Uh, "just following orders" didn't fly at the Nuremberg trials.
Funny you bring up Nürnberg because I used "just" as a direct reference to that flimsy excuse at the Trials. This is to highlight that Coop's hardly better than Barb.
And Cooper following the orders of his CO isn't the same thing as Barb going along with nuking America because her boss told her to.
No. It is the same thing. If we stick with the Nazi Germany imagery you invoke, that sort of retrospective leniency is exactly how you get the Clean Wehrmacht myth. We don't do that here. Coop, simply put, is lucky he didn't get (or that the audience didn't see him getting) overtly monstrous orders like his fellow Marines did, the ones we see carried out in Canada in the game and the show. The fact that they have red-white-and-blue yeehaw Einsatzgruppen ops going on and Coop still takes no issue with the President says everything u need to know here. And that's not even touching his willing and ignorant participation in the propaganda machine even before Barb got him for the VT ads.
Also, "going along with nuking America bc her boss told her to" is interesting framing. I personally think she is going along with it because if she doesn't, her child and husband will die.
[...] some of the guests at the party where Cooper is performing speculate that he's paying Barb alimony and child support.
Because Barb and Coop had a very public divorce. He tells her to pretend she didn't know anything as he's being arrested in 2x8. The logical consequence to "finding out" that ur husband is a traitor is a divorce in the public eye, bc what good American would stay married to a Red? Barb needs to save her reputation for Janey's sake.
He'd have said, "I have a wife. Her name is Barbara" somewhere in here.
He mentions his wife and his family plenty when he's not actively losing his mind. A child takes precedence over a spouse in a life-or-death situation.
When Norm and Claudia are in Barb's office, they find just a photo of Janey [...]
My husband took the fall so I could keep myself and my daughter in the good graces of the company who ensures our survival, let me squander his sacrifice by keeping a picture of him in my office while I'm under heavy surveillance! Surely no-one will think twice about me longingly staring at my convicted commie husband!
[...] we know that Cooper was originally going to experience hallucinations of Lucy and Janey [...]
In the final cut of the scene that we actually end up seeing, Coop says "family" again, not just "daughter".
Not unlike the way Hank sees Lucy.
Hank and Barb are inverses of each other, and besides, there is nothing in the show that would suggest Barb views Janey as a corporate extension.
And it's worth noting that the flashback of Barb being threatened by Wilzig can't be taken at face value, because arguably it's not being framed from Barb's POV, but from Cooper's POV as Barb tells him about it.
That's in 2x6, a.k.a. the episode that gives Barbara a massive "BARB" title card that Lucy, Max, and the Ghoul also got when their POVs were introduced. The point of this episode is quite literally to show the POV of a misunderstood character, no?
[...] what the Ghoul said to Lucy when he realized she was related to Hank: [...]
Coop said that to Lucy because she insisted upon her father's goodness while Coop already knew something had be iffy about Hank MacLean being alive in the year 2296. This line is meant to sow doubt about Hank and intrigue abt Cooper's past. Tying this to a feeling of bitterness towards Barb seems a little threadbare as far as arguments go.
[...] Barb acting like she's on Cooper's side with the diode exchange while secretly planning to betray him [...]
After the diode is in the President's hands, genuinely, what would she betray Coop for? His involvement ends there. And why would she leave him a note with a very personal reference to a shared, fond memory ("Colorado was nice") in her cryopod when all is said and done? Why would he smile at it like that? It doesn't add up.
There is clearly a reason why Cooper loathes who he was before the War, why he calls his past self "stupid".
Here's a parallel between Lucy and Coop: they were both oblivious to the evil of the system they were raised in, which made them blind towards the faults of America and Vault Tec respectively, and hence they were "stupid". Fallout players are meant to groan and throw up their hands when Coop hands the diode to the President without question. He's fucking stupid in that regard bc he was brought up as an American Patriot, God Bless Our Troops and all, and most of Lucy's stupid actions are caused by her upbringing as well. The show won't shut up about this type of thing.
Barb betraying him after pretending to be on his side seems like the most logical explanation for Cooper's cynicism, the brutality he displays as the Ghoul, and why he treats Lucy the way he does. He expects Lucy to be just like Barb, and he's trying to get that side of her to come out.
This contradicts what you said about the Lucy-Coop and Barb-Hank parallels. I don't even agree with the latter one especially, but I find this argument bewildering after everything. Does "I'm you, sweetie, just give it a little time" mean nothing in this economy?
Lucy and Coop have all these parallels because they are the same person. He treats her like a donkey because she's a representation how he views his old self; a stupid, naive, and thereby dangerous person who deserves to be sneered at and squashed, at least in his mind. Externalized self-loathing. He expects Lucy to be just like him if he just puts her through the same shit the world put him through. Y'know? I think 200 years of painful survival and desperate, fruitless searching without human connection would also explain his ruthlessness pretty well.
Also his face while reading a note from his wife... why would he be so optimistic, close to tears and smiling about a note from someone who betrayed him? Why trust it at all? It makes no sense. Look at him.
We see how his opinions of Lucy are proven wrong. The same is the case where Barb is concerned.
He ends up being wrong about Lucy because his arc is also about disproving his general cynicism. By misjudging her, he might realize that he's also misjudged himself.
And I imagine it's also bc he only knew Lucy for a couple months, tops, and she's not his wife of many years.
Barb and Janey were frozen in an Enclave-owned vault. Meaning that her ties to the Enclave and Vault-Tec were still going strong up until the Great War.
Yeah. He did take the fall so Barb and Janey could keep a clean enough reputation for their places in the vaults, that's the whole point. Public divorce, he and Barb separate and no longer interact to keep up her and Janey's appearance as ppl who would never get involved with unamerican activities, etc. We see this idea take shape in Coop the moment he gets arrested.
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