Episode Seven of the Fallout TV series . . .
ONE
The Wasteland. Someone uses a metal detector, looking for shell casings.
It’s a father and son who live in a little shack made from recycled scrap. (YAY!) Inside, though, instead of daughter Sandra, they find Coop. He eats a chicken dinner and watches them. These people obviously know and distrust each other. Coop wants information: the location of that “madwoman in the hills”, Moldaver. Son Tommy resists while his father begs him to tell Coop. Finally he admits that she’s at the Observatory. The boy draws a gun on Coop, who shoots him first. Walking away through the Wasteland, Coop takes a hit on his inhaler.
Transition to pre-apocalypse Coop at the communists’ meeting in the funeral home chapel. Moldaver (who isn’t yet known as Moldaver) speaks to the group. Coop, flushing with anger at her speech, stands up to leave. She stops him. They have the expected confrontation, and then Moldaver goes low, saying she knows Coop’s wife. The two speak privately in the hallway.
Moldaver’s company developed cold fusion, a process subsequently acquired by Vault-Tec. In the middle of a world resource war, infinite energy could bring peace. She gives him a listening device and asks him to spy on his wife.
Roll title.
(There is no TWO or THREE.)
FOUR
The exterior of Vault 4. Inside, we hold on the cryopods of pregnant women in Level 12. Birdie and Cyclops berate Lucy, who’s cuffed to the table in a holding cell. She accuses them of torture. They decide she should see the tape.
On a screen in the room, Lucy sees Overseer Hawthorne make his last log entry. His wife behind him barricades the door while he extols science with unregulated control as the ideal social structure. They’re hybridizing humans with rad-resistant species. However, the test subjects weren’t compliant. At that point in the tape, the room explodes as these subjects, growling, take over the lab. A gulper crawls into view and bites the camera.
These current residents have been easing the suffering of the former test subjects. (Cyclops makes an ill-timed joke about the gulper being his Great-Uncle Peter.) They ask Lucy what the experiment in her vault was. There wasn’t one, she says. Birdie looks at her with disdain: Your ignorance can’t excuse your cruelty. Helmeted police officers grab her and hustle her through the vault.
Meanwhile, a contented Maximus in his fluffy robe eats popcorn. Behind the waterfall screen TV is a window on the hallway. He sees the officers go by, dragging Lucy with a black sack over her head. For a moment he pauses, looking with pitiable longing at his bowl of corn, and then he rises.
Cut to Thaddeus, limping and dragging the humongous golf bag, as he arrives at a Red Rocket gas station. (YAY!!) Four the dog gambols along beside him. She grabs the strap, shaking it and pulling. He sits in the trunk of an old car and removes his boot. Under the bloody sock, his foot is mangled and his big toe hangs by a thread. (Four starts to lick it and he shoos her away.) From the bag he takes Wilzig’s head and ties it in a scarf. He tucks the fusion core down his suit. The rest of the bag is closed in the car’s trunk. Seeing an empty Nuka-Cola refrigerator (YAY!) Thaddeus picks up Four and closes her inside. (He doublechecks that the dispenser flap allows her enough oxygen.) Then he fires up his radio in order to contact the Brotherhood.
Back to a community gathering in Vault 4. Lucy is in the stocks. Birdie riles the crowd. Cyclops lifts a sword and sentences Lucy to death . . . by banishment. The dull sword saws away at her restraints. Everyone cheers at the severity of the punishment. They’re sending her off with a two-weeks’ supply of food. As her final request, Lucy asks that Maximus be allowed to stay.
Cut to Maximus in the Reactor Room, stealing a power core. While Lucy pleads about how good a person he is, he ejects the core and sends the vault into backup power. In his armor, Maximus strides through the vault, ready to bust heads. Vault dwellers go flying. Lucy stops him, explaining that they’re actually nice people. “Sorry,” he calls out.
The two of them are outside of Vault 4, back in the Wasteland. He opens the faceplate when he sees Lucy hesitate. We stole their power core, she says. He argues: I can’t be a knight without the armor. She replies: You aren’t a knight if you aren’t helping people. Maximus visibly struggles; chivalry is not something he’s been exposed to. But he pulls the core and leaves the armor stranded. He looks at Lucy, and then back at his lone, abandoned armor, his face reading a thousand thoughts. From inside the vault we see the power core bounce down from the Medical Supply entrance.
As Lucy and Maximus walk back through the computer foyer that leads to the vault, she broaches the subject of sex. She confesses that she was to marry a stranger. Calling him Titus, she declares him a good person and invites him back to her own vault when their journey is over. He twitches and reveals his true name. He tells the entire truth, squirming that he’s not a good person at all. Lucy responds, “I just threw acid in an innocent man’s face.” She invites him again to her vault, and he says yes. They almost kiss. Fade to black.
(I was pleasantly surprised that these two form a romantic relationship. Because they each have such separate and clear intentions, I didn’t see this coming. It’s a welcome complexity to the season.)
SWITCH
Thaddeus limps through the Wasteland. A local radio station, over, plays fiddle music.
FIVE
As Thaddeus passes a lone house, we see the chicken-interferer trying to blow his own head off with a shotgun. He spots Thaddeus, though, and chases after him with a little suitcase. I’m a doctor, he says. He leads Thaddeus into his “humble pharmacy” and asks to look at his foot. The sock comes off, revealing a horribly mangled piece of meat with dangling toes. The Snake Oil Salesman, as he’s called in the credits, peruses his supply of serums and potions. To pay for the treatment, Thaddeus offers the power core.
Salesman opens his suitcase like The Cleaner preparing to paint Woody in Toy Story 2. He gives Thaddeus an inhaler with an elixir that “heals all”. His foot mends, repairing itself almost magically back into shape. Thaddeus pulls on his sock and asks for a radio station so he can signal his base. Salesman mentionst one in the old Shady Sands. But that place is radioactive, Thaddeus says. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore, do you?” Salesman responds with a smile and leaves. Thaddeus ponders. Fade to black.
Hands reach through a slot. It’s Norm in Vault 33 feeding the prisoners. It becomes a montage of days passing while he endlessly delivers food trays. As he stares through the slot at the gobbling prisoners, an announcement, over, prepares the vault for assignments to Vault 32.
The next time he delivers trays, medical personnel haul out bodies. When Norm steps into the holding cell, he finds the rest of the prisoners dead and waiting their turn. Overseer Betty, investigating, says it looks like rat poison. As she leaves, Betty activates her Pip Boy. We see vault assignments popping up for every other resident. Norm will stay in 33. Steph and Chet are going to 32.
Norm knocks on their door. Steph mentions that it’s just terrible about the raiders. Then she directs Chet to pack while she holds the baby. (His face is resigned and pained.) Norm calls Chet a coward. “We all are,” Chet responds. “That’s why we live in a vault.” With that, it’s goodbye. Fade to black.
We’re back at the Red Rocket where Thaddeus left the dog. Coop arrives. We see a close-up of his boots (Why does he wear spurs? Has he had them on since the birthday party gig 200 years ago?) as he examines a blood stain on the ground. He hears whimpering and turns toward the Nuka-Cola refrigerator. He discovers Four (who looks so adorable) and gives her cheek scratches. He helps her from the cooler and they set off together. (YAY! Finding a dog at the Red Rocket is every fan’s dream.)
Cut to pre-apocalypse Coop smoking a pipe in his living room, reading Tesla magazine. (YAY!) Roosevelt the dog rests his head on Coop’s lap. Rack focus to Barb’s Pip Boy left behind on the bartop. Coop holds the bug, contemplating, and then syncs it to her device. Barb enters with three mugs of cocoa, almost catching him. She locks the Pip Boy onto her wrist. When she takes the tray of cocoa out to the deck, Coop can hear her through the bug talking to Janey. The dog whimpers at him, clearly judging. Coop agrees, pulling out the ear piece. At the garbage, though, he hesitates.
Later that night, Barb sleeps while Coop watches TV from a bedroom chair. It’s the Vault 4 commercial. Cut to him rifling through the outdoor trash. “No dogs in the vault, huh?” Finding the bug, Coop gives Roosevelt ear scratches and kisses his head.
Ghoul Coop sits at a campfire, Four resting her head on his lap. “I’m sorry, Dogmeat, but you ain’t him.” (THERE IT IS! Dogmeat! Let the proper game name for our beloved companion be used henceforth.) Fade to black.
Lucy and Maximus walk a road in the Wasteland. Ahead is a grouping of buildings. Transition to Thaddeus at the radio station. Wilzig’s head lays next to him. He thanks the DJ for letting him use the radio. The DJ is very excited about his fiddle music and its classic fidelity. (In Fallout 3 Agatha plays violin on her radio station. YAY!) A comic scene of Thaddeus and the DJ passing time commences. When Lucy and Maximus approach, Thaddeus starts shooting at them with the 10mm. He misses every shot. Stepping backward, Thaddeus triggers one of the DJ’s booby traps. A harpoon goes through his neck, sticking out both sides like an old arrow-through-the-hat trick. He pulls the stake back out, gagging as it passes through his throat. He wonders why he isn’t dead; meanwhile, Lucy and Maximus stare in horror. When the wound on Thaddeus’ neck self-heals, Maximus tells him he might be a ghoul.
SIX
Three vertibirds approach.
SEVEN
Maximus takes the head and tells Thaddeus to run. (It’s not completely clear here, but we know from the game that the Brotherhood would immediately kill any abomination, including a ghoul. Maximus is trying to save Thaddeus’ life.) Taking one of the booby trap victims, Maximus swaps heads. He gives Wilzig’s head to Lucy and tells her to go.
EIGHT
They don’t want to part from each other, but it’s necessary for now. Maximus leans in for the kiss. At their waists, the two heads press together as if they’re also kissing. She’ll wait for him in Vault 33. He smiles with happiness as she leaves. Chopper blades get louder, and Maximus no longer smiles. With a purposeful stride he goes to meet them. Fade to black.
The Vault 33 community stands before the connecting door to Vault 32. Woody refuses to go and is stopped by security. He capitulates, apologizing. Betty continues with her speech. The vault will need an overseer: Steph. Chet exchanges a look with Norm. As the vault door rolls open, the transferees pick up boxes of personal things and look into the dark hallway with trepidation. Woody and Reg, who is staying, give a tearful goodbye. As the 32ers turn to wave, waiting for the door to shut on them, Norm walks away.
NINE
Transition to Norm sneaking into Overseer Betty’s office. He logs into her computer but needs to guess her password. (The computer mini-game! YAY!) Inside, he sends a message to the overseer of Vault 31: Hello. The response greets Betty. Norm types: I need to return to 31.
It works. Norm proceeds down the linked passage to Vault 31’s door. With much suspense, It rolls open and Norm enters. The door closes behind him. Fade to black. In the darkness, Norm calls, “Hello?” He steps into the light of the vault. Nervous, he walks forward while a mechanical noise can be heard. The camera pushes in on his puzzled face.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
Oh, dear. This structure is terrible.
Why does Coop, who has a lot of character development earlier in the episode, disappear mid-episode? His story is all we have in the One-Two-Three slots, and yet he doesn’t progress beyond the Five? That’s skewed. This episode has great fan service. Dogmeat, YAY! Two of our protagonists form a romance! The evil vault plot is close to being exposed by Norm! Will we overlook the structural flaws just because our enjoyment was stroked?
Yes, at first. But then we will try to understand how pre-apocalypse Coop becomes Ghoul Coop, and we will feel unsatisfied. This episode is titled “Radio” and we have multiple instances that meet the theme. Norm’s communication with Vault 31 is plausibly a “radio”. Maximus finds Thaddeus and Wilzig’s head at a radio station. It’s the site where he and Lucy kiss.
However, this ultimately is Coop’s episode. The listening bug is his radio. A devoted husband decides to spy on his wife. Yikes. Frontloading such a momentous decision in the One-Two-Three is an impossible choice. We need Coop’s story to roll out over the entire episode. It’s too complicated to truncate. He’s our link to the pre-apocalypse timeline. So much information is short-changed by limiting his plot.
The key to Coop in this episode, the continuing thread, is the dog. If the episode had structured itself around the dog, the rest would’ve fallen in line. Roosevelt at the Three, Dogmeat at the Six. Coop’s decision to bug his wife is motivated by the vault’s refusal to take dogs. That’s a Switch right there. All of the clues were there, but they were mis-edited into a confusing structure. If the moment when Coop links the bug to Barb’s Pip Boy were moved into the Eight, then his meeting with Moldaver (who isn’t yet Moldaver) would be a perfect Two.
I’m frustrated to see that all the proper beats were in this episode. They were just in the wrong order. The showrunners need to be more careful with Coop’s transition. He’s a hero who becomes an anti-hero. His arc is so critical. Although Goggins’ acting can overcome a lot of structural mistakes, this is asking too much of him.