see continue to see how its reflected in pre/post Cooper. We know that Cooper has some issues with how his acting career is portrayed and that in some moments he feels so strongly that he speaks up and questions things. That quote being repeated over and over just proves that Cooper has more oompf to him that meets the eye. There is a distinct, furthering difference between Actor Cooper/Cooper Howard/"The Ghoul".
I know what you guys are saying, and in many aspects I agree, but I feel like what gets overlooked with this line of reasoning is that “feo, fuerte, y formal” is pretty largely an on the nose joke because it’s quite literally describing a non-feral ghoul. it just means “ugly, strong, and formal”
Its also a play on the fact that throughout hollywood history theyd make up some bs about a saying from another culture that they just *made up* and what it literally means just *barely* resembles what they claim it does
I think the show just likes fucking with its audience. Like how >!it spends two episodes building up Vault 4 to have this sinister secret only for it all to be setup to the joke that Vault 4 is fine!<. It’s a good way to keep us on our toes in regards to what’s important story wise and what isn’t
I thought it was also very interesting how the "finished" version of the movie is very clearly stitched together from the take we saw where he refused to shoot. You see him raise the gun, hesitate, hard cut to the dude's head getting aerated, hard cut back to Cooper making the slight grimace and lowering the gun - which in the earlier scene was the face he made when he decided not to shoot. We don't see him pull the trigger.
So it seems the implication is that he never actually fired that gun. Hollywood transformed his act of mercy into the illusion of violence.
I didn't notice Cooper's look of distress until my second time watching, but you are right. I thought it was an excellent touch, and it sells me on the idea that the Ghoul is just a role Cooper took on as a survival tool.
I took it the whole time he was a good guy, he just has to do what he has to do. The show references the game, but the characters act a bit more realistic (feels odd to day that). They don't get multiple play throughs, each one IS the playthrough. He isn't good karma or bad karma, just a good guy put into a place where you have to be some level of shit to survive. He saw a family, a child, a brother trying to make his big bro proud, a father doing the best he could. Filly was a general shit hole of degenerates (based on the way it was spoken of) and he was fighting people actively trying to kill him over the bounty. I feel like reveling in the chaos just gives him an escape from the pain. He's acting like you and the others said. Playing a roll is easier than living it.
Great analysis, and just to build on The Ghoul leaving the father and daughter alive - The little girl is all the dad has left after losing two sons. Coop knows that man won’t go revenging anytime soon. Plus the parallel between Coop and his own daughter.
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> It really is a blink and you'll miss it...or perhaps maybe I was a bit too high while watching lol
Nail on the head, mate. There's a few moments in the show where he gives this little weakness in his eyes. They're brief and easy to miss, but they really sell his emotions. Walton Ghoulgins probably gave the kid who plays his daughter the same advice to do the same during that scene in the beginning. BEcause she does the exact same expression, perfectly.
I agree. I hated then loved this scene after I thought about it.
The Ghoul has had 200 years of fucked up shit—he knew from experience how it goes when someone wants revenge.
At the same time, the dude had been around long enough to know how these things work. He'd likely had a lot of brothers hunt him down. By egging it on, he's making it happen in a situation where he has control. It's a moment where he's definitely not a good guy, but you can see the reasoning.
This. You don’t make it over 200 years (ghoul healing helps) in the wasteland without controlling confrontations and learning from your experiences.
The Ghoul plays his hand well, and he gives the potential threats —the father and the son— a chance to identify their intentions.
It’s complicated because the kid was going to attack the Ghoul, but the Ghoul basically chose the “Your brother is a little bitch and you are too.” dialogue from New Vegas.
It’s not complicated at all, it’s just as you said: the kid was *going* to attack the Ghoul.
The Ghoul simply used rhetoric as a means to speed towards an end — eliminating the vengeful threat.
Kid could have just caught some verbal shade thrown by the Ghoul; instead, he caught a deadly projectile.
The father seems smart enough to know when he's outmatched. He tried to de-escalate the situation. He also still has a daughter to look out for who seems quite young. She is more likely to come back in a few years for revenge after her dad dies and she's left alone.
All I’m saying is by the ghouls logic he used to kill the younger brother, he should have killed the rest of the family. He doesn’t know for sure what the father will do/think in a few years, so by his own logic he should have killed him. That same logic applies to the daughter as you said.
You’re right he doesn’t know for sure but the brother was hot that whole scene. Dad was sad but wanted to salvage the family he still had. If he also wanted some he was hiding it well
>Dad was sad but wanted to salvage the family he still had.
I think this is key. The Ghoul just killed part of that family. Who knows how that might change the dad's mind?
Fair but he’s no psychic. The kid validated his revenge theory straight up. Dad still stayed cool after watching his son die. It would have been meaningless if he killed dad after that
Would The Ghoul really have had enough time to make that judgement? If your son is killed in front of you, of course you're going to be upset about it and be so overcome with grief that you don't really pay attention to what's happening around you. The anger part comes later.
100%. But he walked into that room with the kid already angry. The revenge part was imminent. I don’t think one could survive in the wasteland with the mindset that killing anybody is literally always going to risk revenge. Either you would have to be a machine and literally kill everyone who ever interacts with you (which would bring a lot of revenge) or never kill a single person, in which case you would be run over by raiders in a second. It’s a tough balance to maintain, but 200 years is plenty of time to practice
The dad is going to get weaker and less skilled as he ages. The young boy would get stronger, more clever, and more confident. I get what you’re saying but I don’t think it’s a valid criticism in this specific instance. The kid is much more of a future threat than the father.
I think the girl will be a real threat now. Two brothers killed by a guy she showed kindness to by feeding him (and well by the looks)? A father left devastated emotionally and a family left with less hands to make ends meet?
Give it ten years or the death of her father and she'll be on the Ghoul's tail with the knowledge of what he's capable of.
The Ghoul may be the bad karma character, but he's not a monster. He doesn't kill in cold blood, from what I can recall. The son tried to draw on him, and paid for it with his life.
He isn't sadistic. He won't harm others for no reason. He is ultimate pragmatic.
He murders the son because he assesses that he could be a threat in the future. He leaves the father and the daughter alive because he doesn't see them as high risk.
He just blows foot off doctor, to make sure he won't run away, even though he could just as easily take "dead" bounty.
By his demeanor I reckon he would eagerly share serum with his friend. But he is out, so he provides him with last happy memory before mercy killing him. But then pragmatism kicks in and he makes jerky because it's wasteland and nothing can go to waste.
Because the father isn't going to spend the rest of his life hunting the Ghoul down. The brother would have.
That's what the Ghoul was doing - goading the brother to either hurry up and just do it, or back down. If he backed down like the father, he likely never would've hunted the Ghoul down.
I believe he was one of the guys who dug him up, who would've had info about the orders they were given. The ghoul lab had no connection to Moldaver or the primary plot.
It couldn’t have been one of the ghoul lab guys, weren’t they both killed by the ghouls Lucy released? And the reason he’s there is because he shot the brother but the hole went through the paper with the location
🧟 eating 🥣 habits need explanation please 🙏. I remember ghouls would sell food , but I don’t remember seeing them eat. I hope there is more explanation at least online about ghoullification and the perks associated with it 🫥
it's implied they don't have to drink or eat because of the ghoul kid in the fridge. But some say he went into hibernation, or that he hadn't been there since the bombs but only since the raiders attacked a week before
But i haven't really played fo4
in fallout 1 they die if you take their water chip and don't fix their well
In new vegas there's a ghoul that says he survived by eating rad roaches
I think its the Bad (Lee Van Cleef) when he says he always gets his job done and kills the bounty (a father) and the son who comes with a gun to protect his dad
If the kid hadn't gone for a gun and let it go it wouldn't have happened. You can claim he egged him on, but he has been alive for over 200 years. He knows how these things play out from experience. He had to push the issue now to see if they were cool or if he needed to nip the problem in the bud.
Lets be real, that kid had no idea if The Ghoul was going to kill him or not. He killed his brother and probably thought he was next with the way the Ghoul was talking,
I’m trying to remember which western this happens in, I wanna say the good the bad and the ugly with Van Cleffe attempting to gauge if the kid will grow up and seek revenge or not.
It’s been a minute, so it could be another movie, but this definitely felt like an homage.
It is.
Which I feel was a very strong inspiration for this season. The way the characters are introduced is an exact mirror to the introduction of the characters in that movie, And they all parallel very nicely as well ( Lucy is the good, the Ghoul is the bad, A maximus is the ugly, Which in the movie was initially a reference to Tuco's mannerisms, But was actually a comment on his moral ambiguity, Much like how maximus is still trying to find his moral compass).
so being correct about the kid drawing a gun on him makes him evil?
i don't recall if we saw what they referenced, him killing his brother or whatever but the kid was probably going to draw on him had he brought it up or not
the thing with the girl was just editing, he wasn't really doing anything to explicitly imply he was eating the girl that was all done with editing and tension
I mean he invades their home, brags about killing one of the kids and then eggs the other one to avoid future issues, I get the necessary reasoning needed for the wasteland survival but I'm pretty sure that if this was in the game it would absolutely mark it as bad karma, just because it was necessary does not make it good so by the logic of the game it has to be bad karma
I don’t agree he was simply “egging” the kid to draw the gun. The way I saw it, the Ghoul needed information from the family but couldn’t just walk away because the kid could grow up to avenge his dead brother, so the Ghoul played his cards to see if the kid was the type to do that. Rather than be the mouse in an unwanted game of cat and mouse, the Ghoul played a “why wait when you can kill me now” card.
i think that living in the wasteland for so long the ghoul has now learned that if you hurt someone sooner or later they will try to hurt you back and so it is better to take care of all your enemies immediately
He baited the kid into it. There were a lot of ways he could have safely walked out of there while maintaining his threat of violence to ensure his safety. Instead, he chose to antagonize the kid into a no-win situation.
This might also be a shout out to Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant's character from Justified, and rival to Walton Goggins' character Boyd Crowder), eho had a tendency to engineer 'justified' gun fights.
I don’t understand the people saying this wasn’t a bad karma situation. He came to their home and nonchalantly admitted to murdering this kid’s brother. Then goaded the kid into drawing the gun so he could kill him right there. It doesn’t matter if the kid would’ve came later down the road for revenge, he would’ve been justified.
The father had 3 children and now he’s down to 1 and that’s all because of the ghoul’s self-serving actions.
It's the same thing where people try to say that Gul Dukat was 'complicated' in DS9, or that Walter White wasn't 'that bad' of a guy in Breaking Bad.
It's a charismatic, well written and well acted character, so people tend to side with them.
This is probably one of the most outright evil acts in Season one (let alone bad karma), and it serves to show just how far Coop has fallen from his former self. Everything else The Ghoul does can in some way be justified up until this point. This is killing for expediency, and the Ghouls skill set established to this point has clearly demonstrated it isn't necessary.
He did the show with the letter because he wanted to kill the kid, everything he did was to antagonize and provoke. He just forced the kid to make the first move to ease the guilt on that tiny piece of Coop left.
The only person defending themselves here is the kid. The Ghoul broke into his home, threatened his family, admitted to murdering his brother, and then basically said "It's me or you kid".
Proactive defence isn't a thing, that's called murder.
>It doesn’t matter if the kid would’ve came later down the road for revenge, he would’ve been justified.
So it’d still be bad karma if he kills the kid 5 years down the road when the kid comes to take revenge? If so, there’s literally nothing Ghoul could do that wouldn’t be bad karma
At the end of the day the kid would be coming for revenge because of the selfish decision Cooper made. He killed the kid’s brother for an address. Cooper is completely in the wrong in this situation.
I don't get how people are saying this isn't bad karma, good karma would have been walking away and just risking the revenge later, neutral would have been wounding the kid. That's kinda the point of Fallout, that being good is hard and dangerous, Coop did the understandable thing for himself but it's bad by the very definition of the Fallout Karma system, there are many examples in the games gaining bad karma for goading someone into a fight and killing them.
Lucy and Maximus for instance with the Fiends risked a lot trying to play nice and almost died because of it, but that's the risk of being good and Coop has a family to find.
I like that at one point he was a good guy and didnt want to kill the bandit in the movie, he wanted to leave him dignity, then Lucy gives him the vials and teaches him the golden rule, letting him keep his dignity and he goes and watches that movie
I think that was the turning point for him. He didn't immediately go full redemption, but he remembered who he was and what he was about, rather than continuing to wallow in the persona of The Ghoul.
I'm glad he didn't just flip a switch. I'm sure by the end of season 3 he'll have regained some of his former humanity but that should take a long time.
If that kid hadn't tried to pull his gun, the ghoul would probably have let him live.
The ghoul is very cut and dry guy but respects people who exceed or go against his expectations. If the kid had not reached for the gun, I reckon he would have left. He wouldn't care if someone was hunting him down, he wanted to see if he was dumb enough to draw on him while he had the advantage. He did and paid the price.
Big thing I don't see anyone mentioning, the ghoul has been around for over 200 years at this point. That's multiple lifetimes just for us. In the wasteland he could have seen multiple generations of families come and go. I guarantee he has come back to a place to find someone he used to know and found out they died 20 years ago and he's talking to their great grandkids.
When you see how little the wasteland cares about life on that kind of a level and over that kind of time, well. It's easier to justify killing people. The way that kid was acting he was going to get killed in 3-5 years tops anyway. The Ghoul preferred to just get it done now instead of potentially having a sticky situation if the kid did come after him.
It's a very cynical and inhuman viewpoint but surprise! That's literally his character.
Eh. He’s just an embodiment of the unforgiving environment he’s been in for 200 years. He’s learned a lot of harsh lessons. The boy reached for the gun and got shot.
Bit of a side note but I met Erik Estrada at Wondercon in Anaheim. Dude was just wandering around his booth and he just came up and talked to me and my girlfriend. Told me to buy something from a vendor, very jokingly. I told him “oh shit you’re a Erik Estrada” dude was super nice and shook my hand. As a latino, its always nice to see other latinos and how much work they’ve done in Hollywood and other things.
Anyways, two weeks later, me and my GF binged all of Fallout and we get to this episode with Estrada. We had a weird moment where we told ourselves, “we meet him randomly like two weeks ago” it was fucking weird.
Anyways anyways, this scene was fantastic. Ghoul is probably my favorite character in the whole show. Walton fucking killed it.
It's definitely a homage. Saying that does The Good, The Bad and The Ugly exist in the Fallout universe? If Couper Howard saw the movie then maybe he's just larping as Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes.
This really isn't a bad karma scene.
He absolutely gave that kid an out. Many.
He knew the kid had vengeance in his head. Even gave him a chance to be smart about it. Not his fault the kid was a dummy
YES! Finally this scene is being talked about! This cold open is actually my favorite of the season. It shows that Cooper is indeed multi-faceted. You'd think that he'd be the one to be so callous and immune im taking anothers life. I mean, we literally just watched him take down Filly and he was in delight the entire time. So when he shows up to that family and their homestead, Cooper's still toying around. But still he see's that for just as many men, there's children. He's a father still looking for his own so I think that his intentions weren't to initially kill the teenager and that he really wanted to give him a chance to live without avenging his older brother that was killed in Filly. In my re-watch, I noticed that Cooper let the father take lead of the conversation with his son but it wasn't until the teenager stood taller and really looked Cooper in the eye that Cooper knew he wasn't going to live. The fact that Cooper could have (should have?) killed the father and the daughter if he was really worried about revenge also stood out to me too. He just walked away. To wrap it up, why the encounter between the family and Cooper stuck out to me is in the very end of the scene, you see that he's been slightly shifted by the encounter. When he picks up his chem to inhale, just briefly, complete and humane sadness for the murder just washes over him -- you can see it in his eyes and the relief he finally gets. I like to think that Cooper does feel some type of remorse, maybe even some reflection too? Despite wandering around for 200 years, there still is *some* type of shock for having to kill, especially when it comes toa child who is technically only trying to do right by his slain brother. To me, "The Ghoul" isn't even a real person, moreso a toughened, drawn out persona that has allowed Cooper to put distance between himself and his Wasteland troubles; the *real* Cooper Howard is a man who still unfortunately feels -- that's why he allows Lucy to travel along, why he plays around with Max's power armor in Filly, why he comforts Dogmeat, and its why he lets Roger enjoy a nice memory before he too is shot down. It really is a blink and you'll miss it...or perhaps maybe I was a bit too high while watching lol
>To me, "The Ghoul" isn't even a real person, moreso a toughened, drawn out persona that has allowed Cooper to put distance between himself and his Wasteland troubles; the *real* Cooper Howard is a man who still unfortunately feels Are you ready for this? >!Cooper doesn't have much of an accent when he's in pre-war form. Even when he's talking to Matt Berry's character, he has a very light accent. He's totally just playing his old cowboy persona. You are 100% on the money.!<
There's a reason his actor says they're two different characters. Cooper 'plays' the Ghoul to stay sane. In the Filly scene he even 'breaks character' when Maximus knocks him off the scaffolding and onto the ground.
Ohh… that makes perfect sense. He disassociated by using his old badass persona.
Almost like how the ghouls all say their own name to keep sanity...
I think he is just acting
Sometimes acting is a process of disassociation. Usually when the actor has significant trauma.
https://youtu.be/nyoWmkhRyp8?si=5j8OiMqEmSLnSTPN
And more specifically, the character they had him playing after the rewrites. The audience wants to see that a good man can be pushed to violence. >!We don't know exactly what happened with his wife yet, but strings were probably pulled to end him up where he is. How much you wanna bet Vault Tec rewrote his entire life story the same way they did his character's?!<
I think the Ghoul even has moments as well where he doesn’t even have the accent like when he yells fuck after losing the drugs or when he gets hit and yells out in pain
Yeah its basically raw emotion forcing him to break character.
That's a great catch! They even foreshadow it in the show
There’s another layer. The whole concept of cowboys as we know them today is a fabrication of Hollywood and the capitalist, individualism ideals of the Cold War. He is playing a character which was a fabrication of the system which destroyed the world and that character is how he survives.
This plays into the internal conflict he has in the past over using his catchphrase “Feo, feurte y formal” before killing someone We later see him use the phrase without remorse after killing someone in the present
Walton Goggins absolutely killed this role. It could have been such a cartoony, throwaway performance: the outrageous makeup, videogame origin, intentionally campy dialogue. But he went above and beyond and crushed it.
I picked up on that immediately. Probably because I was like “oh! That’s his Uncle Baby Billy voice! He’s acting!!”
Shit time to rewatch
I love that. Like the difference between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader.
Holy shit, I had not noticed that. But now that you mention it... yes.
I noticed it too. It wasn't just a casual murder of an innocent. Cooper realized that the teenager was going to hunt after him; the young man wasn't subtle about his future intentions - his body language, eye contact, refusal to answer, etc.
Yep, I agree!
Wouldn't you?
Want to hunt after Cooper to avenge my brother? Absolutely! It would be really hard for me to hide that fact as well. Savvy Cooper would riddle me with holes even faster than he did in this scene 😄
Ghouls are disposed off the best from afar with a sniper rifle.
Rip and tear
I had this exact same rationale regarding Cooper. It looks to me he's still playing his cowboy character from his movie. I think that's part of why the "feo, fuerte y formal" has been so significant. Cooper is the one who questioned if he really had to kill him regarding that scene. The Ghoul is the persona of him that does it. Which i feel like is supported by the same examples you mentioned above and the one he's in the super duper mart and finds the tape. It shows him watching the same scene again but the finished version where he shoots. Cooper is still playing that character. It's kind of the only tie left he has to his prewar life. Unable to reconnect with his family for over 200 years. Acting is all he has left. Potentially part of his way of coping by masking himself as his character from the movie.
👏👏👏 Omg don't even get me started on "Feo, fuerte, y formal". I have a strong suspicion that throughout the series we'll see continue to see how its reflected in pre/post Cooper. We know that Cooper has some issues with how his acting career is portrayed and that in some moments he feels so strongly that he speaks up and questions things. That quote being repeated over and over just proves that Cooper has more oompf to him that meets the eye. There is a distinct, furthering difference between Actor Cooper/Cooper Howard/"The Ghoul".
Oh i know right. I can't wait to see how it develops. I feel like it'll come full circle.
I know what you guys are saying, and in many aspects I agree, but I feel like what gets overlooked with this line of reasoning is that “feo, fuerte, y formal” is pretty largely an on the nose joke because it’s quite literally describing a non-feral ghoul. it just means “ugly, strong, and formal”
Its also a play on the fact that throughout hollywood history theyd make up some bs about a saying from another culture that they just *made up* and what it literally means just *barely* resembles what they claim it does
I think the show just likes fucking with its audience. Like how >!it spends two episodes building up Vault 4 to have this sinister secret only for it all to be setup to the joke that Vault 4 is fine!<. It’s a good way to keep us on our toes in regards to what’s important story wise and what isn’t
“On the nose” “describing a non feral ghoul” heh heh heh. Nice.
Seriously that line is the best change of his character over 200 years
I thought it was also very interesting how the "finished" version of the movie is very clearly stitched together from the take we saw where he refused to shoot. You see him raise the gun, hesitate, hard cut to the dude's head getting aerated, hard cut back to Cooper making the slight grimace and lowering the gun - which in the earlier scene was the face he made when he decided not to shoot. We don't see him pull the trigger. So it seems the implication is that he never actually fired that gun. Hollywood transformed his act of mercy into the illusion of violence.
Oh dang good catch!
I didn't notice Cooper's look of distress until my second time watching, but you are right. I thought it was an excellent touch, and it sells me on the idea that the Ghoul is just a role Cooper took on as a survival tool.
I took it the whole time he was a good guy, he just has to do what he has to do. The show references the game, but the characters act a bit more realistic (feels odd to day that). They don't get multiple play throughs, each one IS the playthrough. He isn't good karma or bad karma, just a good guy put into a place where you have to be some level of shit to survive. He saw a family, a child, a brother trying to make his big bro proud, a father doing the best he could. Filly was a general shit hole of degenerates (based on the way it was spoken of) and he was fighting people actively trying to kill him over the bounty. I feel like reveling in the chaos just gives him an escape from the pain. He's acting like you and the others said. Playing a roll is easier than living it.
Great analysis, and just to build on The Ghoul leaving the father and daughter alive - The little girl is all the dad has left after losing two sons. Coop knows that man won’t go revenging anytime soon. Plus the parallel between Coop and his own daughter.
That, and the father fit the stock character of a farmer in a Western - so not a threat.
That girl better not grow up to avenge her brothers then.
Look up the "Breakfast with Angel Eyes" scene from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
Yup. I caught that, too!
Yes. Immediately thought of this scene when I saw the ghoul eating his food.
> > > > > It really is a blink and you'll miss it...or perhaps maybe I was a bit too high while watching lol Nail on the head, mate. There's a few moments in the show where he gives this little weakness in his eyes. They're brief and easy to miss, but they really sell his emotions. Walton Ghoulgins probably gave the kid who plays his daughter the same advice to do the same during that scene in the beginning. BEcause she does the exact same expression, perfectly.
Really great explanation. Thank you for the excellent input.
He’s a dude playing another dude
No it was there. Goggins is very good.
I agree. I hated then loved this scene after I thought about it. The Ghoul has had 200 years of fucked up shit—he knew from experience how it goes when someone wants revenge.
At the same time, the dude had been around long enough to know how these things work. He'd likely had a lot of brothers hunt him down. By egging it on, he's making it happen in a situation where he has control. It's a moment where he's definitely not a good guy, but you can see the reasoning.
This. You don’t make it over 200 years (ghoul healing helps) in the wasteland without controlling confrontations and learning from your experiences. The Ghoul plays his hand well, and he gives the potential threats —the father and the son— a chance to identify their intentions.
It’s complicated because the kid was going to attack the Ghoul, but the Ghoul basically chose the “Your brother is a little bitch and you are too.” dialogue from New Vegas.
It’s not complicated at all, it’s just as you said: the kid was *going* to attack the Ghoul. The Ghoul simply used rhetoric as a means to speed towards an end — eliminating the vengeful threat. Kid could have just caught some verbal shade thrown by the Ghoul; instead, he caught a deadly projectile.
By that reasoning it’s strange he didn’t kill the father too. He just murdered his two sons
The father seems smart enough to know when he's outmatched. He tried to de-escalate the situation. He also still has a daughter to look out for who seems quite young. She is more likely to come back in a few years for revenge after her dad dies and she's left alone.
All I’m saying is by the ghouls logic he used to kill the younger brother, he should have killed the rest of the family. He doesn’t know for sure what the father will do/think in a few years, so by his own logic he should have killed him. That same logic applies to the daughter as you said.
You’re right he doesn’t know for sure but the brother was hot that whole scene. Dad was sad but wanted to salvage the family he still had. If he also wanted some he was hiding it well
>Dad was sad but wanted to salvage the family he still had. I think this is key. The Ghoul just killed part of that family. Who knows how that might change the dad's mind?
Fair but he’s no psychic. The kid validated his revenge theory straight up. Dad still stayed cool after watching his son die. It would have been meaningless if he killed dad after that
Would The Ghoul really have had enough time to make that judgement? If your son is killed in front of you, of course you're going to be upset about it and be so overcome with grief that you don't really pay attention to what's happening around you. The anger part comes later.
100%. But he walked into that room with the kid already angry. The revenge part was imminent. I don’t think one could survive in the wasteland with the mindset that killing anybody is literally always going to risk revenge. Either you would have to be a machine and literally kill everyone who ever interacts with you (which would bring a lot of revenge) or never kill a single person, in which case you would be run over by raiders in a second. It’s a tough balance to maintain, but 200 years is plenty of time to practice
“When a clever boy like you get angry…”
He has a history with the father, that's how he knows.
The dad is going to get weaker and less skilled as he ages. The young boy would get stronger, more clever, and more confident. I get what you’re saying but I don’t think it’s a valid criticism in this specific instance. The kid is much more of a future threat than the father.
I think the girl will be a real threat now. Two brothers killed by a guy she showed kindness to by feeding him (and well by the looks)? A father left devastated emotionally and a family left with less hands to make ends meet? Give it ten years or the death of her father and she'll be on the Ghoul's tail with the knowledge of what he's capable of.
The Ghoul may be the bad karma character, but he's not a monster. He doesn't kill in cold blood, from what I can recall. The son tried to draw on him, and paid for it with his life.
He isn't sadistic. He won't harm others for no reason. He is ultimate pragmatic. He murders the son because he assesses that he could be a threat in the future. He leaves the father and the daughter alive because he doesn't see them as high risk. He just blows foot off doctor, to make sure he won't run away, even though he could just as easily take "dead" bounty. By his demeanor I reckon he would eagerly share serum with his friend. But he is out, so he provides him with last happy memory before mercy killing him. But then pragmatism kicks in and he makes jerky because it's wasteland and nothing can go to waste.
Because the father isn't going to spend the rest of his life hunting the Ghoul down. The brother would have. That's what the Ghoul was doing - goading the brother to either hurry up and just do it, or back down. If he backed down like the father, he likely never would've hunted the Ghoul down.
[удалено]
The ghoul literally said he got the note off a body in filly
You’re right. Time for a rewatch
I believe he was one of the guys who dug him up, who would've had info about the orders they were given. The ghoul lab had no connection to Moldaver or the primary plot.
How do you know? I dont remember seeing anything about that.
It couldn’t have been one of the ghoul lab guys, weren’t they both killed by the ghouls Lucy released? And the reason he’s there is because he shot the brother but the hole went through the paper with the location
Thats why I was asking. It's implied that Cooper killed the brother for the info off screen
I thought the brother was one of the guys he killed after the ghoul lab, when he was arrested.
It was implied he was one of the guys in the shoot out with Maximus and town
But why would he have the note? (This is one part of the plot that really confused me.)
Ever played fallout? Everyone has notes buddy
🧟 eating 🥣 habits need explanation please 🙏. I remember ghouls would sell food , but I don’t remember seeing them eat. I hope there is more explanation at least online about ghoullification and the perks associated with it 🫥
depends on the game
FO4?
it's implied they don't have to drink or eat because of the ghoul kid in the fridge. But some say he went into hibernation, or that he hadn't been there since the bombs but only since the raiders attacked a week before But i haven't really played fo4 in fallout 1 they die if you take their water chip and don't fix their well In new vegas there's a ghoul that says he survived by eating rad roaches
Bro didn’t realize he never needed to eat all those rad roaches ☠️
rad roaches are yummy and nutritious. A delicatessen of the wasteland
I think that was just an Indiana Jones gag that nobody thought through.
Probably, do they have the wild wasteland perk in fo4? cause it seems like the perfect thing to include for that
Oh you mean the hiding 🫣 in the fridge shtick
I thought this scene was referring to an old western movie, can't remember what movie was it. Maybe "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly" 1966.
Yep, it's an homage to the first scene for "the ugly" character
Yeah that's the scene, but then again almost every western movie if not all of them have an "eating scene" lol.
“the bad”, actually, Lee Van Cleef.
I think its the Bad (Lee Van Cleef) when he says he always gets his job done and kills the bounty (a father) and the son who comes with a gun to protect his dad
I've seen this connection talked about in some podcasts reviews I listened to. Lucy is the good, Maximus is the bad, and the ghoul is the ugly.
If the kid hadn't gone for a gun and let it go it wouldn't have happened. You can claim he egged him on, but he has been alive for over 200 years. He knows how these things play out from experience. He had to push the issue now to see if they were cool or if he needed to nip the problem in the bud.
Lets be real, that kid had no idea if The Ghoul was going to kill him or not. He killed his brother and probably thought he was next with the way the Ghoul was talking,
His father knew though, and the father even sensed what the son was going to do and tried to stop him
I’m trying to remember which western this happens in, I wanna say the good the bad and the ugly with Van Cleffe attempting to gauge if the kid will grow up and seek revenge or not. It’s been a minute, so it could be another movie, but this definitely felt like an homage.
It is. Which I feel was a very strong inspiration for this season. The way the characters are introduced is an exact mirror to the introduction of the characters in that movie, And they all parallel very nicely as well ( Lucy is the good, the Ghoul is the bad, A maximus is the ugly, Which in the movie was initially a reference to Tuco's mannerisms, But was actually a comment on his moral ambiguity, Much like how maximus is still trying to find his moral compass).
It was straight out of The Good The Bad and The Ugly. Like, almost word for word.
Ok that’s what I thought, but a lot of westerns get blurred together in my head. Especially the man with no name trilogy
He's not even bad karma, he's got 200+ years of survival experience and exhaustion under his belt.
Cool motive, still bad karma.
He is absolutely bad karma lol
Bad karma would have shot the dude and his dad in the back of the head and looted the house.
Yeah if bad karma wasn't at all nuanced lol
I don't think you can eat people and stay good (or neutral even) karma for very long.
That's all true, but did he have to kill the kid right in front of the father?
That or get shot in the head by the kid.
The kid literally reached for a gun first
You wouldn't last long on the waste land it seems
Yes.
Its kill or be killed.
so being correct about the kid drawing a gun on him makes him evil? i don't recall if we saw what they referenced, him killing his brother or whatever but the kid was probably going to draw on him had he brought it up or not the thing with the girl was just editing, he wasn't really doing anything to explicitly imply he was eating the girl that was all done with editing and tension
I mean he invades their home, brags about killing one of the kids and then eggs the other one to avoid future issues, I get the necessary reasoning needed for the wasteland survival but I'm pretty sure that if this was in the game it would absolutely mark it as bad karma, just because it was necessary does not make it good so by the logic of the game it has to be bad karma
Imo, the ghoul was absolutely egging the kid on to try and draw the gun.
I don’t agree he was simply “egging” the kid to draw the gun. The way I saw it, the Ghoul needed information from the family but couldn’t just walk away because the kid could grow up to avenge his dead brother, so the Ghoul played his cards to see if the kid was the type to do that. Rather than be the mouse in an unwanted game of cat and mouse, the Ghoul played a “why wait when you can kill me now” card.
Or, another thing that The Ghoul was probably concerned about is getting shot at as he left.
i think that living in the wasteland for so long the ghoul has now learned that if you hurt someone sooner or later they will try to hurt you back and so it is better to take care of all your enemies immediately
Not at all. He just knows how the wasteland works. Ghoul was in the right.
He baited the kid into it. There were a lot of ways he could have safely walked out of there while maintaining his threat of violence to ensure his safety. Instead, he chose to antagonize the kid into a no-win situation. This might also be a shout out to Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant's character from Justified, and rival to Walton Goggins' character Boyd Crowder), eho had a tendency to engineer 'justified' gun fights.
The ghoul wasn’t thinking about just walking out. He was thinking about 5 years down the road where this kid tries to hunt him down to get revenge.
And when you're effectively immortal and notorious, you have to think about things like that.
To be fair, yeah, that, too. I imagine he has had to deal with a lot of revenge seekers over two centuries.
Yeah, definitely. A genuine case of pre-emptive self defense.
I don’t understand the people saying this wasn’t a bad karma situation. He came to their home and nonchalantly admitted to murdering this kid’s brother. Then goaded the kid into drawing the gun so he could kill him right there. It doesn’t matter if the kid would’ve came later down the road for revenge, he would’ve been justified. The father had 3 children and now he’s down to 1 and that’s all because of the ghoul’s self-serving actions.
For the love of the game.
It's the same thing where people try to say that Gul Dukat was 'complicated' in DS9, or that Walter White wasn't 'that bad' of a guy in Breaking Bad. It's a charismatic, well written and well acted character, so people tend to side with them. This is probably one of the most outright evil acts in Season one (let alone bad karma), and it serves to show just how far Coop has fallen from his former self. Everything else The Ghoul does can in some way be justified up until this point. This is killing for expediency, and the Ghouls skill set established to this point has clearly demonstrated it isn't necessary. He did the show with the letter because he wanted to kill the kid, everything he did was to antagonize and provoke. He just forced the kid to make the first move to ease the guilt on that tiny piece of Coop left. The only person defending themselves here is the kid. The Ghoul broke into his home, threatened his family, admitted to murdering his brother, and then basically said "It's me or you kid". Proactive defence isn't a thing, that's called murder.
>It doesn’t matter if the kid would’ve came later down the road for revenge, he would’ve been justified. So it’d still be bad karma if he kills the kid 5 years down the road when the kid comes to take revenge? If so, there’s literally nothing Ghoul could do that wouldn’t be bad karma
At the end of the day the kid would be coming for revenge because of the selfish decision Cooper made. He killed the kid’s brother for an address. Cooper is completely in the wrong in this situation.
He killed the brother because that brother _also_ attacked him, first.
What bit of dialogue ever implied that the brother attacked first?
The part where everyone in Filly tried to kill the Ghoul to get a payout?
What does that have to do with the brother? He wasn't in Filly.
If the surviving sister hunts him down in the final season it’d be awfully poetic.
Just like the games I feel, sometimes we’re complete bastards sometimes we aren’t
Yes. And I think this show needs more morally gray characters. It seems more realistic in the wasteland than having extreme good or evil ones
I don't get how people are saying this isn't bad karma, good karma would have been walking away and just risking the revenge later, neutral would have been wounding the kid. That's kinda the point of Fallout, that being good is hard and dangerous, Coop did the understandable thing for himself but it's bad by the very definition of the Fallout Karma system, there are many examples in the games gaining bad karma for goading someone into a fight and killing them. Lucy and Maximus for instance with the Fiends risked a lot trying to play nice and almost died because of it, but that's the risk of being good and Coop has a family to find.
No, _actually_. By the Fallout Karma system, it's not bad to kill somebody who draws on you after you tell them not to. Self-defense is not evil.
I like that at one point he was a good guy and didnt want to kill the bandit in the movie, he wanted to leave him dignity, then Lucy gives him the vials and teaches him the golden rule, letting him keep his dignity and he goes and watches that movie
I think that was the turning point for him. He didn't immediately go full redemption, but he remembered who he was and what he was about, rather than continuing to wallow in the persona of The Ghoul.
I'm glad he didn't just flip a switch. I'm sure by the end of season 3 he'll have regained some of his former humanity but that should take a long time.
Depends on his family, I bet his wife is in new Vegas wherever Hank is going, some secret vault maybe.
If that kid hadn't tried to pull his gun, the ghoul would probably have let him live. The ghoul is very cut and dry guy but respects people who exceed or go against his expectations. If the kid had not reached for the gun, I reckon he would have left. He wouldn't care if someone was hunting him down, he wanted to see if he was dumb enough to draw on him while he had the advantage. He did and paid the price.
Big thing I don't see anyone mentioning, the ghoul has been around for over 200 years at this point. That's multiple lifetimes just for us. In the wasteland he could have seen multiple generations of families come and go. I guarantee he has come back to a place to find someone he used to know and found out they died 20 years ago and he's talking to their great grandkids. When you see how little the wasteland cares about life on that kind of a level and over that kind of time, well. It's easier to justify killing people. The way that kid was acting he was going to get killed in 3-5 years tops anyway. The Ghoul preferred to just get it done now instead of potentially having a sticky situation if the kid did come after him. It's a very cynical and inhuman viewpoint but surprise! That's literally his character.
The ghoul is a great character but he is a piece of shit. You don't have to pretend at this point in the story he is a good guy
Eh. He’s just an embodiment of the unforgiving environment he’s been in for 200 years. He’s learned a lot of harsh lessons. The boy reached for the gun and got shot.
Bit of a side note but I met Erik Estrada at Wondercon in Anaheim. Dude was just wandering around his booth and he just came up and talked to me and my girlfriend. Told me to buy something from a vendor, very jokingly. I told him “oh shit you’re a Erik Estrada” dude was super nice and shook my hand. As a latino, its always nice to see other latinos and how much work they’ve done in Hollywood and other things. Anyways, two weeks later, me and my GF binged all of Fallout and we get to this episode with Estrada. We had a weird moment where we told ourselves, “we meet him randomly like two weeks ago” it was fucking weird. Anyways anyways, this scene was fantastic. Ghoul is probably my favorite character in the whole show. Walton fucking killed it.
After how deadly this ghoul is I wonder if they tone them up a notch in fallout 5. Or have a few of them that are absolutely lethal.
It's definitely a homage. Saying that does The Good, The Bad and The Ugly exist in the Fallout universe? If Couper Howard saw the movie then maybe he's just larping as Lee Van Cleef's Angel Eyes.
I didn’t think he killed the kid, it looked like he winged him in the arm to me
Nah, he got 'im in the chest.
The good, the bad and the ugly homage
and the fact that it was erik fucking estrada doing a cameo shocked me
This scene is also totally paying homage to the good the bad and the ugly opening scene, love it
He kilt Erik Estradas boy!!
This was a great scene. I don't remember Roofus from Filly at all but I was wondering if the brother would take the bait, and he did
He did say to the Guy " Don't draw on me for revenge or I'll shoot you " He did go for the gun and got shot. Actions = Consequences
I don't consider this badkarma, per say. Yes, be goaded the boy but it was the boy who chose to try to take vengeance then & there
This really isn't a bad karma scene. He absolutely gave that kid an out. Many. He knew the kid had vengeance in his head. Even gave him a chance to be smart about it. Not his fault the kid was a dummy
The kid made his choice, it's not on The Ghoul.
That situation can be explain your either die a dumbass or stay alive as a coward.
The kid wasn’t exactly innocent