Episode Three of the Fallout TV series begins . . .
LEFTOVER NINE
Title card: THE BEGINNING
Pre-apocalypse Cooper, wearing a fringed cowboy shirt, holds a gun on a cringing villain. After a beat, Cooper looks at the camera and says, “Do I really have to kill him?” Pull out to reveal a film set.
The director comes over. Cooper plays a sheriff who normally just arrests people. Director Emil explains that now they want a good man to wrestle with evil. A new kind of western. Where’s Bob, the old writer? Fired, for being a communist.
Outside of the set, Coop flirts with a stylish woman, Barb, who is his wife. Janey the daughter joins them. Barb is there in a professional capacity, though. She’s arranged a photo shoot for Coop during his lunch break. He carries the costume box as the family strolls down the studio street.
ONE
Hard cut to a bloody, headless torso. Ghoul Coop, puzzled, examines it. Coughing, he opens a little case from his pack and loads a vial into an inhaler, taking a hit. Relief. Looking around past the derelict Slocum Joe’s, he sees foot prints in the sand headed to the city on the horizon. He and Four, the dog, set off walking.
Roll title.
Fade in on Lucy, walking and carrying Wilzig’s head by its hair. She’s alone, surrounded by desolation and broken buildings half-buried in the sand.
Later, she’s made a campfire. She eats a Yum Yum Brand Deviled Egg (YAY!) and takes a look at the head. Examining it, she finds the glowing blue chip implanted behind the ear. From her Pip Boy she takes a tracking device and stuffs it up Wilzig’s nose. She sets the head next to her as if they’re two people enjoying the evening together. She reminisces fondly about the Knight (Maximus).
TWO
Cut to power armor dragging along the ground. Maximus hoists it onto a rusted fork lift so he can repair it. The radio in the suit calls his name: Knight Titus. Wincing, Maximus answers in a falsely deep voice. He’s late for his check-in. Nervous and fudging his answer, Maximus tells the Brotherhood base that his Squire died in battle. When base tells him they’ll immediately send a replacement Squire, Maximus yanks out the microphone and smashes it. He closes up the suit and walks into town.
THREE
He doesn’t have enough caps (YAY!) for the part repair, so he sells a tooth in order to pay the shop technician.
FOUR
When he returns to the armor, scavengers swarm it, and then attack him. They back him into the open power armor. Losing, Maximus struggles desperately and gets an arm into the suit’s gauntlet, accessing its abilities. He’s able to grab a man’s head and crush it like a tomato, horrifying everyone, including Maximus. As he recovers from the violence, a vertibird flies overhead.
Hovering over the Filly town square, the ‘bird lowers the new Squire. It’s Thaddeus. Grimacing at his luck, Maximus runs back to his power armor and hurriedly climbs in. It’s just snapping shut when Thaddeus, carrying the ridiculous oversized caddy backpack, rushes up. Taking a knee, Thaddeus is proud to serve Knight Titus. The bloody gauntlet hovers over his head. In the helmet, Maximus considers his options. During the pause, Thaddeus goes full prostrate, begging. Maximus smiles and, with the modulated voice, accepts his Squire’s service. He tosses the loin armor at him to clean. As he enthusiastically wipes, Thaddeus updates the Knight: many are after their target. They are to kill anyone in their way.
Lucy, the head wrapped and secured on her belt, approaches a road sign: Hollywood Blvd. The area she must cross is flooded. Only the top floors of buildings rise above the water line. A gentle fawn nibbles at the shore’s edge. (You know it’s coming.) The water ripples and the fawn is gone, eaten. Alert, Lucy looks around but she’s caught and dragged up the road. The thing (it’s not a Mirelurk) takes the head off her belt and disappears back into the lake. She runs along the edge, chasing. (The head in a yellow bag rides the surface like a float barrel in Jaws.)
On her Pip Boy, Lucy can see the tracking device. She takes off her pack — is she going in?? — but a cocked gun stops her. It’s Ghoul Coop. Smiling tentatively, Lucy says, “Hello again.” Coop hits her and empties her pack, looking for the head. She lost it. “A Gulper got it,” Coop figures out.
Fade in on an aerial shot of the ruined pier where Lucy first stepped outside of the vault.
We’re inside with Norm.
He meets with Chet, who’s been demoted from Gatekeeper. As Chet walks away weeping, Norm is called for his turn in front of Reg, Betty, and Woody (the Committee/Governing Council). As they chastise him for opening the vault surface door, the camera swings to a poster on the wall: A triangle graphic of Vaults 31, 32, and 33, Stronger Together. However, unlike Chet, Norm can’t be demoted. He’s already worked and failed at every crap job in the vault. Betty’s eyes light with an idea.
Cut to Norm delivering food to the raiders held prisoner. Trays go through the door slot to a group of near-animals. Food is thrown at the window. Unflinching, Norm stares back at them.
Power armor in front of a dead tree. Whatever it is (eucalyptus, maybe?), it isn’t an apple tree. Maximus, though, has ordered Thaddeus to climb it and pick him some fruit. Falling, Thaddeus hits the ground. He apologizes for failing. In the helmet, Maximus smiles. Holding a radiation tracker in one hand and dragging the immense golf bag with the other, Thaddeus leads the way to The Ghoul who follows the girl who travels with their target.
SWITCH
Cut to their reaction as they look down at the bloody and headless Wilzig. Thaddeus can’t wait for the Brotherhood to eradicate all these disgusting ghouls. Maximus spots the footprints in the sand and starts to follow. Fade to black.
FIVE
We’re lakeside. Coop ties Lucy to a winch on a dock. (Four, the dog, barks happily.) While Lucy tries to explain about her missing father, the Overseer, Coop knocks her over into the water. When he pulls her up, she argues that torture is wrong. Over she goes again, flailing in the water while Coop reminisces about studies on how torture never achieved its goal. Still expounding, he pulls her up again. She asks, if torture doesn’t work, why are you doing this? But Coop isn’t torturing her. “I’m using you as bait.” Over she goes again. Underwater, Lucy notices a large hook tied from her neck. Coming through the murk is the gulper. It takes the hook.
Coop yanks Lucy back on the dock, with the gulper following. (We get our first good look at the creature. It’s not like the gulper creatures in Fallout: Far Harbor. It’s gross, though, with a mutation of human fingers lining its gullet.) Lucy scrambles, kicking, but the gulper has the hook stuck in its lip. It takes her boot.
Reaching desperately, she uses Coop’s saddle bag to smack it and get free. When Coop opens his bag, he sees that his case of inhaler vials is smashed.
Cursing, he’s furious. He points his gun at her. Lucy cites the Golden Rule, telling him he can’t treat people like this. He puts a loop around her neck and pulls her along with him. Remaining lakeside, Four barks at the retreating gulper. Fade to black.
Maximus holds a piece of a Yum Yum box. While he’s distracted, Thaddeus opens the back of the power armor. Coming around fast, Maximus knocks him away. He’s only being a Squire, though, and replenishing the suit’s water supply. Max sits so that Thaddeus can finish. While Thaddeus does his job, he tells of his background before the Brotherhood. He worked on a fly farm as a “shitter”. The farm fed him, he fed the flies, and the flies became mulch to feed humans. (Hole-ee yikes, man.)
Then Thaddeus asks how the Knight’s former Squire died, not realizing he’s talking to the former Squire. You knew him, Maximus says, fishing for truths about himself. On base, Thaddeus answers, they used to beat him. First they beat Thaddeus, but when Maximus arrived, they had a new target. “I wish he’d lived long enough to find someone else to beat.” Pause on Maximus’ face in the helmet as he realizes a new side to things. Fade to black.
A meeting of the vault community in the cornfield to decide what to do with the savage prisoners locked in a repurposed reading room. Reg and Woody take turns on the lectern’s microphone, each vying to be the new overseer. Betty sits to one side, as if she’s advising but not competing. The men want to rehabilitate the raiders and integrate them. Applause, except from Norm and Steph in her eyepatch. He suggests they do to the raiders as the raiders would’ve done to the vault. Gasps. Only Steph nods.
SIX
The Vault Engineer interrupts to tell them the water chip is destroyed, leaving them with only two months’ supply of water.
SEVEN
As the meeting disperses, Steph tells Norm that if his father were here he’d do the right thing. Her glance indicates she means murder of the raiders, and that Norm might be the one to do it. Fade to black.
EIGHT
Maximus and Thaddeus are lakeside, standing in the water. It occurs to Thaddeus that the tracker might be picking up something other than The Ghoul. They look out over the water, and here comes the wake right for them. Sighing, Maximus sends Thaddeus back to shore and starts shooting at the incoming gulper. In slowmo it rises up, mouth gaping, to bite Maximus’ head, but Thaddeus uses the rifle from shore. Giving an evil glance, the gulper leaves Maximus and races for Thaddeus, who scrambles away. He’s halfway down the gulper’s throat before Maximus can reach him and pull his shoulders free. Shouting “Victoriam!” Maximus forces the embedded hook deeper, gutting the gulper, and pulls Thaddeus free in a rush of vomitous liquid. (It’s a beautifully edited, comic and horrific scene.) In the wash of the gulper’s stomach, Maximus holds a shoe (Lucy’s). Barking has them turn to see Four tongue-bathing Wilzig’s head. After a beat, the men celebrate.
NINE
Coop and Lucy walk through sand. Her hands are tied and she limps on one bare foot. Coop downs the canteen of water without sharing. He pauses to look at a ruined statue of a woman holding a globe suspended on her finger; it’s the studio mascot that he passed with his family in the pre-apocalypse days. Lucy contemplates a fetid puddle of radiated water. A billboard ahead with Vault Boy lifts her spirits until Coop shoots out its cheerful face. As they walk on, the camera closes in on the billboard . . .
And we transition to pre-apocalypse Coop coming out of his dressing trailer. He wears a vault dweller’s suit and smiles, presenting his look for his wife’s approval. He shakes hands with the company representatives. He’ll be doing his first advertisement. Standing in front of a large Vault-Tec banner, he awkwardly poses. Nothing works until he decides to try a thumbs up. The client and Barb are happy with it. “Act Naturally” plays, over, while the bulb flashes on Coop’s smiling face.
Roll credits.
CRITICAL NOTES
This is one of the Enneagram breakdowns that made me start at the end and work backwards. What is the Eight? It’s not Coop and Lucy. Their scene is a companion to Coop’s flashback. The location, the studio, is the same, separated by 200 years. Coop’s cheerful enthusiasm in the Before Times, inventing Vault Boy’s signature move, darkens into his Ghoul self shooting that smiling face. Those two scenes aren’t an Eight. Lucy’s dilemma reaches no conclusion in this episode, and neither does Coop’s.
Therefore, the Eight is the gulper battle. It’s lively, it’s cumulative, and it resolves Maximus’ search for his target, the head. That means the Two will also belong to Maximus. Notice of a new Squire is the Two Trouble, and it’s directly responsible for Maximus’ success at the Eight. The Switch also belongs to Maximus. The arc of this episode is his. Although we get information about other characters, Maximus drives the action.
Almost.
Norm is the Seven. I could say that Maximus’ decision to act like a Knight and defend his Squire is the Seven, but it would undercut too much of the Eight. The build of that climax needs to start with Maximus having a brave, charitable moment.
The vault takes a turn at the Seven. We don’t see the repercussions of the decision in this episode. It seems very eventful to me, though, that Norm basically argues that the raiders should be killed because of a perversion of the Golden Rule. Do unto others as they’ve done unto you.
And all of that leaves us with a very odd Three/Six. I suspect that the Mirror of these scenes is completely subconscious on the showrunners’ part. We have two people who are mechanics. One is the repair person who fixes Maximus’ power armor part; the other is the water engineer in the vault. Each character has a short, meaningful cameo, and they’re gone. I don’t really know what purpose they serve in terms of advancing the story, but the flow of the episode stops abruptly at these two points. A pause with a character never seen again is definitely an attempt at a Three/Six. It doesn’t quite work here.
However, what really shines in this episode is the Maximus arc. At he beginning, he’s ready to torment his Squire, the man who once tormented him. By the end they’re a team, and every step along their journey is a pleasure to watch.