With this latest episode, Fallout begins to pull back the curtain on its master plan, as well as weave stories from Season 1 into the current season and the wider lore of the franchise. “The Other Player,” alluded to in the title of the episode, refers to wildcards in the distant past as well as the unknown future of the franchise.
I haven’t decided if it’s a flaw or not, but for better or worse, some characters have a lot more to do this season than others. I almost wonder if they should have saved all the Vault 33 stuff for a single episode instead of spreading it out over the entire season, since some stories this year are moving much slower than others. The last time we saw Norm, he was getting choked out by barrel-chested Ronnie. We don’t get so much as a check-in with him this week. Likewise, after being completely absent from last week’s episode, Maximus and Thaddeus only make a brief appearance over a couple of scenes. But let’s not focus on what’s not here, since there’s still plenty of meat on which to chew.
Speaking of meat, last we saw Cooper the Ghoul, he was punched out of the Atomic Wrangler’s window by Lucy and impaled on a conspicuously placed lamp post (yes, I’ve concluded that it’s, indeed, a lamp post). The episode begins with him stuck on the pole, flashing back to arguably better times with his wife at the Lucky 38. Interestingly, the flashbacks this week even include flashbacks of their own, which is a bit disorienting, but it’s nice to see Barb get a bit more characterization this time around. Over the course of the series thus far, Barb (Frances Turner) has been seldom defined as more than “hot and evil.” That’s good enough for me to swipe right, but not good enough for Fallout, so I’m glad she gets a bit more nuance this week. In their suite at the Lucky 38 in the past, a hungover Cooper even asks if she’s always been “a monster,” revealing to her that he listened in on her cabal meeting back in the finale of Season 1.
As the flashbacks progress, we learn that she was coerced into suggesting that Vault-Tec drop the first bomb themselves by none other than Dr. Wilzig (Michael Emerson), who spent most of Season 1 as a decapitated head carrying the Cold Fusion device. We know that he’s part of the Enclave, which suggests the far-right corner of the US Government had some kind of stake in Vault-Tec’s endeavors, but to what end? Is it as simple as rebuilding from the ashes, or is there more corporate political espionage at play here? At least the Enclave didn’t try to buy Greenland, so they can’t be all bad, right?
In the end, Cooper gets young Hank MacLean drunk and checks the mysterious package to which he’s always handcuffed. It has some kind of syringe gun. Cooper is confused, but when Barb shows up, she uses the gun to extract a small device from MacLean’s neck: it’s the cold fusion device. I don’t know why it was in his neck, but now Barb and Cooper have it. But for how long? We know it’s going to end up in The Enclave’s possession eventually.
Meanwhile, Lucy is taken back to her father’s base, where she learns what he’s been up to, or at least a little bit of it. Lucy tries to arrest Hank and drag him back to Vault 33 to face justice, but it’s clearly not going to be that simple. He’s been kidnapping wastelanders and planting mind control devices to the back of their necks. After Hank’s tinkering, the devices are clearly much better than the one he used to trigger a nuclear explosion in Shady Sands all those years ago. He’s turned members of the NCR, Caesar’s Legion, and random people into desk jockey corporate office workers. They’re not hurting anyone, which is nice… But they’re not themselves, either. They’re not just office drones. They’re barely human, stripped of their free will and slaves to Hank’s orders, and they don’t want to return to the surface. It’s safer down in the Vault-Tec underground bunker than out there with the Deathclaws.
A noteworthy scene here has an NCR soldier (the one with the pet squirrel from a couple of episodes ago) and a Caesar’s Legion warrior brought into the office. The devices on their necks have been implanted, but not activated. They try to kill each other and Lucy is helpless to protect the NCR man from the Caesar’s Legion, uh, legionnaire. The only way to save him is to push the button activating the devices, at which point the two immediately become chummy with one another, all memory of their past erased and replaced with subservience to Vault-Tec.
We only get a single scene at Vault 33, but it’s a great one. At the incest support group created by Reg (Rodrigo Luzzi), tensions are riding high. Sure, there’s a lot of incest going on in the Vaults, but the real tension is how their out-of-control snack budget is undermining the authority of Overseer Pearson (Leslie Uggams). She has a point, since the Vault’s broken water chip means resources should be rationed until a fix is discovered.
The showstopping moment of the episode is a music video set to Uranium Fever by Elton Britt, where Reg imagines himself as the leader of his group of incest enthusiasts, who are having a great time eating goodies and dancing merrily as he rocks out on the piano. In reality, he’s just playing a one-fingered version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” while the support group members enjoy free food. The party ends when Pearson leads a group of riot police to disband the group. A rebellious Reg refuses to surrender his group’s snack budget. Pearson says, “You don’t get extra rations because of who your parents were.” Reg cleverly throws it back in her face, saying, “This is still America, so actually yes, you do!” At this point, it looks like Vault 33 civil war is inevitable.
Over at Vault 32, Chet learns from Mustache Dave that Woody is missing. Nobody knows where he is. Maybe reporting the Overseer’s misdeeds to the Overseer herself wasn’t a smart course of action. But that’s the least of Chet’s problems, since he learns that he’s scheduled to marry Overseer Stephanie TOMORROW. I mean, she’s an absolute cutie pie and the sexy eyepatch kinda drives me wild, but Chet can only have his life railroaded so much before he snaps.
Later that night, we return to Cooper. He’s not having a good time. He’s still riding the pole (and not in a sexy stripper way), and his injury is causing him to slip into becoming a Feral Ghoul. Fans of the games know that Feral Ghouls are no more than zombies, devoid of all personality and only seeking to attack and consume the living. Kind of a nice parallel to Hank’s office drones, if you think about it. Cooper tries to gather his resolve and climb off the pole, thinking of reuniting with his long-lost family, but he’s simply not strong enough. He can’t do it. Fortunately for him, he’s rescued by a Super Mutant! Finally! A Super mutant! He’s brought to a secret location (Jacobstown, maybe?) and healed with a chunk of uranium. The mutant, played by none other than Fallout veteran Ron Perlman, explains that a war is coming between The Enclave and “abominations” like mutants and ghouls and that he’s going to have to fight. Cooper rejects the offer, at least for now, and is knocked out by the mutant.
We finally catch up with Maximus and Thaddeus, who abandon their Power Armor since the Brotherhood of Steel can track them. Thaddeus thinks they should sell the Cold Fusion device, but Maximus refuses. He figures they can do genuine good for the wasteland by finding someone with a good heart, like Lucy, who can use it to make the world a better place. Thaddeus counters that they can’t do good for others until they get rich enough to support themselves first. “Altruism is easier on a full stomach.” I put quotes around that, but I made it up. And now it’s a famous saying. There ya go. Jealous? Yeah, I can just do that.
Anyway, the pair are accosted by none other than Dogmeat, who is carrying Cooper’s hat. The dog leads them to Cooper, who is looking a bit worse for wear, but a lot better than that time he was impaled by a friggin’ lamp post. At long last, two of our groups have combined to form one.
Zak’s Thoughts
I’ve shouted out Aaron Moten’s acting before, and Walton Goggins’ performance almost goes without saying, but this week I want to give a tip of my hat to Kyle MacLachlan and the team of VFX artists who bring his performance as Young Hank to life. He’s great in the far future, but in the scenes where he plays a 30-year-old (or so) dweeb of a middle manager, he’s amazing. The effects used to make him look young are downright flawless, possibly the best I’ve ever seen, but it wouldn’t work if he moved like an old man. To his credit, Kyle shines in these sequences, with no part of his voice, his movements, or his overall performance betraying the fact that he is a 66-year-old man playing a 30-year-old (or so) character.
It was a nice touch, featuring the “gore bag” in the Super Mutant’s lair. I love Super Mutants in New Vegas. They’re tragic creatures compared to the SMs seen in Fallout 3, who are just cannon fodder for the player. The New Vegas versions are their own society, not just monsters, but by the time of the show, they’ve been hunted to near-extinction by humans. In New Vegas, whether you like Mr. House, the NCR, or Caesar’s Legion, they all hate Super Mutants. Probably because they’re called Super Mutants. If they were called “Green Cuties,” maybe they’d have an easier time. Maybe the Super Mutants just need a publicist.
If you don’t know who Ron Perlman is, he’s a beloved actor known for playing the title role in Guillermo Del Toro’s Hellboy movies and the TV series, Sons of Anarchy. He was also in a great Season 3 episode of Miami Vice. He narrates all of the Fallout games, from the original 1990s titles all the way through to Fallout 76. I’m glad they found a role for him on the show. It just wouldn’t be Fallout without him.
The wasteland is really small, but I honestly don’t mind. I love how characters weave in and out of the series, from main characters to small parts like the loopy NCR soldier and the snake oil salesman. Realistically speaking, there aren’t millions of people alive in the wasteland, so people have to move around if they want to stay alive outside of the handful of settlements in the region. I’m not going to figure out a proper breakdown of exactly where New Vegas is in relation to Shady Sands and Area 51 and Vault 33, but I imagine it’s not more than a 25 mile radius. Or maybe it just doesn’t matter. Like, how far is Degobah from Cloud City? Don’t worry about it, that’s how far.