“If you think everyone else is the bad guy, chances are, you’re the bad guy.” — Lucy McLean
Episode 3 of Fallout season 2 takes a deliberate breath after the season’s earlier frenzy, shifting focus to simmering tensions and the cracks forming within key factions. It trades some high-octane action for deeper dives into moral gray areas and character dilemmas, while sprinkling in plenty of nods to the game’s lore that will thrill longtime fans. The result is an episode that feels more introspective than explosive, building quiet dread that hints at bigger fractures ahead without fully detonating them just yet.
The spotlight falls heavily on Caesar’s Legion this time around, turning their rigid hierarchy into a pressure cooker of internal strife. Lucy finds herself right in the thick of it, her wide-eyed vault dweller optimism clashing hard against a group that views compromise as heresy. Hanging in the balance between rival power plays, she becomes a symbol of the wasteland’s brutal tug-of-war, where diplomacy often looks more like desperation. It’s a tough spot for her character, one that tests her limits and forces some uncomfortable reflections, though the episode spends more time on the surrounding politics than her personal evolution at first.
The Ghoul shines in his signature blend of cynicism and cunning, navigating a high-stakes deal that underscores his “ends justify the means” survival code. His interactions with NCR remnants carry that dry, world-weary edge, laced with flashbacks that keep peeling back layers of his pre-war life under influences like Vault-Tec and figures from New Vegas lore. These moments aren’t just backstory—they tie directly into his current ruthlessness, showing how old betrayals and power games echo into the irradiated present. It’s the kind of character work that makes his choices feel earned and uneasy, never fully heroic or villainous.
Meanwhile, Maximus’s path with a Brotherhood superior veers into unexpectedly dark territory, blending camaraderie with the order’s uglier underbelly. What starts as armored antics at a familiar Nuka-Cola site uncovers dilemmas about who gets to claim “civilization,” hinting at rifts that could shake the Brotherhood to its core. His arc builds to a tense crossroads, mirroring the Legion’s own divisions and raising questions about loyalty in a world where ideals curdle fast. It’s a smart parallel that keeps the episode’s themes cohesive without feeling forced.
Guest spots add some unexpected flair, like Macaulay Culkin’s turn as a Legion figure whose quirky menace fits the faction’s cultish vibe perfectly. He brings a bureaucratic fervor to the role, emphasizing how the Legion ritualizes its brutality right down to succession squabbles over key artifacts. These cameos feel organic, enhancing the world rather than stealing focus, and they nod to the games’ eccentric cast without overwhelming the main threads.
Pacing-wise, this hour simmers more than it boils, which might test viewers craving constant momentum. Lucy’s predicament holds steady for a stretch, the Ghoul operates in the shadows, and Maximus’s detour unfolds gradually before tensions spike. That restraint pays off by letting atmosphere build—the Legion camp’s stark crosses and sun-scorched decay capture the series’ horror-Western mashup beautifully. Locations like Camp Golf and NCR outposts evoke New Vegas nostalgia, but twisted into symbols of faded glory, reinforcing the show’s point that no empire endures unscathed.
For game fans, the episode is a treasure trove of subtle references, from Legion dynamics to Securitron teases, woven in ways that serve the plot rather than just fan service. Newcomers won’t feel lost, as the context emerges naturally through dialogue and fallout from prior episodes. Visually, it’s peak Fallout: practical effects make the wasteland feel lived-in and lethal, with practical power armor clanks and irradiated horrors that pop off the screen.
By the later beats, the episode starts hinting at shifts in the power balance, leaving characters at pivotal junctures without spelling everything out. Lucy grapples with harsh realities that could harden her edge, the Ghoul’s gambit ripples outward in unpredictable ways, and Maximus faces choices that test his place in the Brotherhood. These teases set up a powder keg for the back half, where alliances fray and the wasteland’s chaos might force some reluctant team-ups or betrayals.
All told, episode 3 delivers a balanced mix of lore love, character depth, and atmospheric tension, even if its slower gear occasionally mutes the thrill. Strengths like the Ghoul’s layered flashbacks and faction parallels outweigh any mid-episode lulls, making it a solid bridge that primes the pump for escalation. In a season already nailing the games’ spirit, this one reminds us why Fallout endures: beneath the satire and shootouts lies a grim meditation on humanity’s stubborn flaws.
“Empathy is like mud. You lose your boots in that stuff. Folks been screaming for two hundred years.” — The Ghoul
Fallout season 2, episode 2, titled “The Golden Rule,” eases the series back into its wasteland rhythm with a blend of tense character moments and signature post-apocalyptic absurdity. It’s not the flashiest hour, but it builds tension steadily through moral dilemmas and faction intrigue, rewarding patient viewers with hints of bigger conflicts ahead.
The episode weaves a tapestry of power struggles and ethical compromises across its split storylines. Maximus navigates the Brotherhood’s ruthless internal games, Lucy and the Ghoul debate the cost of mercy in a brutal world, and Norman from Vault 31 leads survivors peeling back more of the pre-war conspiracy’s ugly layers. At its core, it’s about testing how long personal codes hold up when survival demands compromise, forcing characters to confront who they’re really fighting for.
Maximus’s thread packs the most immediate emotional wallop, trapping him in a brutal boxing tournament that’s equal parts ritual and execution. What starts as a show of unity ends with him forced to kill a fellow Knight under the roar of the crowd, stripping away any lingering loyalty to the Brotherhood. His face after the win—drained and distant—captures the hollowness of victory in a machine that chews up its own, turning a grunt’s ambition into quiet tragedy.
The arrival of one of the new faces, Kumail Nanjiani as the slick Paladin Xander Harkness from the Commonwealth, shakes things up right after the fight. His cocky demeanor and whispers of a brewing civil war ripple through the ranks, pulling Maximus from personal survival into something that feels like the edge of a larger schism. It’s a clever escalation that promises fireworks without tipping its hand too soon.
Meanwhile, Lucy and the Ghoul’s road trip revisits old ground, which could feel like treading water if not for the sharp dialogue and escalating stakes. Their clash over stopping to help screams familiar—they clash over optimism versus cynicism, split paths briefly, then reconvene out of necessity—but it deepens their mismatched partnership. A hospital pitstop turns sinister fast, revealing ties to a slaver faction straight out of the game’s lore, where good intentions lead straight into ambush territory.
The Ghoul’s rant about empathy weighing you down like dead weight lands with his usual bite, but Lucy’s frustration with his cryptic warnings flips the script, painting his toughness as half selfishness. Their chemistry carries it, turning repetition into a believable cycle of two scarred people circling trust. And that massive radscorpion brawl? Pure adrenaline-fueled chaos, a hulking nightmare that embodies the wasteland’s random cruelty and gives the duo a shared “not today” win.
Shifting underground, Norman delivers pitch-black satire as he guides cryogenically thawed junior executives who wake up clueless and entitled in the apocalypse. They’re all petty squabbles and status games amid the ruins, a perfect skewer of corporate rot that outlasted the bombs. His scramble for leadership mixes fumbling comedy with a poignant glimpse of awe at the surface world, humanizing the bunker farce while his companions gripe like it’s a bad vacation.
Elsewhere, the pre-war corporate angle simmers darkly, with hints that ongoing “work” stems from a deliberate architecture of doom. It’s subtler than the surface mayhem, but it reinforces the show’s thesis: the end times weren’t random fallout, but a branded catastrophe whose machinery still grinds on.
Pacing strikes a deliberate balance, advancing multiple fronts without rushing payoffs, which suits the serialized vibe but might test newcomers. It prioritizes atmosphere over non-stop action, letting ironic humor—like deadly fights dressed as bonding or doomsday treated as HR drama—bridge the quieter beats. The result feels immersive, like wandering the game’s open world rather than railroading through quests.
Visually and tonally, the episode nails Fallout‘s essence: gritty practical effects, cluttered retro-futurism, and violence that shocks without overkill. Costumes evoke lived-in lore, from power armor gleam to faction garb, while the humor undercuts horror just enough to keep it addictive.
In the end, Fallout season 2, episode 2 is sturdy groundwork that shines in its character crucibles and world-deepening touches. Maximus’s ring of fire and Norman’s Vault meltdown stand tallest, while the road warriors deliver sparks amid echoes. The radscorpion frenzy injects raw thrill, priming the pump for faction clashes ahead. Not a lone-wolf classic, but a smart piece in a sprawling puzzle—fairly balanced, casually compelling, and true to the franchise’s warped heart.
“Control is not control unless it’s absolute.” — Robert House
Episode 1 of Fallout Season 2 eases us back into the irradiated chaos with a deliberate pace that prioritizes atmosphere over non-stop action, reminding everyone why this show’s wasteland feels so lived-in and unpredictable. Titled something along the lines of a nod to foresight amid apocalypse, it shifts the spotlight toward the glittering promise of New Vegas while weaving in threads from the vaults and the open road, all without feeling like it’s just recapping old ground. The result is a premiere that builds quiet dread and dark laughs in equal measure, setting up a season that promises to dig deeper into the franchise’s corporate nightmares and personal vendettas.
Right from the jump, the episode grabs attention with a slick demonstration of pre-war tech gone horribly right—or wrong, depending on your perspective. Justin Theroux as Robert House commands the screen as a slick-suited mogul, his magnetic performance dripping with oily charisma and precise menace as he demos a mind-control gadget on skeptical workers, his unhinged glee peaking in a catastrophic head-explosion that hilariously exposes tech’s lethal limits. It’s peak Fallout absurdity: blending high-tech horror with retro-futurist flair, like if a 1950s infomercial took a fatal detour into Black Mirror territory. This opener not only hooks you visually but plants seeds for how old-world ambition fuels the post-apoc mess, tying neatly into the larger puzzle of who pulled the triggers on those bombs.
The core trio gets prime real estate here, each storyline humming with tension that advances their arcs without rushing the reveals. Lucy (Ella Purnell), still clinging to her vault-bred optimism, teams up with The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) for a Mojave trek that’s equal parts banter and brutality. Their pit stop at a rundown motel turns into a classic role-playing moment—talks fail, bullets fly, and suddenly you’re knee-deep in the kind of chaotic shootout that screams video game roots, but with character stakes that make the gore hit different. The Ghoul’s gleeful savagery clashes beautifully with Lucy’s reluctant humanity, sharpening their odd-couple dynamic into the show’s emotional engine, where every kill or quip peels back layers of trauma and growth.
Meanwhile, flashbacks to the days before the flash illuminate the cowboy’s (Walton Goggins) haunted past, dropping him into a high-stakes conspiracy involving energy breakthroughs and power grabs that could rewrite history. These segments pulse with moral ambiguity, showing how one man’s vision—or hubris—shapes the ruins we roam today, all delivered through sharp dialogue and tense standoffs that avoid info-dumps. It’s a smart way to expand the lore, making the pre-war era feel as treacherous and satirical as the wasteland, while hinting at butterfly effects that ripple straight to the present-day action.
Back underground in Vault 31, Norm (Moisés Arias) faces a grueling isolation game, rationed and rationed until desperation breeds rebellion. Pacing a sterile corridor lined with frozen execs, he grapples with the cold calculus of survival versus unleashing corporate ghosts, culminating in a choice that’s as chilling as it is inevitable. This thread underscores the series’ knack for turning confined spaces into pressure cookers, where ideology and instinct collide, and it mirrors the surface-level horrors in a way that unifies the episode’s split timelines. No capes or saviors here—just raw human (or post-human) frailty amid institutional rot.
What elevates this opener beyond fan service is its thematic cohesion: progress as the ultimate wasteland monster, whether it’s mind-bending devices in hidden labs, faction wars over scraps of the old world, or vaults masquerading as utopias. The production design shines, from neon-drenched ruins evoking casino glamour turned grim to grotesque experiments that nod to the games’ darkest quests without aping them beat-for-beat. Humor lands in the margins—snarky one-liners amid mayhem, visual gags like branded apocalypse merch—keeping the bleakness palatable and true to the source material’s satirical bite.
Pacing-wise, it unfolds like a slow-burn fuse: the front half reacquaints us with players and places, building investment through intimate beats, while the back ramps up with visceral twists that leave you hungry for more. A few moments drag if you’re craving instant explosions, but that’s by design—this isn’t a rollercoaster start; it’s a deliberate march toward war, factions aligning, and secrets cracking open. Lucy’s pursuit of family truth intersects with tech terrors in ways that feel organic and ominous, promising escalations that blend personal drama with world-shaking stakes.
Visually and sonically, Fallout Season 2 flexes harder, with practical effects that make every mutant skirmish or gadget malfunction pop off the screen, backed by a score that mixes twangy guitars with synth dread for that signature retro-punk vibe. Layered atop that is the inspired use of 1950s-era music—crooning ballads and peppy tunes playing ironically over carnage and corporate horror—anchoring the show’s aesthetic in its ironic nostalgia for a “better” past that led to ruin. The leads ooze chemistry, stealing scenes with micro-expressions that convey volumes, while supporting turns add layers of menace and mirth. It’s not flawless—the multi-threaded structure demands attention, and some setups tease bigger payoffs down the line—but as a launchpad, it nails the balance of homage, innovation, and binge bait.
Ultimately, this episode thrives on Fallout’s core irony: in a world built on fallout from unchecked ambition, our survivors scrape by with grit, guns, and grudging alliances. It honors the games’ sprawl while carving its own path through New Vegas’ shadows, teasing faction intrigue, tech horrors, and moral quagmires that could redefine the Mojave. If Season 1 proved the concept, Episode 1 of Season 2 whispers that the real radiation burns are just heating up—grab your Pip-Boy, because this wasteland’s about to get a whole lot wilder.
“War never changes. You look out at this Wasteland, looks like chaos. But here’s always somebody behind the wheel.” — The Ghoul
Fallout’s first season lands like a mini-nuke: messy around the edges, but undeniably powerful and surprisingly fun. It’s one of those adaptations that feels comfortable being both a love letter to the games and its own weird, often hilarious beast.
Set a couple of centuries after nuclear war, Fallout drops viewers into a retro-futurist wasteland where 1950s aesthetics collide with irradiated horror and corporate evil turned up to eleven. The show splits its focus between three main threads: Lucy, a bright-eyed vault dweller forced to leave her underground utopia; Maximus, an eager but insecure squire in the Brotherhood of Steel; and The Ghoul, a bounty hunter whose past life as a pre-war actor slowly bleeds through his charred exterior. The decision to juggle these perspectives is smart, because each storyline scratches a different itch: Lucy carries the emotional core and fish-out-of-water comedy, Maximus gives the militaristic, power-armor fantasy with a side of satire, and The Ghoul supplies the hard-boiled noir edge and moral ambiguity. The result is a season that rarely feels static; even when one plotline stalls a bit, another kicks in with fresh energy.
The tone is one of the show’s biggest strengths. Fallout leans hard into pitch-black humor without ever completely undercutting the stakes, which is harder to pull off than it looks. Limbs fly, heads explode, dogs get eaten, and yet the show keeps finding a way to make you laugh at the absurdity without turning the apocalypse into a joke. The violence is graphic and frequent, but it usually serves a purpose: to remind you that this world is brutal, even when the characters are cracking wise or bartering over chems. If the games felt like wandering into a deranged theme park built on the ruins of civilization, the series captures that same feeling of “this is horrible, but also kind of hilarious.” That balance, more than any specific lore reference, is what makes it feel like Fallout rather than just another grimdark sci-fi show.
Performance-wise, the casting is pretty inspired. Ella Purnell plays Lucy with this mix of optimism, naivety, and stubborn decency that could easily have been grating, but instead becomes the emotional anchor of the whole season. She brings just enough steel to the character that her idealism feels like a choice, not a default setting. Aaron Moten’s Maximus is a slower burn, and early on he risks fading into the background as “generic soldier guy,” but the more the show digs into Brotherhood politics, insecurity, and the pressure to be “worthy” of power armor, the more interesting he becomes. Walton Goggins, though, more or less walks away with the show. As The Ghoul, he’s vicious, funny, and weirdly tragic, and the flashbacks to his pre-war life give the season some of its most compelling dramatic beats. There’s a sense of continuity in his performance between the slick actor he was and the monster he becomes that keeps the character from feeling like a one-note cowboy caricature.
Visually, Fallout looks a lot better than a streaming adaptation of a video game has any right to. The production design leans into practical sets and tactile props where possible, and it pays off. Power armor has real heft, the vaults look lived-in rather than just glossy sci-fi hallways, and the wasteland feels like a place where people actually scrape out a living instead of just a CGI backdrop. The show has fun with the franchise’s iconography—Nuka-Cola, Pip-Boys, Vault-Tec branding, goofy radios—but it rarely pauses to point and wink too hard. The design team clearly understands that Fallout is basically “atomic-age corporate optimism weaponized into apocalypse,” and that theme is baked into everything from costumes to billboards rotting in the sand. Even the creature designs, like the mutated critters and ghouls, walk that line between unsettling and cartoonishly over-the-top, which fits the overall tone.
On the writing side, the structure of the season feels very much like an RPG campaign. Episodes often play like individual “quests” that build toward a bigger mystery: Lucy stumbling into a bizarre settlement, Maximus dealing with Brotherhood politics, The Ghoul chasing a lead that intersects with both of them. That quest-chain structure gives the first half of the season a propulsive, almost episodic energy, and it’s one reason the show is so watchable. At the same time, this approach has trade-offs. Sometimes character development feels a bit checkpoint-driven—people change because the story needs them to for the next “quest,” rather than as a smooth emotional progression. You can occasionally see the writers nudging the pieces into place, especially as the season barrels toward the finale.
Fallout sits in an interesting sweet spot when lined up against another prestige video game adaptation like HBO’s The Last of Us. Instead of treating the games as a sacred script that must be recreated line for line, it treats the Fallout universe as a shared sandbox—a tone, a style, a set of rules—rather than a fixed storyline that must be obeyed. Where The Last of Us is largely a faithful retelling of Joel and Ellie’s journey, Fallout seems far more interested in asking, “What else can happen in this world?” instead of “How do we restage that iconic mission?” It borrows the franchise’s black-comedy vibe, retro-futurist Americana, and corporate dystopia, then builds mostly original plots and character arcs on top.
That choice immediately gives the writers room to play. They’re not constantly checking themselves against specific missions, boss fights, or famous cutscenes; they’re free to jump around the timeline, invent new factions or townships, and reframe old ideas in ways that a beat-for-beat adaptation could never manage without sparking outrage. This approach also lets Fallout add to the lore instead of just reanimating it in live action. Because it’s not locked into recreating a particular protagonist’s path, the show can explore corners of the wasteland that were only hinted at in the games, complicate existing factions, or take big swings with backstory and world history. That kind of freedom inevitably creates some continuity friction for hardcore fans, but it also keeps the series from feeling like a lavish, expensive recap of something players already experienced with a controller in hand. Where The Last of Us excels by deepening and humanizing a story many already know, Fallout thrives by expanding its universe sideways, treating the source material as a toolbox rather than a template—and that makes it feel more like a genuine new chapter in the franchise than a live-action checklist.
Thematically, the show has more on its mind than explosions and fan-service, which is nice. Fallout keeps circling back to questions about corporate power, the illusion of safety, and how far people will go to preserve their own little slice of control. Vault-Tec’s smiling fascism is a blunt but effective metaphor for real-world systems that promise protection while quietly planning for everyone’s demise. The Brotherhood of Steel, meanwhile, becomes a vehicle for exploring militarized religion, hierarchy, and the dream of “owning” technology and knowledge. None of this is subtle, but Fallout isn’t a subtle franchise to begin with, and the series has enough self-awareness to let its satire stay sharp without slowing everything down for speeches. When it hits, it feels like the writers are asking, “Who gets to decide what’s worth saving when everything’s already gone?”
Where the season stumbles most is consistency. The pacing isn’t always smooth; some mid-season episodes are stacked with memorable set pieces and character moments, while others feel like they’re mostly there to set up endgame twists. The finale, in particular, is likely to be divisive. On one hand, it ties several plot threads together, drops a couple of bold lore swings, and sets up future seasons with a few big, crowd-pleasing reveals. On the other hand, it rushes emotional payoffs and leans heavily on explaining rather than letting certain developments breathe. The shift in tone in the last episode is noticeable enough that some viewers may feel like they suddenly switched to a slightly different show. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it does mean the season ends with more “wow, that was a lot” than a clean emotional landing.
As an adaptation, this freedom-to-expand strategy pays off by appealing to longtime fans and welcoming newcomers without getting bogged down in purist debates. Fans of the games will catch tons of details, locations, and tonal echoes that feel like affectionate nods rather than empty easter eggs. At the same time, the show isn’t just re-skinning existing game plots, which is a good call. It feels like a side story in the same universe rather than a strict retelling. That said, the lore choices late in the season—especially around the broader timeline and certain factions—are bound to spark arguments. If someone is deeply attached to the canon of the older games, some of the retcons and reinterpretations might play like a slap in the face. If someone is more relaxed about canon and just wants an entertaining, coherent story in that world, the show will probably land much better.
The writing of individual scenes shows a lot of care, especially in the way humor and dread coexist. Some of the best moments aren’t the big action beats but the small conversations: a strange, tense chat in a ruined diner, a piece of pre-war media resurfacing at the worst possible time, or a casual bit of wasteland banter that suddenly turns threatening. The dialogue sometimes leans too modern for the retro setting, but the rhythm feels natural enough that it rarely jars. When the show is firing on all cylinders, it nails that specific Fallout flavor: characters staring at incomprehensible horror and responding with a joke, a shrug, or a desperate sales pitch.
If there’s one area where the season could improve going forward, it’s in fleshing out the secondary cast and giving certain arcs more emotional weight. Some supporting characters are memorable and sharply drawn, while others feel like they exist mainly to be lore-delivery devices or cannon fodder. The world feels rich enough that it can absolutely sustain more side stories and slower, character-focused detours. A little more breathing room for relationships—whether friendships, rivalries, or romances—would help the big twists land harder and keep the show from occasionally feeling like it’s sprinting from spectacle to spectacle.
Overall, Fallout’s first season is a strong, confident debut that understands what made the games stand out without being slavishly beholden to them. It’s funny, brutal, stylish, and surprisingly character-driven for a show that spends so much time reveling in bloodshed and nuclear kitsch. The missteps in pacing and the polarizing choices in the finale keep it from being flawless, but they also signal a series willing to take risks rather than play it safe. For viewers who enjoy genre TV with personality, and for gamers who have been burned by adaptations before, this season is absolutely worth the trip into the wasteland. It doesn’t just survive the jump to live action; it stomps into it in full power armor, flaws and all.
“The deal was clear—his life for mine. You broke it.” — Nam Gi-jun
Mercy for None is a gritty, intense Korean action drama that drops you into the shadowy underbelly of Seoul’s criminal world, where revenge is less a personal choice and more a brutal currency everyone ends up paying. Adapted from the webtoon Plaza Wars: Mercy for None by Oh Se-hyung and Kim Geun-tae, the series runs a lean seven episodes at roughly 40–45 minutes each, making it a compact but powerful binge. It follows Nam Gi-jun, a former gang enforcer who once carved out a bloody reputation for himself before literally cutting himself out of the life—he slices his own Achilles tendon to walk away after a disastrous job. Years later, when his younger brother Gi-seok, now a rising figure in the underworld, is murdered in what looks like a calculated move in a larger power struggle, Gi-jun is dragged back into the orbit he tried so hard to escape. What begins as a simple quest for payback slowly mutates into a full-blown gang war between rival factions, where old debts, broken promises, and rotten institutions all collide.
The show’s webtoon roots are easy to feel in its storytelling style and visual sensibility. Plaza Wars: Mercy for None was known for its grim noir tone, sharp sense of place, and explosive outbursts of violence, and the drama leans into that DNA rather than sanding it down. The adaptation keeps the basic spine of the story—an aging, wounded enforcer returning to a city carved up by criminal empires—and translates the panels’ rough, kinetic energy into tight, live-action set-pieces. So Ji-sub’s casting as Nam Gi-jun is spot-on: he looks and moves like someone who has survived more fights than he cares to remember, and his presence gives the character that blend of weariness and danger that fans of the source material wanted to see. The direction and writing embrace the original’s grimy, unforgiving atmosphere, focusing on high-stakes confrontations and the emotional cost of violence rather than trying to make the material more broadly “feel-good” or conventional.
At the center of everything is Gi-jun’s arc, and that’s where the series finds its emotional weight. He isn’t written as a slick, wisecracking antihero; he’s a man who carries his history in his body and on his face. When he’s living in hiding, you can feel the way his past still sits on his shoulders, and once he learns how his brother died, the shift in him is less about explosive rage and more about grim resolve. The limp from his old injury, the way he braces himself before every fight, and the quiet moments where he weighs what he’s about to do all help make him feel like a person first and a genre archetype second. That keeps the show from collapsing into pure revenge fantasy, even when Gi-jun tears through rooms full of armed men; there’s a sense that every win costs him something.
The supporting cast gives the drama a lot of texture, especially the older gangsters who make up the city’s criminal backbone. These men are written as survivors who’ve spent decades navigating backroom deals, territory disputes, and shifting alliances; they don’t just feel like generic “boss” figures but people with their own codes and grudges. Their scenes have a heavy, lived-in tension, even when nobody is throwing a punch. By contrast, some of the younger characters—the hotheaded heirs and ambitious underlings—can feel more sketched in. They bring energy and chaos, but their motivations and personalities aren’t always explored as deeply as they could be, which sometimes makes their big turning points land a little softer. The show also makes the deliberate choice to center almost entirely on men, with women mostly absent or on the fringes. That tight focus suits the idea of a closed, hyper-masculine underworld, but it does limit the emotional and thematic range.
Where Mercy for None really swings for the fences is in its action. The fights are brutal, messy, and grounded, full of close-quarters grappling, improvised weapons, and bodies hitting concrete hard. There’s a clear sense of geography in most of the set-pieces: you can tell where everyone is in a hallway brawl or a parking garage ambush, and the camera usually holds long enough to showcase the choreography without turning everything into a blur. Gi-jun’s physical limitations are baked into the way he moves; he fights like someone who knows his body can betray him at any second, relying on experience, ruthlessness, and timing more than sheer athleticism. As the series goes on, though, it does start to push him closer to the edge of believability, with him surviving punishment that would realistically stop anyone else. Whether that bothers you will depend on how much you’re willing to accept heightened genre logic in exchange for cathartic, over-the-top showdowns.
Stylistically, the series leans into a very specific mood: lots of night shots, harsh lighting, and cramped locations that make the city feel like a maze of traps and dead ends. Bars, offices, stairwells, garages, and back alleys all start to feel like different battlegrounds in the same endless war. When the show occasionally cuts to quieter, more open environments—like scenes from Gi-jun’s life in seclusion—they almost feel like they belong to a different world. That contrast reinforces just how suffocating his return to Seoul is. The music tends to underscore rather than dominate, and while it may not be the kind of score you walk away humming, it adds an extra layer of tension to confrontations and a sense of heaviness to the aftermath of each fight.
Structurally, Mercy for None benefits from being short and focused. With only seven episodes, there isn’t much room for filler, so the story keeps moving—information is revealed, allegiances shift, and every episode pushes Gi-jun further into conflict. There’s no attempt to pad things out with a romance subplot or quirky comic relief, which makes the series feel more like a long crime film than a traditional drama season. At the same time, the show occasionally leans on familiar rhythms: Gi-jun confronts a new layer of the conspiracy, storms another stronghold, leaves a trail of bodies, and moves on. A bit more variation in the types of obstacles he faces or the perspectives we follow might have made the middle stretch feel less repetitive. Still, the relatively tight run helps prevent that repetition from becoming a serious drag.
On a thematic level, the drama keeps circling back to ideas of debt, loyalty, and the illusion of getting out clean. Gi-jun once believed that sacrificing part of himself physically would allow him to walk away from the life he lived and protect the people he cared about. The story systematically tears that belief apart. The bosses he helped rise are still entangled in their old patterns, the institutions that are supposed to enforce justice are compromised, and his brother’s death becomes proof that the system he once upheld ultimately consumes everyone in its reach. The ending doesn’t offer easy comfort: the people who engineered the power struggle pay a price, but what’s left behind is not some hopeful new order, just ruins. Gi-jun’s revenge lands, but it doesn’t look or feel like a victory.
As a whole package, Mercy for None works very well as a stripped-down, no-frills revenge saga with a strong sense of character and place. Its strengths lie in So Ji-sub’s committed performance, the weighty, bruising action, and the way it translates its webtoon source into something that feels cinematic rather than purely episodic. Its weaknesses—limited female representation, some underdeveloped younger characters, and occasional repetition in structure and escalation—keep it from feeling completely fresh, but they don’t undermine what the show is clearly trying to be. It isn’t out to reinvent the gangster genre; it’s out to inhabit it fully, with a distinctly Korean noir flavor and a protagonist who feels like he’s been carved out of regret and rage.
If you’re looking for a character-driven revenge thriller that leans into dark atmosphere, grounded yet stylized violence, and the slow unraveling of a criminal ecosystem, Mercy for None is absolutely worth the time. If you’re hoping for a broader ensemble piece with varied perspectives, rich female characters, or a more hopeful worldview, this will probably feel too narrow and bleak. As a webtoon adaptation and a compact action drama, though, it stands out as a confident, hard-edged entry that knows exactly what it wants to do and largely pulls it off.
1990’s By Dawn’s Early Light is a film adaptation by HBO of William Prochnau’s novel Trinity’s Child. The film, when it first aired on HBO, seemed dated since the Soviet Union was ultimately going through its death throes as the military build-up initiated during the Reagan Administration crippled the USSR economically (they too tried to match the build-up in conventional and nuclear forces). Yet, despite the ending of the Cold War, recent events domestically and around the world has shown that the world never truly left behind the shadow of nuclear war.
The film is simplicity in the way the plot unfolds. A failed coup by dissident Soviet military commanders fails, but it’s after-effects of creating a “hot war” between the US and the USSR succeeds as both US President and Soviet Premiere make mistakes in their decisions. Decisions heavily influenced by their military commanders who see only black and white in how their respective nations should respond militarily. By Dawn’s Early Light shares some similarities to the classic 60’s Cold War films like Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Both films deal with the human frailties and flaws helping influence events that could lead to nuclear Armageddon for the whole planet. By Dawn’s Early Light concentrates on several storylines to highlight the stress and difficulties individuals must face to either follow their orders to their inevitable conclusion or allow their conscience to help make the moral decisions in trying to stop the madness spiraling out of control. Though some people’s decisions are left wanting, the film ends with a glimmer of hope that may just bring the world from the brink of annihilation.
The acting by the cast of Rebecca DeMornay, Powers Boothe, James Earl Jones, Darrin McGavin, Martin Landau and Rip Torn are well done. Rebecca DeMornay and Powers Boothe anchor one of the subplots as romantically involved B-52 crew pilots whose conflict comes from their own intimate closeness affecting command decisions and from the stress of families lost by the rest of the bomber crew. Darrin McGavin, Rip Torn and Martin Landau anchor the other subplot of competing Presidents. One a physically incapacitated US leader trying to avert escalating the conflict to the point of no return with another recently sworn in who fears of losing a nuclear war and thus wanting to strike back full and hard. In between these two leaders is the diabolical performance by Rip Torn as a warmongering Army colonel who sees only winning the war as the only objective. At times, the performances do become hampered by the simplicity of the script, but the cast power through to the end.
In the end, the film might look a bit dated in its production design (this was 1990 and many years before HBO became known for premiere television production) but the story itself is very current and relevant. What might have been a nice Cold War relic fairy tale when it first aired in 1990 on HBO has taken on more of a cautionary tale as more nations begin to acquire nuclear weapons with some of these nations not just enemies of the US and the world in general, but also led by men whose hold on sanity seem tenuous at best. By Dawn’s Early Light is a great piece political “what if” that hopefully remains just that and not a prediction of reality to come.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing City Guys, which ran on NBC from 1997 to 2001. The entire show is currently streaming on YouTube!
This week, the city guys finally leave the city for a while. Drama follows.
Episode 4.24 “El-Brain”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)
On Wikipedia, this episode’s plot is described as follows: “El-Train enters the Science Fair to prove that he’s smarter than everyone, including Jamal, who thinks he isn’t.” Unfortunately, this is one of the episodes that is not streaming anywhere online so I haven’t been able to watch it. Interestingly. the title of this episode would seem to indicated that I’ve been referring to L-Train by the wrong name all this time.
Well, he’ll always be L-Train to me. And I hope he did well at the science fair. I’m also going to assume that Jamal learned a lesson about judging people.
Episode 4.25 “Pier Pressure”
(Dir by Frank Bonner, originally aired on December 16th, 2000)
Chris has got access to his father’s vacation home for the weekend so the kids are going to the Hamptons!
Everyone is super excited about the idea of going out on Chris’s father’s yacht. The only problem is that the yacht’s captain has called in sick. Fortunately, Chris knows how to sail. He, Cassidy, Dawn, and Al take the yacht out for a spin. As you can probably guess, this leads to one disaster after another. First off, Al forgets to pack the food because he’s tired of Dawn trying to micromanage his life. Secondly, Chris and Al turn out to be not quite the expert fishermen that they claimed to be. Third, after turning off the engine, Chris can’t figure out how to drop the anchor. Fourth, the boat floats until it hits a sandbar. Fifth, the boat runs out of gas. Sixth, the boat runs out of power. Seventh, Al announces that everyone is going to starve to death. That does seem like a distinct possibility but at least they’ll get to experience a little bit of the yacht life before they die. Plus, if they die, the show will be over and I can start watching something better.
Meanwhile, Jamal and L-Train invite two women up to the house, which they now claim to own. The women make themselves comfortable in the living room. Suddenly, Ms. Noble and Billy show up! What are they doing there!? It turns out that they’re spending the weekend at the Hamptons as well and they just decided to stop by. Seriously, school’s out. It’s the weekend! No one wants to see their principal on the weekend! And really, I am kind of suspicious of any principal who would decide to just drop in on their students during they’re own vacation. That’s weird.
Fortunately, it all works out in the end. Jamal suddenly notices that Chris, Al, Dawn, and Cassidy haven’t come home. The coast guard is called. Everyone lives! Yay! This is the type of episode that I can’t stand, where every problem is the result of people just being unbelievably stupid. But at least it only lasted 30 minutes or so.
Before I start this TV series review I will admit I am gullible for a dark British comedy; and the darker they go the more I love them!
This Way Up:
Is a dark British comedy that follows Aine (Show creator Aisling Bea ) While she goes thru the disaster of her life. Rebounding as an English tutor in a foreign land she begins to discover who she really is. Finding a new life with a someone you wouldn’t expect while also connecting with her sibling rivalry Shona (Sharon Horgan)This Way Up also stars (Tobias Menzies as Richard) (Indira Varma as Charlotte) and (Aasif Mandvi as Vish)
I know other reviewers are going down the “Catastrophe” or “Fleabag” thoughts. And I completely understand that. But, for me, I just watched Aine suffer a “teeny weeny” breakdown and re-introduce her-self to her-self. For this series only having six, about 25 minute episodes, it is fast paced, excellently written and handles delicate subject matter very succinctly.
Would I Recommend?
Why are you still reading this review? Go, now, and spin up your Hulu and get to watching!
Here is you a teaser if you want!
This Way Up: All episodes are now streaming on Hulu
You all know I love Orphan Black as much as anyone! And I literally just bounced up and down off my seat when I saw the new trailer during BBCA new show ClassDW!
From the Orphan Black YT page:
The clone sisterhood has been through it all together. From assassinations, detrimental illnesses, monitors and accidental murders to suburban drug fronts, kidnappings, male clones and biological warfare – there isn’t anything thBlis lot hasn’t experienced. But through it all, they’ve remained united in their love and mission to keep each other safe at all costs. They’ve sacrificed their families, the loves of their lives, and any true sense o ors and accidental murders to suburban drug fronts, kidnappings, male clones and biological warfare – there isn’t anything thBlis lot hasn’t experienced. But through it all, they’ve remained united in their love and mission to keep each other safe at all costs. They’ve sacrificed their families, the loves of their lives, and any true sense of normalcy, all for the chance to liberate themselves from forces much bigger than any one of them. This season, they must all fight for the family they’ve chosen, for a new future and ultimately, for freedom.
Orphan Black extended trailer can be seen here!
Okay, this was a bit exciting to me! And I can not wait until #CloneClub is back on June 10th!
In 2009, Steven Soderbergh released a little independent film called The Girlfriend Experience starring, who at that time, was one of the adult industry’s biggest stars in Sasha Grey. The film explored and dealt with the life of a high-class escort by the name of Chelsea as she navigated the world of powerful men and the effect of money in monetizing something as intimate and personal as being someone’s girlfriend. It wasn’t a film that had many supporters. Most saw the inexperience of Sasha Grey as a dramatic actress hamstringing what was an interesting look at the dual themes of sex and capitalism.
It’s now 2016 and the premium cable channel Starz has released a new dramatic series inspired by the very same Soderbergh film mentioned above, but not beholden to it’s characters and storyline. Where Sasha Grey’s character of Chelsea seemed more like an on-screen cipher the audience was suppose to imprint whatever their expectations onto, this series has a more traditional narrative of a young woman whose attempt to balance in her life a burgeoning career in law (she’s just earned an internship at a prestigious Chicago law firm) with her discovery of her inherent sexuality while dipping her toes into the high-end sex-workers trade of the so-called “girlfriend experience.”
Riley Keough (last seen as the Citadel wife Capable who both romanced and mothers Nicholas Hoult’s War Boy Nux) plays Christine Reade as a struggling law firm intern who has worked hard to get where she’s at and continues to do so both as an intern and as a continuing law student. Yet, she also has the same problems many young people the past couple decades have had when it comes to earning their degrees. Debt has become a major issue and finding ways to make ends meet while still holding onto their dream profession becomes more and more difficult. Christine, at the encouragement of a close friend (played by Kate Lyn Sheil), tries her hand at becoming a high-price escort.
Just like the film it’s loosely based on, the series tries in the beginning to paint the high-priced escort profession that Christine gets herself into as very glamorous. Christine’s clients are white men who are older, rich and powerful. Men whose own interpersonal relationships with those close to them have been left behind in their quest for power. They see in Christine a sort of commodity to help fill in a need missing in their life even if false and just a transactional role-play experience.
Showrunners Amy Seimetz (who plays Christine’s sister Annabel) and Lodge Kerrigan (independent filmmakers and writers of renown) have created a show that explores not just the dual nature of how sex has become just another commodity in a world that’s becoming more and more capitalistic, but also a show that explores the nature of a professional woman in a world where they’re told that in order to fit in with the “men” they must suppress their sexual side. It’s a series that doesn’t hold back it’s punches in showing how the patriarchal nature of the professional world (it could be law, business, Hollywood, etc.) makes it difficult for women like Christine to try and be a successful professional and still retain their sexual nature. It’s a world up-ended and shown it’s cruel and ugly nature by Christine with every new client she meets and entertains.
The show and it’s writers (both of whom took turns directing each of the 13-episodes of the first season) don’t pass any sort of judgement on Christine’s choice of working as a high-paid escort. This series doesn’t look at these sex-workers as beneath what normal society expects of it’s women, both young and old. They instead want to explore the why’s of their decision to enter into such a career even if it means hampering their initial chosen profession. They’ve come up with some intriguing ideas of this world of escorts and powerful men walking through their lives always pretending to be one thing then another. A world where half-lies and made up personas have say much about the true natures of each individual as it does of the world around them.
Christine enters this world of becoming a “girlfriend experience” as a rebellious, adventurous lark, but finds out that her keen, observant and adaptable mind which has served her well in her rise as a law student and intern also serves her well in her new side-career. While her friend Avery who first introduces her to the world sees it all as a rush and exhilarating experience to be done here and there, Christine finds herself drawn deeper into the world as she goes from being represented to finally going off on her own as a freelancer. She’s her own boss and she controls what goes on with this new life.
Yet, The Girlfriend Experience is not all about the glass and steel, cold and calculating glamour of Christine’s new world. Just as she’s reached the heights of her new found power over the very system which tells her what she can and cannot be, outside forces that she thought was in her control brings her back to the reality of her choices throughout the first half of the series. For all the money, power and control she has achieved her old world as a law student and intern begins to fall apart as it intersects with her new one. It’s to the writers credit that they don’t give Christine any easy outs, but do allow her character to decide for herself how to get through both her professional and personal crisis.
While both showrunners Seimetz and Kerrigan have much to do with the brilliance of The Girlfriend Experience it all still hinges on the performance of it’s lead in Riley Keough. She’s practically in every scene and she grows as a performer right before out eyes. From the moment we see her we’re instantly drawn to her character. Hair up in an innocent ponytail and dressed very conservatively as she starts her internship, we still sense more to her character and we’re rewarded with each new episode as Keough’s performance with not just her acting both verbal and silent. Whether it’s the subtle changes in her expression as she transitions from an attentive “girlfriend”, supportive “confidant” and then to a calculating and all-business “escort” and all in a span of a brief scene.
Even the scenes where some audience may find titillating (even for premium cable like Starz, the sex in The Girlfriend Experience are quite eye-opening without being exploitative.), Keough manages to convey her true feelings with her eyes, while her body language convinces her latest client that it’s all real. She’s able to slip into whatever fantasy her client pays for and, in the end, whatever fantasy she wants to insert herself into in order to escape the terrible reality which has hardened and prepared her for the “real world” that all young people in college aspire to join.
The Girlfriend Experience might have been born out of an cinematic experiment by the icon of independent filmmaking, but it more than stands on it’s own take on ideas and themes (while adding and introducing some of their own) that Soderbergh tried to explore. With Sasha Grey’s performance as Chelsea proving to be a divisive reason whether Soderbergh’s film was a success or a failure, with Seimetz and Kerrigan they found in Riley Keough’s performance as Christine Reade a protagonist that engenders not just sympathy but at times frustration. Her Christine Reade doesn’t conform to what society thinks women should be when out and about in public and, for some men, when in private, as well.
The same could be said about this series as it doesn’t fit into any particular narrative and thematic box that we as a viewer have become trained to. It’s both a series exploring the existential idea of sexual identity and the commodifying power that capitalism has had on things intimate and personal. It’s also a series about a young woman’s journey of self-discovery that doesn’t just highlight the high’s but also shows how precipitous the fall can and will be when the traditionalists object. The show also performs well as a thriller due to the exceptional score composed by another brilliant indie-filmmaker. You may know him under the name of Shane Carruth.
The Girlfriend Experience doesn’t have the pulp sensibilities of such shows as The Walking Dead or the rabid following of Game of Thrones, but as of 2016 it’s probably the best new show of the year and here’s to hoping that more people discover it’s brilliance before it goes away.
You all know I love Orphan Black as much as anyone! And I literally just bounced up and down off my seat when I saw the new trailer during BBCA new show ClassDW!
Through the Shattered Lens 