The Ringer-Verse - ‘Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 3 Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Hot dawg! Ben and Van Lathan suit up to discuss the lore-stuffed third episode of the second season of 'Fallout,' "The Profligate." After sharing their overall review, they check in on Lucy, Coop/The Ghoul, and Maximus, and examine how the episode's themes and plot lines tie together. They also reflect on the merits of talking to dogs, compare and contrast crucifixion methods, break down bathroom conversation etiquette, bemoan anti-ghoul discrimination, and more. Intro (0:00)‘Fallout’ Episode 3 recap (6:32)Outro (1:08:27) Host: Ben LindberghGuest: Van LathanProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone, it's Amy Poehler, and I'm launching a new podcast called Good Hang. In preparation for that, I asked some of my friends to send in some videos and give me some advice. Just be yourself, and the guests will come. Don't be the celebrity that this is their like six things they're doing. I love two crime and cooking podcasts. Is there any way you could combine the two? Well, everyone has an opinion and a podcast. So, join me for Good Hang.

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You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner. Or a road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. A dog, a way, and welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus feed for all things fandom.

Greetings for the first time in 2026. War never changes, but the calendar does. New Year, same podcast, same host, namely me, Ben Lindberg, senior editor at the Ringer, and Paladin of Buttmash. We're only 12 hours into this shift. We've got 10 more to go and clocking in for his shift, joining me through the transfer portal right after recording a ringer tailgate episode, a man who's seen upwards of 15 different movies

and sympathizes with the Pinko point of view. It's Van Lathen. I kind of do sympathize. Okay, but yeah, hey, what's up? How are you guys doing? What's going on, man. What a fun show. How much of your tailgate pod was devoted to Marcus Freeman's airline?

Not enough. There should have been more. Not enough. Yeah. He needs an intervention, an intervention even. I can't think of anyone better positions to offer advice on that matter than you. I mean, to be honest with you, I wouldn't deal what I had to do, but it seems like as if he is hesitant and I just don't understand why, coach, please.

Just commit. Yeah, it's time. It's past time. One of the many advantages of becoming a ghoul is you don't have to stress about your hairline anymore. You've gone from a show where you talk about Marcus Freeman to a show where we talk about Gordon Freeman. You're back on buttmash. And to quote our gulified friend Thaddeus, we're all really, really lucky to be here.

Believe me, I have seen some shit out there, but here we got it made because we're discussing Fallout Season 2, episode 3, the profligate, written by Chaz Hawkins and directed by Liz Friedlander. Missed you last week. How you feeling about Fallout season 2 and this episode specifically?

Two was a fantastic episode. We didn't get to talk about it. And three, just continued the momentum, if you're asking me. The show has a clear narrative. It is sometimes, obviously we talked about this before, brutal to watch, but I'm really enjoying this show. I think it's off to a better start

than what I believe was the sensational first season. I'm actually enjoying it more this year. Interesting. I'm happy to hear that. So you're not feeling at all overwhelmed by the amount of lore here how quickly this world is expanding all the new factions we're meeting? No, I'm not.

I do find myself sometimes having to stop down and do a little homework, which I don't know if that's really great in a show, but it never takes me out of it. I do sometimes figure out, what am I need to learn? What do I need to know? What's going on here?

There's a lot of stuff going on, but they're really merging the worlds that they're creating pretty seamlessly, if you ask me. The only downside of this expanding ensemble is that every week we miss someone. Someone's got to be the odd character out. So episode one, there was no Maximus, and this week, no Norm or Hank,

And that just comes with the territory. You're trying to fit in all of these different characters, all these different factions, all these different storylines. There's not enough screen time to go around. And so we're skipping people from week to week, which could be jarring, I guess. You know, people might find that a bit disjointed, not to know what these people are up to from one week to the next.

But I guess it's just a log jam at this stage. I don't know if it's too many characters in the kitchen or just enough. But it's a growing number for sure. It's not quite stranger things. size ensemble, but it's getting... Yeah, and the characters are representative of their different parts of the world, and sometimes when you don't check in with those characters, you don't

check in with that world, and you miss the characters, but you miss the world, too. If I'm away from the seller-dwellers too much, then I kind of like, I don't want to check back in and see what's going on down there. When you're away from them, you don't get any of what's going on as far as their narrative is concerned.

Yeah, yeah, what's happening with Raj and his snack budget and the the support group. We have no idea. We haven't seen him in a while. Everyone that he got to work on, you know, just all of this stuff. What's the other guy who was able to get the people

that he woke up to work on his behalf in episode two? What's his name? Norm. Yeah, Norm. Norm. You're talking about Norm. I liked that little,

I'm sure we'll get back to that, but I like that little portion of what was going on and how he was finding himself as a leader, manipulator. Yeah. But yeah, that does kind of get away from some of the momentum of the show and the consistency. However, the show does a good job of always replacing that

with something else that's sort of wondrous, intriguing. It holds your interest, you know? Still wondering what's happening with those kissing cousins down in the vault. I hope those two are going to make it. I'm pulling for them. Yeah, there's not enough time to feature every character. There's not enough time on this podcast to talk about everything that's happening in the show. I'm enjoying it too.

I would say from minute to minute, I'm as engaged as ever. When I pull back a bit, this was maybe the first week where I felt like there's a little too much dip on the chip, maybe now, possibly. Or I'm getting a little more information than I need on some of these factions. And since I played fallout New Vegas, I kind of know what we're dealing with here. And I'm doing a little less research on the fallout wiki because this is kind of fresh in my mind. But I could imagine that some people who are coming to this fresh for the first time, not knowing anything about, Caesar's

slash Kaiser's Legion wondering who are these people? What's their whole deal? Maybe we don't need to know

because maybe they're done after one episode. We'll see. But there's a lot of introductions here and title cards for various

factions. And we'll discuss some of that stuff and whether any of it is extraneous, gratuitous. But we're going

on a grand tour of the wasteland and everyone in it, starting with Thadius, we catch up with him. He's running a child work camp.

He's extracting bottle caps from... He's polite about it, though. Sasparilla bottles? Yeah, oh, very much. You know, as half-goule labor camps for children go, I mean, like he said, you know, most children in this world, they're dead. So considering the alternative, it's probably better.

These bottle caps, if you play Fall Out New Vegas, these are everywhere. There's sunset Sasperilla. Everywhere you look, bottle caps are the currency in this world, and people particularly collect the ones with the blue stars on the bottom. bottom. So again, just triggering memories for me of playing the game. What I did last week with Daniel, we sort of divided the podcast into the various storylines and characters that we focus on in the actual Fallout episode. So we can do the same thing here. And we can talk a little bit about what's up with Lucy. And then we can get into Coop slash the ghoul and then their paths

cross. And then we'll get to our man Maximus last because he's making moves. Not all of them intentionally. But Lucy, she wanders into Caesar's legions camp. And John Lennon once saying, Christ, you know it ain't easy. You know how hard it can be the way things are going. They're going to crucify me. That's exactly what happens to Lucy here. And lo and behold, we get a surprise guest star taken off the helmet to reveal of all people during home alone season, no less. Macaulkin gracing our screen once again. Did not see this coming. I'd seen that he was in it. I was wondering how he was going to show up.

When they shot, the way the reveal was shot, it was obviously somebody that was going to be important. That was coming up there. I want to say something about her crucifixion, though. It was ethical. In what way? No nails. No nails.

They didn't go, but in nails, which if you're going to be crucified, which if you're listening to the sound of my voice right now, desperately hope that does not happen to you. But if you're going to be crucified, I would hope that they would tie you rather than nail you because that's harder to come back from, especially if you're not a goal. Yeah, I guess that's true.

Yeah, that does leave a mark. If someone cuts you off of there, you still got the scars, presumably. But then you look at it like that. If you still have the scars from the crucifixion and you're in the right part of the country, you show those scars, you'll get all kinds of stuff. It's true. You know, if you got the stick out of it, that's status symbol.

If you can survive it, it's probably a good thing. But guess what? You're not going to. Yeah, yeah, I survived a crucifixion and all I got was this lazy rope burn on my list. But, Bacalli, he's out there again a little bit, you know? He's kind of been hibernating. There's a gap in the old IMDB, but he's been out there a bit more lately. And I'm happy to have another Culkin back in our lives with a little more regularity.

So it's not, I don't know if it's a thankless role, but it's not the most thankful role for him to appear on fallout. He didn't have a ton to work with here. but still happy to see his face. It does go to show that this show can really, you know, it has clout. I mean, it has a huge audience. They can get people on this show. They can get Justin Thoreau. They can get Macaulay Culkin just to appear for possibly one episode and be a Caesar's legionary.

So, all right. It wasn't exactly the thing that I would have expected him to be lured out of quasi-retirement to return to the screen for this role in particular. But happy to have him. have Caesar's Legion or should I say Caesar's legions? And this is a running bit in the game, too, in Fall Out Nov Vegas, the pronunciation of Caesar versus Kaiser, depending on whether you're encountering people who are in the Legion, who will say Kaiser, or people who are not in the Legion and will say Caesar like we would. Evidently, I mean, no one knows exactly how the

original Latin sounded, but based on the scholarship, it would have been more of a K-sound than a C. it would have been Kaiser. So they're true to history here. And that sets them apart. But of course, Culkin tells us we're at war. Lucy says with who? He says the New California Republic, the cons, the brotherhood, everyone, essentially. But like the brotherhood, there's also a civil war brewing here and has been brewing.

So there's a stalemate for 15 years, evidently, there's been a stalemate between rival factions of Caesar's Legion. You know, it's like Alexander the Great Dies, all the generals squabble for control. And here we have this almost Monty Python-esque silly setup where you have the rival Caesar's Legion camps, which are adjacent to each other. And somehow this stalemate, this no man's land has persisted for all this time. I'm not sure how this is a sustainable situation, but I guess by the end of the episode, it's not. Look, there's a density about this episode. Like, there's a density about everything that's going on that's very sometimes overwhelming. This, though, is interesting.

I, if I'd have had my druthers, I'd have stayed here longer to, like, really negotiate this stalemate. I thought maybe, because I haven't played the game, she was going to have some specific skill that was going to get the stalemate popping or make one side go or she was going to find out something about the, all of that stuff. there was so much intrigue that could have happened there and if there's one note on the episode I would have is that they kind of use that setup just for a comedic scene of her getting like thrown back up on the cross. We don't really stay there and learn what's going to happen between these two people, the history of it.

And it could have been a good, almost like the Mandalorian. If we were in the Mandalorian season one, part of this would have been about figuring out, you know, how to make one side win to get your freedom or whatever. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at, I guess. I don't mind introducing new legions and fleshing out this world a little bit, but then don't just sort of skate by it, you know, because if you're just introducing it as kind of window dressing or fan service for someone who's played the game and says, oh, Caesar's Legion.

But if you're watching this for the first time and you know nothing about this, aren't you asking questions? Aren't you wondering, who are these people? What are they about? So, you know, we get some expression of their philosophy from Culkin's character, but we don't know why they're dressing up in Roman armor, why they've modeled themselves on the Romans. Like, none of this is explained and maybe given the end of this episode, it won't be. So if it's one and done, then it's kind of, well, does it even make sense to introduce these

people and raise all these questions? But maybe it just makes the world seem bigger and more alive, that there are all these factions struggling for power out there. And they all have their own philosophy and their own dress code and their own pursuit of power and grudges, which you know, you might get some sense of as you're watching, even if you don't know everything. But like, you know,

you kind of don't need to do some of the stuff. Once you see her, the lady that she saved get her throw cut, you know she's in danger. So by the time they go and set other stuff up, you kind of want to see that stuff paid off and they don't do it. However, they give you more great stuff.

They give you Maximus on his journey. all of the seemingly sectarian violence that's happened. It's not different sex religiously, but different factions going on inside the Brotherhood. That stuff was really interesting. I really like, the Brotherhood could almost be another show. It almost could be like a whole, a whole different show because their motivations inside of this post-apocalyptic world are so different.

So, you know, that was good to come back with that, But, you know, not to keep beating the dead horse of would have liked to see more of the little standoff there, but, you know, would have been cool. Yeah, in the game, Caesar is kind of an interesting character, Caesar's Legion, kind of interesting. And, you know, they've said that they're not kind of canonizing any one of the possible endings of Fallout New Vegas. But in most of the endings, Caesar does die or almost all of the endings in the game is whichever choices you make. And so it makes sense that there would be a power vacuum. And evidently, it's persisted all these years. But yeah, it is largely played for laughs.

And maybe that makes sense because these guys are, after all, cosplaying as Romans in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Maybe there's not a great explanation for that, even if you give the game's explanation. And again, you know, Daniel and I talked about this last week with Lucy being very overconfident at times and not really adapting to the wasteland as much as it seems like she was. You can say that too.

Yeah, we were frustrated with her, especially, you know, last year she wondered, last week she wonders into this trap and everyone's, you know, getting stung by rad scorpions. And then she has the gall to tell the ghoul, why don't you reflect on your mistakes, you know? And meanwhile, it's her mistake that they got her into the situation. And then you'd think that in this episode she would sort of see the light maybe. Because, you know, she goes to all this effort to save this woman who is immediately summarily executed, right? So all that effort was for not. And then she walks in here knowing nothing, knowing no more than a show-only viewer of Fallout and says, sometimes conflict resolution, it's easier than you think. And next thing you know, she's up on the cross. So here she is. She has the temerity to say, you know, you've had these warring factions for 15 years or however long. She just thinks she's going to waltz in there and solve it with a few words, such are her diplomatic powers.

So again, she gets hoisted on her own petard or her. own cross and maybe she will actually learn something from this episode, but she definitely hasn't when the episode starts. We're watching her take her lumps. She's taking her lumps. She's taking the arrogance that she probably has as a vault dweller, a set of ethics and values that she was taught are paramount by the people who have, you know, clean water to drink and food and all that stuff, whatever, whatever.

She's trying to export those things out onto a world or into a world where they don't exist. And look, you would have thought that in the first season she would have learned a little bit, but she can't do that, but she's still learning that lesson and she's learning it the hardware. I will say this, though, great acting work. By the end of this episode, as she's walking with, you know, her lips burned and her countenance is different. She seems to be transformed and changed. by that experience. And I am pretty certain now

that she is going to listen to the ghoul a little bit more, or maybe she gets put back into a situation but she has to make a similar decision it will be interesting to see if she chooses humanity or the reality of the wasteland that she's in. I hope so.

Yeah, it's high time. We see some growth here from her. Benefit from the two centuries of wisdom that the ghoul has accumulated along with his kill count. And yeah, you know, she does seem sort of beaten, resigned, hardened by the end. We'll get there. In this exchange with Culkin's character, she's talking about the concept of America,

which is long dead to anyone in this world who has not been living below ground. And Colkin says, you know, maps drawn by the dead, all that remains of America is the overwhelming evidence of its failure. And then we get another airing of the debate about how to be a good person in this world. or where power comes from. And Lucy is arguing, as she always is, for being the better person and being good. And Colkin says the good is not a meaningful vector in history, only strength. So this is kind of the golden rule versus gulden rule, as I called it, last week debate that she and the ghoul have been having.

And also the debate that I guess Maximus has been having with Quintus and other members of the Brotherhood. So on the one hand, it's sort of the same debate that is playing out in each of these plot lines. And I guess we get it by this point, maybe, you know, if there's a difference of opinion here that maybe will be resolved at some point this season. On the other hand, at least it's tying together these storylines because if if Maximus was just off on his own doing something and Lucy's off on her and doing something and, you know, at least in this sense, if their paths are not physically intertwining, they are at least wrestling with some of the. same issues here, which sets up some parallel structure. Yeah, and you kind of wonder what lessons are being learned that are going to be needed for them to come back and find some common ground or be on some parallel journey. Like, what is everyone learning?

It seems like Maximus is actually learning the limits of what the brotherhood can accomplish, the pettiness of it, the individualness of sort of the people at the top, maybe the fact that they are not quite ready to rule. Maybe he is starting to believe more of himself. He's internalizing some of the things that he's hearing about the limits of the rule of his cleric and all of that stuff. And then, you know, the ghoul even, the ghoul, when he goes out on his journey for help, he once again is initiated into just the flimsyness of any real type of movement or organization in the wasteland.

There's no one to ask or help. And that sort of reinforces what he thinks and really knows about the world. So he has to do the same thing that he always has to do, which is create chaos. Lie and create chaos to get what it is that you want. And maybe she learns a little bit of that. and then these characters all come together at some point to have to contend with the harsh lessons that they're learning. All right.

Let's leave Lucy hanging on the cross for a moment and transition to Coop or the ghoul in the present. Speaking of taking lumps, he is taking lumps out of his own self. He is extracting a pound of poison flesh from his leg. He's talking to dog meat, which is very relatable. You know, he says it's just been a while since I had someone worth talking to. He's petting dog meat. He's opening up.

And what could humanize man or ghoul more than having a dog and talking to the dog? And, you know, he was a begrudging pet companion in the first season. But here, he's reconnecting with the dog lover he used to be. And I know you know as a fellow dog lover, but we talk to our dogs all the time. Whether there's someone there or not, they're incredible listeners. So I don't know how you could not talk to a dog, even if they don't answer you. They answer you in their own way. They communicate.

They tell you what they? they want. You can, if you are a true dog owner, you can start to read expressions on your dog's face. Yes, or at least convince yourself that you can. Bolson comes over and he makes a certain look with his face. And I know that his stomach is certain. He has a sensitive stomach.

He has to go outside like right now. I can look. He's like a kind of like a panic face. But the thing about talking to a dog is because the dog doesn't talk back, a lot of times speaking to something that doesn't give you anything back allows you to get to a conclusion and work their thoughts out in real time.

It's true. It's a great practice for podcast. They don't, yes, and at all, but you can hone your rhetorical talents. Yeah, you're talking, you're saying things, hearing yourself say something out loud. Sometimes you're hearing and you go, that doesn't make any sense,

or sometimes you're hearing you go, oh, that's actually the way I want to go about that. And the dog is like, whatever puts their head back down. The scene where he was getting the poison flesh out was something that I'm noticing happens a lot more in Fallout for me.

It was a complete total tapout scene for me. I could not watch it. There are things that are happening in the show and I'm increasingly saying, okay, the brutality of the show sometimes I have to go a little bit past it

because the show does not spare you at all. Amazon, don't get a fuck. It's true. Yeah. I like the scene, though, if you're able to watch it just because thematically, I mean, as he is, you know, de-poisoning himself, he is talking about what this signifies.

You know, he's talking about himself as a ship, as a boat. You take out one plank. It's unchanged. You take out a lot of planks. And all of a sudden, you've got to ask yourself, what the fuck am I looking at? So he's kind of talking about like the ship of Theseus concept, you know, you replace every part of the thing. Then is it still the same thing, even if it has the same shape?

And that's been happening to him for 200 years, right? Whether it's actual physical scars left on his person, which there are plenty of those. But also, he's, you know, taken chunks out of himself in order to survive and thrive in this world and the person he used to be. And maybe he's opening up again and he's becoming more of a softie now that he has a dog by his side. But this is, you know, he's had to do the same thing essentially to his heart, right? not physically with a knife, but he's been poisoned in a sense by this fallen world,

and he has had to harden his heart against it. And that's how he turned into the ghoul. And that's what we've been talking about since the start of the season. Is he the same man? Will he be recognizable to his family if they ever find him, right? Or if he finds them. And from there, we go to the flashback, back to unscarred pre-gool coop. And we get this domestic scene.

So he and his wife are hiding very important facts from each other. That sometimes happens in a marriage, but higher stakes in this one. He's doing his best acting job yet, just playing the concerned husband around his wife, whom he knows is plotting the apocalypse on the side. Now, his wife, assuming this isn't an act on her part, she's crying about being unable to fit everything into their keeps a box. She hates. Yeah.

She hates leaving anything behind. even as she is one of the people who's helping to ensure that they have to leave it all behind, she is bringing about the apocalypse. So do you see this as sincere? Is she conflicted at all in this moment about what she's doing? Or is it just this is a necessary evil of the apocalypse that I want to bring about? What do you read into her mentality in this scene? You know, I think she's legitimately conflicted.

I think that she's doing something. but at the same time, wrestling with the reality of what it is that she's doing. I love the relationship dynamic there and the motivations behind the relationship dynamic and the sort of subterfuge

that's going on between them. I wish there was a little bit more of it, but I don't also want to spend too much time in flashback. I enjoyed the flashbacks in this episode. I always enjoy the flashbacks in the show always, but I don't want to spend too much time

in flashback. But I think that there's honestly trepidation on behalf of her going through with what she has to go through with doing this whole thing, it's probably scary even if you've resigned yourself to the fact that you're going to do it and be a part of it. Yeah, I guess it's kind of a garden of Gessimini moment. We're getting very religious in this episode with the crucifixion and everything, but it's like, you know, I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. I guess that's not

Jesus. That's what I say. Calo Ren, but, you know. Will you help me? But, yeah, you know, your crisis in the garden and you know that this is coming for you, but still, you have to go through a lot to get there. Of course, she could perhaps avoid it, but it's worth it to her overall. Now, do you think that given her role in this, and maybe we'll find out more about this in the flashback scenes, but is Kup searching for her specifically because he misses and loves her, or is he out for revenge for her?

or is he similarly conflicted? Because you know, you get why he's trying to find his daughter, but his wife is as culpable as anyone in this world. I'm waiting for the scene where he gets back to his wife because I think part of what's happening in the flashback when you see, you know, the speech that happens with his former serviceman, brother-in-arms, basically convincing him through the speech to go through with what he wants him to go through with the entire deal,

I think the flashbacks are showing them on diverging paths. And what I'm starting to wonder is, and maybe I've missed this in the first season or at some point this season, what kind of terms they were on when all of this happened. So I wouldn't say that I think that he's on a mission of revenge because I think that his daughter is a part of this and that's legitimately something that he wants to,

obviously he wants to see his daughter again. But I do think that there's probably more that we're going to see between him and his wife that leads me to believe that he wants to sort of show her the world that she created and watch her live in the folly of what she's been a part of. So we go to the VFW meeting. Charlie tells Coop, half the guys in here have killed people, maybe not the right ones. So again, that we're off fighting for our country. And meanwhile, these corporate interests are stabbing us in the back, the government's

against us. We were fighting the wrong enemies. We get another good guest star. Martha Kelly shows up as a not very charismatic congresswoman. Shout out to her and Baskets, great show. Coop hits the head and whom does he meet, but Robert House, who's just loitering in the bathroom. I guess he's the man who plans for every contingency. He knew Coop would have to go.

And so he's standing in the bathroom at just the right time to catch him here. I was going to ask you about this, the etiquette, right? Right. So at the end of the scene, Coop takes him to task, says, a vet would know better than to talk politics while a man has his dick in his hand. Put military service aside. What are the ground rules here? Especially someone you don't know, you're striking up a conversation. To what extent are you allowed to have sort of an intimate exchange while one is relieving oneself? Not to get into a whole bunch of heteronormative bullshit. But what I will say is that, you need focus. You're in there. You're using, you leave, you get a dribble on your pants or something like that. People can see dots and now guess what?

You got to sit in the way and you got to hide it. You need focus, particularly with the shake and finish after. And this guy's not respecting this. As a matter of fact, I think he's using the awkwardness of the moment. He's using it as a weapon. He's weaponized the awkwardness

to put Coop in a situation where he feels, uncomfortable as you know something's up. And that, my friend, is wrong. Yes. You can't take advantage of the vulnerable situation that what is in at the urinal. Yeah, he doesn't even wait for Kup to finish his business. It's one thing if, you know, you take care of business and then you're washing your hands

or something. Okay, you could strike up a conversation at that point. But you've got to wait a while. You can't just immediately launch into this while, while Kup is launching into what he's doing. So we didn't see House last week. we still don't entirely know the nature of Robert House and how he relates to the house that we saw in season one and in the opening scene of season two, the guy who was in the Dr. Strangelove kind of conference room. My guess, I presume that this is the real house and the other house that we saw is a body double, basically. That's, again, we haven't watched ahead, but this is a guy who plans for every possible situation.

He's taking nothing for granted. He is trying to live forever and ensure his own safety. So I assume that he has other Robert houses. It's like a Queen Amadala situation, I think. You know, it's like he's posing as a handmaiden, but he's the real queen all along. That's the cop that came to my mind. So this is the real house. Presumably he has intuited what Coop is up to here.

So he gives him a little speech. He says, I sympathize with the Pinko point of view. They have grievances with the traditional institutions. entirely justified, if you ask me, but he doesn't necessarily disagree with the methods. He says, you back a body into a corner. They're liable to try anything. Now, he kind of has backed coop into a corner in the bathroom at the urinal. But I think he seems to know that Coop has maybe been hired or tasked with, with, there's a hit put out on him potentially. So he is, he's jumping in preemptively to try to talk Coop out of it. I assume that he knows what

coop has in mind and what he's been put up to here. He is checking his temperature. He's checking his temperature, trying to see how uncomfortable he can make him, trying to see what our guy has up his sleep. Yes. He says you back billions of bodies into a corner at the same time, TISC, everyone trying to solve the same problem at the same time with a multitude of solutions. Messy, messy.

And he seems to think he's above it all. He sees more clearly. He's able to anticipate all the ways. that things could play out and protect himself. So we leave House in the past. As you said, Charlie gives this speech that is essentially a veiled appeal to Coupe, trying to talk him into doing what needs to be done,

even if he has to kill some people, it's worth it because the ends justify the means. And he gives him the award that he just won. He says he didn't get it for killing the people that he had to kill to save someone. He got it for saving someone. someone, but sometimes you need to do the dirty work to get to that point. So Coop.

Yeah, Coop leaves. Perhaps he has been convinced to try to go through with this mission. And now he has been assessed firsthand by house, though he doesn't know it. So jumping back into the present and skipping over Maximus for the moment, we will return to him. But we go to the ghoul. He walks into Seizier's Legion camp and gloats a bit over Lucy. Well, Miss Lucy, how's that golden rule working out for you now? I could not just let her, you know, live in the fact that she's up there on a cross and there's nothing you can do.

Had to do that. I had to take a little victory lap there. You could wait until you cut her down when she's not mid-crucifixion maybe to say, told you so. But, you know, I respect it. He says it when he sees her. And he says to dog me, don't look at me like that. I don't like her either, but we're going to need her down the line. Daniel and I were talking about this last week.

Is he growing fond of Lucy? Is he following her, helping her out because he is attached now because he sees her as the daughter that he has lost? Or is it just a, you know, purely means to an end, practical, pragmatic? He thinks he's going to need her to maybe get the jump on Hank, her dad at some point down the line. Maybe a blend of both. But he now goes on a number of side quests and fetch quests here in order to get Lucy freed. So he goes to another fallout New Vegas location. This is the House Resort or the House Resort and Country Club, which was occupied by the New California Republic in the game and turned into Camp Gulf, golf, that is.

And he runs into Victor, the Securotron, another Fallout New Vegas remnant here. This is, you know, security robot, as you, no doubt, we're able to see. It's something you encounter throughout the game. It gives you quests. It's sort of an intermediary kind of your go-between when you're talking to House. and Victor gives him the lay of the land a little bit. Not the first or the last little bit of exposition we get in this episode. Victor explains that the NCR is fighting the Legion.

Victor says Robert House is gone. The ghoul seems to doubt it. And then in order to get Lucy down, he has to go on another little side quest to the Rangers in the Hills. And Victor says, you know how it is, the NCR in the Legion. They can't stop fighting like Katzzi. And dogs. So again, this is, I think, holding the hand of the viewer. Just like, no one has any idea how these factions relate to each other.

It's not like we know what they stand for or what their history is. So we need some character to come on and say, here's, you know, and Victor, I guess, plays sort of a similar role in the game. Just kind of, you know, the exposition, the lore dump. You need something like that. Now, sometimes it's kind of transparent and it's obvious that that's what's happening. And that's kind of the case here. But maybe there's no way around it if you want to introduce all these.

factions. You have to have someone who comes onto the screen and says, here are who these people are and what they want and what their relationship to each other is. There are a couple of times in the show where you see people doing a little bit of work to expand the world. This was one of them, you know? I'm not still, I'm still not sure I understand like exactly what's going on. And I was going to ask you from having played the game, who are they talking about their cut off from? What's going on? What did he expect to find up there? What's the deal with all of them? that. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business to keep companies of all

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Two good creamers are available in sweet cream, roasted vanilla, and lavender. So which one are you trying first? find two good creamers at your local retailer in the creamer aisle. Yeah. So the ghoul gets to this camp, this outpost of the NCR and says the California Republic may want to drop the word new because y'all look in dusty as hell. And this is basically, so this is, you know, again, 15 years after the game. So I don't know exactly what's transpired since then.

But the NCR has fallen on hard times. This was, you know, shady sand. Shady Sam, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They have the California map up there. By the way, I wasn't on last week when you guys did episode two. Yeah, yeah. Heartbreaking scene.

Heartbreaking scene to start a. The fridge scene in the flashback? Yeah. The nuking of Shady Sands. Heartbreaking scene. Yes. Yes. We got into the logistics of actually surviving a nuclear explosion at close range.

Indiana Jones did it. Indiana Jones style. Okay. Yes. I don't want none of y'all saying that the black man can't do it. If Indiana Jones did it, we saw it in the movie. I don't think, I don't think Indy should have been able to do it. But if you can do it, then sure. You know, why not? Why not Maximus, a little maximus? And I think the arc of the covenant shows up in Area 51 to another little nods to Indy while we're at it. So, yeah, it's been 20 years since Shady Sands and they don't seem to know it. You know, these are kind of like you read about the Japanese soldiers who were holdouts in World War II, right? Like they get cut off on some Pacific island. They don't know that the war is over or that it's gone poorly for their side. And so they're just sort of still following orders.

you know, fighting after the ceasefire is declared. That's kind of what's happening here. I don't know exactly why these soldiers are cut off to the degree that they don't seem to have any awareness of what's happening with the NCR because, you know, you'd think they'd have a radio or something. There'd be some scuttle butt. They'd know that the NCR is not faring well. But they don't even seem to know what year it is or how long this has lasted.

They're just completely cut off and seemingly laboring under some delusion that their side. is still winning here and is still in a pitched battle with the Legion and everyone else. But in the game, yeah, you're kind of fighting tooth and nail. It's the Legion and the NCR squabbling for supremacy over the dam in the area. And yeah, at this point, they have both, I guess, seen better days, far better days. And as the cool says, well, if this is winning, I would hate to see what looks like. Yeah, he kind of leaves them without. Yeah.

Like, you guys go fuck yourselves. Was that John Grease? Was that Uncle Rico? Oh, I didn't make that connection. I don't know that that was him. Because it seems like if it was him, they would have made a bigger deal about it. Was that, was that him? Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe I don't think that was him. I got to look. No. False alarm. You can check the credits. But yeah, the NCR is, you know, the organization, the government that's devoted to sort of reestablishing civilization. And as this soldier said, you know, not that they're purely good exactly,

but they are the ones who are sort of trying to bring back order and clean water and laws and all the rest of it. And this is clearly a lawless situation where that's not working out. So the NCR soldiers ask the ghoul to help them spread the word, tell their people that they're still out here, but their people are gone from all appearances. No. When I looked at this, I thought about the underlying thesis for the entire show, which Maximus kind of talks to Xander. When they are riding together,

you know, the conversation that they're kind of having is about the reality of the world that they live in and how partly what you have to do is just continue to move forward and do the next thing no matter what. Like, no matter what. Like, he calls it civilization. He goes, like, Look around. Like, look how bad it is out here.

And he goes, it can get much worse. So when I'm up there and I'm watching them and I'm seeing everything that's going on, they seem to still be holding on to some sort of, I guess, overarching set of values while the goal is just about the next step on whatever journey like he is on. They're disconnected from any of the centrality of civil. and the hope of it seems to be what's keeping them where they are right now, where he's completely lost hope. So his cynicism is actually the survival tool that he needs to survive,

to get forward in his work. And like, you know, when you combine all of this stuff, a lot of times every little scene is kind of preaching to you about, like, where you are actually at. And it's, as far as post-apocalyptic stuff goes, should I say, a lot of it doesn't have any central meaning. A lot of it isn't really asking anything. Like a lot of it is just a depiction of the world.

This show, it always seems to want to say more about the nature of humanity and the nature of civilization and what that means. Yeah, it's interesting because the VaultTech folks, they just want to wipe the world clean and start over. Tabula Rasa, blank slate, remake the world in their image with no faction because everyone's in the same faction.

Of course, factions would inevitably arise. But all of the factions sort of have a similar goal, or at least they are all sort of striving for their own personal reclamation day. Maybe it's not as nefarious as the Baltic version. But they do kind of want to remake this world as they see fit. And maybe they want to make the world better as opposed to just making it the way that they want it to look like.

But everyone is sort of hoping for that moment when they reclaim their rightful throne or their rightful position. And in some cases, it's more far-fetched than others, including this NCR situation, as the ghoul says, ain't nobody coming because there ain't nobody left. He also dispenses another little piece of wisdom, little piece of advice that's helped me sleep at night over the years. When something's dead, it's usually because it deserved to die. So again, they're appealing to the ghoul's better nature.

Here may or may not still have a better nature. And this is kind of a window into how he has descended into being the no holds barred survivor he is, is that when he has a pang of conscience and he thinks, should I have killed that person? He says, well, if they're dead, that's what they deserved. You know, it's kind of Darwinism, right? It's like survival of the fittest. If you deserve to die, then, or if you died, you weren't made for this world. And not only does Coop take the vials and leave without helping the NCR. He sells them out right away.

Because he used them. Takes the vials. As a bargaining chip. It was such a, that was the shittiest scene. Offers them for a hint. It looks like he's going to be a human being. Takes the vials, then fucks him right away. To be fair, I guess you could say that they do not in the end get fucked because he

fucks up Seasers Legion before they can go up right after the last vestige of the NCR. So he goes back to the camp. He uses the location of this outpost as leverage. He gets Lucy down. The flashback, the past is intermiggling with the present. We see Charlie's speech. We see Lucy saying, thank you. Maybe she's learned her lesson.

Coup says, don't thank me yet. And then Charlie's given him the pet talk, giving him the lighter, which he still has. He's still clinging to the lighter after all these centuries, that memento of this person he used to be. And he says, maybe this was a mistake. Lucy says, what did you do? and the ghoul says maybe something good or maybe something stupid. So, you know, I guess this is a good deed in his mind that he used the NCR as a bargaining chip.

But then he planted this dynamite or set off this dynamite in Caesar's Legion camp. So now they're going after each other. They're at each other's throats. And so in a way, he's helping the NCR, I guess, in an indirect roundabout way, he has freed Lucy and spared the NCR at least. So that's the ghoul's version of doing something good Or as he says something stupid Which is what Lucy has largely been doing Throughout this season

So you know if he gets good again Then there's the risk that's I mean it's his hard hard hardness That has kept him alive Right also It's kind of an interesting situation To see her move a little bit more To his position

And him move a little bit more to her position right She Although she hasn't done anything bad you can tell that this experience is weighing on her, like I said earlier. Meanwhile, he does something that's not based in any, it's not altruistic, but it is a little less shitty than things that he's done in the past, and we wonder if they're on sort of diverging journeys. Yeah, any little sign of progress is welcome after all these years.

He's gradually thawing. So finally, we get to our man Maximus. We rejoin him at the Brotherhood camp. There's an ongoing revolt and rebellion here. Quintus is trying to complete his power grab, but there's the complication of Xander, the paladin, who has just parachuted in or flown in from the Commonwealth, and reestablished, reassered the Commonwealth's power,

which is given the other Brotherhood factions cold feet. We get another mega lore dump here from our cleric, Quintus, who tells everyone about Roger Maxen, the founder of the Brotherhood. And this is someone, if you played the game, you're probably familiar with the names, goes back to the original Fallout and you encounter. He's a playable character in one version,

one incarnation of Fallout. Roger Maxon, he's the one that, yeah, Quintus is telling everyone about, you know, trying to talk them into sticking with him, banding together against the Commonwealth and using the example of the founder of the Brotherhood, high elder Roger Maxon. Again, this is very much a case of like, why would he be telling them this in this scene? Don't they know this already? But it's, you know, for the benefit of the viewer who has no

idea what he's talking about. I guess you could say these are all different factions and some are more religious than others and in tune with their past. Maybe they don't remember who Roger Max and is anyway. It's a lot of names and proper nouns for non-players to keep track of. But he's using it in service of a point, it doesn't work. The other Brotherhood factions walk out despite the temptation of cold fusion and all those fusion cores. And Maximus steps up when the clerics have the room to themselves and say, hey boss, you know, this Zander guy, I could just kill him.

That's what we do here, isn't it? Yeah. What do you feel like Maximus and Zander's relationship is or is becoming? because so I'm assuming that Xander's not actually dead at the end of this episode, right? You don't know. Well, time will tell.

Okay, maybe he is. I mean, I thought maybe you were bringing in some. Okay. No, this is a show only character. So, yeah. It seems as if, this is another thing that the show is, that confuses me about the show sometimes.

Zander seems to be given Maximus like real game. Like real. actual game. Like, you could be doing more. These people are completely fucked. Maximus seems to be dealing with his sense of duty, who he is and asking himself, like, what he believes. He doesn't kill him.

His, the people that are over him don't want anything like that. They want something very specific. It seems that he's believing more in what Xander is saying. At the same time, his belief in his chain of command is eroding. yet at the end of all of this, the guy kind of wants to kill kids and then he just gets killed right there and that's kind of the end of that.

I thought that maybe that would become a little something more, but it kind of didn't. All of what you're talking about, the seating of it, its entire arc is almost in this episode. Yeah. Yeah, that's something Daniel and I talked about this a bit last time, but we go from zero to 60 when it comes to the Brotherhood

who aren't even in episode one. The Commonwealth has essentially not been mentioned in a full season, and suddenly we're introduced to the Commonwealth and all these different brotherhood factions. And they're warring. There's all of this. There's not just this outward sort of animus between everyone. There seem to be all of these like underlying under the surface things that they're

hanging about each other to and throws you right back in the middle of it. Yeah, that's what I was getting at earlier with just how much is baked into this because you're trying to catch up on, wait, Seizers Legion, who are they? What do they want? What do they have against the NCR? Does the NCR still exists? And wait, now there's a commonwealth that's like in charge of the brotherhood and the brotherhood has all these different factions. You know, if you're a show only viewer, none of this has really been introduced to you in season one. And suddenly just the palate here is, is broadening. One thing we talked about is just kind of the parallels between the flashback scene last week that you mentioned in Shady Sands with the actual father figure who really cares about Maximus. Quintus, who's positioning himself as a father figure for Maximus, but seemingly does not actually have his best interest at heart or just isn't interested in what he has to say. And, you know, he calls him son, but clearly does not welcome his humanized, right? As soon as... Don't talk to me sword.

Yeah. As soon as soon as the Maximus pipes up with his plan, which fair, right, for him to just be like, I could just kill him. Because in the last episode, Quintus tacitly had him. kill that bear knuckle brawler. Again, kind of Indiana Jones style. So, yeah, he is kind of the attack dog. And so he's like, why don't I do that again? Problem solved. And Quintus, yeah, behold, the dimness of the swords.

I have no need for the thoughts of a sword. Leave. In front of a whole room of people. And Maximus thinks about bristling. Well, he bristles, but he thinks about not receiving this order for one second. He makes them repeat himself. And that shows you in that scene, that little microagrefer, that there is some crumbling of his faith in this father figure, this patriarch right here.

And it's risky to just emasculate your sword like that, right? Because your sword can cut you. And we've seen that Maximus is not necessarily content with his station, right? You know, he basically kills or allows to die. The knight takes his armor, gets jumped up in rank, wouldn't put it past him to pull off a here, right? Like, you know, he leaves the room. He's disgruntled and Xander perfectly positioned, you know, just like a house was waiting for coop in the bathroom. Zander's waiting for Maximus to come out. He says, the brotherhood that you believe in, that I believe in, we are the last bastion of order

in this country. We are a bulwark against chaos. If you ask me, fomenting a rebellion, sounds a lot like chaos. So Zander trying to identify with Maximus, be buddy. buddy pal up with him, hey, we're just the grunts. We're on the front lines. We're putting our bodies and lives on the line while these clerics are dictating orders from their conference rooms. And he's essentially encouraging a military coup to depose the clerics, either in this faction of the Brotherhood or overall in the Commonwealth, right? And so he seems to want the relic, the cold fusion, the unlimited energy source and says that the Commonwealth won't last without it. And Things will get worse, which Maximus doubts.

Zander says, it can get worse. Trust me. So he is, at least nominally putting his faith in Maximus. He says, I trust your judgment, Maximus. So should you. Now, is that sincere? Or is he just gassing him up? Is he just manipulating him by building him up while Quintas is trying to manipulate him

by putting him down? Well, I mean, that's another reason why I'm wondering if he's alive or not, because he was doing a lot of plot work to instill some sense of doubt into Maximus and potentially make Maximus potentially realign Maximus's allegiances and his belief and what he's got going on. That plus the sort of nut cutting that he experienced, you know, while everybody was sitting around, you think, you know, maybe he is getting through to him a little bit. then they have a bonding exercise where they meet up against the same fucking robot and they're killing a robot together and it's want to come over there's fist bumping

and all of that stuff happens turns on a dime right away turns on a dime right away when maximus is confronted once again with his this character has a tendency to deviance meaning he's not an order follower by the book type of guy and I'm not sure which members of the Brotherhood are. But in the first season, he saw an opportunity to skip steps to get to where he was. He took it. He then kind of falls back in line for a time, but now there are things that he's just not willing to do. There's something that he still believes in that orientes him. And it makes a lot of sense, except I was thinking, and maybe I'm jumping a gun and plot reading right now, I was thinking that the major storyline between these two was going to be him realizing later on

through, you know, the delivering of the relic or to take it out of the, that this guy was a fake, especially since you have an actor in here that's so well known. But no, he gets hit on the head with the goddamn fucking flaming mallet and he, we're out of here, buddy. So I guess now all these decisions and decisions that Maximus has to make on his own, if in fact he's gone. We don't have close. captioning when we watched the screeners, at least I didn't. And so there was a line. When they go for this joy ride, they're in the cockpit, so to speak.

Speaking of nut cutting, did Zander say to Maximus, can we just be hard dick for a second? Did I? I didn't mishear that, right? Is that an expression? Is that straight talk? I get it. I pick it up from context. Yeah.

Can we just be hard dick for? I'm like, oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, I like it. I mean, we had the conversation with the, soft dick, presumably in the bathroom earlier in this episode. Now we have the hard dick conversation. And actually, there was a hard dick conversation between Lucy and Maximus in season one

where he's talking about his cock is floating, you know, because no one has given him the birds and the bees talks. And so he thinks something has gone wrong when there's an ejaculation. Anyway, hard dick. We can be hard dick for the rest of this episode. I like that expression. I'm adding it to my lexicon. So yeah, they do team up to take down this Securitron that's hold up here out in the wasteland.

And it's just, you know, every now and then in this show, there's a lot of talking. There's a lot of meeting characters. But sometimes we just clear out for an action scene, which is nice. You know, like the first scene of the season, you get the shootout at Novak. And then in episode two, you get the rad scorpion fight. And here you get this fight with the security robot and the power armored soldiers from the Brotherhood, the show does action well. So, you know, every now and then the story slows down to just have people punch stuff. And I appreciate that. That's always welcome. And things come full

circle because they're back at the warehouse with Thaddeus where we started the episode. So most of the episode, you're wondering, why did we just catch up with Thadius? How does this connect to anything else we find out at the very end of the episode? When it turns out that this is where they are, Xander is ready to massacre the ghouls, the abominations, as he calls them. He's going to save the smooth skins. There is a lot of anti-gool discrimination in the wasteland. It kind of made me want to get some of my people on the phone. The ghouls need some advocacy.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Daniel and I made the case last week for being a ghoul, for ghoul supremacy. I would much rather be a ghoul in this wasteland situation. There's a reason why the ghoul has lived all this time. or Thaddeus, for that matter, right? In the end of season one, he gets shot through the neck with an arrow.

And he lives. And then they're like, Thaddeus, I think you might be a ghoul. And he's like, oh, no, he'd be dead if he wasn't a ghoul. He should be celebrating. He's an entrepreneur. Listen, child little walls being what they are, whatever. Okay. But the ghoul seemed to me to have a point of view.

They're kind of cool, you know? It doesn't, you don't look terrible. The goal is. is still kind of dashing in a way a little bit. Still kind of looks okay. He's got some swagger. He's still walking goggles under there.

The whole thing going on, the whole nine. So, yeah. But watching this just gross display an attempted ghoul mass killing in this situation. Yes. Just down. By the way, the glee,

he was lustful for ghoul blood. I'm like, God damn, get this motherfucker out of the paint. Yeah. And, you know, even in the first scene, there's some, some ghoul on ghoul discrimination, too, right? Because Thaddeus, who's a ghoul himself, he refers to one of the, you know, more progressed ghouls as disgusting, right? When he's, yeah. So there's a little bit of that, you know, self-hating ghoul. Intra group. Exactly. Yeah. A sage steel of ghouls. Again, you like that. You don't want to agree. You can't. You don't know what to agree. You can't. Before. I'm playing the Steve rule here where sometimes it's better to be quiet, probably. So, hold my peace.

So yes, there's about to be the ghoul massacre. And it briefly, you know, comes back to the old debate because Maximus is trying to intervene and talk him down. And Xander's like, this is what the codex calls for. And Maximus is like, yeah, but you don't have to do this. And Zander says, without the rules, where are we? you know, this is clearly just his own anti-gul hatred expressing itself, but he's at least couching it in terms of we're the brotherhood. Like we uphold the law.

We're the ones keep in peace. We're the ones, you know, trashing the robots. After legitimately, five minutes before that, him trying to convince Maximus to do something that's clearly against the rules. Like, you know what I mean? Without the rules, kind of once again, the show getting into the character's head a little bit, The entire time before this, on this journey to where we are, he's trying to get Maximus to do something

that is clearly against not the overall, I guess, core tenets and teachings of the brotherhood, but certainly against what he's been advised to do and what he's been told to do and what he is supposed to do. But now when he's got some cool children in front of him, he's missed her by the book. Yeah, and I guess it's whose rules and whose law. It's like we talked about in episode one where Lucy says she wants to bring her dad to justice.

And it's just what does justice mean in this world? It's like who is delivering the justice and deciding what justice is. And I guess you could say Xander's sticking up for the Commonwealth and trying to nip this rebellion in the bud, even if it means that he's trying to goad Maximus into overthrowing his own superiors in the brotherhood. So it's complicated. But it gets either less or more complicated at the end when Maximus, intervenes to stop the massacre of the ghoul younglings and basically just brains Zander with a torch.

And there's some compression in that helmet. There's, you know, we don't know, obviously, we haven't watched ahead. We don't know if Zander survives, but that didn't look particularly survivable to me. He doesn't, you know, he tells Thadius instantly that he thinks he just started a war. I guess that would be true, even if he just incapacitated Zander. As soon as he attacks him, whether he's dead or not.

If he's dead, you can probably cover up in some way. The war is probably more likely if... Which was his plan all along. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me about that weapon? Like, is that weapon supposed to be something super... Because I couldn't really tell the usefulness of the weapon by watching the show.

I'm like, yeah. Yeah. There is a torch in fallout that does have kind of like that open flame at the end and you can just clock people with it, but also burn them. So, I mean, multiple ways to deliver destruction. And yes, I guess you could say this was kind of the plan that he suggested to Quintus. Why don't I just kill him? He doesn't do it the way that he drew it up exactly, but ultimately achieves that goal here or at least sidelines him. And then, yeah, if he does survive this first blow, then you just take him out entirely rather than let him live and potentially report back to his superiors or escape or something.

One way or another, he sees this as, you know, crossing the. Rubicon, essentially, and now maybe there's no going back. And so that's a question for next week or whenever we meet Maximus again, does he go back to the Brotherhood? Does he decide, like, if the Brotherhood is all about just massacring ghoul kids, then maybe I don't want to be part of this anymore, which is, you know, a conversation that he's been having all season, even internally. And does he do that? Or does he see his power? Maybe he's like, hey, I'm as cut out to run this thing as anyone. I'm the one sweating in the suit. And now I've removed one of these obstacles. So I don't know. Do you see Maximus's play here as just sort of trying to change the brotherhood

from within by remaking it in his own image of morality? I think so. I think he's seeing two things. Number one, the cracks in the infrastructure of the brotherhood. And then two, the holes in the philosophy of the brotherhood. Like you ask yourself if it's part of the rules. to kill a bunch of kids because they're ghouls are these rules that I should be following. Then on top of that, he sees the pettiness of the uppers in charge and it doesn't seem like there's much for him to believe in in terms of the way the brotherhood is presently constituted.

I guess the question is, does he still believe in it at all? Does he leave the brotherhood at some point? Which he's had chances to do, to be honest with you throughout this show, to kind of cast it off a little bit. Or is there enough about it that he's still? still believes in to where he thinks that it could be useful if it operated in a different capacity. Yeah. And so I wonder, you know, we're, what, three episodes in here, eight episode season. Do you think that these characters' paths are going to cross and all of these

storylines will weave together soon? Or are you thinking they'll be proceeding on their own past until the finale and it all comes crashing together again? You know, we talked about this in the first one. Right now, I'm, I'm thinking that probably maybe not. I'm thinking maybe at the very end you get something, but in their effort not to rehash the first season, I think everybody's on a solo mission right now, you know,

as solo as Lucy and the goal being paired up can be, and then maybe we get some type of unifying thing at the end, you know. Yeah. The nature of the show, I think is still sort of an open question for me. Like we talked about in our Ring ofverse Recommends pod on Pluribus, We talked about how, you know, there's a whole world here and the fate of humanity is at stake, but ultimately it's about one person or it's about individuals and it's kind of a character

study. I guess this show is aiming a bit broader than that. Not that it's not a character study. All these characters are hopefully growing and evolving or devolving and coming to some realization. But it seems like in season two, the ambitions here are broader than they seem to be in season one, where, yeah, there was a lot of groundwork laid about how did the apocalypse happen and who is responsible and what will this world be like. But more and more now, it seems to be not just about Lucy's personal journey or the ghouls or Maximus's. You know, it's all of that.

But it's also just like who will control this world? Like who will get to shape the future of this reality? And that's something if you're setting that up and introducing all of these different factions and competing visions of the worlds, then you're in it for the long haul like you know strap in for several seasons yeah it seems like they're doing they fast forward world build here but they're giving you a lot

and they're also doing their job to give you a lot of the world from before which hopefully when these two narratives kind of meet will help you understand a little bit more the scale of the world that they're building but I think you're right I don't know if this is going to be,

this could be something that at some point could exist without Lucy, without Maximus, without the goal. Especially, it's like once you learn kind of what's going on, you know, and you know as much as anyone about how deep the lore the game is. I think they want the lore of the show to be,

I mean, maybe not that deep. Video games go to a place that almost nothing else. People talk about how deep books go, but video games go to places that, like, a lot of the places can go. So I don't know if they can get that deep, but they can get a lot deeper than what they are right now. Yeah, that's the thing.

It has to be the abridged version because you're playing all these fallout games. It's hundreds of hours. And, you know, whether that storytelling is kind of organic and you just stumble across books lying around the world and you read up on the lore or whatever it is, you just, you get a sense of these things that it's tough to impart in an eight episode season. So inevitably, by necessity, you're going to cut some corners. I just, I hope they don't cut them too short. And I hope they don't give short shrift to the characters we care about while they're laying all this. groundwork for the bigger ambitions of the show or the fallout franchise for that matter on Amazon. You know, you sort of said like the Brotherhood feels like it could be its own show.

I don't know that this is selling me necessarily on whether I would want to watch the Brotherhood show, but it could almost be a backdoor pilot for just like, what's what's happening with the Commonwealth, you know? There could be spinoffs that come out of this, but I always, I get wary of, you know, when you put the card ahead of the horse. And it's just, hey, we have a hit on our hands here. Let's make more versions of this. And inevitably, then you end up sort of setting up those sequels or spinoffs or prequels or whatever it is in your main show instead of just focusing on the characters. So I hope that there's not too much of that happening in the season. But so far, still enjoying our adventures through the wasteland, still enjoying podcasting

about this show with you. And that'll do it for this week, profligates. So I was going to say it's just been a while since I had someone worth talking to. But that's not true. Everyone. we have on But Mesh is worth talking to. But always a pleasure when that someone is you. No problem. Can't wait to come back, man. I'll probably jump the gun and watch episode four. The show's got me.

As long as you don't watch five and six, you can't know more than I do that our listeners do. Screener Gate all over again. Thanks to Devin Rinaldo for producing this episode and to our Juno Ramco Pal for green lighting, all of our podcast endeavors here at the Ringiverse and House of Our and Across the Network. You can contact us at RingverseGaming at gmail.com.

And we have a lot of 2026 preview content coming your way on both of the feeds. So next week we will, of course, be back with our Fallout episode four breakdown reactions. That will be early on Thursday as well. But before that, we have our most anticipated video games of 2026, what to look forward to in the video game world coming early next week. Midnight boys, pew-poo. You're doing your over-runners. Got a lot of stuff coming. It's going to be a big January for Midnight, boys.

Hyped draft coming on House of R2. We've got Wonder Man. We've got a night of the seven kingdoms. We've got Star Trek, Starfleet Academy. So much nerd content coming down the pike, and we will do our best to cover it here at the Ringiverse. Thanks as always for listening. And as Caesar's Legion says, farewell, Waleigh.

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