The Ringer-Verse - ‘Fallout’ Season 2, Episode 7 Reactions | Button Mash

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

You always end up back where you started … and this week Van Lathan ends up back on Button Mash as he and Ben Lindbergh break down the penultimate episode of ‘Fallout’ Season 2, “The Handoff.��� After sharing their overall review, they consider Steph’s backstory, catch up with the core characters, and assess how several storylines could come together in the finale. Along the way, they contemplate Canadian heritage, the Ghoul’s accent, and whom they would want with them on a Wasteland journey. Intro (0:00)Reactions to “The Handoff” (6:00)The Ghoul’s Accent (14:47)Steph’s Backstory (18:06)Betty and Other Wild Cards (26:48)Lucy and Hank (37:46)Coop, Maximus and Thaddeus (52:43)Outro (1:20:02) Host: Ben LindberghGuest: Van LathanProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Craig Horlebeck 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. Tramphia offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tramphia 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. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject trumphia, proper training is required.

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Ask your doctor about Tramphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Tramphiara Radio.com. 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 They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum business.

So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Hi, hozers, and welcome into the ringerverse, whereby overseers orders showers are outlawed, and so is flushing the toilet. I am Ben Lindberg, Senior Editor for the Ringer, and Button Mash host, never underestimate the power of brand recognition. And our brand is Button Mash, where we're serving button mashed potatoes, always your favorite. It's been a while since we last mashed with Van Lathen.

Where's he been? We didn't have a falling out, so to speak. He was sent on a leadership exchange program in Vault 31. But as Maximus says, you always end up back where you started. And Van has found his way back to Button Mash as this fallout season. winds down. Wonder Van Lathan. Well, hello, old chum. Ben, that was masterful. How many references to this episode could I cram into one intro? How can you get into one goddamn that is, that was masterful. Ben, Jesus. Way to go, my man. Pulling out all the stops for your

grant return to this podcast. Always so happy to have you. And we have much to discuss. And so we will put our heads together, still attached to our necks as we discuss. Follow. out season two, episode seven, the handoff, directed by Stephen Williams and written by Kieran Fitzgerald. First of all, we haven't potted since episode three. So a lot has happened. Super Mutants, Barb backstory, Lucy taking lives, so much more. How were you feeling about the season heading into episode seven?

I actually feel like it's shaken out in a much more narratively interesting way, even than the first season. First season was a journey for the characters. This one seems like more of a journey for the audience. There's so many things that are happening to the people on screen here, such a reorganization and a deepening of the understanding of the world. It's been really, really good to see story-first stuff. Less to me, visual gags.

They can't really rely on some of the stuff that the first season could, just the off-kilterness of where we are, the absurdity of the whole thing. But this is really a dense plot-driven season of TV, and I'm really enjoying it. Not too dense for you. It's just right, because I know that there are people who think,

okay, this is maybe a little too much dip on the chip, a little too much world building. Maybe the world doesn't need to be this big or this busy, or it's just hard to cram all these characters into this amount of screen time. It's not too much for me, right? But also remember, I watch Severn's. So it's not too much for me.

For the people that feel like it is too much, and they wanted their fallout to be more of a diet prestige show in kind of the tradition of the boys, which is a show that's very important to a lot of people. But it touches on some real life actual issues, but the absurdity and the comedy of the boys, It kind of a lot of people, it's a little bit more sort of accessible than some of the other shows that might deal. And some of these same issues are for people that feel like that, I get it, that they want it kind of more of that.

But they're not going for that. They, this is a season of TV, I feel like to be taken seriously. They're throwing a lot at you. Yeah. Yeah. And I also feel like speaking of other prime video shows, since you brought up the boys, you said it touches on real life events or political issues. I think it long since past touches on and now just mimics basically exactly, right, in a way that at least late for lately for me has not been working as well. And maybe it's just because you can't kind of parody the real life politics.

And so there's just nowhere for them to go, but amp it up even further. And then they end up just basically mirroring what is actually happening. I find fallout more effective maybe on that level lately just because the illusions aren't quite as obvious and. clear and mapped on to real life events. It's certainly there. It's just subtext a little bit more than it is text, just completely on the surface. So it just feels a little more artfully done, at least lately, in my mind. I agree.

I think that the boys has to be very battering in the way that they get their messages across. It's not a subtle show at all. No. I am surprised at the amount of subtlety that Fallout has been able to generate you know, at the same time that we're talking about these gigantic existential questions about the future of society, the present of society, what is or isn't Armageddon? What would you go through to save the world?

It's also marriages and fathers and daughters and friends you made along the way. And what is honor? Like what, it's all of those things that like are very fundamental to storytelling, kind of wrapped up in the same stories we've been telling for thousands of years now. Yeah, almost a marriage at least. Almost a marriage. Goddam. Sorry, stuff.

It didn't. Why? Why are we getting married? What a question. I see that we're getting married. Why? I mean, it is a question that, you know, sometimes people get to that point and they haven't actually asked themselves that.

So it is an important question to ask. But the way that they went about it's not ideal. I'm glad that the whole thing was called off. We'll get to that in a second because we're talking about episode seven. So what is your review of episode seven itself? Really enjoyed it. So much is happening here. There are little scenes with Lucy's dad trying to teach her how to drive.

And you realize what she hasn't had, even though she was a vault dweller. And it seems as if she's had so much more than a lot of the people that occupy the world, that we have, you know, questions about how much bad is bad enough, which bad is the better bad in terms of the Legion versus the New California Republic, all of that stuff. Then at the end, we get legitimate wonder in the show. As the ghoul activates and unlocks, just throw pops up, and I'm like, what's going to happen? I love what's going to happen. I love what's going to happen when a piece of technology is integrated with something else.

and it has the possibility to change the landscape of what you've been watching and then you have to ask yourself damn, we're in the end game now like what's going to happen now? But just all of it, there was great action in the episode.

Super mutant destroyed and killed like it, by our, we're back in the mechs, the techno mechs, all that stuff. The coming of age of ghoulness. I was like, hey, I'm a young ghoul.

My nose hasn't fallen off yet. Look at this thing on my, all of that stuff to me was working. Give me the birds and the bees. Let's talk about ghoul stuff. Let's talk about ghoul stuff, ghoul daddy. We're going to talk about some cool stuff. Yeah, Daniel and I were down on last week's episodes, relatively speaking. We thought it was a week one, and there was just a lot happening.

I think this is a rebound, but also clearly a prelude to what's to come. And that's inevitable. But some shows, Game of Thrones, for instance, the penultimate episode is the climax. That's what it's really building up to. Others, it's set up. It's moving pieces around the board. I would say that fallout falls more into that category in season one and season two. And maybe that's partly a product of just eight episode seasons.

You know, Thrones was 10 typically. And I do feel that sometimes with Ballout because here we are. We're spending time with Steph. We're finally finding out about Steph and her backstory. how she got to this point. And I'm happy to spend more time with Steph. Nah, you don't care. I can tell.

It's tough, though, when you're talking 20 minutes or whatever it is with Steph, we're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. This whole thing, Ben, like, listen, you want them to be the 51st state. This whole thing is an anti-Canada agenda, which is very funny that they did on the show, but you don't want to know about her. You don't care. There's a secret I've been hiding from you that I'm going to be confessing in the

course of this podcast and your mind might be blown just like Chets. We're not there yet, but we're going to get there. We're going to get there. But point is, if this were a show with a lot of episodes, then by all means, work Stefan. I like the character. I like the portrayal. But coming this late in the season, while you're trying to catch up with everyone else, and some people aren't appearing in the episode or you're seeing them for two minutes, poor Norm, just waking him up to knock him unconscious again. It's just, it's tough. You know, that's been an issue all season, hasn't really interfered with my enjoyment of the show. But there are times when I wish there were just a little bit broader a palette because they're trying to do so much, as you said,

they're trying to introduce all these elements and this faction and pull the curtain back on the world. And there's only so much time to do that. And so you constantly feel like, ah, we got to we got to cut a corner maybe because we got to get to this next scene. And there were a few nitpicks, I think. Some scenes that sort of strain belief a little bit, maybe some contrivances just in the interest of getting to where we need to go in the amount of time that we have to get there. But we'll touch on those things as we proceed. I'm with you, though, on the big emotional moment that really resonated with me later on in Freasite when Maximus kind of comes into his own.

We'll talk about that. We're going to go just faction by faction and group by group here as usual. But I did want to ask just a bigger, broader question. Now that we've seen all these different character pairings, Who's your crew in this world? Oh, this is a great question. You're traveling across the wasteland. You can pick any of these characters to be your traveling companions.

Who do you want with you? Not just for safety's sake to back you up in a fight, but just to be good company to make conversation. It's me, Maximus and Lucy. It's the OG. You don't feel like your third wheeling with Maximus and Lucy? That's the fun of it. You just want to get in their way? You're like the chaperone?

The fun of it is... Don't get too close to each other. Then it becomes like an 80s coming of age story, right? Oh, okay. I probably don't make it out of this journey. But I'm the one that helps them both get through the world but also realize that they're like peas and carrots. You know what I mean?

So it would probably be them. If me and the ghoul, me and the ghoul and then the human version of the ghoul the three of us together on a journey would also be awesome as well. The original coop. You want the original coop.

The original coopity coop. Because his character to me is my favorite character of this season. The original coop. Yeah. Coop from the old days, that part of it and his dilemma

over completing that mission over the subterfew that he has to engage in in his own family. That's been some of my favorite stuff in the season. Have you liked how heavily that has played into the plot of what it is that we have going on? Yeah, that's another thing I've noticed is that it feels much more past-centric

than season one did. Absolutely. Obviously, you know, much more flashback. So we're just spending more time in the past, but also the past is connecting to the present in a lot more ways, which I guess makes sense. as the story is evolving, but all these characters were finding out that they're actually

pre-war characters like Wiltsig last week. We find out that he predates the apocalypse. Now, we've got the Congresswoman, or at least part of her, is making the trip to the apocalypse, right? And Steph, of course, is dating back to pre-war. So all of these, we're bouncing back and forth. We're intercutting much more. And I think that's a good thing. On the whole, honestly, I probably enjoy the flashbacks in the show more than the present, which is not a knock on the present. I like both, and I prefer both to either in isolation, but it has been notable how much we have been living in the past this season.

I think it's a smart narrative thing to do just because of the fact that this world can be so overwhelming. And also so much of a drag, it's only so much you can watch people eat soup with fleas in it. You do want to like, you want some comfort, and the past gives you, the flashbacks give you comfort but it's also just a really curious thing to watch on screen. All of the retrofuturism, that's always good.

Any sci-fi person loves retrofuturism, right? You love it. Star Wars is not retrofuturist, but maybe it is. But they're also like in rural desert areas where they're riding around on horseback and stuff like that, but at the same time they got like laser guns and hovercrafts and all that stuff. It's not retrofuturist, but it's a mix of technologies.

It's like a land where they took all of that stuff and they didn't really use it to make like TikTok. You know, they used it to make things that helped them travel in between galaxies. It's something useful with it. Right, you know what I mean? So that stuff is always, it's always compelling to watch. But then mixing that with the same old struggles

of American political, social economic capitalism, different factions, all of that. I really have enjoyed that. A break from the brutality of the post-apocalyptic fallout world has been much, much appreciated for me. Yeah, and plus, as we're trying to understand the wasteland and how it came about and who dropped the bombs, each time we go into the past,

we're going into the past with a purpose to understand these characters and their motivations better and also just the origins of this world. This does bring another question to my mind, though, because we're getting so much coop and ghoul juxtaposed in the same episode, the accent has been standing out to me. You know, the Gaggins Gould drawl. And I was wondering if this is like, and I know that this comp will resonate with you, is this like when Brian Kelly, Boston boy, goes to LSU and starts to sound like a good old boy, is this an affectation that he's trying to blend in with this world? or over the course of two centuries,

has he just naturally developed this drawl and he comes by the accent honestly? So shame on you. Okay. For implying that Brian Kelly is anything less than authentic and sincere at all times? No, for bringing him up, period. Just invoking him at all.

So shame on you. Sorry. I think about it as somebody else. And I want everybody to go look this up. I'm old enough to remember the time where Charlize Theron became a star. I'm old enough to remember this. I want you guys to go back and watch a movie called Two Days in the Valley.

It's a movie that you probably will enjoy, but when it came out, not a lot of people knew exactly what to make of it. It seemed like the type of movie that was supposed to be super cool and was slightly less cool than it had. actually was, at least at that time. But it was, it garnered a lot of attention. It's like when every movie was like trying to be Pope Fiction, Pope Fiction had changed the face of cinema and everybody wanted to have a cool movie

involving a lot of characters that had crime, that had sex, and had all that stuff. So anyway, Charlize Theron comes out. And in that movie, she is impressive, okay? On an acting level, curious. Yes, yes. Very impressive young actress And she goes on the late night show She's on a show and she's talking

And then she says Hey I'm from South Africa And people are like what She did not sound like she was from South Africa In any way, shape or form She sounded like she had lived her entire life In America And she sounded as if

She had never even been to South Africa before She did no way that she's No way that she sound like that And anytime I think of someone that has come to a place and been affected by the change in scenery, I actually think of Charlize Staron

because she's like, yeah, I just kind of don't have it. It was a big deal. I mean, she might have been on, that might have been Conan O'Brien she was on at that point. I don't know if she was big enough for Lennon, but that might have been Conan O'Brien

that she was on at that point. So I think he's done a Charlize to where he's been in this world for such a long time that he's actually become more southern. And, and if anything, in the world of the past, he might have been able,

he might have been trying to sort of manage his accent because he was like a movie star type of TV guy that probably wanted to be taken seriously. They didn't want to be looked at as a country bumpkin. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Putting on airs.

Or he's kind of a chameleon. You know, he plays a lot of roles, affects a lot of accents. Okay. All right. Let's start out with the vaulties because we do spend a lot of time underground and that can be hit or miss with fallout.

But I'd say mostly hit this time. And, of course, we open in a flashback slash nightmare in the hellscape that is occupied Canada. As Steph flees from the Uranium City internment camp up in the Big 51, meanwhile, we learned that Chet wears a sleep mask. Me too. I've never felt closer to Chet than in that one. I wear one as well. Love a sleep mask.

Yeah. Love nasal strips. I go sleep mask, nasal strips, blackout curtains. That's my comfort. That's my happy place when I sleep. Anyway, she has to flee across the border into the U.S., sort of a reverse handmaid's tail. And this is interesting, I think, because she is presented with the power armor, which later in this episode, we'll see when Maximus strides into Freeside in the power armor, he's a hero. People look on him as a savior.

And they remember when the NCR, this is a symbol of order and protection and safety, it represents the opposite for Steph. This is the oppressor. And we quickly see that a suicide bomber dispatches the power armor. So this is scary. This is real. But I liked that they show that it's in the eye of the beholder and also the wielder, that the power armor, this famous fallout iconography, it can be heartening or terrifying, depending on the perspective.

And there's history in the fallout lore. The intro to the very first fallout game actually starts with a newscast about Americans in power armor executing Canadians. So this, there's precedent for this. And people have wanted a Fallout Canada game to explore what's going on there. So this is exciting for Fallout fans. Steph's mom becomes collateral damage in this bombing. RIP. Played by the way, by Natasha Hensridge from a whole nine yards. Authentic Canadian. So I appreciate casting a Canadian to play a Canadian. Not true for Steph, sadly, but what can you do? And, She gets a little pep talk, the dying words from her mom, at least the last words we hear, don't think of them as human beings. Think of them as Americans.

Powerful, powerful message to leave your daughter with as you bleed out. And she takes those words to heart. Does she? She doesn't take her long to embrace them because she splits a flannel wearing, I don't even know if this is an American or a fellow countryman, but slits is. throat for pork and beans, kills a customs and border patrol officer. I'd hate to hear what Greg Bovino would say about her. And in the present, she is definitely not pulling any punches either. And now we know why. Now we understand Steph in a way we didn't, where we knew she was sinister, but we didn't know what shaped her exactly. So do you feel like you understand the enigma that is Steph Harper.

I think it was useful. Because when you look at her, it's essentially subjugate this poor man, this poor masculine man, women subjugating man. It's such a terrible thing. Such a scourge on society

that we allow it to happen. You wonder how she can be so disconnected. She's one of the least likable characters that I've seen in a show recently. Even this backstory, normally when you get a character's backstory, particularly an unlikable character, You get some window into why they are the way that they are that humanizes them.

This gives a window into why the way she is the way that she is, but it does nothing to humanize her, even though she lost someone close to her. It's still like, okay, this is the origin of the fuckery. And the reason why this character should be reviled and not something that delivers that character out of that perception of them. I understand your concern about this. particular backstory, I did think that it was well executed.

And I thought that it really made me care more about the almost wedding that was at the end of the episode. Because if not for this, I do not think that I would have cared at all. Like coming back to that entire thing. And I share some of your, I guess, criticism about the vault dwelling aspect. of this, to me, it's it's not uninterertaining, but it is the least entertaining, the least compelling part of this season.

Sort of that stuff that's going on. Yeah. That setup at the beginning of it did provide us with, to me, a little bit more bite for some of the stuff that happened at the end of the episode, especially like when the wedding blows up. Yeah, it's all starting to tie together now, and I'm sure it will more in the finale.

And it explains a little bit about why she is the way that she is. She's definitely not pitching in on the dish doing. She's not helping out with the household chores. Explains why she disregards Chet the way that she does, not just that he's kind of a pushover, but he's an American. So subhuman to her. So if she could get some brainwashed wastelanders to do the dishes, she definitely would. And I think this also helps, you know, I was talking about some contrivances and sort of things happening in a convenient way to maybe push the plot along. For example, the not-quired.

quite meet-cute between her and Hank and also the goal. We find out how Steph ended up being one of Buds'Buds is that when she gets across the border, she gets herself a gig in housekeeping in Vegas and just so happens to run into the unconscious Hank and is asked by Kup to transport him back to his room. You know, it's all quite convenient. And then when Chet finds Woody's glasses in the garbage disposal, yeah. Yeah. And look, I guess there are only so many places to dispose of things when you're stuck in a ball.

It's dumb. My only head canon rationalization of this was basically like she thinks so little of Chet in that she doesn't think of him at all in a Don Draper way. But also she just doesn't have a high opinion of him that she just doesn't even, it doesn't occur to her that he's going to piece together. Because I wondered about this when he discovers her ID in a past episode. but she didn't hide it all that well. So my only explanation is that basically she sees him as so far beneath her that doesn't even occur to her, doesn't cross her mind that he could be capable of putting two and two together.

He's not going to expose her. He's not going to have the spine to actually raise any objections. And for a long time, it seems like he won't. So maybe, maybe that makes it make sense. But it is one of those, okay, well, this is a way to sort of hurry things along to where we need to go. I made sense of it because the garbage supposed to thing is really, really, really dumb. I made sense of it. If these are not human beings

who are like you say, then she's really not concerned at all with them being her equal because she is not savvy at all. She is dominating and she's cutthroat. Literally. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely literally. Right. Cunning maybe, but doesn't seem to be very savvy or concerned with any potential ramifications that can come from her secrets being kind of thrown out into the wind.

Do you think that we've seen the last of not just Woody's glasses, but Woody himself, is this a series wrap on Zach Cherry? Because, you know, in this show, they will just bring in and dispense with guest stars just like that. So is Zach Cherry, after being a more prominent part of the show, is he just out like, Kamail, no, Johnny, he doesn't get a goodbye? It's just the glasses and that's that. And what did she do with the rest of his body? Did she?

Yeah, he's a big fella. Cut him up and dexter him and feed him down the garbage disposal and the glasses are all that's left? I think he'll be back. Okay. I think he'll be back. I think he's a recognizable guy and he's been in a couple of different. He's been in the show. Yeah.

So I would expect him to have McCauley Colkin, come on now, Johnny, those are two different things. I think he'll be back. I think he pops up again in the next episode. I can't imagine that she's very concerned. for his well-being. So it doesn't seem to me that she would have any qualms about killing him, maybe disposing of him. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just gone, but it's an unceremonious departure, if so. And of course, she has the explanation that he's been sent on a leadership exchange program

involved, in Vault 31, very convenient. But she is doing her plotting Betty in the other vault is getting increasingly desperate. And with the water running out, I mean, you can't flush the toilets. That's the last straw. Yeah. I can go for a while without shout. If I have to. But if I can't flush the toilet, then you're in a rough spot, especially if you're living underground in an enclosed space.

So she hands over Hank's briefcase, which Steph has requested. And she says, I'm holding you to the deal. We get the water. Steph says, you'll get your water. Betty says, whatever you're up to, I want. No part of it. I just want these people to live in peace. And Steph says, the deal was for the water, Betty.

I can't speak for the future. That's bigger than us. ominous. ominous words. not even ominous, I mean, very direct. Yeah. Like, they'll, you basically saying, you probably eventually get fucked over. Right.

And so you get the water, you better probably scrounge up something else of value to me that you can continuously barter and bargain with, or else if the opportunity to dominate you guys makes itself plain, I'll probably take it. It was very interesting. I always wonder about stuff like this, even at the end of the episode where there's a trade of the power armor

for the little cold fusion thing. Isn't that what that is? The little... Okay. So I always wonder, what if you don't trade it? Like, what if... Like, what if he gives him

the little canister and he goes, you can't have the armor? What are you going to do? So there's no one to enforce it. I mean, you guys will fight, but, like, what's the deal? Like, in that situation, how do you know you're going to get the water?

Like you should have asked for the water first to me. Yeah, I mean, Betty's clearly worried that she's not going to get the water. And I guess it's, yeah, it's the honor system, but there's no honor among thieves. So I don't know. I guess in video games, I mean, the whole fetch quest system is so dependent on getting the thing that you're trading the thing for. The whole system, the whole gameplay breaks down if you don't get the thing that you're trading for. So maybe that applies to the show as well. But what I'm thinking is not that she's not going to get the water,

but that be careful what you wish for because she might get the water, but there might be something in the water. Absolutely. There could be something in the water that ends up causing mass disease. They're too desperate to really be able to look into it the way that they should. There's just no reason that you should trust that character. And she's also giving you more reason to distrust her in that she said, you can't really trust me.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, she gets the briefcase. And so the question is, what's in the box? What's in the briefcase? You got to think that this is FEV related, that this is perhaps the forced evolutionary virus. And that if Steph were to put that in the water supply, she could just convert everyone instantly into a super mutant, which won't bother her. She doesn't think of them as human beings. She thinks of them as Americans and also maybe mutants.

So that's what I'm wondering. And, you know, they've backed Stefan to a corner here. They're onto her. What would be the reason that she would want them to all become super mutants, though? Well, there's clearly some larger plot at work here with Bud's Buds, and with Hank and what they're all plotting and FV as sort of just a remaking society and elevating humans. And so perhaps it's that.

It's just kind of wanting to establish herself as, as the alpha of a pack of super mutants or just get these folks out of her way. They mean nothing to her. So I'm assuming it's all part of the master plan, which we are also learning about in fits and starts in the norm timeline. But we do briefly get the not so happy couple here at the altar. And instead of forever holding his piece, Chet speaks now. And he has a lot to say.

And, you know, weddings never work out on this show. The series started with a wedding. Didn't go great. And it was kind of the downfall of the vault. It set all of this into motion. And things don't go according to Steph's plan here either as Chet finally musters some backbone and exposes her. And we see her flee for the second time in the episode, this time as a runaway bride. I love how as soon as Chet says he doesn't have Woody's glasses, Davy, who's officiating, is happy to proceed with the ceremony. It's just like, well, there's no proof. It's just, cold feet.

It's just your free wedding jitters. He comes out and says all that stuff. Accused your bride to be of murder. But, you know, you're just trying to, we'll just go. We'll just go ahead. Forget about that. But then the revelations come out. And, of course, you know, he builds up to it.

She's 200 years old. That gets a little gasp. But a much bigger gasp for she's Canadian. Very tough. Horrifying. Horrifying. For me, for me, definitely horrifying. You want to go ahead and give me your secret now?

I can't wait. This is the time. I haven't been living a lie all this time, but I don't know if you know this about me. So this is not a video podcast, so our listeners won't be able to see this. But I'm going to make a confession to you and hold something up to the camera. You ready? Here it is. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

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What the bin? What is the, what? Explain, what? It's true. How? I'm a secret Canadian. I'm holding up my Canadian passport. and my certificate of citizenship with little,

little Ben Lindbergh with that maple leaf. You are a subject of America's hat? What the fuck? What part of Canada? I never knew this. Here's the other, I'm a dual citizen. Oh, no. American and Canadian.

I go both ways. I cannot believe that this is an actual fact. No border can contain me. Where, where, what's, okay, what's the country of origin, though? I was born in the U.S., born in bread, but my dad is from Calgary. And so I am a Canadian citizen, as is my daughter. I've passed it down to her. What?

Yeah. It's true. Calgary stampede, flames? Yeah. Wait a minute. The stampede is in Calgary, right? Yeah, but more of a Vancouver, Canadian person. That's where I've spent most of my time in Canada.

Beautiful, lovely city, lovely area. cosmopolitan, West Coast Canadians and all that stuff over there. Mountains, skiing, salmon leaping in streams. It's a beautiful place. I cannot believe this. I can't believe this. You slandered me. You suggested that I was anti-Canadian.

Turns out I am a Canadian. I guess I could be a self-hating Canadian, but I'm not. You're one of the most Canadians. You love this. Extremely Canadian. I'm very proud. So I guess the question is, how did you feel when this episode made a mockery of your heritage? Yeah, I was torn.

I was torn about this. denigration of my Canadian half. I think it's all a little tongue in cheek. And in this world, look, these people are brainwashed in a way, not with an actual device stuck in their necks, but they have been fed propaganda and America in this timeline annexed Canada in order to wage war, to get to Alaska more easily and continue the fight. And so Canadians have been subjugated by us. and, you know, history repeating itself these days with our president desiring a big 51. So timely, topical, and I'm here to stand up for my people.

You should. I'm actually on the Canadian side in this, and this and this and only this because... Yeah, it's hard not to be. If we get to talk about other things, Beaver Tales, like Putin, you know, Justin Bieber, all of these things that have been forced that I've been taught, Tim Hortons,

Like we get to talking about all of these, Drake, there's been a lot of problematic shit coming out of Canada that you guys got to deal with lately. Yeah, yeah. I tell you, the one saving grace that you guys have, the one saving, two saving graves, graces. One, you ready for this? Yes.

One, maple syrup. It's great. It's very important. You can get it in Vermont, but the stuff across the border. It's not the same. You know why it's not the same because it's a little colder in Canada. The maple syrup needs a cold. I don't know if people know that.

I see. It's like, I'm not going to get the whole fucking water in New York to provide the perfect pizza and bagels.

You guys don't, I'm not giving you guys that much pot to why I tell you why the cold helps the maple syrup you guys have to do that on your own.

Go look it up. And then the second thing, obviously, socialized medicine. I'm a fan. Yeah. Okay. So,

you know, it's not perfect, but, you know, I tell you what, you twist your ankle, you go to the doctor, you're taking care of. So I'll give Canada

those, those two things, maybe Second City TV. But other than that, no. We got a lot going for us. We got a lot going for us. Yeah. No, no more. It's too cold.

Like, it's a lot of stuff going on up there. It's too cold until the world warms further. And then it'll be time for Canadian hegemony because global warming will play right into Canada's hands. We're just biding our time. I say we. I've lived in the U.S. my whole life. I'm more American than I am Canadian, except by citizenship where it's half and half,

and now you know that about me. Okay. You can come to me with All Matters, Canada in the future. If you need to consult a semi-authentic Canadian, I'm your guy. All right, we spend all this time with Steph, secret Canadian, not so secret anymore, which means we basically don't see Norm at all. We see Norm wake up and Ronnie and the other Vault 31 guys, the Buds Budds, are consulting the VaultTech Handbook, which they're pretty sure says that impersonating management

is punishable by death. Conveniently, they don't kill him, though. They let him lie around and just brain him again. He goes back to sleep and wakes up again. I was too hard on Claudia. I was suspicious of Claudia last week. I thought maybe there was more to her. She was too nice, too helpful.

I guess she's good, unless she's really doing a long con here. But, yeah, he's left unattended. long enough to get out a radio call, which as far as we know, no one hears, but maybe the message has picked up. Who knows? He calls Lucy. He calls Hank. He asks for help.

Also convenient, you know, that they let him escape. They let him live. But maybe they are not quite as cutthroat as Steph and they couldn't bring themselves to do it. Anyway, that's all we get. Yeah, they could have killed them anytime they wanted to. Yeah. That's all we get from Norm this week. See you next week, Norm.

Hopefully you'll be conscious again. Okay. So sticking with the McLean's, let's just. talk about Lucy and Hank here. So Lucy, despite being appalled from the jump at what her dad is doing, she's kind of coming around. Or is she... She's a little bit more like him than she thought that she was.

It is a little disconcerting how quickly Lucy starts to think maybe Hank has some good ideas. Right. And I know she's his dad's and there's history there and it's, they fall right back into their conversational rhythms and it's easy for her to be seduced by the ideas. but for someone with such a strict moral code, she lapses pretty quickly into considering whether maybe this makes sense.

I don't know that her moral code is as concrete as we think it is. And I'm really interested to see what happens in the next episode. She's essentially a child. And that is what the seclusion of the vault kind of makes you, makes you into a kid.

It arrests your development a little bit. And something that growing from a kid to an adult is about is about sort of litigating your parents' ethics, litigating the ethics of where you come from and what you were taught. The reason why kids are so politically active on the liberal side in college is because most of America is really conservative. So being that most of America is really conservative, or let me not say most of America, that's not quite true.

A large portion of America is really conservative. conservatives. And so when people are trying to become adults and throw off their parents, they go against what they've been taught and that pushes them to the left. They then become their parents, which probably pushes them a little bit more to the right. Generalization there. With her, what I'm interested in knowing now is if all of that's been sped up, if that's been sped up, if she's litigating the ethics of the world as she saw it, in a really fast way and then saying it kind of doesn't make any sense for the actual world that I'm living in now. So she thinks that, you know, what she was taught is who she really is, but she doesn't really know who she really is because she's never had to put it to the test.

We saw that when she was doing the stick up at the store. Absolutely. And she was asked, who are you? She doesn't know. And so now she's being hit with all of this information. And she says something when she talks about the fact that the Legion is different than the NCR, she's delving into what adults do, which is asking yourself questions about incremental goodness and incremental evil.

The lesser of two evils is what grounds your existence as a human being in this society. What does the least amount of harm? Not what's the most purely good. What does the least amount of harm? Because that's normally the choice that you have to make. And so watching her make it is kind of a subversion of her purity. But at the same time, it's her rounding into an adult three-dimensional character. Yeah.

We all go through that stage. You handcuff your dad to the stove. You know, it's just adolescent rebellion. That's the way these things are. And she says, well, I guess this is one way to save the world, but it's wrong. But she doesn't say it with conviction at first. It sounds like she's trying to talk herself into it being wrong. Hank explains a little bit more about the device.

He says it tidies things up a bit in the brain, cleans the memory of the horrors they've experienced. This dial controls how much amnesia they have, and the mainframe implants new ideas in their heads, turning these wastelanders into well-meaning good people. He also says that once the procedure has been finished, it's irreversible. And we learn that the mainframe that programs the boxes is in the basement.

Though maybe it's more of a brain frame. as we will learn later. So then, yes, we do get that wholesome scene, the golf cart lesson, the wholesome father-daughter driving moment. And, you know, this made me sad because here's another little bit of Lindbergh lore. I don't drive. I don't have a driver's license because I'm a lifelong New Yorker as well as being a lifelong quasi-Canadian.

And so I will never have this moment with my daughter where I get behind the wheel and show her the ropes. Maybe she'll show me someday. You don't know how to drive a car? No, I've always lived in the city. We walk everywhere. We got public transportation. I've just never needed to.

I'm living the arrested development in a vault. I've never needed to drive. And I got a learner's permit once when I spent the summers in California. And I was also perplexed by the not using both feet arrangement. It just seems more efficient. You got two feet. You got two pedals. I'm with you.

Lucy, I identify. very much with that. I understand it's a safety risk, but I unlearned what I learned after I got that learner's permit. And now I'm basically just waiting for the robot cars to take care of me. That's my only hope.

So wait a second. Let's say you come out to visit to do some ring or shit. We out here hanging out, blah, blah, blah. It all kicks off. Just like Fallout. Not quite that desperate. Not a T-1000 Terminator 2 situation.

but just a skirmish where we're society friends, you know, whatever. Yeah. We have to drive in shifts to get from, let's say, L.A. to what would be shift driving? Let's say L.A. to Seattle. Yeah. Well, I definitely can't drive a shift, but automatic, a shift of automatic driving. I think I can do it.

You think, oh, so we have to drive. So if we have to drive up there, so I'm going to drive, then Jomey going to drive, the LA are going to drive. We're all together. We got to get to the free zone of Seattle. Can you be trusted to drive a shift, a six-hour shift? Can I be trusted? Huh?

No. I can sit there and I could steer. And I played a lot of driving video games. I wouldn't say I'm good at them. And I did get that learner's permit. So, you know, some slight experience. I've forgotten all the traffic rules, but in this scenario, I probably don't need to know the traffic rules.

right? I don't need to know like, you know, merging who has right away what that sign means. I just, I can keep the car on the road. I can point it in the right direction. I think when, when you're all at the end of your rope and you're asleep and you need me to take the wheel, I think I can do that. I'm going to tell you something right now. Yeah. Ben, if you don't take the wheel, then that means you're on permanent shotgun duty. So that means you have to have your eyes peeled out the window or the car with the gauge or, with the long gun, looking for people

who are going to try to steal our gas. You might have to get out there and steal some gas. Like, you never know. So it's just interesting to know what your role is going to be if you happen to be out here

and we need to get to the free zone of Seattle. Can you drive? Yeah. Well, maybe horseback riding is in, right? It's like the Last of Us style. True. It's very true. So that may work for me.

Anyway, you're learning a lot about me in this episode. I don't know whether it's raised or lowered your opinion of me, but it's definitely changed it in some way. Okay. So they have this little driving moment. Hank says, really wish we'd had a normal life, Sugarbond. And she says, we did have one, dad. You wrecked it.

Now, I imagine he's thinking a pre-war normal life that she never could have had. But to her, vault life was normal. Vault life was happy. And he blew that up. And also Shady Sand's life, not that she remembers it, but that seems to have been happy too. He took that away from her. And quickly, she does turn on him. You know, she's curious about the ideology.

She's wavering. But ultimately, she does come down on the right side of things. You know, we go down to this secret mainframe vault door. What's behind it? We don't know. It's very stranger things. Season 5-esque, there's a big surprise reveal behind this door. She sees the former legionary who's mopping the floor and being polite instead of trying to kill her.

That gives her pause. We could stop them, Lucy, Hank says. It's just to join me and together we can rule the wasteland as father and daughter. But ultimately, she says no, she jumps off into Cloud City and she rejects his entreaties. Although, you know, she dutifully dons the yellow dress. She goes to dinner. And it's really not until she gets waited on by brainwashed Biff, aka Uncle Rico, aka Greg from White Lotus. Dan and I were joking about how we always think of Michael Emerson from Lost as Benjamin Linus, or Michael

Emerson is Benjamin Linus from Lost. I forgot that John Grice played Roger Linus on Lost, Ben's dad. So it's a fallout Linus family reunion. Anyway, remembering that Biff has lost his mind makes up Lucy's mind. And she realizes, this is wrong. We have enslaved these people. They are bringing us dinner. This is not good.

I can't live like this. and she decides to handcuff him. And turns out he doesn't like that very much. He actually doesn't like having his free will and agency removed. So the tables have turned and he's not happy about it. Yeah, she pulls a slick move on him. It felt like she was being glamored a little bit. And she might have, might have start to, I don't know, cozy on up to Hank's way of seeing things.

Yeah, it was that Return the Jedi throne room moment. You see, Hank looks leaning. I'm a Jedi. I like my father before me. I mean, like, it's funny. It's like, oh, you know, and the empire is like, you know, we can overthrow the emperor. He has seen this. Well, obviously not clear enough because that's what happened.

But anyway, this is so. You haven't foreseen it at all, palpi. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, always in motion is the future. I've seen it. It's like, well, I don't know.

I think there was some gaps. That scene is interesting because when Hank tries to reassert dominance over the situation. Just, we're done here. Thank you. He treats him like even more of a servant. Yeah. Which probably to me ends that scene in, you know what? I just can't fucking do it. I can't fucking do it. I see the choices. They're right there. Would things be better in my hands? It's a question that people always have to ask, you know, if those, if, would things be better? If I could choose winners and losers, if I could call balls and strikes, you know what, I still want everybody to be able to play their own game.

I got a chain dad to the goddamn stove. Run away and then, you know, we'll find a head in the goddamn room. This is one of those moments when they're talking about the factions. And Kamala Glockland's great in this episode because he has that really just friendly, nurturing dad energy, but then the mask slips and you see him for the fanatic that he is. But when he's saying, it's all the same, New California Republic, it's just like the Legion, they all have their problems, high taxes, expansionist tendencies on popular foreign policy. Trust me, you'll understand when you're older.

And Lucy is not here to be both sidesing the wasteland factions. He says, I think I do understand. One side is murdering people, enslaving them, crucifying them. And the other side is just vaguely problematic. And Hank, pretty problematic, too. This is another time when I wish, though, that the show had just done a little more to ground the audience in the differences among these factions and just to illustrate just because we spent a little time with them and with the Legion and with the NCR. It's just a shadow of its former self. And if you play

Fallout New Vegas, you get to know these groups much better. And, you know, if you feel like you're on board and up to speed with what these factions represent and everything, then maybe they did enough handholding. But I'm just trying to put myself in the place of someone who has only seen the show and has only briefly seen just kind of these caricatures of the Legion and the NCR, the remnants that are left. And is it entirely clear what the differences actually are and what they do represent and stand for? So that's something I've wondered about. But when Maximus strides into Freeside later, we do get that illustration of what the NCR at least meant to people at one point. Right. I think that the Legion haven't actually crucified her.

Right. And having her up there was supposed to be our introduction to just how crazy they are. But to your point, they almost looked silly. They looked dangerous on accident. Yeah, there was some comic relief in there. Right. Which is not what you want when you want to, like the empire in Andor looks deadly, organized, fascist group of.

organized killers that if you make one wrong move, if you talk too loudly in the wrong place, if you say the wrong thing to a stormtrooper, you are fucked for life you just never know. And the stormtrooper stereotype of they can't hit the broad side of a barn with a blaster, you don't want them to be too bumbling and bad at blasting because they are scarier when they could actually hit something or when they're torturing you or whatever it is.

So they're putting you in prison when you can't touch the ground and all that shit. So with that, I definitely agree. The NCR doesn't even really exist in the show like talking about. Yeah. So not in the present. Not in the present. I mean, like, in terms of for me, to you, I've never played a fallout the game before. So I don't really even know, like, we've been a part of it.

But I don't even really, when that line was delivered, I understand the line. but I'm not even so sure I know what's vaguely problematic. Like when you say vaguely problematic, do you mean like the fucking Democrats? Like what, like what? You know, like what, what, what, I'm not even so sure I got it. I understand. Oriented around the Legion, I get it. But like the NCR themselves, they seem like victims in this show almost.

Yeah, the show hasn't shown that, I don't think. So that's where I feel like a little more time and just a little more screen time. in real estate. I like this show. I wish it were longer. I wish there were more of it. And I think it might allow some things to breathe a bit better. And we do see briefly, Lucy, at the very end of the episode, which we will touch on in a second, but we can wrap up with Coop and Company in the present and in the past. We've got a lot of ghoul action here and a lot of coop action. Now, I'm into this quartet. When we were talking about who we would want to travel with in the wasteland, who's our crew, if we want to party up, you could do a

a lot worse, I think, than Maximus and Thaddeus. The ghoul, you've got to get to know him. But Maximus and Thaddeus and Dog Meat, for that matter, I would want to be sitting around a campfire with those two, just shooting the shit. I think that would be a good time. And so they're traveling in silence here. Thadius is trying to talk cool stuff with the cool, but the cool isn't having it. He's taking them to Lucky 38, Lucy 38. That's where she is. But they have to kid up to attack the death clause. and the ghoul pulls the gun on Maximus. He wants to know if Maximus is worthy, basically, to be the ring bearer, the diode bearer here. How do you have that? He asks about the cold fusion device.

And we know that he has seen this before. And he has had it himself. And he has been in Maximus's position a couple centuries earlier. It's always nice when the cross-cutting works like that. And Maximus, he says, this is for Lucy. She's a good person. She'll do the right thing with it. And that seems to satisfy the ghoul.

He even gives a glimmer of a smile. And maybe it brings back the memories of when he was idealistic or naive, maybe, thinking that he could give this to a good person and they'll do the right thing with it because clearly that didn't happen. And we'll see who he gives it to. But I like that little moment. You know, anytime when the characters connect and some of the themes resonate across plot lines just help to knit together all these sort of disparate threads in the series, that's good stuff. Now, do you think that he was pleased by that response because that meant that he knew he could get it from him? Maybe, maybe that. Yeah, also, right, that his heart's in the right place.

He would be willing to give it to somebody, meaning there's something that you can do to convince him to give it to you. That too, yes, it's transactional, as he says, right? So it is all kind of about that, which is the way Thaddeus thinks of it. just let's sell this to the highest bidder or trade it to someone, which is kind of what ends up happening. But maybe it is, means to an end, because he has left that old coop behind, or has he, we'll see. So he leads them to this NCR armory. They kid up, they get those gouse rifles, and they're on their way back to Vegas to take on the death clause. And yeah, the ghoul says, you want to give that thing to a good person so they can save the world. I understand.

And we know he understands, because he's been in that same position. but in order to save that good person, you're going to have to give it to a really bad person. Great line. Yeah. Yeah. And House, he rigged the game. Now they're rigging the game.

We're trying to with this NCR power armor. And Maximus does end up back where he started inside the armor. And this is my favorite moment in the episode. His slow motion roll into Freeside just because, you know, it's kind of a showing, not telling moment where we were just saying the show hasn't really told us very much. about the NCR, but this is a moment showing us what it meant to people and what its absence seems to mean. And the fact that Maximus is the physical embodiment of the NCR in this moment. And it's just, it's synthesizing his roots, his origins, because he's got the power armor

from his brotherhood background, the bare design from the NCR. This is like the two sides of Maximus that have kind of been in conflict, like the guy who wants to be good and wants to make the world better, but is just embroiled in the brotherhood. And here, he's put those two together, at least for this moment. This is like self-actualized Maximus in this moment. And he sees that little boy who looks at him the way he looked at the brotherhood who saved him after the destruction of shady sand. So this is, this is a meaningful moment. And as the ghoul says, never underestimate the power of brand recognition. What do you, for Maximus, his, he becomes, comes, he was enraptured by the armor.

Yeah. Like he is taken in by the armor, you know? It's like how everybody looked at the brief, what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. I know that it's consistent with his character and everything that he's been through. What do you feel like the intoxication is really about with him and that? Like the fulfillment of what he feels like his actual destiny is? I think so, because I think this is the way he,

He wants to make the world a better place. He wants to be a good guy. But the Brotherhood kept confining him and restricting him and forcing him to do things that were not so good. And he always felt like, you know, one thing after another is happening to me. I'm not actually making any decisions or choosing anything. And here maybe he feels like he is actually trying to dictate his destiny for once. And he sees that this is a relic of the NCR. He remembers the good people who helped raise him before Shady.

Sands exploded. And yeah, I think this is the way that he sees like the light at the end of the tunnel of his just moral arc of this season. How do I be good? How do I help people without committing all kinds of abuses along the way? Yeah. It was interesting to see the power armor in action. Yeah. I was fucking shit up.

It's, it's, so I like what they do with all the effects on the show, just with the death clause, with the power armor, because it's, it's pretty practical. and it's not super CGI. It looks lived in. I will say, like, when they actually get into it, you know, they had the power armor battle before with Kumal, before he met his end and the Securitron. And here, I actually felt the Death Claw fight, which I guess is still in progress,

a little bit of a letdown. Oh. I mean, I don't know what I was expecting. It's just a bunch of, it's a couple big beasts. taking swings at each other. But yeah, it wasn't what I had built it up to be in my mind. I thought it was going to be more. Was it interesting for you to see the ghoul show fear in his eyes?

Whenever the ghoul sees a death claw and is actually terrified, I like that, yes. That was so interesting to me to see him use his weapon, it not really worked, and then to see him go, shit, I'm fucked. And then actually be saved. It was like a little human moment for the ghoul at the end. It kind of, it then bleeds into him actually using the cold fusion to me. Mm-hmm. And, yeah, there is that moment where he seems to be screwed,

but then Maximus comes in, saves the day, just decapitates the death claw. I guess the death claws have become cannibalistic. Maybe it was just that that was a little too easy. Like having played fallout games, death claw, pretty intimidating opponent. And for them to go down like this, and granted, they get a pretty solid tail.

swipe in there and knock Maximus into Freeside. So as we leave him here, his fate is still undetermined. But I don't know. It wasn't among my favorite action climactic scenes in this series. So I was slightly disappointed by that. But it seems to have worked better for you. So they get into the casino. The ghoul heads up to the penhouse.

He installs the Cold Fusion house centuries after he wanted it. He finally gets his diode. It gets installed. and his mainframe, a different mainframe, boots up. And we get the image of House on the screen saying, well, hello, old chum. We can talk about the significance of that in a second. Just want to touch on Coop in the past, Coop and Barb. So we talked about how Steph is introduced and she's not banking on people to do the right thing to stave off the apocalypse.

She's going to save herself. And then a not very well-discized coop meets with Congress. woman Welch in a public place says, I know you're a good person and I know that you're trying to do the right thing. I want to believe in people like you that fight for all the right things, but you don't make it easy. And she says, or he says, why can't good people like you just learn to sell it better? And she says, I don't know, how's that worked out in your experience, which reminds me of the mutant asking Coop last week how working alone is working out for him. And, you know, he's the one selling stuff for the bad guys. He's the pitchman for Voltaic.

So I guess now he's trying to help her sell it better, but the presentation could be better. It's true. But so much of this show is about how to be a good person. Is there even such a thing as a good person? So this falls into line with that. Yeah. There's a little subtext there about whether or not it's important, whether or not there's more power in being good or appearing good. and doing the right thing is super duper important, right?

But being famous or being noteworthy or being able to have enough, how can I put this? An individual doing the right thing is incredibly important. But is it more important to be important enough, even if it's in an inauthentic way, to make people want to do the right thing? Isn't that more important? Even if you, a bad person that can influence people to do the right thing,

is that more important than just an individual doing the right thing? And it doesn't seem like it is, but the answer is it probably is. Like it probably is. And so all of the motivations that he has that are running against each other, the fate of the world, his family, his relationship with his wife, how he sees himself being a sort of average guy, not really average, but kind of average that knows way too much

and is weighing the future of humanity, the present, all of that stuff. What side should he be on? That's been a good evolution and journey to be on this season, and it kind of like comes to head maybe when they're sitting inside that limo at the end, you know? Yeah.

I'm suspicious of everyone in this show, I thought Claudia seemed too good to be true. I was wondering whether Congresswoman Welch, maybe it's a front for her too. Is she some sort of honeypot for do-gooders trying to coax the whistleblowers out into the open so that she can betray them or something? But no, I think she's actually good as far as we can tell and look what it gets her at the end of the episode. But he asks her, he tests her, what would you do with infinite energy? She says, give it away to the public. Sounds good.

and give the president the diode, and we can put it into 25 years of resource wars tonight. She ends up making the connection offers to introduce him to the president. Now, when they go to this meetup, Barb and Coupe, right, they seem to be good again. She says the only way to save our family is to save the world, right? They kiss and make up. They seem to be on the same team. Now, I know she came to his aid and his side when he was stealing the device.

the first place. But that's it. They're all good, I guess. Like, did they just go to relationship counseling between episodes or something? Because there were some things said in their conversation last week that's tough to take back. Yeah, definitely tough to take back. Like, you know, your wife is an agent of the apocalypse. It seems like that would be a big deal in your relationship. And then, you know, with everything to happen, I don't know. I do feel like her character is a Gosh underwritten. Just a little bit, right? Just a little bit underwritten.

I understand what the character represents and what the motivations for the character are, but she's kind of thingified a little bit in the show. Well, until very recently, she was not really written at all. Right. You know, we just didn't get to see her. And then we get her backstory. It's kind of like the Steph situation where we get one episode.

It's belated. It's overdue. We've seen this character forever. And now we finally do this dive into their past. but by necessity, it's kind of the abridged version of it all. And so, you know, how pro-Stef are you now, knowing that she came from difficult circumstances? Does that excuse and explain all of her subsequent behavior? She's just a survivor.

It's a cutthroat world. And we talked about that last week with Barb, too. Okay, has this humanized her? Do we understand? Would we do the same thing in her place? This was just another case where I was thrown a little bit by how they seemed to have patched things up quite quickly here. I mean, based on what we see, because we don't get to see if they have some subsequent conversation. It seems like they're on decent terms already. So good for those

two lovebirds, I guess. We'll see how that continues. But Coup gets in the car where the Congresswoman, and of all people, Clancy Brown is sitting playing the president. Not the first president he's played. He played LBJ in the Crown. And also not the first fallout connection for Clancy, because he voiced a Brotherhood of Steel character in the original fallout. So, yeah, so much like Ron Perlman, he's sort of a series veteran, goes all the way back to the beginning. Always happy to see Clancy. He says, thank you for doing the right thing, son.

But is he doing the right thing? He thinks he is. So this was another thing, you know, we can, I guess, infer that Clancy's in on it, right? That's the enclave. We know that the enclave is sort of built out. It's like the deep state. It's sort of, you know, people who are pulling the string. behind the American pre-war government.

They kind of form the enclave. And I would assume that the president here is in league with them, that he's in on all of this. And this is presumably how the enclave gets the device, which we saw at the very start of the series. And maybe this is how Kup moves up the apocalypse timeline, which House was puzzled by. Why is you coming to Vegas the thing that changes the date of the apocalypse? Well, maybe now we know because he's handing over infinite power to the bad. presumably. Would Coop, though, at this stage, be gullible enough to think that the president might not be in on all of this? And wouldn't Barb maybe know that all the shadowy figures

who are behind the scenes here, you know, is she still trying to like undercut Coop or is she naive too? Like, are they really believing that the powers that be? Because Coop is seen, you know, like the death clause being introduced in the battle by his own side, his own government, you'd think he might have some second thoughts of just handing it over. I kind of like the give it to the public. I don't know what that looks like in practice exactly, but how do you do it? Passing it to the president. I mean, I can't think of a situation like this where I would view the president as the

trustworthy guy. You know, I'm at Clancy Brown. We've seen him in too much, you know. That's true. So that's kind of like, I'm like, you're not going to give it to the fucking guy, the guard. He's about to hit you. He's about to fucking kill the cool guy for the Shaughey-Ridip. You're not going to give it to him.

He's going to do something bad. I know him. He plays the heavy all the time. And so, but in this situation, when I was watching it, I was like, man, what timeline is giving that to the U.S. government the right? thing to do. Like which time, I know that she is also, but like

one person that's kind of but like which timeline is sitting in there with the, even though you've done the right thing. It just seems fucking, that's not who you want to go with. Getting it to the public with, there would seem like there would be

some doctor, some revolutionary, some group, some something. But when you look at it, I think it was played. What about Moldaver slash Kate? I mean, we don't exactly know what her whole deal is, but she invented it, right?

She seems to have better motivations, maybe. I think that this scene is constructed this way. Purposely for us, though, for us to be hissing at the screen and going, man, why would you give it to that guy? Yes, right. So I think for us, we're sitting down. We know Clancy Brown.

He's, the scene is positioned in a way where Clancy Brown, is sitting next to the woman. He's feeling a lot of the frame. You know what I mean? No, who's sitting next to who? I think he's... The Congresswoman's sitting next to the president. Right.

He's taking up a lot of space. It looks as if he's asserting dominance. But if I would have gotten a limo, I'd have been like, nope. This doesn't feel like. Hey, man, y'all, hey, do let me out. Like, this doesn't feel right. Yeah, that's, yeah, we understand it and we know more than Kup does at this stage. Yeah, of course.

I'm disappointed in my man, like even based on what he knows and he might not know quite how deep the rabbit hole goes, but he should know enough to know that handing it over to the president probably not exactly keeping things safe. So questionable, questionable decision from our guy here for sure. And, you know, we kind of know, I guess the provenance of where the diode goes and what happens here is actually. the Congresswoman's sitting next to Coop in the car, and the president is across from them. That's what I did. So that's how I remember it. Because he's, the president is alone and he's filling up the frame as like an imposing figure.

They're together. So the scene is shot to make him look super powerful and imposing and thereby untrustworthy with this type of power. And assuming the Congresswoman is getting duped to, you feel for her. As well. It's part of the whole, you know, it's like power can be supportive. and the baddies can be persuasive and Hank's almost talking Lucy into doing something bad. And yeah, everyone is out to get something and you just got to watch yourself constantly. So we do at the very end of the episode, we get this nice little intercutting, which we don't get a ton of on this show just because a lot of the different jumping around from storyline to storyline and timeline to timeline, it doesn't always match up.

But I love a good just intercut, you know, speaking of Return of the Jedi, just when we got the throne room. and we got the space battle, and we got the sanctuary moon, and we're going from one to the other, and they're all sort of intersecting and taking place at the same time. We get a similar effect here where Koupp is handing over this device to the president, and Lucy is checking out the mainframe and seeing the congresswoman, who's not looking quite as good in the post-apocalyptic timeline. Yeah, and so we don't know exactly how this works,

whether they've been sort of training the devices based on her brain. There's a lot of stuff. What the fuck is happening? Yeah, it's a good question. There's a lot of stuff in the fallout lore about like robo brains, as we saw Bud Askins, right? And, you know, bio brains and just like, you sort of, it's like, again, Star Wars, like the, the Bomar monks at Jabba's Palace, you know, just the brain suspended in the solution. But that kind of turning a brain into an AI, basically.

So I don't know whether she's still conscious in some way or whether they're just kind of using her processing power to power all these devices and override the individual free wills of everything. We talked about the pluribus tie-ins last week, hard to ignore here also. And maybe this is like the final indignity. This is the way to stick it to this do-gooder congresswoman, right? Because assuming she is pure of heart and intention, this is just the ultimate to enlist her against her will. in furthering Hank's scheme at controlling everyone. So you've got to feel for her. It's a tough, tough look for our gal.

Yeah, if she has any degree of consciousness and she's in there, she can't stop them from doing what they're doing to her. Her eyes looked totally dead. Her face was like pale. The shocking kind of scary scene. Yeah, yeah. So we also get house being rejuvenated, resurrected in some form, and we don't know exactly what form that is.

is this purely computer consciousness house. Very well, maybe there's been a lot of debate and discussion about what this means for the lore of Fallout New Vegas, because you can choose several different endings in Fallout New Vegas, and it affects, you know, in most of them, house dies, but there's an ending. The house always wins ending where House survives. And so people have been thinking, oh, does this canonize the house always wins ending? But we just don't know enough to say. We don't know whether he is still alive in physical corporeal form. We now don't know. It even calls him to question the story of the game where, you know, he's this desiccated husk of a corpse of a guy.

But now we don't know whether that was the actual house or it was the body double all along. So house is still a mystery. But we were wondering if and when, more when than if he would show up in the present and what form he still exists in. And maybe he's been hibernating for a while. but House is back and at least as a disembodied voice on a screen and an image on a screen. So, you know, we have yet another relic of the pre-war world here surviving on in some unnatural form, whether it's getting gulified or being a head attached to the gizmo that House was wearing to connect to his mainframe or your maybe just a computer consciousness or something.

You do whatever it takes, I guess, to survive. Isn't this clearly like an Arnhem Zola situation? Isn't it clearly like a project insight needs insight? Like, isn't this clearly a situation where his consciousness is somehow sentient to a degree inside of this machine? He, the Dror L, Arnhem Zola type of deal. Isn't this clearly the deal? Yeah, I would think so. I assume that we'll find out next week in the finale and all will be revealed, or at least some will be revealed.

But yeah, he's still around. And there's just a lot that we still don't know, even with all these revelations. Like, how does Kup go from the guy we know, the star of the Vault Tech ad campaign and stage and screen, or at least screen, to the guy who's down on his luck and out of work and working kids' birthday parties as a cowboy? does that flow directly from what happened here, right? So he hands over the diode to the president. If the president's part of the enclave, then they know where his loyalties lie. And maybe he gets blacklisted, right? He can't work in Hollywood anymore.

He has to do kids' birthday parties because they know he's a pinko, you know. He's not sympathetic to the cause anymore. So he gets drummed out of the red carpet world. I guess that's what's about to happen to him here. And so now he's jaded. He's cynical. He knows what happens when you try to be good and when you try to do something for a good person

or find another good person and put that power in their hands. It backfires. He's seen it all over the course of centuries. Cost him everything in his life before the bombs. And after it seems as if he's searching for a way to put all of that back together, to find, to make all this.

this entire journey that's been across hundreds of years where he's tried to be good and then perfected being bad, I think the meaning of the entire thing is kind of what his family or the search for what was happening. That's what it means to him. Like he's still putting together this mystery about how you're supposed to exist in the world. And I think as much as it is about largest,

society and all of that stuff is also very singular and very human, very directly about him. Yeah. All right. Well, we end in this elegant way with the handoffs, the titular handoffs, the two different mainframes, the disembodied heads, the congresswoman has gone the way of Wilzig last season. And now we will see how it all ties together and all pays off in the finale. And one last thought, Thadius meant to mention this, but maybe part of the reason. why the ghoul doesn't want to talk about ghoul stuff with Thaddeus, apart from not being a very talkative guy until you get to know him. It seems clear, Thaddeus, not a ghoul, actually. He's not the kind of ghoul that the ghoul is because he's falling apart and evolving in some

interesting ways. So there are some theories out there. Maybe he is morphing into a mutant. Maybe it was the F.E.V that the snake oil salesman injected him with, not just radiation. Maybe he's morphing into a centaur, which is another. beast from the fallout lore, which is another product of FEV infection. And that can get pretty gnarly anatomically speaking, which seems to be the transformation that is happening here to our guy. So I'm a little bit worried about him. You know, it's tough to go from human to ghoul, but then to go from thinking you're a ghoul to not knowing what you are. Arms fallen off, can't count on your limbs, no way to snipe. Some comic relief. But I'm worried about our boy. I like

that is. Now, in the centaur world here, is there room for his personality to say the same, or does he become overcome by centaurness and get like primal in some sort of way? I see what you mean. Yeah, it would be a shame if we lost his essential thadiousness. Yeah, his deal. Is he going to lose that? Because that would be something that actually could be emotionally pretty hard hitting if that were to happen in the next episode. That's true. Yeah, I hope, I hope not. You know, It varies. Like with all the products of FEV and the mutants and everything, even the death clause, some of them are intelligent and sentient and others are more just kind of the primal beasts.

So we'll see which way he goes. But it would be a shame to spoil the performance of Johnny Pemberton or lose the levity that he brings to the production. So I hope he keeps his wits about him, if not his arms. And we'll find out next week. Same time. You'll be back. Buttonmesh. be back. We'll bring it back home together. Yeah, for sure. I'm back. I'm really interested to see

the way this season finishes up. I can't wait until next week. All right. Well, what a journey it's been. We covered a lot of ground, a bunch of biographical revelations. I confessed my Canadianness. Not not confessed. I proudly proclaimed my Canadianness. I'm not secretly 200 years old, but plenty of plot twist this week in fallout and butt and mash both. And once the podcast's been finished, it's irreversible. Actually, that's not true. Podcasts. You can just back up and listen again, feel free. And while we wait for the finale and for our noses to fall off, we will give you plenty of other podcasts to enjoy. But MASH will be back tomorrow, back-to-back Nash as we play some MASH or Pass with several new releases, Highguard, Cairn, Mio, return to Cairn, Mio, return to Cairn.

We're going to get into all of it. January. It's supposed to be slow, but not actually super slow in the video game world. And then Ringaverse Recommends will return on Saturday, followed by the Midnight Boys, Piu, on Monday. their reaction to Night of the Seven Kingdoms, episode three. And then ButtMash and both of us will be back next Thursday for the grand finale of Fallout Season 2. In the meantime, you can contact us at RingiverseGaming at gmail.com. There's a flood coming.

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