It’s the penultimate episode, and New Vegas is at the center of everything.
Well, not everything. We have a whole subplot exploring a character entirely removed from the real action of the season. Still, this is mostly about setting things up for the finale.
Automated Ambitions
With Lucy and Hank, the episode picks up where the last one left off. Lucy is quite torn over Hank’s insanely unethical (but weirdly practical) plan to use the Automated Man device to control people on the surface. While the end result might be more stable than the Wasteland in its current state, it would be no less of a nightmare world.
Lucy gets hip to that very quick when she realizes that the automated wastelanders are effectively reduced to mindless slaves, their memories and identities stripped away in favor of strict uniformity.
It’s a hard dilemma she’s put in, especially with Hank acting so blasé about all of it. He’s obviously committed to this agenda, but he also clearly would like for his daughter to be on his side again. I like the scene where he’s giving Lucy her first driving lesson in the Vegas Vault’s spacious corridors.
But no matter how rosy a spin he puts on everything, Hank fails to turn Lucy to the dark side and she continues to rebel.
Savage Strip
Which is good, because it would have been awkward if the rest of our heroes arrived to find our plucky protagonist turned rogue.
Cooper, Maximus, Thaddeus and Dogmeat probably had the best scenes in this episode. At one time, all of these characters were opposed (yes, even Dogmeat), so it’s cool that they’ve reached a place where they can work together.
In exchange for the cold fusion diode, Cooper gives the two former Brotherhood of Steel grunts access to an abandoned NCR safe house. And hooks Maximus up with a new suit of power armor, customized to resemble the NCR Rangers; it’s wonderfully fitting for his character.
The boys stroll into New Vegas, well-armed and ready to do battle with the pack of Deathclaws surrounding the Lucky 38. Though it’s Maximus who does most of the fighting, since Cooper’s got his own agenda, Dogmeat’s a dog and Thaddeus is kind of falling apart.
I should talk about Steph now. Because this episode expanded on her character in a big way.
Like Hank, they’ve set her up to be a great Fallout villain. A coldblooded opportunist with no true loyalty to anyone but herself. She’s even given a sympathetic motive for being this way. Steph is driven by her past as a concentration camp survivor during the United States’ hostile takeover of Canada, losing her mother in the process.
From the time she crept into the US to the present day, she’s acting purely to secure her own survival. Which is bad news for the Vault-Dwellers she’s now in charge of.
Under pressure to end the water shortage in Vault 33, Betty gives up Hank’s secret box to Steph in exchange for some of Vault 32’s water. She won that little battle, only to then be exposed at the wedding she arranged between herself and Chet. I like that Chet had the wits to wait until he was in front of everyone before revealing the evidence he’s got on her; I was worried he would just sheepishly fall in line. This puts Steph on the run again.
The Journey of a Diode
Steph turns out to be another character who ran into Cooper 200 years ago. In fact, he helped lead her to Vault-Tec by introducing her to Hank.
Cooper seems to be at the center of everything: Vault-Tec, Moldaver, Mr. House, the U.S. military that would eventually become the Brotherhood of Steel, etc. Now we learn that he was basically the man who started the plot of the show.
To be fair, the young and idealistic Cooper thought he was saving the world from the exact future his Ghoul self is now trapped in.
After successfully stealing the Cold Fusion diode, Cooper listens to Diane Welch, the well-meaning politician he met earlier, and hands it off to the President, believing it’s better left in the hands of the government than a heartless corporation like Vault-Tec or a shady weirdo like Mr. House. Unfortunately for Cooper and Welch, the U.S. government was already compromised by the Enclave… who are implied to be the ones Vault-Tec orchestrated the Great War on behalf of.
The world is condemned instead of saved, and Cooper finds himself handing off the diode once again. Only this time, he delivers it to the one it was meant for: Mr. House, whose digitized consciousness is revived when Cooper places the diode in the Lucky 38’s system.
That's not so surprising. What was surprising was the fate of Diane Welch, which I most certainly did not see coming when this character was first introduced. After eluding her dad, Lucy opens the door to the mainframe computer room that connects all of the automated people and we see that all of it is hooked up to Diane's severed head. Just when you think you've seen how monstrous Hank and Vault-Tec can be, they up the ante in the most outrageous way.
Caps and Rads:
* Lucy gets her first costume change since the show’s first episode, trading in her blue Vault-Tec jumpsuit for a saccharine yellow sundress. Ella Purnell’s looking good either way, but I’m mostly just glad she got to change out of that bloodstained shirt.
* The President of the United States in the past is played by Clancy Brown. I’ve been watching The Crown recently, in which Brown plays Lyndon B. Johnson at some point. Also, Brown and Walton Goggins both have voice acting roles in Invincible, which I’ve been reviewing alongside episodes of Fallout.
* Thaddeus thinks he’s a ghoul, but even Cooper seems perplexed by his condition. He’s got a small mouth with crooked fangs forming on his shoulder, and one of his arms randomly falls off. I’m guessing he’s turning into a Brundle-Fly type thing, becoming a new creature by slowly shedding his human form.
* Cooper mentions only ever seeing one man come out on top in Vegas and that he did it by rigging the game. In the context of the show, he clearly means Mr. House, but he might also be referring to Courier Six if we factor in the plot of Fallout: New Vegas.
* Cooper takes a laser rifle from the safe house. I liked that it barely did any damage to the Deathclaws, though. That’s definitely similar to the games.
* Clever move casting Natasha Henstridge as Steph’s mom who encourages her mercenary behavior. Steph is an attractive yet eerie blonde who happens to be ruthlessly focused on her own survival at the expense of others, making her more than a bit like the alien seductress Henstridge played in Species.
* Music: “Balada de la Trompeta” by Raphael, pretty effective during the climatic reveal.
Quotes:
Lucy: “I guess this is one way to save the world. But it’s still wrong.”
Hank: “Perfect is the enemy of good, Lucy.”
Cooper: “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but the Vaults aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Maybe the best thing that we could hope for is that enough people do the right thing so that the Vaults aren’t necessary.”
Steph: “Hm. That’s a nice sentiment. But I think I have a better chance of getting in a Vault.”
Cooper: “I wanna believe in people like you, that fight for all the right things, but you don’t make it easy. I saw you at that VA meeting last week. Why can’t people like you just learn to sell it better?”
Diane Welch: “How’s that worked in your experience? How much do you actually know about the company that put you on all those billdboards?”
Cooper: “More than I did when I signed that contract.”
Cooper/The Ghoul: “So, you wanna give that thing to a good person so they can save the world. I understand. But in order to save that good person… you’re gonna have to give it to a really bad person.”
Maximus: “You always end up back where you started, huh?”
Cooper/The Ghoul: “Now you understand.”
Lucy: “I think I do understand. One side is murdering people, enslaving them, crucifying them, and the other side is just vaguely problematic.”
Chet: “She’s two hundred years old. And she’s not even from America. She’s Canadian!”
Barb: “Here we go. The only way to save our family is to save the world. That simple.”
Cooper: “That simple.”
Not a bad set-up for a finale. Three out of five corrupt U.S. Presidents.
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