The Ringer-Verse - Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 6 Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

Sharpened pencils down! Ben Lindbergh and Daniel Chin discuss the momentous, if somewhat scattered, sixth episode of the second season of 'Fallout,' "The Other Player." After sharing their overall review, they recap and dissect each of the (many!) main plot threads and character developments, break down the story revelations, and greet a new guest star with a crucial connection to ‘Fallout’ lore. They also scrutinize a mini–musical number, speculate about what could be coming in the final two episodes, and react to the announcement of a 'Fallout' reality series. Intro (0:00)‘Fallout’ Episode 6 review (1:25)Barb and Coop (3:48)The Ghoul (26:42)Lucy and Hank (43:42)Maximus and Thaddeus (1:00:30)The Vault dwellers (1:08:38)'Fallout Shelter' reaction (1:20:40)Outro (1:26:05) Host: Ben LindberghGuest: Daniel ChinProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Craig Horlbeck here to tell you that the NFL is back, whether you like it or not, and we are covering all the latest news, trades, rankings, and more on the Ringer Fantasy Football Show with my two co-hosts who are both named Danny. Check the Ringer Fantasy Football Show out on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks.

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Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiara Radio.com. This episode is brought to by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need weather tech floor liners in the summer unless you hit the beach or go camping.

Then you'd want a cargo liner or 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. Hello and welcome into the ringer, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I'm Ben Lindberg's senior editor for the ringer and robo brain of button mash. Like the products of inbreeding support group, button mash is at max capacity. So Triple Cousins doesn't cut it anymore. However, there is room for another player on this podcast, a ringer staff writer, the automated

Dan, Daniel Chin. Welcome back. Thanks for having you back, Ben. How's it going? Going well. Sharpen your pencils, people, grab some tasty trail mix, because we are settling in to discuss Season 2, episode 6, the Other Player, directed by Lisa Joy and written by Dave Hill. Is that a good idea? As Barb says, none of this is a good idea, but we're doing it anyway. And as always, we're beginning with our overall review of the episode. So, Daniel, what's your verdict on The Other Player? I thought it was a pretty good episode overall.

I enjoyed it. I thought it did a good job of carrying the momentum of the previous episode. But that said, I did not think it was nearly as good as the last one. I thought there was so much going on in this episode, and it was kind of just the other side of, there was so much good that came out of all the setup across the whole season, and Averyly came through it a nice way last week,

and I thought this was like the flip side of it, where there was just like too many storylines and not enough time to really divide it up. Yes, we'll see if there's enough time to talk about all of them on this episode. But we praised last week's episode. It was our favorite of the season, if not, the series, and that was partly because it was very focused and cohesive, and by the standards of this season, at least kind of drilled down on a couple of core characters. That's a

tough act to follow. And this episode didn't try to sort of stick with the pattern that last episode said. Not so much. This was one of the busiest episodes of the series. I liked a lot of it, but we do see almost everyone except Norm and House and Steph, I suppose, although felt like she was there because she certainly plays a part in the proceedings. But a lot of lore, like last week, but maybe not as well integrated into the story as the lore last week was, you could kind of feel the strings being pulled, the table being set, which I suppose is appropriate at this stage of an eight episode season. But it ultimately works for me just because the themes tie it together. And as always, we'll be pointing out some parallels among characters and timelines here.

So it works for me, but you're right. It was a one episode blip where we kind of focused on one thing. And here it's everything. All of the plates that have been spinning all season, they're spinning in episode six. So the more complex, the fallout episode, the more complex, the recap podcast. But nobody thinks about that. Won't anybody think the poor recap podcaster? Tough to know even how to structure this pod.

But let's go Barb. because she's waited for her close-up long enough. So we'll talk about Barb and Coop, and then we'll talk about Gould and his new companion, as well as Lucy and Hank, and then Maximus and Thaddeus, and then the Valtes. A ton to get to here. But first, let's begin with Barb,

because this is our first real look at Barb as a POV character, and it's about time that we finally learned a little bit more about Barb, right? Yeah, I mean, just seeing her name Flash and Cross It was a very exciting moment. We were like, ooh, okay, did not expect this to happen. But it was a lot of fun being able to see a little bit more of that and just understanding this character a little bit more after her just being on the sidelines a lot

and it's really a big source of mystery. Yeah, got to be more title cards per episode this season than last season. It seems like just every episode we're getting new title cards still this deep into the series and the season. So we join Barb in the executive conference room with young Betty and no Kyle McLaughlin de-aging for Leslie Uggams here. We just get a new actor entirely, but nice to see Betty in a different time. We see some Vault of the Future art on the wall, which resembles an image from the original

Fallout. There's a lot of original Fallout DNA in this episode. Some of it may be mutated. We'll get to that. And Barb and Betty are sitting through various meetings and presentations. A lot of working lunches I've noticed at VaultTech, apparently. Just no time to take some time to take a bite. You got to just cram your burgers down your mouth while you're delivering presentations

about the apocalypse, which doesn't seem to be really helping Barb's appetite here because she's just picking at a salad. But everyone's eating while they're talking. I guess time is at a premium because the apocalypse is coming. But still, you know, maybe a midday break. I had that same thought too. You have four people in a meeting, and then you're just two people presenting, and you're eating burgers while standing up like that.

It's like, what's happening here? But it really did like highlight how casual everything was and then just talking about dropping bombs on Los Angeles. Just chowing down, fattening themselves up as they fattened up profits of all tech with the rest of the world's ruin. And we get to hear about marketing's plan for the apocalypse. Marketing prefers multiple five megaton blasts. on the image of LA, a cacophony of puff clouds.

We also learned, so this was interesting, we learned that the water chips have a 30% fail rate and that they'll know before installation, which ones are faulty so they get to choose who runs out of water. What do you make of that? Does this mean that Fault 33's chip failure in the future is preordained? Or is that actually a product of the fighting that we saw? Yeah, I mean, that's the way I received it at least.

I thought that was a really cool setup, too, because you have young Betty in the room taking down notes. Yes. I mean, it's very possible that she just forgot about this happening too because it's been so many years and she was woken up prior sleep. But I really liked that she was the one taking notes in that room too. Yeah, right. So that would suggest that either she thinks it's fixable despite the flaw or that, yeah, she was thawed out 40 years ago and the apocalypse has happened. and maybe this meeting didn't stick in her mind, but she was at least privy to that information in theory.

And maybe she'll put that to use in trying to repair the water. And maybe that has some bearing on whether this is all an experiment and what does that mean? But we will return to the vaults a little later on this pod. We also get an appearance from senior junior VP Bud Askins, who proposes specialized freeway lanes for premium customers. Smart idea. Always thinking ahead.

Bud and Buds' Buds, this is how he ascended to senior junior VP, just identifying new profit centers at all times. Also, we get young Hank sitting in on a very momentous meeting. And Hank says, I asked Betty if I could take notes on this one. She said, yes, the young eager beaver Hank. So Betty was in the meetings, but she may not know about the automated man. However, Hank does because he was there, and we even see him eagerly standing up out of his chair to get a closer look at the gizmo as fake Robert House presents the device that

we have gotten to know so well. So again, Betty may or may not know about the water chip failure. Hank definitely knows about the whole automated man project and he's been in on it from the start. Yeah, I thought that was a nice little setup as well in the same way of Betty being in the other room when that was happening with the water chip. I did immediately think when he was like standing out of his chair though, like if he's trying to do this like covertly for any reason, like terrible poker things.

I don't know what he's doing. Yes, it's true. Even bars is like turning around in her chairs. He's like, you go back there? Yeah, maybe it's the CGI-D aging that makes him unable to hide his motions. So he's a little better at the clandestine subterfuge as an older man. But we do hear a little bit more from fake house who says Robco presents the automated man. Spent a lot of time trying to make my machines more lifelike.

But hey, works the other way around too. and we learned that Voltec and Robco have always had a special arrangement, quote unquote. It's like a special relationship between the U.S. and U.K. We know that House has multiple VAT vaults, and Barb is not in on everything. And this is maybe the first indication that even though she is in charge of the vault projects, as we know, and FV and everything else seemingly, at this stage, at least, she's in the dark about a lot of stuff. Because House tells her fake house, you must have missed the town. You're paying me for this. In exchange, I get Cold Fusion to power my little project in Vegas.

And Barb does not know what that project is. It's above her pay grade. It's a need-to-know basis. She's not aware, evidently, of House's plans to protect Vegas from the bombs falling. So this, again, I guess, is our first little glimpse behind the curtain at what Barb does and doesn't know and where she rates in the hierarchy of Voltaic and whether she is, in fact, just a... a cog in this machine. Yeah, I mean, I thought the actor for Barb, Barb Howard, Francis Turner did a really good job in this whole scene of just

how much she always just has to play it cool, even though she's clearly underneath, just so horrified with everything that's happening. Yeah. I was a little disjointed with like the flashback within the flashback. And then there was like this inception thing going on with the flashbacks where even I was like trying to keep track of the timelines.

Yep. I had that reaction too. Yeah, just multiple timelines, not just. past and present, but also multiple past timelines, and you kind of had to keep straight, okay, where are we here and who knows what? Right. But even though it was like using trying to keep track of like where, where, when this was happening, I'd say like how it was going side by side with this conversation that she's having with Coop and the present where Coop is just accusing her being, you know, this, this monster and just work like who could be worse than you. Right. She's clearly just struggling through this too and just a part of this, this larger machine.

Yeah, so fake house explains the deal to her. He gets cold fusion. Of course, as we see later in the episode, perhaps he won't. And perhaps Barb will play a part in that. But we do see in this many meetings. And you know, you're stuck in a conference room all day listening to presentations. That's tough for anyone. I'm sure some of these meetings could have been an email so that people could have gone and gotten lunch. But she is hardly holding it together. And everyone else is extremely blasé about this. and is not really thinking of the apocalypse as something that will cause human suffering, just an opportunity for profit. But she is feeling the strain, and she is hardly holding it together. And we can tell that she's doing it for her family like the ghoul does in the future, right? And we see her staring at the snapshot of Coop and Janie and herself. And this is why she is doing this. This is the first indication of Barb's motivations.

And is she actually a monster or are her motivations sort of similar to our heroes or anti-heroes here? And it's all kind of complicated and we will learn a little bit more about it. But, you know, it's one of those not so different you and I kind of revelations where she's just grit in her teeth trying to get through this for the good of her family. And isn't that what the ghoul is doing hundreds of years later? Not with a picture, but maybe a mental image of Barb and Janie and how he's trying to get back to them. as we see when he is impaled on a poll. Yeah, I mean, I think this, it was really just necessary to see Barb's perspective at some point, like just being able to see these parallels as you're alluding to,

and just having this conversation with Wilson, too, which I'm sure Rebecca too as well. Yes, now that we know his name, which we always have. I had to look it up right before the final. I can't keep disrespecting Michael Emerson like this. So Barb is barely holding it together, and she's barely holding the family together, the family's fracturing to, as we see in this other flashback, we get a match cut from the ghoul in the present impaled on the pole to Coop lying on his bed in Old Vegas. We are sort of necessarily skipping around in the timelines in this podcast as well. And this is the hard

conversation that we knew was about to happen here. Coop reminisces about his proposal to Barb on Catalina Island remembers the sound the seagull shit made when he took a me, how romantic. And we knew that we need to talk is never a good sign. And this gets heavy very quickly because he transitions right from, remember what I proposed and we got married and wasn't that wonderful too. You know, the thing that I can't figure out is, were you a monster back then? Or did you become one later?

What a segue. Just what a conversational vibe shift that was. So aggressive, but I just love the delivery on it too. And I will say, like, I was so excited to see this play out. And one of the side effects of just having so many things happening is you just have to move really quickly through some of these scenes. So that initial conversation was just so quick. Yeah. And just left on that like kind of bomb.

Yeah. Yeah. Were you always a monster? And then it picks back up like 30 minutes later. Right. It's real heart to heart. And, you know, she's indignant because we've seen things from her side or we're starting to now. And we know that she's suffering too.

So Coop has been suffering trying to figure out why his wife is maybe a monster. She doesn't see herself that way, of course. And so she's shocked that he says this, but also maybe on some level she's ready for it or expecting it or maybe even grateful for it because they've both been hiding so much from each other. And they've kind of been presenting this facade to each other and maybe just getting it all out there is something of a release. for just, you know, a stress valve, even though this is an incredibly uncomfortable conversation. And Barb rationalizes it or explains her behavior to Coop says, this is about Janie.

Coop says, so for our daughter, you would kill millions of people, billions of people, other mothers just like you, other daughters, just like our daughter. And Barb says, wouldn't you? For Janie, wouldn't you? And, you know, that kind of gives him pause, because we have seen that in the future as the ghoul, maybe he's not killing millions or billions because they've been killed already,

but he is willing to go to any lengths at that stage to get back to his family, or at least that's his stated goal and the thing that is fueling him here. So, you know, we haven't seen his transition from Kup to Ghul and the final disillusionment and everything here. But this is another, well, are they actually different at their core? Yeah, I think that's one of the things that comes out really nicely in this whole sequence and in this episode of just seeing that there is always this side of Coop and the Cool. But also, like, there's just this kind of annoying bit of just righteousness and him being

a little naive to the whole situation. I think it's a really good parallel to the way Lucy is in the modern timeline as well. Because it's like he's saying all these things that are, but it's also just knowing, especially after seeing her perspective, it's like, this is going to have to be. And if it's not her, it's going to be somebody else. Yeah. My wife and I have not hash this out yet. I feel like I need to maybe after this podcast, just hit up Jesse and we can get on the same page

about how many millions slash billions of people we are willing to slaughter for Sloan, our daughter. We still haven't decided on that. But, you know, maybe we have to hash this out, this conversation. It might be. It might be, you know, but maybe it's overdue just in case we are presented with a moral dilemma like this and have to figure out the links we're willing to go to. So Barb says there are worse people out there than me, Kube.

And then just another, just dagger to the heart, who could possibly be worse than you? This is escalated quickly. And, you know, I guess I'm not the worst. Isn't the strongest defense, maybe, from his perspective. But we do shortly see whom she is referring to when she is alluding to worse people out there. than her. And we see a flashback, another flashback, now a different flashback timeline, flashbacks within flashbacks, to Barb, who is plotting to make away with the cold fusion before it can fall into Robko's hands. She has sat through one too many meetings. She has had enough.

She has decided to rebel, perhaps, and try to disrupt the plans. And then she enters an elevator, only to find a character whose name, again, we definitely immediately remembered on last week's pod and this one, Wiltsig, aka Ben Linus from Lost, aka Leeland Townsend from Evil, aka Michael Emerson, his head still firmly attached to his neck at this stage.

So this is interesting. He delivers a sinister speech, as only Michael Emerson can. You're just a very replaceable part in this machine, but if you forget your place in the company, you'll die, and so will your family. The same will happen to me. If I don't communicate this message,

we're all in the same boat, and not one of us can stop it. You know that, you wake up knowing it. So it's just layers within layers of manipulation and pressure. He is saying that his hands are tied to, that someone is pulling his strings as well, and we have some sense of who that is. But this is a revelation.

You know, we haven't seen Wiltsig living and breathing in quite some time. And now we know that he's a pre-war character, too. That he is not just an enclave escaped scientist in the post-apocalyptic wasteland timelines, but that he has been around for centuries also. Yeah, just that he's also at Baltic, too. And that he's in a similar position within that. I did like there was a shot as it pansed both of them, the elevator, and it has the Voltaq Corporation right between the two of them.

Yeah. But yeah, no, it is really interesting to see him back, but in this timeline too. So I'm curious if they're going to keep circling back to him as well. But this is a really big episode for just having the enclave actually to come back into prompts. Yeah. And we don't really know yet what part he's playing or whom he's affiliated with. Is he already part of the enclave? Is he just acting at the behest of the enclave?

But we know that some. way or another he made it to the post-apocalypse that perhaps he was cryogenically preserved somewhere too. And this would perhaps explain how in the post-apocalypse he knows about Moldaver, right, who we know is also a pre-war figure as Kate. And perhaps they were in contact. Maybe that's how he knows where she is and that she was the one who invented Cold Fusion and why he resolves to get it back to her. He is finally rebelling at that point. So that sort of explains that connection or that possible motivation. And, you know, if he does rebel himself as Barb is attempting to hear before he intimidates her, maybe he comes around a couple centuries later and finally decides to do

what Barb wanted to do back then. It's hard to say exactly. But this at least gives us some breadcrumbs. And we see that he tells her to say that the only way to guarantee results is by dropping the bomb ourselves. So he is the one who is basically compelling her to act as a mouthpiece in that shadowy Dr. Strangelove meeting and as she is, you know, gazing at someone as she delivers those lines. Maybe it's him or he's looking on or his controllers do. So this does reframe our understanding of that scene. Because when we first see and hear Barr, as Coop is overhearing her too, it seems as if she is the mastermind, she's the one spearheading this, but it turns out that there is someone else behind her, some even more shadowy figure

or affiliation or faction, just pulling her strings too. And naturally, that leads to the question that Coop has, who controls Voltaic? And Bob says, I don't know. And then Coop says, well, let's find out, which that stood out to me as a very Lucy S. optimism slash arrogance, you know, that's very much when Lucy just thinks that she can solve any problem by just waltzing in there and talking to people or whatever it is. There's a little bit of that from Coop here, which maybe goes to show why they get along so well. Obviously, by the time he meets Lucy, he's been gulified and that optimism has been beaten out of him because, of course, he fails. The bombs drop. And maybe he even plays some part in bringing a bell.

the bomb's dropping. But right now, at least, he has that confidence that he could just go in there and do something about it. And that is very Lucy-esque. Yeah, no, it's a great point because he walks out of there

with absolutely no plan. And it ends up being a very happy plan. Yeah. Of just getting Hank drunk and bringing it back to the room. But I really like what they're doing with Coop across this whole season. I think this is another, like,

very fun poop episode. And seeing it's a very different way. to show how this character is evolving, just backpedaling rather than showing Lucy, very slowly evolving in the present, but still evolving in the present. But now that we've had

six episodes of them this season, you're seeing so many parallels. Just this come together, and it's really satisfying. Yeah. And the last devastating line that we get from Coup to Barb, Barb says, You know me, you know me. She's trying to appeal to their history and their relationship.

And Coup says, I don't. I don't know you, Barbara. Echoes of last week's, who are you? And I don't know with Lucy not knowing who she is. Coup doesn't know who Barb is. And then, yes, Coop gets Hank drunk and drugged, opens the briefcase to find not the cold fusion device, but an extraction or injection device,

which Barb, who shows up just in the nick of time, uses to retrieve the relic the cold fusion from Hank's neck a la Wiltsig in season one. So that's just where you store things when you don't want to misplace them, just, you know, in your neck for convenience. So maybe Kup will end up keeping his word to Moldaver slash Kate about disrupting the Cold Fusion exchange and keeping House from getting it, which would help explain Fallout New Vegas because the goal of House in Fallat New Vegas is, to get the platinum chip, which you are delivering at the beginning of the game as the courier,

and that's sort of a source of his power and storage device and helps him control the strip. And so if he had Cold Fusion all along, then why would he need the platinum chip? Maybe he never obtains it because of all this scheming and all these machinations. So given what we've seen, given that Barb does show up for him in the end, is this redemption for this character, partial remnant? redemption, we finally get her point of view. She shows up to help her hubby. We understand that the screws have been put to her too. So how you feel about Barb these days? I think it's a little too early to tell if it's full redemption. Definitely partial redemption. She's on that path. And I do like

the setup for where it's going. And again, it was just really important and I think crucial with this character to finally have her perspective shown in the previous timeline. And now that we have that bit of groundwork set up. I'm really excited to see what happens with the two of them and how Janie's well-being ends up factoring in all this because that's what's been the driving force for Barb this whole time. And now if she's going to be willing to potentially jeopardize that. I will also say, like, I was very unimpressed with the Baltics like security over this all-important thing. Like, they went this extra step of having you have to pull it out of his neck, right? Right. But it was so easy.

just get him hammered and back to the room. There's no key or anything. He just opens up to see his face. Did he steal a key or it seems like he just flips it open? I think he just flipped it open. What is happening here? Yeah, not the only time we'll see Hank handcuffed in this episode. But yeah, it does seem to be extra precautions.

But ultimately, I mean, not that anyone's security is really that great in this series. Certainly the Brotherhood's security also. lacking a lot of the time too. So maybe that's just a consistent theme here. But there was a shot in a trailer that we've seen previously of Coop handing over the Cold Fusion device to someone. We don't know whom. I'm sure we will find out in the next couple of episodes.

But yeah, do they pass this on to the enclave? Who has it? How does it get from where it is to Wiltsig back in season one? How does the automated man device end up where it ends up in Hank's hands now, given that this exchange with the cold fusion may not actually happen? A lot of moving pieces here, but we at least have some sense of what they are, if not in exactly what order they will come down in.

So let's jump forward a couple centuries from Kup to the ghoul, our friend Razal Ghul, who is hanging on this pole and has a hole in him. And no one in Freaside seems to care. Everyone just walking by, ignoring his pleas. I guess you could say it's the bystander effect, you know, that sort of psychological effect. Like when a lot of people are around who could help someone,

any one person feels less pressure to help them. But it's probably not that. It's probably just that no one ever helps anyone in Freesides that people are conditioned to turn the other way. This is the wasteland at all, after all. And it's true that NPCs in Fallout typically don't really react to dead people or soon to be dead people. They just kind of stroll on by. And that's what's happening here.

Yeah, that too, right. You'd think it would maybe be in their best interests not to have a feral ghoul around. Because that tends to be bad news. But I suppose he is immobilized. Seemingly does not take too long for him to start to turn. So he does need fairly regular hits off those vials in order to preserve himself. Another thing I was thinking, though, is that as he just hangs here, hoping that someone will help him, he sure could use a good Samaritan like Lucy right now. And of course, he turned on her and betrayed her, but, you know, was compelled to the same way that everyone is compelled to constantly in this series, the way that Barb is, the way that the ghoul is when Hank has the ghoul where he wants him, et cetera.

but this is the sort of situation where Lucy shines, or at least has historically, she's always willing to help out someone in need. And very few other people are in the wasteland. And the ghoul is now finding that out the hard way. So I wonder if as he suspended there, he's thinking maybe I was too hard on Lucy all those times when she just led us into a rad roach den or some other predicament or got herself crucified. She had the best of intentions. and, you know, I wish you were here right now. I will say I was very disappointed in dog meat. For as smart as dog meat is, just put the vials right there, you know.

I know. It would have been so easy. Now, I guess he was playing the long game as we see later because he gets the hat and he grabs it and does make use of it ultimately. So it wasn't just that he was bringing that back to Coupe as Coupe slash the Google thought. But it does seem like a roundabout planned. We're smarter. We're smarter and not harder. Right.

Yeah, like you wouldn't have to go get help from someone else. I don't know how he knows that he's going to find Thaddeus and Maximus at the campfire. But yeah, it seems like if he had just just grabbed the vials and brought them over, then presumably the ghoul could have helped himself out of the situation. So, you know, not the best companion, perhaps, but also has good intentions, I'm sure. And this is, you know, a poignant moment, I think. where the ghoul who is losing control of himself is reminding himself of his name and Janie's name.

And this gives him the strength to perform his calisthenics workout here and briefly pull himself up almost to the top of the pole. I think this is the first time, as far as I can recall, at least, that the ghoul has referred to himself by his old name in the series. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I'm glad you pointed that out

because it was really cool to tie back to the way we've seen ghouls that are about to become feral do that across the first season especially. We've seen this happen a few times and it's just it's a little different when you see the ghoul, our ghoul and Cooper are doing this being the one to do it. Yeah, yeah, right. And when he's been on the other end of this, and this was in the previously on for the episode, but when Koupe and Lucy or ghoul and Lucy come across Roger, the feral ghoul or about to be feral ghoul who's in the process of turning and clearly he and the cool have some history, but he is unwilling to share from his vile stockpile to save Rogers. So he

does put him out of his misery, I guess, but also turns him into ashterkey. So it's sort of self-serving ultimately, more so than pity. But again, you know, the question is how far has he come since that point? Is he, we don't really know what he's thinking. If he's thinking anything, he's having a hard time thinking thoughts at all. But if he reflects on this later, Will he think, huh, I was in this situation? And really, you know, it's the whole golden rule, golden rule debates that these characters have been having all season. And now he wishes that someone would do unto him as he would like them to do at this stage. I also enjoy when he was pulling himself up slowly and agonizingly.

The close captioning gave us flesh squelching and also squelching continues. I always enjoy a good, just close captioning of squelching, but that was quite accurate. And then a lumbering beast stomps in. And just when you think that maybe the death clause have come back, nope, the ghoul is rescued or abducted, not by death clause, not by Thanos, though there is a resemblance, but by a super mutant played by none other than Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman. Yes. Yes, and I mentioned last week, we'd finally gotten death clause.

We still hadn't seen super mutants, and we didn't have to wait long because here we have one, one of the good ones. We did see a dead supermutant's hand briefly at the enclave base back in season one, which tells you a little bit maybe about the history between the super mutants and the enclave. But this is huge not only because the super mutants are a big piece of fallout lore, but because Pearlman himself is also Falun. out legend narrated or voiced a character in virtually every fallout game, the guy who has been telling us for decades that war never changes. That actor almost never changes. It's Perlman. And I was happy to see him have a part in this series.

His voice is so distinct. And I think I had just seen the interview clip going around of him talking about this recently and how he was paid like $40 in a sandwich to do this voice work in Fallout 1. So the moment, even though there's some sort of distorting effects or some effect on his voice, they make it sound deeper and more mutant life. It's just such an iconic voice that you can just clock it immediately. Yeah, he was on a podcast earlier this month, and this was before we knew that he was going to be playing a part in the series, but he was asked about his history with the franchise. He said the whole fallout thing is a mystery to me. They invited me to do the very first fallout back in the 90s, I think.

They gave me $40 in a sandwich. and a year and a half later I get a call, hey, you remember Fallout? No. Well, there's a second one. I go, why? Because the first one went through the fucking roof. I go, really cool.

Do the second one, and then a year later, the third, fourth, and now it's like a whole brand. I didn't see that coming. So clearly not a Fallout player himself, but he does appreciate the role he has played in the series. And hopefully he made more than $40 in a sandwich to play this part on screen.

Maybe they made up for it here. I would hope. I want to ask you a little bit about what we know and don't know about super mutants in the fallout lore, but I guess we can just close the loop here and go through this scene because the super mutant drags the ghoul away to an encampment, which is festooned with gore bags from Fallout 3. And we don't see his face for a while. You can kind of tell it's Pearlman because of how he sounds, but you don't see his face until the end of their interaction. The Character design, pretty menacing, reminded me actually of the ghost of Christmas yet to come from the Muppet Christmas Carol, which frightened me as a kid's great movie, but that ghost specifically left an impression on my mind and, you know, sort of similar because it's just this massive hulking, shrouded figure and you don't see their face. But we learned that it is a pearl mutants, let's call him.

He hauls the ghoul up into his own kind of quasi-crucifixion pose, much like Lucy. in the Legion camp a while ago. Kind of looked like Vecna in the Abyss at the end of Stranger Things. Season five just suspended amid all the meatbags and gore. And we get a quick healing treatment here from the Pro Mutant to his brother in radiation, the ghoul, and just sticks a glowing piece of uranium

straight into his hole in his stomach. Says uranium, bad for them, good for you. you. Good advertising tagline there. And that closes up the hole. And then we get a little bit of a lore dump here from the Pearl Mutant who says, there's a war coming and we need you healthy. He expresses some solidarity with his fellow Abomination brothers, the ghouls, and says, you know, us and our kind. And the ghoul initially does not see himself as of a piece with the mutants and says our kind. I thought, You and me got bit by a different motherfucking bug, my friend. And Perlman says, ghouls, mutants, we're kin, and we should unite against our common enemy.

They drove us to the point of extinction and forget we ever existed. But we didn't forget them, the people who set this all in motion, the enclave. And, you know, we were not the only ones to foresee the enclave reveal here. But we called that last week that they would be the other player at the table that House referenced. Not that there were that many options. but the ghoul does not want to enlist with whatever movement. The Super Mutant is orchestrating here. It says, I've been wastelanding for 200 years.

Whatever it is, I got to do. I do it alone. Pro Mutant says, uh-huh, and how's that working out for you? Good point. And he did need a partner to pull him off the pole where he was impaled. And he says, if you won't join our kind, then you can't know where we live, drags him back to where we meet him again at the end of the episode. We'll get there.

So why don't you tell us a little bit about how this fits into Fallout lore and what we know about Super Mutants? Yeah, sure. Feel free to chime in if you think I'm missing anything or if there's anything you'd like to add. But took it down a few notes from Fallout Wiki and just from my own experience playing the games. But yeah, I mean, so we've already seen a little bit of FV,

the forest evolutionary virus on the TV show so far. We've seen it more teased from the Norm storyline than actually in effect yet. So FVV was developed by West Tech as a form of biological warfare. There are several strains of it, but the one that was used by the primary antagonist

in the first fallout game, the master, is the one that's what's created the supermeans. And just for a little bit of the master background, I don't know if maybe he'll be referenced at some point in the TV show,

I'd be curious, but the master was once a human doctor who fell into a vat of FV, you know, your classic villain origin story situation here. Happens to mutants all the time, unfortunately. Right. So as a result of that, he became mutated.

And then the master founded this organization called the unity. And with the unity, he sought to transform all of humanity into a new super mutant race who could survive and thrive in the unique environment of the wasteland. And using FEV, he started turning all of these humans to create his own army of supermeans. And we saw a little bit of the CGI, Ron Perlman, green skin. But with these super mutants, most of the time they have green skin, they're bigger and stronger than humans, they're immune to disease and radiation, crucially.

There are also some super mutants known as the night 10 who have blue skin due to prolonged exposure to stealth radiation. Curate to see if they're going to come to play at all. But for now, with super mutants, I mean, they appear all throughout, out the Fallout games. They're not always evil. They're often intelligent beings.

And in many of the games, you work with them. They're like rules. They're often outcasts and enemies of the human race, which is a story element that a lot of the games really focus on as they're being oppressed and trying to gain more rights for themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And I know some of the real fallout heads who were watching the show at first thought,

oh, this must be an established character before we realized it was a super mutant. Maybe it's Gorus, one of the. intelligent death clause from Fallout 2, or maybe it's Marcus, who's a super mutant, also in Fallout 2 in New Vegas, who's a former follower of the master, or maybe this is, you know, someone who is created by the master, I suppose that's still possible. But this could very well be just an original character entirely, but maybe related to those other movements or characters that we have seen in the lore, but makes some sense that there would be a grudge here that It's a no love loss between the super mutants and the enclave, that they feel greeted by them, discarded by them, manipulated by them.

So we don't exactly know just what part this figure plays in it and how big this movement these freedom fighters are and just, you know, where this will all go. It's just, it's another pretty big reveal at this stage, you know, three quarters of the way through season two. and you're lifting the lid on a lot of lore here that no one really would have suspected if they haven't played the games. And then this just broadens the scope of the show even more. And we're talking about not just battles

between factions and among various factions, but also among humans and mutants and ghouls. So it's again, the ambitions of this series. There's a lot of runway left here seemingly. And, you know, is it too much that they're trying to wrangle here? Here is it sometimes feeling like a lot to dump on people? Yeah, I think so. But also it does speak to the potential to keep this story going. There's just a lot more meat on the bone and in the meat bags

strung around this church hide out. Yeah, this definitely felt at least to me, like doing a lot of set up for where the series is going. To your point, there's a lot of where the show could go from here. I think this is probably too much for them to get into for the last couple of episodes. I suspect that there's going to be some sort of big setup for the Supermunes to be a bigger part of season three. And maybe that comes into play with, I mean, I hope that our people in vaults 32 and 33 are okay. But that's where this could be heading. I will say a scene like this in particular with an episode that was so overstuffed, I thought was a little bit disjointing as well.

because with it being so quick and being so short on time, scenes like this feel like a lot more set up than it is substance. And a lot of this season, because you're forced to do a lot with such little time, a lot of it does feel like more set up than substance. I thought that too.

Yeah, as cool as it is to see Perlin, as cool as it is to see a super mutant. It did feel like that character just kind of parachuted into the middle of this episode at the perfect time, you know, sort of DeiSX super mutant, right? and saves the ghoul, carts him off, tells him a little lore, does a little exposition, and then carts him elsewhere, you know? And we don't even know exactly where he was or where they live,

and they drop him off in an original location, too. But yeah, just that kind of being plopped down into the middle of this episode. It felt a little less organic than some of the reveals, say, last week, you know, at least like when we get more insight into Vault Tech and the Enclave and Barb situation and you again pull back the curtain and oh it's the enclave just lurking behind there all along pulling the strings at least we have seen that character before and we have some sense of what the enclave is but yeah this felt a little bit just sort of jammed in there you know we have to introduce this aspect of things so here's a way to do it and i don't know if we'll be

following the super mutant regularly or or whether this will be a next season thing or whether we'll check in from time to time. But it felt like a thread that maybe could be dropped briefly, or maybe it comes back in the finale. Who knows? But I'm with you on that not exactly being the most seamless entry point to that bit of lore, but still exciting for follow-up fans. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business.

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conveniences and kind of creepily a dress that her father has laid out for her. And instead of dialing zero for Hank and his help, she leaves and comes across a couple of crucifiers from the Legion. And she's ready to smack them with something she finds on the wall. But she no longer needs to because now they're nice guys. And she realizes why? Doesn't have to use the fire extinguisher on them? because they have been shipped, they have been automated, manized, and now they're bestibuds

with each other and with herb. So that kind of gives us a sense of the way of the land here. And as she's wondering around, we get this water cooler conversation between Sherman and Gregory, we learn their names are later, who are former members of opposing tribes from the surface, and very cordially just offering each other the chance to get refreshments first, which I don't know if you saw this, but this reminded me of, there was a viral video in November of these two phones with chat GPT talking to each other. And they're just like each addressing the other, not realizing, I guess, that each LLLM is talking to it. Yeah. Yeah. They're just like both talking about other, they're going to keep the good vibes rolling. And it just continues almost infinitely because

they just keep picking up prompts from each other and there's no substance to what they're saying whatsoever. That's kind of what we're getting with these brainwashed people here. Refugees are not really refugees, people who have been abducted from the surface. And we also get this look at their synchronized movements of the automated men and women as they are choreographed just assembling more and more of these devices. Lucy continues to wander around and she finds her dad, Hank, bearing his scar, in a vault-style unit in the simulation. section. And he, even though he appears to be somewhat surprised when she wanders in, he takes

it in stride and he just says, we never got to discuss all quiet, did we? So he wants to have book club. Book club is in session here, but Lucy didn't do the reading, or at least didn't finish the reading. I enjoyed all of this part of the episode a lot. I couldn't stop thinking of pluribus. I thought so too. Yes. Especially with just all like the synchronized movement and just the the sheer wholeness and the brainwash behavior. Even just beginning with the dialing zero for what she needs to explain. Exactly, right. Yeah.

I wonder whether we would have had a pre-recorded voicemail about how they just need some space if she had dialed it. But I guess the difference is that they do talk to each other because, you know, they're not telepathic. So it's not a true hive mind. They're just all sort of similarly blank up there, I guess. But, you know, the all quiet conversation, Hank reveals, I mean, they both. both reveal that they found it troubling, but to Hank, he says, the most troubling was that

everyone seemed to be fighting over nothing. The French and the Germans, I mean, what was the difference between them really other than the uniforms? I saw the same thing up on the surface. People fighting over the most petty things like bottle caps. Is that what you saw when you were up there? And Lucy's kind of quiet as if she does see some truth in what he is saying, because that is essentially what Lucy has witnessed largely. because, and maybe this is kind of a critique of this season, but she hasn't really had any time to get to know people up there and what drives them and what they want.

She has sort of speed run all of these factions, and she encounters them, and she gets captured or crucified or whatever, and then she's out of there. It's not totally true, though. Like if you play New Vegas, okay, yes, there are plenty of people who are just squabbling over bottle caps. They're just trying to survive and trying to make their way in the world.

But if you play the games and you get to talk to the companions and learn more of their perspective, well, the NCR, the Legion, these factions are fighting over real issues and the future of the wasteland in a way like Hank is. So maybe he's selling people short or again is kind of elevating himself or Voltaic or the enclave or whoever and underestimating and writing off everyone else as basically having these petty. concerns, whereas he is the one who is high-minded about everything. Maybe he just hasn't gotten to know everyone, partly because he blew them up, which that's sort of on him also. Yeah, I mean, Shady Sand is just the best counterpoint to everything that he's talking about. Like, that was a thriving society that was doing really well. Like that that little snippet of it, this is like they're on their way to rebuilding civilization there. Yeah. And he just annihilated it. Like, I did like all of this sequence.

a lot, but I was very frustrated with Lucy and I did still feel like she was a little bit stagnant in her growth where she's still just so righteous and naive to, like, because he's right like with a lot of, with a lot of what he's seeing up there and she's seen

that, but I feel like after all this, you would at least hear him out. The whole time she's just like, nope, we're going back, like you know, you're going to turn all these things off, you're going to free all these people. And it just feels like she, although she is, like Eliparnell's doing a good job of where she still feels different.

Like she still looks different. She's processing these things all with a little bit more of a weight to her after these experiences, this traumatic experience that she's gone through. Yeah. But the fact that she's not ready to talk about this was a little bit annoying for me because I feel like we're just kind of pushing it a little bit further where we're going to actually get to the real need of this conversation. And she's still maintaining that she wants to bring him to justice and bring him all the way

back to the vault and have. some sort of sentence pronounced, which seems pretty unrealistic at this point. Granted, I know it's her father and, you know, he's trying to connect to her and manipulate her and appeal to her emotions and their shared history and reminiscing about when she was a kid and all this stuff. And she's trying to resist that, obviously. And, you know, she knows that he can be persuasive and manipulative. And so I appreciate that she doesn't want to hear it. Ultimately, he maneuvers her into a situation where she has to hear it, and he forces her to see his way of thinking.

She's trying at least to resist, I guess, that persuasion. And I suppose I understand why she doesn't just sink the scissors into his throat, just because she has some conflicted feelings about her dad, understandably. But, you know, this is not going to go anywhere good in the short term. And he continues to do his monologue. You know, some things just never change, such as war. for instance, people just want to kill each other, don't they? I think it's the only way for people to feel safe.

It's ironic. To feel safe, we have to hurt people even kill them. And he's not exempting himself from that because, of course, he's a good illustration of that. He wants to kill people. He killed plenty of people to make himself safe or the vault or Lucy or ensure the survival of the way of life that he wants to bring about. But just as he is saying it, that's when the scissors are suddenly at his throat. I did enjoy that he says, you know, for a second there, I thought the wasteland had changed you.

Although he doesn't say wasteland, he says wasteland, which I kind of enjoyed the way that he pronounces wasteland. No one else really seems to say it that way. But, you know, we've wondered how much the wasteland has changed her all season two. And as you're saying, not as much as you might suspect. But then he handcuffs himself again, explains I did what I did to protect you. But maybe it came at too high a price. He says it's time to take responsibility. And it's, again, like Barb's rationale, right?

It's all to protect Janie. It's all the ghoul has to betray Lucy to protect his family. And Hank is saying the same thing, essentially, that he just had to destroy Shady Sands because it was for Lucy's good. You know, that's just the rationalization for anything and everything fucked up families in this world. And you got to draw the line somewhere, right?

So he thinks that when she sees, his handiwork that she will come around. I think you'll call what I've been doing redemptive. She says, you mean brainwashing those people? I wouldn't call it brainwashing. It's a very sophisticated process. So yeah, this absolutely is where the pluribus came in. And Hank gives her the tour on their way out, introduces Lucy to the group and all of the reformed former murderers and Briggins here. One thing I wondered is how the automated people remember that the surface is dangerous, right? Because they all, they all want to stay inside there, which I get, but they all seem apprehensive about being freed. Yeah, because they're not supposed to remember everything,

right? Or at least that's the way that Hank explained it to SOS, the snake oil salesman last week, that he would be able to talk and interact, but just wouldn't remember anything that had happened to him. So in theory, they shouldn't really remember that the surface is dangerous. I don't know. Maybe Hank told them that it was or something or they're just happy where they are. But that did stand out to me. And of course, there's an ex-Legian member here and Uncle Rico Biff from the NCR. I wonder where Captain Rodriguez is. We don't see her here.

I don't know if she has been captured and turned to. But this is the moral dilemma. This is some sort of trolley problem here that Hank presents Lucy with. Lucy doesn't want them, quote unquote, fixed, which is quite a way to describe this, sort of like, you know, sterilizing an animal. So Hank sicks six them on each other in order to force Lucy into action. And Lucy, in self-defense, stabs the Legionary with a pencil sharpened by Marjorie, expert pencil sharpener, so that came in handy.

But as the Legionary is stapling Biff to death, Lucy, in desperation, presses the button to brainwash them in order to save his life. So how does this all seem to you? I guess, again, we're presented with sort of a binary option. Either they're at each other's throats and they kill each other or you take away their agency and their free will. And as was the case when the ghoul presented two options to Lucy, either take more drugs or gold turkey. There's another option. There might be a third way. It's a more difficult way. And in the moment, I guess Lucy does what she has to do, but she's been, you know, forced into a corner, essentially.

Yeah, I really liked the way all this did play out overall, and I thought that calm flocking was, was awesome in this whole scene, but both them and Elbrano, but. Yeah, and Gagons in this episode, every, everyone, and Turner, like, again, the cast is awesome. Yeah, they're always so good. But just seeing how he's just very softly manipulating her, and just this, like, how sinistery he is beneath,

beneath this like such a friendly and like just dad facade that he's built up with the whole the sugar bomb you know he's he really lates it on heavy but i mean i really couldn't stop thinking of flurbitism because it's just the whole the whole setup is that whole dilemma yeah is like whether or not these people are better off having free will or if they shouldn't be trusted with that free will and and to be able to see it visualize like that and have it be a fight with Uncle Rico having his head stapled in over and over again. I wonder how many staples it would have taken. Like, how much time did she actually have?

Because it didn't seem like they were really penetrating. Painful, I'm sure. But still, yeah, so we've talked about how this series has made us think about silo and severance. So now add yet another Apple TV sci FI series to the list of influences or at least the analogs. I guess it's understandable because Apple TV has kind of. I've cornered the market on sci-fi series. By the way, for all mankind, coming back, March 27th, get hyped. But yeah, I wonder whether you thought this aspect of things works as well as it does in

Pluribus. That's a tall order, at least. We both really appreciated Pluribus and covered it on the site or on podcast. But this is a different sort of show. And, you know, Fallout and Pluribus, they both have humor. Pluribus is often funny. But Fallout is more sort of slapstick sophomoric humor, I guess, than Pluribus. It's a little less of a high-minded show much of the time, which is fine.

Like they're each doing different things in different lanes. But when Fallout wants to kind of drive in the Pluribus lane too, you know, where we have this meditation on identity and free will, can that work as well in a show like Fallout as it does in a show like Pluribus where you're interspersing that? with lower brow humor, I guess you could say in Fallout. It's like that constant tension between just the different tones of Fallout, which works well for me, I think, like the darkness and the kind of the comic relief and the gallows humor and all of that. But also when it wants to get kind of deep and profound, I don't know if it's as natural a transition maybe. Because whenever we see these Fallout figures on the surface, they are kind of cartoon. cartoonish caricatures in a way, you know, just like fixing flea soup or whatever. So it's like, are they leading a really actualized life up there that makes you feel that bad for them? Because

like, in pluribus, you know, the others, the hive mind, they don't really have a choice, right? They're just compelled. They get taken over and absorbed and assimilated. Here, at least with the snake oil salesman, he's on board, right? Because his life sucks and he wants to be assimilated. So I don't know, it hits a little bit different for me here. Yeah, I agree with you. It's a good point to raise. I mean, with Plyribus, too, it's just such a different show with how much of a slow burn. I think it is really perfectly suited because that's just the question that it's addressing

the whole time. And I think the difference here is just there are a lot of things that are happening at once. And we do see this kind of this question of over free will and if humanity can be trusted with itself across the whole series. I mean, that's kind of just the whole point of them just trying to be, like, with war never changes. Like, if humans are always just going to come back to the same thing. Yeah.

I will say with this episode, seeing it, like, visualized like this and having that be really top of mind, it did make me a little bit nervous. And I don't know, maybe it's just like being a little bit triggered from, from, like, Westworld in the way that Westworld ended in having the least of Joy, it was the one that directed this one. So, like, Westworld was still a little bit top, top of the world. mine too because that was just, that became to be a lot over time, but the whole matter of free will. So I hope it's not like too much of where this is going with the whole automated man thing, but it does feel like it.

Yeah, it is funny. These similar themes and overlap and questions, but on a week-to-week moment-to-moment basis, it's hard to come up with two shows that are sort of different as a spectator experience, you know, Fallout and Clurbus, as you said, slow burn where you're following one character, the vast majority of the time, you know, maybe two tops in a typical episode. And here you're jumping around constantly. And in Clorbus, there's just so much time to breathe. Whereas in Fallout, yeah, you're constantly in some other setting or some other timeline or there aren't flashbacks in Pluribus too. But yeah, everything is a lot slower-paced. Whereas, you know, there's always

something happening in Fallout and more action, quote unquote. So very different sort of vibes. But touching on similar themes here. And I like both shows, just different delivery mechanisms. I think as you were saying, too, I mean, I think just leaning into the comedy a bit, like helps too,

because it is, it is so over the top, like having this moment where John Grease's head is being stapled in by a guy that's wearing this, like, ridiculous Caesar costume. Like, it's all very over the top

in that sense. So you get this in a very quick and very fallout way. So it does, it does work to me overall. Yeah. Okay. Our last couple sections here,

a little less substantial so we can probably move through them a bit quicker. But Maximus and Thaddeus, we were missing them in episode five. We catch up with them again, wondering the wasteland here. They have to abandon the power armor

because the Brotherhood can track it. And of course, Thadius wants to sell and or trade the cold fusion. Maximus resists and says, we'll give it to the right person, a good person,

that girl I met. So he is, after all, still hung up on Lucy he seemed to be trying to put out of his mind when he was more committed to the Brotherhood earlier in the season, but no, he is clearly still pining for his vault girl here

and searching for her. And we do get an interesting conversation between Maximus and Thaddeus, which again touches on one of the core themes of the series. And Thadius is not so willing to allow that Lucy is the being of pure light and goodness and everything sweet and nice

the way that Maximus sees her as Thaddeus says, I would be a good person too if I grew up on top of a mountain of food and supplies in some cozy little impenetrable home. Wouldn't like this, that's for sure. Wouldn't have to steal and stab and fib all the goddamn time just to get by. And Thadius, you know, tries to sell Maximus on his selling the coal fusion plan by essentially sounding like Sam Bankman-Fried or something like effective altruist. If we just get really rich, then we can be good and we can help more people in the long run.

Maximus isn't having it. But Thaddeus is essentially arguing that there's no such thing as good people, only good conditions. So what do you make of this ongoing debate that has been playing out across just multiple timelines and settings and character groupings in this series? I really like this scene a lot. You know, this fallout is so much about just these different duos. And there's always some pairing. This was one that I really enjoyed from season one. So it's fun to see them back in this very different situation where, I mean, Thaddy's cool now.

And Maximus is still a little unsure of himself, but he is more sure of himself by now. And this conversation that they have, I thought, was really important to have in the episode where everything's moving so quick because it grounds itself a little bit more. And especially pulling back to that flashback sequence of Shady Sands and seeing a little bit of Maximus's, childhood and having that strong foundation of the goodness and his parents and the goodness of that community. And this idea of the question of nature versus nurture is something that's just so important to this series. And just evidenced by Lucy being a vault dweller and leading the vault and seeing the way the wasteland is. So I think it was a really good scene to have in this episode. Yeah. And I thought so because it also interacts with a couple of the other things that

we saw in this episode, just other plot threads because Hank is essentially saying that the wastelanders are irredeemable. And, you know, maybe he always would have thought that because he's just a maniac at the core and a lot of his ill car. But, you know, he's saying that they cannot be redeemed. Now, maybe that's because he destroyed shady sands and all the good people there, right? And Maximus is saying maybe he had it better than Thaddeus, which is really saying something about how Thaddeus had it. We learned, by the way, that he was born in the Boneyard and not the nice part of the Boneyard. That's essentially Los Angeles in Fallout One primarily, so another nod to the OG. But, you know, this is, again, like Hank, are you sort of cleansing this fallen world

and bringing goodness to it by either wiping everyone out or brainwashing them? Or are you the one who is making it fallen in the first place because maybe you played some part in the bombs dropping, or you destroyed Shady Sands where goodness was getting a towhold, and the good people who helped raise Maximus were obliterated because of Hank. But then again, is Thaddeus right? Were the good people of Shady Sands only good because they had supplies and they had order and they had water and they had water and everything, right? Because this ties into the vault scenes that we're about to see. because are the vault dwellers actually good people, or are they just a mob that's out for itself? And that's just been camouflaged by the fact that they have had ample supplies.

But when the water is short and when rationing is imposed, suddenly it's a doggie doggy dog worlds down there. Right. So that kind of argues that maybe actually Thadius is right, that maybe Lucy seems to be a good person because stuff didn't break while she was down there maybe. So it's an unresolved debate. And I don't expect Fallout, the television show, to resolve the debate about whether humans are inherently good or not, which is something that people have been wrestling with for millennia.

So, you know, our finest philosophers are still struggling with that one. I don't know that Fallout will settle it once and for all, but it does help link together these disparate stories. So we do see the redemption of Doctor. I mean partial redemption, at least, because he catches up with Thaddeus and Maximus, wakes them as they have dozed in front of the campfire, which I guess is much as Lucy first encountered Dogmead and Wiltsig at the campfire in season one. When she was nodding off and Wiltsig was telling her, you got to watch out for the rad roaches out here. Seems like Maximus and Thaddeus have let their guard down. But Dogmeet leads them to this Mojave Mission School, which is not from Fall Out Nouveau.

I guess it seems to be an original location. And they unite with the ghoul. This is where Pearl Mutant has dumped the ghoul. And I liked this encounter because Maximus and Gould both spy each other. And each of them says, fuck, which makes sense because the last time they met, they were trying to kill each other in Philly, right? So this is far from a heartwarming reunion. Yeah, this is a pairing.

I'm looking forward to seeing a lot too. Yeah. It's going to be a lot of fun to see, especially not bad. this is a cool too. I feel it's a really fun component too. And it's immediately something that I'm sure that the ghoul can just pick up on where it's just like, okay, well, Maximus must be different now. He's just hanging out with this cool.

Yeah. I will say the other aspect of it that I really enjoy, especially before this meeting with the ghoul, this reunion with the cool, it's just that you have the other parallel of them trying to figure out where they're going to bring cold fusion at the same time as Coop is working that out himself in the, and Barnda working that out in the previous timeline.

Yes. So now that present day ghoul has the cold fusion here too. It's going to be fascinating to see what the three of them decide to do or if the ghoul just takes it for itself as more leverage. Right. Yeah, he'll recognize what that is because he has had it in his possession centuries before. I can't get rid of this thing. It's a bad penny.

Keeps coming back into my possession. And yeah, as you just said, the dynamic duo of Max Maximus and Thaddeus is a good pairing, but the dynamic trio of Maximus and Thaddeus and the ghoul, I don't know how patient and tolerant the ghoul will be with these two. I hadn't even considered the idea of the fledgling ghoul who's still in the process of getting ghulified and now can learn at the knee of the most experienced ghoul. He can just take him under his wing, share some vials, help ease him into his cool transition. Again, not the mentor probably that I would want,

but now that he has been accompanying Lucy and has softened somewhat, perhaps he'll be ready. And presumably he will draft them to assist him in rescuing Lucy slash going after Hank and maybe battling a death claw or three along the way. So I am very much looking forward to seeing those three interact over the next couple episodes. And that brings us to our final setting and character grouping here.

We do not know what's going on with the Vault 31 folks and poor Norm, whom last we saw was on the point of death or just passed into unconsciousness. But we will leave him there for another week as we catch up with the inbreeding support group, or I guess the products of inbreeding support group, though, it seems to have morphed more into the inbreeding support group. Like there's clearly support for future inbreeding here, So there are a few slogans on the wall on various signs that are just like mottoes of the products of inbreeding support group.

I think there are maybe four of them. I'm going to ask you to choose your favorite. Okay, so one is keeping it all in the family. Efficiency at its finest. Okay, so that's option one. Inbreeding is not a crime. Kiss and cousins for better loving. And the simple hip, hip, hooray, three cheers,

for the inbred. So do you have a favorite? I think I'm partial to kissing cousins for better loving, maybe. I was going to say, I like human and the family. Yeah, efficiency at its finest. It's very corporate. Very Baltic. Yeah, I like that one.

Yeah, no shortage of options here. I actually didn't see these, so that's very funny. So everyone's continuing to snack on the snack budget here. And we get one of the strangest sequences in this. series, I think. I mean, it's got to be, right? We get essentially this daydream, it seems, that is happening only in Reg's head, where we get this Busby Berkeley musical number, you know, just kind of almost like the choreography of the brainwashed folks in the vault acting in lockstep here. It's more of a grand production because we get uranium fever

by Elton Britt, which is playing, which Fallat four players will remember, from Diamond City Radio. And the aspect ratio changes from 69 to 4.3. So it's old school and there's kind of like a different film stock or a film grain effect. And then after this little delusion plays out, we kind of go back to reality and we see that really, Reg is tapping out. Mary had a little lamb on the piano and it's all quiet, so to speak, in this room, except for the snacking sounds. So is this what's happening in his head at all times?

Is this his delusions of grandeur coming to fruition here? What is what is going on with this sequence? Like what is happening in Reg's head? And why is this in this episode in this series? It was definitely really weird. I thought it was very fun in the moment. Yeah. It was definitely jarring just to have the aspect of ratio switch,

just to have a musical number in the middle of all this. and just like an odd amount of insight into Reg as a character. Yeah. I thought this was like the most fun part of this whole section. But overall, like with all this, I was just like, why are we having any of this right now? Yeah, it's like I like that there's a playful spirit to this series. But I'm sure, you know, we've already wondered, why are we spending so much screen time on the Volties this season? And for anyone who's thinking, gosh, we went a whole episode without House or without Norm or without this,

or that, and it's because we needed to see a musical number in Regis Head in the vault, but I kind of appreciate the audacity of it. It's just, it's so strange. It is very much like it's kind of a hallucination. It's like that option you referenced in Fall Out New Vegas, where you can play it the wacky way and just reach that out. Yeah, this is a manifestation of that, essentially. And I don't know, maybe it's the water shortage or something going to people's heads, although there doesn't seem to be any shortage in the support group itself. So Betty and her jackbooted thug enforcers finally show up. And if anything, they're probably overdue. I have wondered, like, where these guards live. I have that same thoughts. Yeah. It's like,

is there a barracks in the vault? Or do they just fraternize with the general population? Or do they keep to themselves? Because every now and then, you know, it's like everyone's kind of collegial and friendly and they're just wondering around. But then there are these like giant guards with like riot armor and stuff. Like where they keep these guys? The Raiders came in season one. Like they weren't theirs when they needed them the most. Did they draft them since then so as not to be susceptible to another attack?

I don't know because they seemed like they might know what they're doing or at least they're committed to the bit. But yeah, I've wondered about that. But these are the enforcers for Betty, but they don't do a great job of enforcing anything. She comes in. She tries to lay down the law. She declares that the snack budget. is rescinded, the support group is resolved. It's a constitutional crisis inside the vault.

And she lays out her case and it makes some sense. We're running out of water and you're feeding people salty snacks. And at first it sounds as if Reg is going to back down and concede defeat. But no, he pivots to populism and he appeals to the base desires of the support group members. He says, we're giving the people what they want. And Betty says, I'm sorry, but you don't get extra rations because of who your parents were. And then Reg says, actually, this is still America. So yes, you do. Inspiring, patriotic.

We're all down here because of who our parents were and who their parents were. Our ancestors put themselves first, and you know what? That worked out for them and for us. I'm not ashamed of that anymore. So it's morphed into a products of nepotism or products of privilege support group.

And, you know, this is sort of just backing up what Thaddeus says. It's every vault dweller for the same. themselves. It's get yours, right? When resources are scarce, then factions develop and war never changes. Yeah, I think in that respect, it is interesting to have this in this episode because it does fit into this whole nature versus nurture discussion. But again, I mean, not to beat this point too much, but it's just like when you have so many storylines and the show is kind of spreading itself thin by dividing so much time between these different plot lines with all this, this was the first time I really felt like this with the false storylines

where I was just like, I wish that they could just spend more times on the other plot lines that where everything just feels more urgent. Again, it does tie in nicely at least with the setup in the beginning of the episode two with Betty, the faulty waterships. And hopefully this is going to pay off again more

in the next couple episodes as I'd imagine Norm's storyline finally emerges for this too. But this whole episode, I was just like, I want to see where Norm is. And we get this musical upwards that. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, there are political allusions and resonances here.

And Betty invokes the weevil famine. And Red says, we don't want to hear about the weevil famine anymore. And, you know, someone pipes up. It feels good to hear someone finally say that out loud. It's like, you know, they've been through traumatic events. It's like when people bring up the pandemic, you know, and we don't want to talk about the pandemic anymore. We don't want to think about any of this.

We just want to grab our jello and stuff it into our mouth for added emphasis, right? So, you know, and there's this kind of othering of Betty and, you know, you 31ers are just plumbed different somehow, which, again, is often, you know, populist leader. There has to be a boogeyman. There has to be an outsider. Now, in this case, Betty is actually an outsider, and the 31ers are different, and there actually is a conspiracy. So there's actually some merit to that in this case, but it's, you know, an old power grab playbook blueprint, time tested. So I don't exactly know where this is going. But I have faith that it's here for a reason and that we have to trust in the writers and creators that they're going to land this storyline somehow.

And a couple episodes from now will say, oh, that was why that was there and why we spent all this time. You know, whether it's just the, the FV is going to play into what's happening in the vault or we find out more. about the experiment that's playing out down there, but I do understand some spectators being somewhat mystified by why we are lavishing all this time when time is limited. You know, we have to ration that too. And I think this storyline has exceeded

its screen time budget, perhaps. But we also get a quick blint at Ball 32 where our old pal Davey. And, you know, I never mind a chance to catch up with Davy. Davey's always a delay. He's this. So he confesses. very gravely that he doesn't actually like checkers.

He just does it to spend time with Woody and confides to chat that Woody is missing. Worried about Woody, Daniel. Yeah, poor, poor Woody. This is problematic. Shortly after reporting Steph's violations to the overseer, which is Steph, he has seemingly disappeared.

Probably doesn't bode well for him, but we will see, you know. Maybe he's just gone a different sub layer of lumens or something. We'll find out. But Davy also learns that he is engaged to Steph. Unbeknownst to him, she has announced their impending nuptials via a poster that is just pinned to the board for all to see, but he is seemingly the last to learn. So he has strong-armed him into taking care of the baby, naming the baby, just cohabitating with her. and the question is, will this be the final straw for Chet,

who has just been, you know, going along with everything. But maybe now he will be a runaway groom and he will not walk down the aisle and he will actually call Steph on her shit here, especially if Woody has disappeared. Do you think he is approaching his breaking point? Every time I think he's approaching his breaking point, something else happens.

This really might be the final straw, but I think all he needs to do is just the little, show the little bit, just the slightest sign of a great thing. and he's just going to be back and down again. But I'm ruined for chat. I'm ruined for chat here. Yeah, maybe he'll snap. You know, he's just been taking so many lumps all this time.

He's lost his friends and maybe it'll just all come out finally. He will revolt. I hope so. And a couple little interesting Easter eggs on that same poster board with the wedding announcement. There's a sign for Vault 32 Ninja Club and it says, we meet anytime, any place, try and find us. I'd like to spend some time with Bolt 32's Ninja Club maybe as a break from the products of Inbreeding Support Club, but I guess we can't find them because they're ninjas. Also, there was a poster for a screening of the film Night of the Fishmen's Revenge, which is sort of a B-movie send up from the Fallout 4 add-ons.

There's a notice that Davy has lost his copy of Dean's Electronics, which is a Fallout New Vegas skill book. And there is a flyer for a shooting range meetup that says, bring the kids. kids, which is, I think, a reference to the Fallout 3 tutorial. So, you know, they're not always hitting you over the head with these things, but if you want to go on an Easter egg hunt, then you will find a lot of these things, just, you know, especially in the artwork, just posters in the background. Yeah. If you freeze frame and investigate all that stuff, a lot of it is an allusion to some obscure

lore from the games. So, you know, it's just a little lovelet or a little nod that you can very easily ignore as opposed to some of the more heavy-handed lore stuff. And the end credits as well do that, do that really nicely too. Like, there are some fun. I think this one, they had like the Grognach. Yes, yes.

Barbarian. And there's always some, like, I always love like sitting through the end credits because it always, it gives you a little insight too. It does sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we got a glimpse of Bud's whole set up and how he was preparing to turn into a

robo brain long before the apocalypse. So before we finish, just a little bit of news about the Fallout TV franchise. We have been wondering all along, is this setting up a spin-off and how many seasons is this thing going to run? Well, we know one thing, which is that there is a Fallout reality series coming called Fallout Shelter, which is already the name of a Fallout game. But here's the logline for this 10-episode reality series that is coming from Prime Video and Bethesda, etc. set inside Vaultex bomb-proof vaults, Fallout Shelter drops a diverse group of contestants

into an immersive, high-stakes world inspired by the game's signature dark humor, retrofuturism, and post-apocalyptic survival storytelling. Across a series of escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas, and moral crossroads, contestants must prove their ingenuity, teamwork, and resilience as they compete for safety, power, and ultimately a huge cash prize.

And the show says that will blend large-scale challenges with deeply social, psychological and narrative-driven gameplay in the spirit of the Fallout franchise and its choice-driven ethos. So I didn't really have this on my radar, didn't expect that Fallout Shelter the reality show would be the next step

for this TV franchise. What was your reaction to hearing about Fallout Shelter? This wasn't on my radar at all either, and I only knew about it from you slacking it to me right before we started recording. I immediately thought of when like Squamilis Game, like Netflix did like Squid Game, the challenge right afterwards. Yes.

And it's just, it's so horrifying, like, problematic to me that the takeaway of all of these shows where it's just like a criticism and critique of like, you know, the extreme, like, capitalism and just the way that people are being taken advantage of in these situations and to just make it a reality TV show. Like take away all the wrong things from it. Like, take for in fallout's case, for showing how problematic it is with Baltek and these other corporations, just experimenting on these innocent, unsuspecting people. And then to be like, yeah, let's do it ourselves. More money off of them.

Yep. Let's give a fire. Yes. Yeah. I invoked with Van earlier this season, the Torment Nexus meme, sci-fi author. In my book, I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale. Tech company, at long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from Class. like sci-fi novel, don't create the torment nexus. So yeah, this, look, taking the pulse of the

fallout fan base, I have not detected a ton of enthusiasm for this announcement online. It appears there's been a bit of a backlash. I mean, partly it just appears to be milking the Fallout brand, right? And the TV series is successful, and I'm happy that it is, and that it's found a new audience for the already large established audience for the games. But this feels very much you know, it's a re-skin of Big Brother or any number of other fallout or reality shows, right? It's just, you know, take Big Brother but Fallout. Like, how can we take this hit show and have people dress up in the signifiers of Fallout and hope that people tune in for that?

It's not something I'm particularly compelled by this pitch. So who knows? But, yeah, it feels very much like, you know, kind of a cash brag. How can we just extend this hit brand that we have? have on TV to the lowest hanging fruit, essentially. But, you know, maybe it'll be better than that. I'm not holding out a ton of hope. But as long as it's not like something that interferes with fallout proper and the show itself,

then, okay, fine, have their fun, I guess. But I think they're casting contestants now. So if this kills to you more than it does to us, then you can get on Fallout Out Shelter. Maybe we'll have you on to talk about it. So that's something to look forward to. All right. So a ton happened this episode. Any final thoughts on the episode as a whole or what we might see next time? And by the way, we have no idea what we will see next time. And no one does because six episodes, that was all that was sent to the press prior to the season. And we haven't been watching ahead because we've been covering it week to week. But as far as I know, now everyone is in the same boat as they say in this episode, even the people who watched ahead. And In fact, there was no next time on sneak peek, even, unless we missed it. Neither of us saw one.

So does that suggest to you that there's something big coming here that they did not want to divulge? I think so. I mean, again, I mean, we talked about some of what we thought were the flaws in this episode with there being so many moving parts. And again, as I was saying earlier, just a lot of it feels like more set up and substance. But I think when you have a lot of that setup, eventually it's going to pay off. And that's what we saw in last week's episode. And I think they have done a lot of setup.

So this is the time for them to really land the plane. And I think they've created a lot of really, really interesting plot lines and a lot of really interesting mysteries across the course of the season. I think, yeah, land a bird time. At least. We'll see it. Land the bird first. Yeah.

All right. Well, to quote Hank, that end was a humdinger, huh? I hope the next couple episodes will be too. thanks as always for being the other player on this podcast, Daniel. Thanks for having me back as always. And thanks to Devin Olado for producing this podcast and to our Juno Rengapal for being the vault overseer of the Ringiverse. You can. And I hope will contact us via email at Ringiverse Gaming at gmail.com.

And expect another fallout recap of episode seven. Same time, first thing next Thursday. When we leave, we're leaving all the doors open to our list. can go home and where are we going to fucking do something. Talk to you next week. What's the difference between butter and butter made from real California dairy?

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