Episode Six of the Fallout TV series . . .
ONE
A black-and-white pre-apocalypse advertisement from Vault-Tec featuring Coop. Smoking a cigarette on camera, Coop shows off Vault 4. (A sign, unremarked, over a door says: Test Subjects.) Rad-proof (and Red-proof, wink) the vault will house 200 people. Here is the Hawthorne family, part of a community of scientists who are living a five year trial in the vault. Coop encourages the audience to reserve a vault spot today, and then the director calls, “Cut.”
Shift to color as the camera pulls back. It’s a wrap. The Hawthornes, who aren’t actors, ask if they were alright. Coop exits the apartment. His wife is in the residence hallway. Bud Askins, a slimy fellow, corners him. While working for a defense contractor, Bud designed the T-45 power armor, something Coop already knows. Bud tries to palm off the T-45’s flaws, but Coop, who wore the armor in the Battle of Anchorage, won’t let him slide.
As Coop longingly watches his wife walk away from her conversation, Bud keeps him from leaving. He wants to talk about “time”, the ultimate weapon.
Escaping, Coop hugs his wife from behind, suggesting they clock out early. Barb is uncomfortable, possibly because his cuddling makes her look unprofessional. (Either that, or she doesn’t want her husband to touch her.) She tells him, sorry, but the wrap party is at their house. Coop takes the news with good humor. Cut to their home.
It’s a beautiful Hollywood property with a pool. Coop, dressing in his bedroom, picks up a newspaper with ad copy of him, thumbs up, promoting Vault-Tec. He tells his dog, a border collie named Roosevelt, to stay as he gives him ear rubs. As the dog goes to his bed (with a teddy bear — YAY!), the camera pans to the front page of the newspaper: Reds Losing Territory!
Coming onto the staircase landing, Coop lights a cigarette. On the wall behind him is a huge poster for his Western, “A Man and His Dog”. He schmoozes the crowd as he strolls through his house. Bud Askins, committing the crime of talking business at a party, calls out to Coop, who keeps walking.
TWO
Poolside, the voice actor of Bartholomew Codsworth charms the hired waitresses. (Codsy! YAY!) Coop joins him. We learn that he’s lost jobs because he’s “the pitchman for the end of the world”. They lament “Hollywood Reds” and the pocket protector brigade that runs things now. Codsworth drops that he, too, is on the wrong side because he sold his voice to the Mr. Handy robot. They lift their martini glasses and toast each other.
THREE
Hard cut to Ghoul Coop waking up on the floor. Next to him is the broken robot, Snip Snip, talking randomly in the Codsworth voice. A group of sheriffs enter the Market and hold guns on Coop. They pull the robot’s fusion core, unpowering him, and pistol whip Coop unconscious.
Roll title.
FOUR
In the Wasteland, a bunker shows the door for Vault 4. Inside, the vault hallway is tidy.
Insert a shot of forceps removing the bullet from Maximus’ shoulder.
He and Lucy are still in the vault’s holding foyer. People in scrubs tend his wound while Lucy speaks through the window. They’ll need to stay in quarantine. Maximus objects, ready to move on. Lucy vouches for the excellence of vault doctors. The woman behind the window says they have found and are bringing in Maximus’ power armor. She explains that she was born on the surface and lived in Shady Sands before the nuclear blast. Lucy is so happy to reconnect with a vault. Maximus, though, frowns.
(We, knowing vaults, are nervous.)
In quarantine, Lucy and Maximus sit on their stretchers. He says that she smells good; she asks if he wants to have sex. Immediately, Maximus squirms. He speaks in a way that indicates he’s never had sexual education or experience, and only has a child’s understanding of ejaculation.
(A lot of subtext, somewhat confusing, happens here. First, Lucy is sexually knowledgeable and experienced. It was never clear if she and Chet, her cousin, were active in the vault. It’s not the moral framework we expect from an apple pie vault, and it’s never explained. Second, Maximus, who’s been in the Brotherhood since childhood, suggests that the knights live chastely. It’s also an odd moral framework. The show gives the BoS an unstructured mash-up of cultish priests and cruel warriors. This whole scene is structurally uncomfortable.)
The camera pulls out through the vault’s foyer door window to show the label: Test Subjects. All of the earlier information about Vault 4, the science vault, comes together.
Out of quarantine, Lucy and Maximus eat lunch in the common area with the other vault dwellers. He’s suspicious. She’s relaxed. The woman, Birdie, brings the overseer to meet them. He has one eye, like a cyclops. Congenial but visually unsettling, he tells them to stay out of Level 12. (The CG for his eye is awkward and rudimentary, making his presence even more unwelcome.) When he leaves, Lucy starts to notice the other dwellers and their physical anomalies. Maximus’ doctor lifts his scrub cap to reveal a second nose on his forehead.
In the Wasteland, Coop walks with the sheriffs and remembers.
Flashback to him and Barb in their yard hot tub. It’s a beautiful afternoon scene. Coop semi-jokes about quitting Hollywood and buying a ranch in Bakersfield. Barb, climbing out, picks up a prototype Pip Boy she’s testing. He doesn’t like the corporate world. However, for Barb it’s more personal: this job is important because it guarantees their family a spot in one of the good vaults. (She doesn’t explain what that means.)
Later, Coop sits at a bar. Dismal foreign policy news comes from the TV. He’s joined by Charlie, one of his military brothers and co-actors who now attends pro-Communism meetings. Charlie argues why he’s against capitalism: Vault-Tec has a “fiduciary responsibility” to promote war. Their vaults won’t make money for their investors without it. He gives Coop a card and invites him to a meeting. Fade to black.
SWITCH
Daytime at Coop’s house. Phone call for Barb from work. They’re about to sit down to dinner, though, and Coop hangs up on them. We see the Pip Boy on Barb’s arm as they eat. Janey, we’re told, reads to the dog in her room. This prompts Barb to mention dogs aren’t allowed in the vaults. Feeding them would be inefficient. (Throughout, Barb is nervous. She suspects this will turn into an argument.) Coop wants to know if he went to war only to end up living under the boot heel of Bud Askins. She becomes angry. She spends every day at work thinking about how humanity can survive a nuclear event. She works hard to ensure her own family gets into the special vault for management, the one that oversees all the other vaults. Intense, she insists this is the best outcome in a horrible situation. Coop apologizes.
FIVE
Lucy sits with the Cyclops Overseer. He’s a fifth generation dweller who isn’t a fan of the surface dwellers they take in. That’s the policy, though. (That eye is so distracting; I don’t think he’ll ever pass the uncanny valley test.) When Lucy asks about Level 12, Cyclops kicks her out of his office. Fade to black.
Maximus, walking the vault hallway, finds his armor in a storage room. He’s happy until he remembers it has no power. (The inscrutable helmet seems to judge him.) Finding the reactor room, Maximus prepares to steal a nuclear core. Birdie comes up behind him. She’s brought him a Pip Boy keyed to his own personal room, which includes a hot shower. Maximus doesn’t know what that is.
The residence hallway is full of smiling people. He finds his room and enters. A gift basket of snacks waits on the table. (Sugar Bombs! YAY!) Music plays on the turntable. A save screen of a waterfall loops on the TV. Potable water flows from the kitchen faucet. In the shower, he dances, then comes out to a pure-white fluffy robe and slippers. He samples the basket.
Meanwhile, Lucy enters the vault’s classroom, a nostalgic look on her face. The lesson on the chalkboard is the history of Shady Sands, capital of the New California Republic. The last drawing in the timeline is of a mushroom cloud, year 2277. Lucy was taught none of this in her vault’s school.
(I believe this is the first time we hear Inon Zur’s magnificent and iconic theme music from the games. Why wait until halfway through the first season? The showrunners have decided that this reveal, that Shady Sands was a thriving community for over 100 years before some one or thing destroyed it, is the key moment. Is this the season’s Switch? For whatever reason, the introduction of the Fallout music is thrilling and impactful.)
Noticing that people are gathering, Lucy leaves the schoolroom. The Surface Dweller residents have some kind of tradition. They invite Lucy to join them. Fade to black.
The sheriffs escort Coop through the Wasteland and into a “Govermint” building. He recognizes the head man, Booker. Coop used to be his best bounty hunter. He asks for his sewing kit from his bag, which contains a fingertip (Lucy’s?), and to have his wrists unbound. Booker marvels that Coop’s been alive for 200 years. He taunts, Are you still looking for her? (We don’t know who Booker means. Possibly Janey, possibly Barb?) Coop only responds that he’s been hearing about Moldaver, the “Flame Mother”. Booker is prepared to punish Coop for breaking up his lucrative organ donor business at the Super Duper Mart. While checking the trigger-like movement on his repaired forefinger, Coop admits to trashing the market. He also confesses to shooting up Filly.
SIX
When the sheriffs move on him, Coop takes their guns and kills them. Booker, still calmly smoking his cigar, curses at Coop.
SEVEN
Ignoring him, Coop goes to the wanted poster billboard and pulls down a picture. He knows this face; who is it? It’s Moldaver, Booker tells him. This is his first time putting this name to this face. Prompt a flashback.
EIGHT
It’s the Communists meeting in pre-apocalypse times, held at a mortuary. Coop pulls up in his nifty banana-yellow convertible. He enters and joins others filing up the stairs.
Crosscut with Lucy entering the Surfie meeting. Everyone, including Lucy, checks their Pip Boys at the door. They light candles at a central table. Lucy follows along with their chanting.
Back to Coop, who hesitates in the funeral home hallway.
Lucy startles when the Surfies start unzipping their vault suits. Naked upper bodies come out. (None of the women wear a bra under those things? Pfft. I don’t think so.) Lucy forgoes the undressing.
Charlie welcomes Coop to the meeting.
Birdie enters the group and lights a brazier on the table. “Flame Mother, we remember,” she says.
In the mausoleum, a silhouette of a woman’s coiffed head walks down the hallway.
“We bring back Shady Sands,” Birdie chants. People smear something green on their foreheads. Lucy joins them until she hears that they’re spreading victim ashes. She starts to back away when they drink blood from bowls.
The fashionable woman walks up behind Coop and her face comes into focus. It’s Moldaver in the pre-apocalypse world.
Lucy stares at a banner the Surfies raise as they chant to the Flame Mother. It’s a drawing of Moldaver. She has a corona, like a red Madonna. Fade to black.
Cut to Lucy pounding on Maximus’ residence door. Reveal him in the bathrobe, grinning. The empty snack boxes are strewn across the table. She tries to convince him they should leave, but he’s obviously in his bliss, even ready to try that sex thing. As she goes away to find proof that the vault is bad, he nibbles on more snacks.
NINE
In the elevator, Lucy pushes the button for Level 12. Suspense as she walks down 12’s hallway and opens the lab doors. A preserved gulper floats behind glass. Specimen jars contain human parts. Lucy activates a video machine with footage of an experiment. Behind her a glass case contains a medical chair under water. Grainy footage shows a woman in the chair, her head above water, giving birth to fish that swim around and eat her body. Lucy stops the tape and continues further, finding a room of cryopods storing frozen pregnant women.
Lights come on and the Two-Nose Doctor enters. Hearing a noise, he hits the alarm and takes a “specimen control” spear gun from the wall. Lucy can’t get out. She throws acid in his face and fights with the others who enter. They restrain her, and Birdie confronts her.
In his room, Maximus watches the waterfall TV screen and eats popcorn. It’s the only time we’ve seen him content. Fade to black.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
First, let me address the lab torture scene. Any time a story decides to use a woman giving birth for horror purposes, I’m angry. My reasons are multiple and would take an essay to decode, which I won’t write here. Suffice to say, the episode crossed a line for me. Over-the-top violence is part of the Fallout universe. However, this treads into porn. The next episode will reveal more context for this scene, but in this episode all we have is this revulsive moment. They needed to restructure, to make this scene less fraught. It is the Nine, after all, leading into the next plot development. It was a mistake to structure it like an Eight.
The entire episode is a little wonky on structure. The Two comes late. Because the Eight involves Coop confronting his feelings for communism, we know the Two must be the Hollywood isolation he and Codsworth experience because of their corporate work. Although Bud Askins is definitely Trouble, his character doesn’t develop further in the episode. This plot is about the Moldaver reveal. Drinks with Codsy is the only possible Two, but a lot of false flags fly about in the One.
Sheriffs In/Sheriffs Out is the Three/Six Mirror. It’s a common storytelling structure, but usually the person entering and leaving has more consequence to the Enneagram. The sheriffs are random characters. I’ll count this as a legitimate Mirror, but it’s weak.
This is another episode in which the joy for me is Maximus. He’s like a baby who begins to understand how complex the world actually is. Partly, he’s just a comic sidekick in this episode. Even in the silly robe, though, his pathos as a man who’s never known luxury (such as it is) is evocative. Lucy’s on a mission to discover the evil mystery that powers this vault. However, this could be the most honest, compassionate vault that ever existed, and it still wouldn’t be able to sustain Maximus’ naive happiness. It’s a bit heartbreaking. This world holds no peace. For a brief moment he’s allowed to think that it might.