Fallout isn’t just a sci-fi satire of America and the Cold War in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. It’s also an exploration of humanity. What drives us. What divides us or brings us together. What compels us to create or destroy, to do good or bad.
I think the show has done an excellent job of capturing this underlying complexity.
It’s all over the place in this episode. The Ghoul is an absolute menace to the wasteland, but he’s not a static character; as Cooper Howard two hundred years in the past, he’s a very likable fellow. In that past, Moldaver’s world-changing cold fusion tech was eclipsed by Vault-Tec’s monopolization of nuclear war paranoia. The bizarre community in Vault 4 is made up of the remnants of Shady Sands’ nuked citizenry and the mutant offspring of people 4's original Vault-dwellers used for mad science experiments. And the pleasant and carefree atmosphere of Vault 33 is almost entirely stripped away as the secrets of the adjacent Vaults 32 and 31 are slowly revealed.
Dualities are everywhere, and things aren’t always what they seem. Again, very similar to the previous Nolan-Joy project, Westworld.
Lucy and Maximus get a head
The early portion wherein Lucy and Maximus depart Vault 4, in particular, is a great example of the moral and philosophical elements of the franchise. Maximus regains his power armor by stealing the Vault’s fusion core. The Vault will not survive long without the fusion core, as Lucy points out. Maximus is forced to decide: Condemn Vault 4 to keep the suit that makes him feel heroic, powerful and safe, or do the selfless thing and give the fusion core back.
Since he is generally a well-intentioned person, Maximus does give up the core and the suit. He also owns up to the lies he’s been telling about himself. And since Lucy is a kind and understanding person, she's able to look past his mistakes and invite him to join her when she returns to Vault 33. It graduates into a full-blown romance when they get Wilzig's head back from Thaddeus. When the Brotherhood of Steel closes in on their location, Maximus continues to be heroic with his idea to bring the Brotherhood a different severed head and give the coveted head to Lucy so she can save her father. They kiss passionately (as do Wilzig and the decoy head) and promise to reunite.
Ghouls Like Us
And while their love begins to bloom in the present, the Ghoul's appears to be on the verge of falling apart in the past. Moldaver exploits Cooper's doubts about Vault-Tec, getting him to spy on his wife, Barb, by bugging her Pip-Boy. Cooper has some initial hesitance, but some of his and Barb's previous conversations about the company move him to go through with it. We know from the first episode that he's separated from her and paying alimony the day the bombs fell, so this clearly does not end well.
One of the things that motivated Cooper's turn to spy was the fact that he'd have to leave his beloved dog, Roosevelt, behind when he and his family moved into a Vault. And 200 years later, it's his Ghoul self's growing affection for Wilzig's lab-bred dog that lets us know there really is some trace left of the man he once was.
That said, traces of goodness or not, he's still cold-blooded enough to gun down a young man in front of his poor father, as we see him do at the start of this episode.
33/32/31
Underneath all the wild Wasteland shenanigans is still the mystery behind Vault 33 and its neighbors, 32 and 31.
Here we start off with a bang, as the captive raiders from Moldaver's attack all wind up dead from poisoned food. Only for this to quickly get swept over when half of Vault 33's people are ordered to relocate to the now unoccupied Vault 32, all guided by the leadership of the new Overseer, good old Betty.
None of this sits well with Norm, who is very observant and questions things. Leading him to hack Betty's computer and lie his way into a meeting with the Overseer of the as-yet-unseen Vault 31. This is where people like Betty, Steph and Hank, Norm and Lucy's own father, come from originally. And also where every Overseer for Vaults 33 and 32 have come from. Norm's entry to Vault 31 is very foreboding, and as he walks down the corridors, he finds... something moving on the ground.
Though I'm not a fan of the limited episode count for modern shows, this was a pretty effective penultimate episode for the season.
Caps and rads:
* Music: “You’re Everything” by The Danleers, and “From the First Hello to the Last Goodbye” by Jane Morgan.
* We got another Saturday Night Live cameo, with Fred Armisen as the guy running a local radio station.
* The opening scene with the Ghoul interrogating Adam before gunning down his son was another big nod to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Erik Estrada gave a good performance with a very small amount of screen-time.
* Speaking of that scene, very cool to see the NCR Ranger uniform in live-action. Even if it’s only worn for lead farming. Another iconic outfit from the games, like the Brotherhood of Steel power armor. The dialogue suggests that Adam and the Ghoul fought each other in the past, probably back when the NCR was a major power on the West Coast.
* Maximus eating an extra handful of popcorn before heading off to rescue Lucy was a good visual gag.
* Love the giant bags the Brotherhood initiates have to carry. It’s like a realist’s perfect depiction of what it would actually be like to lug around the ridiculous amount of supplies and equipment one can collect in the games.
* Thaddeus’s foot injury was quite gruesome. And it doesn’t look much better after he gets the creepy snake oil salesman to heal it, either. Which reminds me, the creepy snake oil salesman has a fusion core now. Will that matter, at some point? Is he going to find the abandoned power armor?
* Not sure if I pointed it out yet, but ghouls in the show apparently have a healing factor as another symptom of their mutation. Pretty sure they’re about as vulnerable as any human in the games, aside from the increased lifespan and radiation tolerance.
* The Ghoul refers to Wilzig's Enclave dog, CX404, as "Dogmeat." This is a recurring companion character in the games, a lovable German Shepherd type of dog the player can team up, pretty much always called Dogmeat. The name is another reference to A Boy and His Dog.
* Norm hacking the Overseer computer, with the scrambled code selection, was beautiful to see. Maybe next season will feature someone picking a lock with a bobby pin.
Quotes:
Cooper Howard/The Ghoul: “There’s always some new little faction, ain’t there? Brand new team of believers with their own dumbass ideas about how they gonna save the world.”
Lee Moldaver: “We were told the atom bomb meant the end of war. That didn’t work out, did it? We were told America’s always getting better, it’s always moving toward a better future. But the future is getting closer, and we can see it. Their ‘better future’ is a cliff’s edge. And it’s coming up fast, isn’t it?”
I wish this didn't sound as prescient as it does to me.
Moldaver: “I’m not a communist, Mr. Howard. That’s just a dirty word they use to describe people who aren’t insane.”
Overseer Benjamin: “For causing harm to a fellow survivor, you are hereby sentenced to death… by banishment to the surface!”
Lucy: “Do you want to come live with me in my vault?”
Maximus: “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
Snake Oil Salesman: "Is that a… Fusion core? You don’t see those around much anymore, do you?”
This might be a cheeky line meant for Fallout 4 players, since you’re liable to collect a lot of fusion cores in that game.
Vault 33 Announcer: “Remember, wherever you end up, that’s where you belong!”
Pretty dark hearing this right before we find out the raiders all got poisoned.
Chet: “I feel like this is a good moment for a fresh start.”
Norm MacLean: “You think so?”
Chet: “...Someone obviously does.”
Steph: (offscreen) “Chet!”
Norm: “You’re a coward. You know that, Chet?”
Chet: “We all are, Norm. That’s why we live in a vault.”
Cooper/The Ghoul: “I’m sorry, Dogmeat, but you ain’t him.”
Four and a half out of five rotten severed heads making out.
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