Fallout season 1 finale: Capitalist middle managers murder the world
A messy sendoff is anchored by the series' best, darkest, and most grimly funny scene
TV Reviews Fallout
When I started this little post-apocalyptic journey seven episodes ago, it was with a question about tone. Was Fallout, at its core, a comedy or a tragedy? But it’s a false distinction, in a lot of ways. As our old pal Bud Askins might tell us, either in his flesh body, or trapped with his brain rolling around inside an off-brand Roomba for all eternity: The difference between the two is often only a matter of time.
The worst thing you can say about “The Beginning,” the final episode of what will almost certainly be merely the first season of Prime Video’s Fallout, is that its best and most affecting scene not only comes only halfway through its run-time, but 200 years in its past. That’s the sequence in which Cooper Howard, having infiltrated his wife Barb’s workplace at Vault-Tec, eavesdrops on a meeting between her, her co-worker Bud, and the heads of the other biggest tech giants on the planet, as they pitch them on getting in on the Vault experiment themselves.
Bud’s pitch is typically messy, Michael Esper deploying enthusiasm to grim ends as he lays out a picture of a future that consists of middle managers giving the human race performance reviews—forever. But it’s Barb who actually lands the sale. Barb who taps into the fear underlying everything that Vault-Tec does. Barb who breaks her husband’s heart, Frances Turner and Walton Goggins again giving the series’ best performances, this time completely isolated from each other in multiple senses of the word.
How do you sell bomb shelters to the public, despite ongoing peace negotiations? How do you ensure that, when your Dwellers emerge into the future some centuries down the line, they won’t be eaten alive by the other survivors? How do you ensure that the people you love are safe? Easy: By making sure the people you love are the only ones left. “By dropping the bomb ourselves,” Barb announces with perfect conviction to the (metaphorical) ghouls in the room. It’s a punchline that isn’t funny, a tragedy you can’t help but laugh at. As Bud waxes enthusiastic about a sort of terminal form of capitalism and his dreams of breeding a culture of “super managers,” and the other executives—there’s more on them down in the strays—begin getting excited about all the fucked-up experiments they can run with their own private vaults, Barb Howard lays out the disturbingly simple logic for killing the world: Once everyone else is dead, she and her family will finally be safe.
It’s an idea that kills her husband, albeit slowly, Goggins looking more horrific here than when he’s walking around, two centuries later, with a big open hole instead of a nose. It’s also an idea that’s been core to Fallout’s journey so far, especially for Maximus, the only one of our three leads who grew up out in the Wastes. His feelings for Lucy are clearly genuine, but she also represents that safe place he’s been looking for all his life—the same one Elder Cleric Quintus dangles in front of him shortly before the Brotherhood Of Steel invades Griffith Park to horrifically bloody effect. It’s what Hank MacLean peddles to his daughter as he tries to lie her back into proper daughter shape; what Lee Moldaver is avenging with the torch she keeps burning for Shady Sands. It’s even what drives the Ghoul, under all that cynicism and badassery: the search for something, someone, safe enough to call home.
Unfortunately for “The Beginning,” though, things are a little messier on either side of that central, perfect scene. We open, for instance, with the Brotherhood themselves, who remain unpleasantly generic—even if it is nice to check back in with Dane a bit this episode. (They confirm to Maximus that they booby-trapped their own boot, out of a desire not to get dragged out into the Wastes.) We know enough about the Brotherhood, by now, to realize that they’re fascist, power-hungry jackasses—but not enough to care about them as anything more than target practice for other characters. Maximus has steadily grown to be an important part of the show’s three leads despite starting off in the weakest position. But that’s only because we’ve gotten to know him, not because he’s given us any kind of window into the group he ostensibly represents.
Moldaver’s community is more interesting, a thriving society with access to agriculture, childcare, and egalitarian attitudes toward the inhabitants of the Wastes. (Note that one of the ghouls Lucy saved back in “The Ghouls” is there, receiving help.) Moldaver herself, despite her apparent propensity for setting up Bond villain-esque lunch tableaus, turns out to be sane, measured, and possessed of a completely rational goal: using the MacGuffin in Wilzig’s head, combined with Hank’s Vault-Tec personnel password, to activate a cold fusion reactor to provide power to the Los Angeles boneyard. (Fallout gets its second jaw-dropping L.A. vista of the series late in the episode, as Moldaver turns all the lights in the destroyed city back on with the press of a button.)
As with the Vault 4 residents in “The Radio,” though, Moldaver and her people are just so unambiguously good here that it feels a bit like Fallout is putting its thumb on the scale for any final decisions Lucy might have to make. (Where’d Moldaver get those raiders from the first episode, by the way—and why? Everyone in her camp certainly seems capable of using a knife and fork.) The reveal that Hank is not only a Vault-Tec stooge from before the War, but that he nuked Shady Sands personally, in a fit of paranoid jealousy after his wife left him for the surface, feels like Fallout abandoning a decent chunk of the moral ambiguity that’s made these last eight episodes such an interesting trip, in favor of sorting characters safely into boxes for the road. That same patness applies to Cooper’s storyline, the show employing huge stretches of coincidence—notably, his connection to Henry/Hank—to get all its characters in one place for the finale. It smacks of unconfidence, of an effort to wrap everything up neatly before the show departs for parts unknown.
Weirdly, Lucy gets the shortest shrift here out of anybody, her choices essentially boiling down to picking which of the several people yelling at her she’ll decide to believe. That she’s ultimately left with no decision but to choose someone else to follow might be weirdly true to the Fallout games (along with the conflicts and connections between parents and children that make up a key part of the plots of both Fallouts 3 and 4), but it still feels like giving a great character surprisingly little to do with the climax of her own life’s story. That said, Ella Purnell can sell an “Okey dokey” like nobody’s business, and she’s the character we’re most excited to see grow and evolve as the series inevitably continues, she and the Ghoul hitting the road on her father’s trail. (Maximus, meanwhile, is doomed to get the recognition he no longer craves in the worst possible way.)
“The Beginning” does serve up simpler pleasures, meanwhile, whether it’s the bark-laugh fun of seeing some poor Brotherhood schmuck falling vertically into a rotating propeller during their assault on the Observatory, or just the sight of Kyle MacLachlan, Space Marine, as Hank hijacks an abandoned set of power armor to make his eventual escape from his vengeful daughter. (It’s always fun to see MacLachlan go full villain, his eternal boyishness shading into deluded petulance at the ways the Wastes have “corrupted” his daughter.) And then there’s the pleasure of watching the Ghoul do his own version of the dark room gun-kata fight from Equilibrium, disassembling a whole crew of power armor-wearing Brotherhood Knights in a way that, yes, feels genuinely, authentically badass. There’s fun to be had here, because Fallout always knows how to serve that need, even as it’s driving elegantly toward some deeper purpose (or fumbling it a bit, as “The Beginning” manages to do both at different points, after all).
Okay. Final verdict time. Fallout is, in the aggregate, a much better television show than it ever actually needed to be, given the popularity of its parent brand, and the ease with which executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and series showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, could have just slapped a few Pip-Boys on stuff, adapted the plot of Fallout 3, and called the whole thing good. Whereas, say, The Last Of Us worked as a video-game adaptation solely by strictly recreating its source material in a non-interactive form, this series opted instead for the more ambitious path: wrestling with the themes and ideas that power the Fallout universe, without slavishly recreating them. It has, over these last eight episodes, been both heartbreaking and laugh-out-loud funny, genuinely moving and horrifically, gut-churningly violent. Structurally, it’s something of a mutated mess, in desperate need of clean-up by some well-meaning Samaritans, who we can only hope might tame its frequently meandering episodes into more focused shapes. Even so, it’s a show of exceptionally high highs and only the occasional outright failure or dull patch. Like the games it pulls from, it has big, weird ideas about humanity, hope, and humor, and it expresses them through a point of view like pretty much nothing much else on TV, ragingly cynical in a way that never quite curdles into despair. It’s not only a good adaptation, but a great story in its own right—and it’s all enough to make us sincerely hope this world won’t be ending any time soon.
Stray observations
- On the editing front: I thought the episode had ended at fully four distinct points (starting with the “Okey dokey”), making for a real Return Of The King experience.
- Great read from Aaron Moten as he describes Titus’ death: “He died running.”
- Michael Cristofer, who genre fans will likely know from Mr. Robot, is great, here and elsewhere, as Brotherhood leader Quintus. (He’s also a Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright and wrote the original screenplay for The Witches Of Eastwick. Learning: It’s fun!)
- Moisés Aran has basically spent the entire season off in his own little show, but he’s been great, very affecting and intense—even if Norm’s plot just kind of putters out to nothing after the big reveal of Vault 31's secret.
- Speaking of our old pal Bud: “I don’t have kids myself, but I do have a training program for up-and-coming executives, and that’s basically the same thing.”
- Fallout Game Corner: Okay, this one is going to be a doozy—especially since the location we see Hank tromping off to in the final final final epilogue of the episode is the city of New Vegas, central to the Fallout spin-off of the same name. (You’d be excused for thinking it’s Seattle, but no, that’s a giant roulette spinner atop a hotel, not the Space Needle.) At the same time, all of the executives who show up at the meeting with Bud and Barb are named characters from Fallout lore—most especially RobCo representative Robert House (a.k.a. the guy with the mustache). House, played in the games by the sadly-late René Auberjonois, is a big deal in Fallout world, having survived the fall of the bombs and basically turned Vegas into his own personal fiefdom. Expect House to be a big deal in season two.
- Bonus Fallout Game Corner: I get a happy little thrill every time the show uses the Pip-Boy confirmation sounds from the games. That is all.
- It’s kind of sweet that Barb has Coop’s posters up in her office.
- Less sweet: her getting to drop the “War never changes” line, as we cut back and forth between Moldaver’s troops and the Brotherhood slaughtering each other.
- “I loved your mother. But she stopped being your mother when she left home.”
- Counter-point: “Where’s my fucking family?”
- Okay, but seriously: What is up with Moldaver’s lunch spread? Was she expecting Lucy to drop by, or do they just serve up a full roasted mutant two-headed pig with an apple in its mouth for every meal?
- Oh, and that’s a deathclaw skull on the ground as Hank’s marching on, right? Can’t wait to see those nasty bastards in live action.
- Unanswered mysteries: what the hell Moldaver is doing in the future, why the Enclave had the who-sit (and who the Enclave are, at least for those who haven’t played the games), and, most pressingly, no Ron Perlman cameo. Really?!
- And that’s a wrap on the first season of Fallout! Thanks for taking this journey through the Wasteland with me, folks; this show massively exceeded my (admittedly dim) expectations, and I find myself genuinely excited to see where it goes next.
183 Comments
Useless fact! Hanks authorisation code is 101097 , the date that Fallout 1 was released!.
Useless fact 2! In countries that don’t use the US’s date formatting, it was shown as 101097.
Ha! That date solves the problem, unlike things like “Pi Day” (March 14) which only work in the US system.
Or 420
Thank you for this! I suspected that’s what it was, and kept meaning to go back and check but never did.
There was a shot of a Deathclaw skull as they panned to New Vegas, btw.
Indeed RIP Rene Auberjonois. Fantastically funny in Benson and achingly earnest in The Patriot. Wish he was still around doing his thing.
I laughed out loud the first time I saw him on Star Trek. That’s Clayton Endicott III, thank you very much!
Same … he’ll always be that lovable pompous windbag to me. Way better than the first guy that played off the cast (Lewis Stadlen). A lot of the Benson cast is passed now. Didi Conn and Ethan Phillips still around. Missy Gold is still kicking.Marcie, Benson, Kraus, the Gov, Clayton, Rose are all gone.Cracker jack cast and well-written one-liners. Shows up on COZI TV once in a while and still holds up.
Speaking of our old pal Bud: “I don’t have kids myself, but I do have a
training program for up-and-coming executives, and that’s basically the
same thing.”I know we are supposed to view this as pathetic, because it’s Bud, but I’ve heard childless professors say this about their graduate students in all seriousness.
When I was working, I’m sure I did say “I don’t need kids, I have employees” several times. Usually when they were arguing with each other and I had to mediate.
I have kids and I have employees, the difference is I like my children 🙂
I have kids and employees – and the difference is that I like my employees!(I kid – mostly) – but – as a parent you may be “biologically obligated” to love your children – but ask any parent of 1 or more teenagers, and you will generally hear that while you will always love them – you may not always LIKE them during the process of transitioning from child to fully-baked-adult.
One of the funniest things my friend Ann (born in Vietnam) ever said was “why do white parents hate their kids so much”. She mentioned her parents being strict and the stereotype of strict Asian parents but then seriously was like “strict Asian parents will do anything to help their kids succeed meanwhile white parents will celebrate the day their kids leave for college”.
She’s not wrong. The cringiest thing during the pandemic was a tonne of parents joking about hating their kids cuz they were home from school… joking about not liking your kids isn’t cool… don’t fucking have children then if you’re going to be a dipshit about it.
My biggest pet peeve is people who have kids who don’t want kids, like grow the fuck up dude.
To some degree, but it is worth understanding that the support that many Asian (and other groups like Jewish) parents have for their children’s success isn’t entirely altruistic — they want their kids to succeed because traditionally in a lot of societies they were from there were no such things as pensions or social security — if your kids couldn’t support you in your old age you’d likely die of starvation. Which is also why they generally want their kids to be lawyers, doctors, or engineers — getting a degree in art or literature just isn’t going to cut it for supporting their parents.
There is no living creature on the planet that I want to spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week with. Ease up a bit on these parents.
I am cool with spending that time with my cat.
Also, you can fire your employees.
That reminds me of an old East German joke. “Q: Sometimes New Germany [the official Communist Party newspaper] says the Soviets are our brothers and other times that they are our friends. Which is it? A: Clearly they must be our brothers. One can choose one’s friends.”
Hell, it’s the hugely emotional final line of Goodbye Mr. Chips.
and, most pressingly, no Ron Perlman cameo. Really?!
They should have made him the head of Vault Tec. At least that’s who I assume the smoking man was supposed to be in that scene. I guess there’s still time in season 2
Ooh that would be a pretty awesome bit of casting–have him be the shadowy figure she looks up to during the meeting….
And what’s up with Hank’s wife/Lucy’s mom? I get that she was ghoulified when Shady Sands was nuked, and that Moldaver has brought her there to torment Hank for his actions, but why does she look so decrepit? Shady Sands was nuked, like twenty years ago? She’s pretty young so far as ghouls go.
And as a clearly feral ghoul she should be trying to eat everyone around her, not sit there and slowly grind around creepily.
If you looked closely, you could see that she was strapped down to that chair.
Also, from the flashback (AND the handholding as Moldaver died) it was clear that Rose and Moldaver were lovers. She wasn’t brought there to torment Hank.
Like even after the ghoulification? Kinky.
….what? I’m not homophobic but you’re reading something that wasn’t there dude…. and if that is what they were going for than that would be queer-baiting…. also it would fall into the “old homosexuals” in fiction trope where you find out about their sexuality moments before their death or when they’re of old age and not sexually active…. conveniently leaving their sexuality off screen for homophobic viewers….
I’m just so confused by your takeaway.
Yah, I thought this was pretty obvious but seems to be overlooked by lots.The showrunners said the show is pretty queer, but it was hard to really explore how that looks within the world when you are trying to do so much else story wise in 8 hours.
But not totally. Ferals should still be trying to strain against the straps and be clawing and biting at any living being nearby.
Being strapped to a chair is irrelevant. Ferals would still be trying to rip and claw and tear free all while biting at the nearest living creatures.And there is nothing to indicate a romantic relationship at all. And here is the video of the flashback. Moldaver and Rose never even touch, much less hold hands.
Go back and rewatch the finale, she takes Rose’s hand as she’s dying and says “We did it, Rose” as Maximus is watching.
In the flashback, right after the shot of the trolley car (1:25 in your video), they share a glance that if you can’t recognize that as Not Just Friends, I don’t know what to tell you.
I think that someone holding the hand of someone else as she dies and two people smiling at each other it what is obviously meant to be a happy scene are very thin threads to hang your argument on. Especially between women where non-romantic physical touch has been more socially acceptable for a long time.
I believe she was shackled.
But not totally. Ferals should still be trying to strain against the straps and be clawing and biting at any living being nearby.
I thought she was tied to the chair during that scene?
But not totally. Ferals should still be trying to strain against the straps and be clawing and biting at any living being nearby.
Maybe Moldaver kept her sedated or something.
Can you sedate a feral ghoul? Do their bodily functions even work that way anymore?
My recollection is that chems still work on them in the games, but implied that it they have a higher tolerance than normal people. There’s a ghoul in … Fallout 3? New Vegas? I forget … that says they regularly use Jet. Plus in the show, The Ghoul is taking whatever that anti-feral drug is.
It’s not like they’re dead – you don’t have to destroy the brain to stop them like with a zombie. They’re just mutated.
You’re correct about non-feral ghouls. But ferals are a whole different ballgame. Or, at least, they can be. Feralsreally are more like zombies and we see some of them in extremely advanced stages of decomposition. Feral ghoul reavers in Fallout 3, for example, literally rip chunks of dead, radioactive flesh off their bodies and hurl it at you. Ferals generally can exist for years (centuries) without eating or even breathing, so they don’t need either food or drink.If they don’t need to eat or drink or air to breath, if they don’t even need whole bodies, why should drugs effect them?
Where are there ghouls that survived without air? Not saying you’re wrong, but I don’t remember that.
There are a few times you’ll be playing in swampy areas and the ghouls will rise up out of the water and muck to attack you. There are also times where you will enter places that have been sealed for centuries with no food or air coming in and feral ghouls will still be attacking you. In these places either ghouls breath and would’ve use dup the limited air supply over centuries but continued to survive because they don’t need to breathe and just did it reflexively or there is air because ghouls don’t breathe because the don’t need to do so.
Two hypotheses: 1) there’s a wider spectrum of ghouls in the show universe than what the games have shown us; 2) we can presume Moldaver has had her captive since whenever she went feral (unlikely she just went out into the wild and found her now), so maybe she’s been unfed and wasting away to nothing. It would be cruel of Moldaver to do so, but cruelty to a feral ghoul is not really cruelty to the person they used to be, and probably she was waiting for exactly this day to teach Hank a lesson.
My read was that she wasn’t necessarily feral, but had been basically so burned and half destroyed by the explosion that this was all that was left of her. Ghouls basically run on zombie logic, so if they don’t take care of themselves like Cooper obviously has, they physically degrade into a mess, but the radiation can still keep them alive far longer than they should be.
In Fallout 4 one settlement is a mansion, where the owners survived in basement. All of them were ghoulefied, and the youngest son who apparently knew to expect this was initially stoked because he figured it meant they would all survive the post-nuclear world. However, while he retained his faculties, his family went feral almost immediately, leaving him to haplessly care for them before dying of some unknown mishap. So sometimes the nukes to mindless zombie pipeline is pretty fast, I guess?
Yeah, turning feral seems to affect different ghouls at different rates. If it were just a set time to losing their mind, there wouldn’t be any intelligent ghouls who were pre-War humans and every game (and this series) features such ghouls.
my read is that nothing that you have seen in the games is canonical because the games are restricted by being models, and the series is not. So in the games you don’t have a huge variety of ghouls, but in the series you do. Probably there are no decrepit ghouls in the games because there was no way narratively to put them there that it would make sense in the design or in the missions. People talk about series as if they were about real people and real universe, instead of workers doing their best given their circumstances, time restraints, etc.
Ro Ron Pearlman cameos are the best! 😉 I would theorize just like NCR in the past, Moldaver makes use of raiders when she wants to a achieve a morally ambiguous objective. In order to claim Hank a lot of people got murdered.
I never played the game but loved this series. Goggins is still fucking amazing at anything he touches. I want season 2 already! 😉
pretty good show, man. lots of little things they can improve in season 2, but for a first season with that kind of baggage i think the team did a tremendous job. also fun to hear my friends who know nothing about the games talk about how much they like it, too. it really just felt like watching someone play the game in a way that was both engrossing and had enough distance that i could laugh at the misfortunes.
Best reaction from a friend: “I tried playing. I went the wrong way and got killed by some giant bug before I even had a weapon. Like, five times. I can’t stop watching the show.”
Haha that is “peaky newbie Fallout” and has been since the very first game to present day.
I do recall in FO3, it was not intuitive to figure out how to equip the crowbar or whatever item you find to beat up the roaches.
That description made me think of New Vegas, where it’s very easy to go the wrong way after the starting village and end up in a deathclaw nest.
Or those Cazadores. Those goddamn Cazadores. Those relentless stinging, swarming, son-of-a-bitch CAZADORES! Have I mentioned that I hate Cazadores?!
i didn’t even realize you could do VATS until i was like 6 hours in
yeah and thinking back I think it was mutant rats that gank you straight out of the very first vault in Fallout 1
Thanks for a nice set of recaps/reactions—some of the best and most actually thoughtful writing I’ve seen on this site in ages, and from someone who actually has history with the Fallout franchise, even.Final takeaway for me: when I heard they were doing this show and the Nolan of Westworld was helming in some fashion, I was afraid of the worst (and as a non-Fallout-megafan who only played one of the games, albeit half to death, I was far from committed to watching it). When I saw the funny trailers, I got cautiously optimistic. The first episode was intriguing and pretty funny, just a bit messy, and made me want to watch more. By the end of all eight, I was fully absorbed. It’s not a perfect show—but then again what show is? And honestly the imperfections feel a lot less like serious flaws on such a deliriously ironic and disgusting piece of genre work as this one. Really loved it in the end, can’t wait for S2. And the highest compliment I can pay is that it’s likely to make me go play another Fallout game in the interim.
Nolan also did Person of Interest which is a great show that had a good amount of humor cutting through darker storylines. And he’s reportedly an enormous fan of the games – I think he once said that he was playing 3 so much that he wasn’t able to focus on his screenwriting career.
Everyone should watch Person Of Interest, a thing I feel comfortable saying even in spite of the Caviezel of it all.
I tried Person of Interest so many times because it was recommended here, and I only found the most irritating clichés of the North American mainstream media, with its soapy dramatic moments and all.
Person of Interest was design as Criminal Procedural until the later season when it got serialized plot. In fact it wasn’t that interesting before (Spoiler) the death of certain character when it became spy thriller with AI theme (this show definitely ahead of it’s time).
I would agree that the shift in focus after Character was to the good but the shift from procedural to serial is not and has never been a relevant indicator of quality. I know you didn’t say that outright but it’s implied. And I deeply dislike that fairly common misconception.
You’re not wrong but how far did you get? The first season kinda blows. It starts as one of those stupid gimmick procedurals. Made worse by the main character doing his Bale Batman impression ALL. THE. TIME. It gets a lot more interesting late in season one I think. By the time Sarah Shahi’s character shows up and the over-arching plot really get’s rolling, it’s quite entertaining if still occasionally groan inducing. Not a top tier show by any means, but there is some amazing stuff in there and it’s totally worth watching.
That’s been my fear of starting it. First because I just don’t associate CBS with cutting edge programming (as intrigued as I am to watch EVIL). I’m also coming off the disappointment of trying to watch FRINGE years after that zeitgeist has passed (I can see how it was the shit at the time of its release, but what made it so is pure cliché now).
This idea that people involved with this show need to have played the games obsessively is juvenile. I keep seeing online that fans are mad that Walton Goggins didn’t play the game, like fuck off that has nothing to do with whether he could play a cowboy ghoul.
I never played the games and I enjoyed this show (although this final episode felt a bit alienating toward non-game fans. Anyway I just wanted to let you know that yes, it is possible to just straight up seperate this and the games and honestly I liked this show and I will continue having never played the games.
Take your weird brag that someone got so into the games they began ignoring real life elsewhere. That’s edgelord incel noise.
Person of Interest is a real little seen gem that has a lot to say – it’s just a shame Caviezel went nutso.
I feel like the writing on this site has gotten significantly better recently in general. Is it something to do with the buyout?
The new guys fired Sam Barsanti, so yes.
Ew don’t thank the AV Club for recaps. Shout at them until they bring reviews back… have some self respect dude.
To answer your rhetorical: The SopranosBreaking BadArguably, The Americans
Watched and loved all three, especially the first two, but I didn’t find any of them perfect. To me the nature of TV dictates that perfection is essentially impossible to achieve. They make a large number of episodes on tight writing and production schedules, often with budgetary constraints, frequently not knowing how long the show will last, etc.; dips in quality and focus, and periods where they are just running in place, are part of the game. But if they are great enough, we accept (even love, in some cases) their flaws. Not putting Fallout on the level of those terrific shows, mind. But I do think it’s good, and I also think there is not one series with 20+ episodes that you couldn’t find some stuff to criticize, that could have been better.
Agree on all that. Probably the closest to perfection a show can get is analogous to an album you can listen to without wanting to skip any tracks. For me, at least, see earlier list (although Americans penultimate season’s intentional slow af pace wore on me during the initial weekly watch. I haven’t rewatched in in a binge yet, where maybe that won’t bother me as much). And not putting Fallout on that level either…YET. But I was really satisfied with S1. But I’m gonna need Dale Dickey/Ma June to be a recurring cast member. She’s pure gold in that one episode.
Totally agreed, let’s get more of her in S2! She’s such a treasure–and her character survived that episode, no reason not to bring her back.
I also think Fallout needs to find an absolutely perfect cameo for Timothy Oliphant. Give us the zombie Raylin/Boyd face-off (oops) that JUSTIFIED was too chicken (oops again) to do!
Oh man, now I really want this. Dream scenario: Oliphant plays another ex-vaultie, analogous to the Lone Wanderer, who plays a key role in an episode and has an old-fashioned shootout with The Ghoul at the end. And this time, let Boyd win it, just for giggles (and of course because he’s the [at least, a] protagonist this time, not Oliphant). If they’re looking for a joke with some bite, seeing someone who is basically a proto-Lucy go down in flames would supply plenty of that.
“We dug ass jerky together.”
Take your star, dammit
With a bit more reflection than might be possible in the moment, Moldaver isn’t nearly as much the good guy in this as the twist seems to want her to be, and I really wish it was more clear whether that’s intentional. For all her supposed devotion to Rose, she sure seemed perfectly fine with a revenge plan that involved the rape-by-deception of Rose’s daughter, and only didn’t also involve her murder by the narrowest of luck. Plus of course how Rose’s son also would have likely been killed. It’s hard not to agree with Hank’s assertion that she’s just as bad as him.
Well, I think she was pretty unhinged by grief over Shady Sands and might just be operating in revenge mode rather than being heroic. I’m unclear what she intended to do with the cold fusion reactor. I get that’s what she was working on pre-War before Vault-tec bought and killed the research, but was she going to build more cold fusion reactors to bring power to the Wasteland or something?
I think she probably is far less than saintly for sure, though you are right that this episode doesn’t show us enough of her other side to keep that in our minds. Even leaving aside the specific details of what happened to (or could have happened to) Rose’s children, the entire plan—introduce a batch of unchecked raiders to a vault full of, essentially, innocent and ignorant vault dwellers, in order to kidnap one pretty awful man—is terrible. It really seems like she is an ideological extremist who will do or enable about anything in the name of her objectives. And she probably decided after what happened to Shady Sands that anyone hiding in a vault had no worth, including Rose’s (but more to the point, Hank’s) children, even though they hardly chose that life for themselves.There are plentiful present-day, real-world analogues to her, which I will not bring up to avoid an inevitable political argument. Suffice to say that dehumanizing inconvenient innocents is something a lot of people have done when sufficiently motivated by ideology and/or revenge.
That seems my read as well, a real ends-justifies-the-means type. It occurred to me while reading this article that Moldaver may have used the raiders instead of NCR peeps because she didn’t think the civilized folk would go along with her plan. Or because she didn’t want to “corrupt” them, like she probably feels she has been. “I bear doing the bad things so others can be innocent,” etc.
It may be that she wasn’t just indifferent to the suffering of the vaulties, she WANTED mayhem to ensue. And knew that NCR folks wouldn’t roll like that. Could split the hair a few different ways as to her exact motivations, but yeah, I feel like this finale worked overtime to make us see her POV—which is totally fine, we needed to—but could have slipped in at least one reminder (other than Hank’s) that she’s really no saint, at all.
Moldaver’s felt underserved by the season as a whole, and we really never got enough time with her to gauge her full motivations. It was probably my biggest issue with the writing in this, largely good, season. She plays a really large role in the narrative, but barely gets any screen time!
Alright, this thread has done a pretty good job explaining Moldaver’s flawed stratagem (all we need is Hank, but instead of just grabbing him and going, we’ll do some unnecessarily extended deception and kill a bunch of innocent people, even though that will greatly risk the primary objective being blown).
Still want to know how she’s around a couple of hundred years later.
Still want to know how she’s around a couple of hundred years later.I suspect Hank’s line as he’s about to be abducted is our biggest clue to this. Something like “I think I know who you are…” If he just knew her from hanging out with his wife at Shady Sands, but then you’d expect he would know who she was and recognize her immediately.So that got me thinking maybe he knew of her, her efforts to expose Vault-Tec’s plotting. And he doesn’t rule out that this could be Moldaver because she should have been dead for 200 years. So maybe Hank knew the company had captured her and forced her into cryo-statis so she had to witness the new world as punishment for going against them? That’s my best guess.
I suspect given the quality of the writing this season that there’s a good shot we’ll see some expansion of the various aspects of Moldaver/Flame Mother/Williams during Season 2 (presumably in flashbacks) to try to flesh out the moral ambivalence of the character and what her actions meant for the world.She’s just too interesting to conclude that arc by bleeding out and lighting up the ruins of LA.
Im hoping the thing with Moldaver is a clone situation.With Nice Moldaver as a different clone (and thus different personality) from Raider Moldaver. Which would also explain why some version of her is still around looking exactly like she did 2 centuries ago.
There’s also a possibility that she’s a Synth. Somehow Institute/Railroad return in Season 3?
Completely agree with this and also the torturous condition she kept Rose in. I wouldn’t keep my worst enemy in the state Rose was apparently left alive in by Moldaver for 20-ish years- and we’re supposed to believe she cared for/loved Rose? Love was the merciful end Lucy gave her. IMO Hank and Moldaver both did unforgivable things to Rose and I do wish they would have better explored or clarified what they were trying to do with this reveal because I don’t think it’s what they were really going for. I think they sacrificed some logic for surprise twists episode by episode (like Monty violently turning on Lucy and Rose still being alive despite horrific injuries- they wanted the shock & awe of that even if it didn’t make sense after all of Moldaver’s motives are revealed).
This episode is by far the worst of Season 1. Every major plot point is hackneyed, every action scene generic, every major idea idiotic.Capitalists wouldn’t want to nuke the world. Because once you blow up your customer base there is no one left to sell stuff to for profit. Capitalism as an economic system is made directly possible by industrialization, which is why capitalism doesn’t emerge until the 1700s in England after the Industrial Revolution had kickstarted there. So starting a war that blows up all the factories on the planet and effectively annihilates all industrial development and technological progress would be to completely annihilate capitalism. Something no capitalist would ever do.The only thing that saves the whole thing from being, “Bomb it for the lulz,” stupidity is the Shadowy Figure Looming Above (TM). That guy is likely an Enclave representative, which means Vault-Tec is really serving the Enclave. And the Ebclave wanting to wipe out all life on Earth and repopulate it with their own ideologically indoctrinated people does make sense. Which makes Vault-Tec’s actions make sense, even if their arguments are moronic and everyone in that rooms looks baffling idiotic for treating the argument seriously.Moldaver’s Vault-Tec is suppressing cold fusion to continue the Resource War is also stupid. By this point in Fallout history, actual fusion had been developed and minimized to the point that microfusion cells, fusion plants the size of a smartphone, existed and were being mass produced. The existence of cold fusion wouldn’t have changed anything at all in terms of Vault-Tec’s profitability or in continuing the war.The whole Evil Father reveal was 100% easy to predict and 100% meaningless. It would have been far more interesting if Hank hadn’t been an obviously evil sonuvabitch and still working for Vault-Tec. Instead they made him Comically Evil.The idea that a single shot from any gun can just one shot someone in Power Armor is ludicrous. There is nothing authentic or badass about it. I know it happens in the game, but that is because you eventually level up far beyond the level mechanics of the game to keep up. And the Ghoul’s ability to just one shot kill anyone in power armor leaves you wondering why he didn’t do it to Maximus earlier in the show during their big fight. The fact that the Ghoul can somehow see in the dark but the people in power armor can’t is equally dumb. They don’t even activate their headlamps.Lucy’s mother as a ghoul is not how ghouls work. The decrepitude isn’t necessarily an issue. The problem is that she is obviously feral and instead of trying to eat everyone she sees all she does is sit in her chair and make creepy noises. It felt like she was from Return of the Living Dead, not Fallout.On the subject of Lucy, am I really supposed to believe that a six year old can’t tell the difference between a bright lamp and the friggin Sun? Have these writers never actually met a child that age? The whole revelation that Lucy had lived on the surface in Shady Sands was so bad. It leaves you wondering why the literally dozens of people in the Vault who lived with her and knew about it would never have mentioned it to her. And if they crush her optimistic spirit just to show how grimdark everything is, they show will be unwatchable. I would much rather watch a show where her optimism reawakens the Ghoul’s humanity that a show where she becomes dead inside. Lucy should revitalize the hope in those around her, not be wasted by terrible storytelling.They really dropped the ball in so many ways in this episode. It was all around a disappointment and left a bad taste in my mouth after what was, over all, a great experience.
Now imagine that, get this, capitalism doesn’t imbue it’s devotees with rationality. It’ll save you a lot of headaches about this show and real life.
Even if you believe there is a better system, capitalists have built the wealthiest, most technologically advanced, and democratic nations in human history. To think of the people who made modern science and technology are irrational (at least more so than any other humans) is absolute nonsense. And if you really believe that then you have been indoctrinated into a political cult yourself.
Yeah you failed to rebut the point and then added on a lot of your own baggage to pad out your post. Try again?
Not only did I rebut your attempt at an argument, I completely disproved the entire claim. That you can’t understand it, well that’s how indoctrination works. It takes away your ability to understand the obvious.
Bzzt. Incorrect. It’s easy to tell because your first reply talks about shit that has zero to do with my point and your second does the same. Third time lucky?
I can’t fix your low reading comprehension. Sorry.
Clearly, as you can’t even comprehend the simple single point that was made and replied to one you made up.
That you can’t understand it, well that’s how indoctrination works. It takes away your ability to understand the obvious.
I understand what you have written it doesn’t even respond to the point I made and you can’t actually identify what the point was. Give it a a 4th try if you like, just one little explanation.
Not only did I rebut your attempt at an argument, I completely disproved the entire claim. That you can’t understand it, well that’s how indoctrination works. It takes away your ability to understand the obvious. And, I’ll add, you don’t seem to understand the difference between being able to read something and comprehend what you read. Just because you did the former doesn’t mean you did the latter.
You don’t know what the claim was. You haven’t been able to explain what you think it was even when specifically asked.
Capitalism isn’t any more inherently rational than any other economic system or any less likely to fall prey to regular human foibles like greed, stupidity and outright narcissism. Hell, it has a penchant for rewarding them. I mean, currently Elon Musk is the poster-boy for that, but there’s endless examples of corporate shortsightedness and outright stupidity. You also have to bear in mind the world of Fallout takes things to extremes for the sake of satire. Not to mention, in this world, the corps are as much political entities as they are for profit companies. In that regard, you sort of answered your own question in your OP: the corps are egomaniacally beyond the point of worrying about competing for profit. To the point that the “customer” almost becomes the product. The tech at their disposal allows them to burn down the world and reinvent it in their own vision. It should also be noted, since you’re familiar with FO, there’s some people at that table who definetely had some egotistical reasons for entertaining such a plan. That said, I agree there’s more going on, and the shadowy figure is likely Enclave. It also seems clear that Barb wasn’t fully in control of when the bombs dropped. She wouldn’t have don’t it when her daughter was unprotected. It might not even have been Vault-Tec that was responsible.As to “cold fusion”: Microfusion cells and Fusion Cores, etc. weren’t “cold fusion” (which is impossible, but that aside) and there are entries you can find in the games where scientists bemoan that the research wasn’t taken further as it could have alleviated the world’s energy problems, with the implication that that might have been intentional. So the show is actually working off the game there, even if the science is nonsensical.When it comes to Hank, I’m not convinced that he’s lying when he says he didn’t bomb Shady Sands. He hightails to New Vegas, which also looks nuked, and there is an in-game person close to NV who could’ve done that: Ulysses, who controlled the still active nuke silos in The Divide. Even if it’s not Ulysses I think The Divide is coming into play and someone else was pulling some strings. I totally agree about Rose and how she was depicted. That was like a Walking Dead zombie and had no relation to how ghouls work in FO. I have less of a problem with the Ghoul taking advantage of power armor weaknesses. The show dwelled on him holding some kind of armor piercing rounds and the BoS group of the show (and often in the games) were undertrained, over-confident idiots. Both in the game, and in the show, people fall in with the BoS because that’s the first faction they ran into, or were born into it, and they stick around despite the disfunction. Where I’d probably disagree most with your last take is that OBVIOUSLY Lucy’s optimism is going to reawaken the Ghoul’s humanity. That’s the most rote thing about the finale. The show didn’t hire Goggins and didn’t spend all this time Howard’s pre-war life to not have it all come into play as some kind of redemption arc down the line.
Thank you!
“Capitalists wouldn’t want to nuke the world. Because once you blow up your customer base there is no one left to sell stuff to for profit.”These aren’t capitalists. They’re businessmen.The median businessman has no idea how capitalism works; at the 90th percentile they are actively opposed. They’re typically mercantilists, who believe that every transaction (except resource extraction) is zero sum.
This is an excellent point. They absolutely are mercantilists, which explains the fact that all the major corporations in the Fallout universe (and real life) essential operate as extensions of government agencies. And mercantilism isn’t capitalism. In fact, capitalism developed as a rejection of mercantilism. This is also something most people do not understand, which is why whenever something has to do with “making money” they immediately ascribe it to capitalism. Vault-Tec isn’t willing to nuke the Earth for the lulz or the (non-existent) profits. Vault-Tec is really an extension of the Enclave and is carrying forth its agenda, which has nothing to do with profit seeking or making. This is the only thing that makes sense.Which makes the scene is the show where Vault-Tec announces its willingness to annihilate the world to ensure its profit margins absolutely moronic.
Unanswered mysteries: what the hell Moldaver is doing in the future I suspect that Moldaver may be a cyborg, Fallout 4 established that The Institute have developed the technology to the point where they were nearly indistinguishable from normal humans.
That’d be a nice change of pace from just being frozen like everyone else. And cyborgs are one of those things that are almost always present in the background of the series but almost never given much prominence.The other option is some kind of mutation: FEV, ghoul, or otherwise, but I think that’d be pretty lame considering she doesn’t show much sign of such. (Being a ghoul with access to a bunker full of skin creme would be funny but probably strain credibility.)
The games also have cloning, though from the show it seemed clear she was in cryosleep like Hank.
They had clones too–one vault was chock full of nothing but Kens! (least I think that was his name, been a while since I’ve played)
Gary! (unless there was also a Ken vault I didn’t discover).
Haha yes! That’s it–Gary! I think the Gosling episode of SNL was still fresh on my mind when I made this comment, but I knew Ken didn’t sound right!
GARYY!!!
Gaaaaaaarry….
Moldaver being a synth would certainly have been an interesting reveal before killing her off. Should that be the case after the fact, it will come off as a contrived way to tie up a lose end.
either that or she’s been in and out of cryogenics for 200 years
Synth probably the most logical answer, since Moldaver was present during the rise, fall and destruction of Shady Shand (atleast around 5-10 years), and she didn’t look different since Coop met her Pre War. I don’t know a Cryogenic in Fallout that regress someone age.
Also unanswered: Why does everyone know who she is?
Like you said William, that generally exceeded expectations. I definitely had a few issues with the characterization, but I’m not gonna quibble too much when it gave us so many bizarre and delightful wasteland cameos, as well as some genuinely funny bits.
One note though, it is somewhat confusing to have a character named Cooper who isn’t the one played by Kyle MacLachlan. I can cope, but it feels odd.
Oh man I knew there was something weird about Cooper and McLaughlin but didn’t put it together until reading this comment!!
Okay, my one remaining plothole nitpick: If Vault 32 was offline and dead for at least two years, how did no one notice? Especially if the overseers of all three vaults were (presumably) in regular contact with each other?
I deleted my original reply because I realized that part of your question is why does Hank not know Vault 32 is empty, and I think that IS a pretty big plot hole, even though I think other parts of your question can be explained!
Or for that matter, that Vault 31 isn’t a real vault with an actual population but just some freezers that occasionally send somebody to 32 or 33? 32 and 33 seem to have a tradition of inter-vault marriages (like Lucy’s) which include a big party with members of both vaults present. Did anyone find it odd that 31 doesn’t do that?
The point was that no one questioned the system, to the point that questioning the system wasn’t even a question.
I thought it was a little odd that only Vault 33 dwellers were sent to re-populate Vault 32. Had all things been equal, I would’ve expected 31 & 33 to split the new population of 32.
The 31s are supposed to be in hibernation until the world is ready to be repopulated/exploited by them. I assume they are only woken as necessary otherwise to keep everything in order.Still doesn’t explain how 31 or 33 didn’t know about the civil war/destruction of 32.
The overseers are all “from” vault 31, so all the overseers would’ve been in on the shenanigans.
Then they would have known that Vault 32 was long compromised and that the “vault dwellers” were frauds.
Oh, shit. Got ya. Fair point.
This is always the explanation for the vaults in the games. Vault-Tec was really good at putting the right (wrong?) people in charge to make sure their experiments got as far as they could before going off the rails (which some were absolutely intended to do).
All the Overseers were frozen Vault-Tec employees, Bud’s Buds and in on the charade and the experiment between the vaults. The Triennial Trade, where the vaults interact, happens (obviously) every three years so, during the show, the shit is all hitting the fan at the same time.
The Triennial trade may be when the vaults open up and interact, but it seems clear that the overseers remain in some regular contact.
Lee Moldaver just needs to pretend to be the actual Overseer in the messages. It’s just text, so they don’t really know who they are talking to. That’s how Norm got in to Vault 31.
But 32 destroyed itself two years before. No one noticed until someone pretending to be the overseer of 32 suddenly popped up? Did nothing notice as 32 tried to break into 31? What ended everyone there? Is there a “safety” protocol that destroyed the few survivors at the end?So many questions.
Agreed. It may make some sense that 31 knew that 32 had destroyed itself, but why would that information not be passed on to 33s overseer and why did they not move to repopulate it sooner? Along those lines, who cleaned up 32? I thought that maybe 31 had sent over a crew/had started the repopulation with their people, but that seems unlikely as it played out as a) no signs of others over there and b) it seems likely that you want to stay in hibernation unless you have to be woken to keep everything running. I guess it is possible that some 31s were woken to go clean and then came back, but there are a lot of problems with this. Not that it takes away from my enjoyment of the series, but something is going on.
So here’s my question – and if I missed some obvious tell, please do let me know.So according to Norm, Vault 32 found out they were enthralled to nuclear business tyrants, rose up against their overseer, and ultimately committed mass suicide (possibly because they couldn’t open their door) about 2 years before the show happens. The raider he talks to clearly saw all the aftermath when he arrived and stole the vault uniforms.So how did Bud and Hank not know about this? The other vault, presumably ruled over by one of their “buds,” went dark for 2 years, then when they offer to trade corn for a husband, people just show up to comply? Wouldn’t Hank expect to see the previous overseer or know if they had been replaced? Wouldn’t the people of Vault 33 recognize that nobody from 32 had turned up for previous interactions? How did Moldaver know to show up with a fake husband? What was her plan if there hadn’t been a communal wedding? And Lucy says her marriage is part of an annual trade – didn’t anyone in 33 think it was weird that their previous annual trade didn’t happen, with no explanation?Conversely, if 32 was PERMITTED to rebel as part of some secondary experiment, wouldn’t Bud and Hank have been even MORE likely to know, and even less likely to let people supposedly from there in?
“So how did Bud and Hank not know about this?”Bud’s an idiot, and Bob’s Buds are even bigger idiots. Note that Norm was able to con Bob into thinking he was talking to barb with zero preparation. Moldaver knows all about the con, so she just needs to keep up the pretense that it’s the actual Vault 32 Overseer talking. She can assert that they shouldn’t open up until they contain the blight as an excuse until she’s ready to invade the next vault.
Yeah, I guess that’s all plausible. And I could see “Bud’s buds” getting a little kick out of going radio silent and keeping secrets from each other because that’s just MANAGEMENT THINKING.
Yeah, to me it’s less a plot hole and more something that wasn’t explained. There are ways to imagine it happening.
I wondered a lot about this too. Also, who cleaned up vault 32? No one from 33 knew anything about it, and there’s currant no active people in 31. It’s not like the newly elected overseer in 33 cleaned up like a vault full of dead bodies by herself. Other than that, I think the blight covered up a lot of the premenstrual in 32 from 33, though I’ll admit Moldavers timing is too convenient for her purposes to make sense.
Maybe they thawed all the execs out, made them do it, and froze them again? If they’ll put up with being awakened just to lead a bunch of rubes in a bunker, they’d probably do that too.Then again, they probably just had security and custodial do it, and told them anything awful they saw was the raiders’ doing.
many of these plot holes were very well explained to me when you realise that: they are mid managers, the kind of people that only focus at very specific things, objectives, tasks, thinking that are the most important in the world. So, as radarskiy says, they are idiots.
I might be wrong, but I assumed the previous years marriage candidate came from 31. Possibly the pregnant woman with the eyepatch? Since she and her doomed husband had no existing children when that seemed like a huge priority, it stands to reason they were married somewhat recently.
Norm found out that 32 was opened by his mother’s pip boy. Moldaver had that, so she specifically invaded the vault 2 years previous and then pretended to the be the overseer every now and then to keep up the pretence.
I love that when Lucy’s brother finds Bud-in-a-jar, he’s gotten hopelessly stuck in a corner. The entire Bud’s Buds plan, doomed by a bad turn if he hadn’t shown up! It ended on a cliffhanger, but I feel like we’re going to get another funny exchange between them at the start of the next season and he’s not just going to hop in his dad’s cryopod. she and the Ghoul hitting the road on her father’s trail. One nice thing about this is that the show hard averted any sort of “surrogate daughter/father” thing between them. Coop treated her like shit, she saved his life to show that she’s a better person than him, and now they’re teaming up as allies.
*Never Go It Alone achievement unlocked*
I’m going to continue getting confused when people refer to Coop in this show and don’t mean Kyle Maclachlan.
These reviews are great and very appreciated. I miss the time when AV Club reviewed more shows.I think this show stumbled on the landing a bit-the final episode had some pretty big plot holes and coincidences to make it go. But the second season was set up really well, and I thought the show overall was pretty amazing. As a long time fan of the games, I thought they nailed the vibe of the whole thing perfectly. Pretty amazing actually: I thought it would be really hard to translate from the games, but everyone involved did an excellent job. And Walton Goggins is fantastic in every role he touches.I loved the first season overall. So did my wife, who is very supportive of my gaming but has never played anything other than Ms. Pac-Man and Mario Kart. So we have a crowd pleaser here all around, The last episode really is a little sloppy, but there are some great moments and it really tees up a Season 2 of this great show, so all is forgiven.
At the meeting with Robert House, having Big MT being represented by obvious fat cat was an odd choice, since that’s the company that Fallout fans will associate with “scientists who can neither see the forest nor the trees, because those leaves are interesting.”Still, it gives me a hope that they can get find time to visit the Big Empty in season 2, and hopefully the Think Tank still exists in some sense.
Oh I hope the Think Tank exists (and DOCTOR MOBIUS!). Their insane banter is why I loved Old World Blues so much. And we need Muggy cameo. Poor, poor Muggy. 😂
That’s Frederick Sinclair, the guy from Dead Money.
Again, Dane, they/them pronouns!
Apologies, I actually did have this right in my original draft – after people pointed it out to me earlier in the season, which I appreciate – but failed to communicate it to my editor, so it got changed while they were busy fixing my various typos and grammar mistakes. Should be fixed here, and in all other mentions in these recaps.
lol “editor”? AV Club staff member trying to deny the litterbox of typos found regularly on this site is hilarious. Nice try though.
AVClub has editors?
Also, John Updike wrote the novel “The Witches of Eastwick,” so Michael Cristofer’s screenplay was adapted, not original. I have no friends.
God you people are so obnoxious lmao. She’s a woman.
As with the Vault 4 residents in “The Radio,” though, Moldaver and her people are just so unambiguously good here that it feels a bit like Fallout is putting its thumb on the scale for any final decisions Lucy might have to make. (Where’d Moldaver get those raiders from the first episode, by the way—and why? Everyone in her camp certainly seems capable of using a knife and fork.)You’re contradicting yourself. Obviously Moldaver is not “unambiguously good” given what she did to capture Hank. (Nor is the NRC unambiguously good in the games, though better than most factions, but the show didn’t spend much time there.) Presumably Moldaver hired the raiders, as they will work for caps or drugs. The why? Could be multiple things, not least that she didn’t think her NRC remnants would go along with a plan to raid a vault and kidnap someone. Or she didn’t want them to know her plan until after the deed was done. This actually leads to a qualm I have with the show: I felt like it didn’t really give the viewer any idea of how powerful the NRC is/was or the dynamics of factions working in the very settled West at that time (or that settlements were pretty common and robust in general.) The reveal that Hank is not only a Vault-Tec stooge from before the War, but that he nuked Shady Sands personally, in a fit of paranoid jealousy after his wife left him for the surface, feels like Fallout abandoning a decent chunk of the moral ambiguity that’s made these last eight episodes such an interesting trip, in favor of sorting characters safely into boxes for the road. I’m not 100% convinced Hank was lying when he denied nuking Shady Sands. There’s the basic question of how did he get a nuke to begin with, but there’s also the big New Vegas reveal at the end. Howard has been clarifying to fans that nothing in New Vegas has been “retconned” and that the bombing of Shady Sands takes place right after the events of the main game. It also looks like New Vegas itself was bombed from the credits. The only person in the games that wanted to do that, and had the ability to do it, was Ulysses. He had control of active silos in The Divide and hated the NRC, The Brotherhood, The Legion and Mr. House pretty much equally. The Lonesome Road takes place right after the events of NV, and they could simply say the Courier/player didn’t stop it from happening. Now, the show hasn’t even introduced The Legion, barely dealt with the NRC, or the various conflicts the different factions have had (again, a qualm, as the world is very well settled at this time and I don’t think the show really got that impression across properly), so if they do anything with it at all, it could be just bits and pieces. I just wouldn’t be surprised if what seems implied now, like Hank nuking Shady Sands, ends up being a random occurrence that was more coincidental than intended, because that’s basically the definition of Fallout. Hank does hightail it New Vegas for a reason though. The obvious reason would be Mr. House, even though NV looks destroyed.
Ron Perlman to play the lead Super Mutant in Season 2. You heard it here first.
Of all the mid-level managers at that meeting, Barb Howard seems to be the only one who is even half-way competent. There must be someone else who set things up, even if it was Barb’s idea to actually use the nukes.
I presumed it was the ‘shadowy figure’ they show her look up at for a split-second. At first from the angles I thought she suspected or even knew her husband was listening, but then they show the silhouette in the window and that is likely the person pulling the strings (and presumably a PTBAL for next season).
The US President somehow escape to the oil rig before the nuke went down. And VaultTec had connection to the Enclave (the experiment were design to set up colony in other planet). I guess the US government just use VaultTec as an escape goat despite all the peace talk (it’s a ruse), the world resources weren’t enough for multiple country to survive without conflict.
No one else is going to talk about how the most impactful and dramatic moment of the finale is undercut by PS3 Kyle MacLachlan, apparently de-aged by bad AI? Did thess Perchance renderings do better or worse? You be the judge.Another apparently unique observation I have is how Lucy was completely unable to rouse Maximus from unconsciousness. I get that it was done in order to put them on separate paths narratively, but they kind of botched the urgency needed to sell that by making her spend way too long waggling his brain around. Being out so cold from head trauma is concussion territory, perhaps brain damage. I thought he died for a moment. I remember Steve Young’s stories of waking up in the hospital and not remembering anything that led to him being there, asking questions he had already asked moments earlier. Probably no consequences from this, though.I’m hoping next season, we run into Thaddeus again, halfway transformed in a ghoul.
The only show/movie I’ve ever seen (in the non-football/medical category) that’s ever noted how seriously bad getting “knocked out” is for you is Archer, and that only does it in a purposefully half-assed way.
Yep. Could be the most realistic deeply rooted in reality movie out there and still people will be hopping up from being knocked unconscious for a considerable amount of time as if nothing happened to them.
Fallout doing it was hardly surprising.
Another fun (in a morbid way) nod to the games: all the vaults the Execs are ‘spit-balling’ get created and are canon to the games. You even get to have not great experiences in some of them (others you read about). I think my favorite game easter egg was when her brother ‘hacked’ the computer, using the exact same ‘mini-game’ that’s in the later Fallout games.Also, I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t notice the end credits of every episode were essentially spoilers/previews for the next episode—they’re all images of the locales— and sometimes more, like the Mr. Handy billboard at the end of episode 3. Even if you didn’t recognize New Vegas by the cityscape, all the billboards and locales during the end credits refer to New Vegas.
William Hughes… do you understand that things can be both comedy and drama? Arguably the best dramas have a sense of humour. Why does something need to be black or white?
The A- grading of this episode is very “I loved the games and this show” but this was not an A- episode…. I liked this show a lot but I’d argue that this plus that ridiculous episode with Chris Parnell were not good. I was genuinely so confused by the reveals in this episode.
I liked it but this article/thread feels like a real circle-jerk. False praise from fans who got excited because they recognized things in a TV show. It’s also the bad-type of edgelord bait that caters to Snyderverse fans.
There was a lot I liked but damn this show had a lot of plot holes. For an episode graded A- there’s certainly a lot of people in the comments asking what Moldaver’s deal was. Yeah it was good but it wasn’t revolutionary TV. I enjoyed 3 Body Problem much much more than this.
My biggest gripe is just how casually a bunch of characters lived for hundreds of years… to the point where it was even unclear how Moldaver was alive in the future.
Wait a minute, hold up- If the Ghoul can one-shot power armor all this time, why didn’t he just do that in the firefight in Episode 2?? From the underwhelming Vault 31 mystery reveal to Vault-Tec being behind the bombs in the first place (wtf?), this finale didn’t work for me, brother. Moldaver’s plan to get to this point made no sense, Maximus did nothing but fail upwards all season, and our protagonist Lucy is left with nothing to really do in her own story but listen to exposition.A-
Kyle McLachlan went from Coop to Bob in a second there
I did not love all the choices made in the series with the Fallout universe material, but making mid managers the mediocre narcissistic evil guys is such a stroke of genius that the final episode felt really really good. It’s a middle finger to the Fallout 3 or The Postman narrative where the middle man is the one who makes the country recover and run through its symbols (a narrative I actually love) and I cannot stop admiring it.
It seems a little weird that the macguffin was cold fusion when at least the brotherhood and vault dwellers already had it. I guess it was just a matter of scale/efficiency? It’s also not at all clear to me how the brotherhood found out there was a guy out there with the key to cold fusion in his head? They’re not exactly friendly with The Enclave. Finally, Barb knew when the bombs were gonna drop, but didn’t bother to get custody of her kid that day? Good season of TV though, really enjoyed it.
“Cold fusion” doesn’t exist in the FO games. Stuff like Microfusion Cells and Fusion Cells are all “hot fusion,” require H3, need to be contained, and eventually run out, as opposed to (the scientifically impossible) cold fusion that would produce power indefinitely at room temperature without any significant containment. There are some files you can find in the earlier games where researchers bemoan that microfusion wasn’t taken further, as it could have alleviated the cause of Resource Wars, hinting that it was intentionally suppressed. At the same time, it was never particularly clear in the games how fusion works (other than fusion cells being invented in 2066) and was one of those things better left unaddressed because it creates more questions than answers. The tech that could create mini-fusion reactors loaded into guns should’ve pretty much fixed everything. When it comes to the bombs, I felt it wasn’t Barb who had a direct hand in dropping them that day for the exact reason you mention. She wouldn’t have don’t it with her daughter unprotected.
Thanks! Your comments on these reviews have been full of interesting information.
This show was OK.
I’m just trying to figure out how the Ghoul thinks his wife and daughter are still alive 200 years later. But then again… Moldaver is alive.
Wife – easy: he knows she’s a higher-up in VaultTec, that they were the ones who destroyed the world, and that they had a plan to stay alive indefinitely in order to outlast the competition. And as to his daughter, presumably there will be another flashback at some point to right after the nukes go off that explains how the daughter got from his horse to mom’s custody. It could be really simple: the first place he headed to was his own home and she was there.
I really enjoyed the series, episode 2 in particular was amazing. The core cast are awesome. This finale tho felt slightly underwhelming to me. Plus the reveal of Lucy’s mother with the zoom-in on the necklace while she sat tied to a chair growling had me unexpectedly guffawing, which I suspect isn’t the desired reaction. Why was she even there? Moldaver presumably hunted her down, brought her back and tied to her to a chair all in the hope that Lucy would show up to rescue Pops, clock her and turn on her father? I dunno, it all seemed hilariously ridiculous and slightly spoiled the finale for me.
Awesome closing shot of New Vegas though, season 2 can’t come quick enough. Unleash the Deathclaw.
Moisés Aran meant to be Moisés Arias?
Ok. I thought maybe I missed the plot point explaining how Moldaver is still around. We can assume it’s the same way the Vault-Tec management people are still alive, but it wasn’t made specific, was it?So, Vault 31 just defrosts a new executive every decade or so, and they win control of 33? What’s 32 for? I need a diagram.
that he nuked Shady Sands personally, in a fit of paranoid jealousy after his wife left him for the surfaceI think this is actually more nuanced than you think. Remember: this is from a group of people (of whom Hank was one) whose goal was to wipe out the surface population so that they could repopulate the Earth with their ideal of what society should be. If Shady Sands was a thriving city, that would make it harder for them to take back over what was left. It had to be eliminated because it was a threat to Vault-Tec’s long term plans. And there was the added bonus that it allowed Hank to take vengeance against the woman who left him.