Fallout Episode Six | Review

14/04/2024

Fallout Episode Six begins with Galaxy News, brought to you by Vault-Tec! It’s the promo vid we saw from one of the early trailers for the show. Walton Goggins Hoop is here to sell you on buying into a Vault. This is number 4 to be exact, one led by scientists. If you know anything about Fallout then this is a scary proposition with how Vault-tec treated their customers, and we are off.

We meet the Hawthornes, who will lead Vault 4 into the future. One governed by science first and foremost. As the ad shoot ends we get some Coop backstory and meet one evil corporate mf’er. He loves the idea of using “time as the ultimate weapon” to “win”. Bud is his name and he loves the idea of management leading the future. We cut to later that evening and there’s a wrap party for the ad shoot back at Coop and Barb’s home. We meet their dog Roosevelt, who’s a cutie patooty.

After a little schmoozing, we meet Coop’s friend Sebastian, played by the one and only Matt Berry! They go over their deals selling their likenesses and voices to various companies. Coop got millions, and Sebastien got a few hundred thousand to voice Robco’s robots. A jump cut brings us back to Ghoulgins 200+ years later as “The Government” is pissed at their drug stash warehouse/body chop-shop has been blown to smithereens and they knock The Ghoul out.

Fallout Episode Six | Review

Lucy and Max are being patched up and taken care of in what we find out is Vault 4. Everyone is incredibly kind to them as they decontaminate in a room for a little while. During that time Lucy asks Max if he’d like to have sex, which he doesn’t seem to understand. He thinks it’s dangerous when your “c*ck explodes” after it’s rubbed too much. Lucy explains that no, you want that to happen every time. He turns her down though because he’s an idiot.

Once quarantine is up Max and Lucy are allowed in, and those in charge let them know they found Max’s armor and are bringing it to the Vault for them as well. They’re greeted by Vault 4’s overseer, who is a cyclops. Slowly they realize everyone in Vault 4 looks like some sort of weird experiment, which if you don’t’ know the greater Fallout lore, makes total sense. My favorite is the guy with a nose in the middle of his forehead.

We catch back up with Ghoulgins as he continues reminiscing about his past life as Cooper Howard. Coop and Barb are hanging out in their hot tub. Coop wants to retire but Barb’s having none of it, her focus is on getting her family a spot in a vault. Charlie, a friend of Coop’s meets with him at a bar and tries to convince him that Vault-tec is “the f*cking devil”. They’re having “commie meetings” about what these corporations are doing. We get some back and forth about “fiduciary responsibilities” and how Vault-tec owns most of the country and the US government is broke, conspiracy time!?!

Coop and Barb have a discussion about the Vaults when Coop gets pissed at the fact that “no dogs allowed” is a rule. Coop wants his freedom, America baby! Barb is full on corpo though, defending Vault-tec however she can. Full on gaslighting here for poor Coop. She does a wonderful job of making him feel terrible for daring to question her precious Vault-tec by pretty flatly stating “bombs will drop, we need to not be out there if they do”. He ends up apologizing to her, and while I do buy that she cares for her family I do not trust her as a Vault-tec executive.

Back in Vault 4 Lucy the Cyclopsoverseer have a friendly discussion about Vault life. Turns out the Overseer is Vault-born and doesn’t really like all the surface refugees they’ve taken in, but he feels a responsibility after what happened at Shady Sands (a huge bomb blew it up). When they were brought in Lucy and Max were told never to go to Level 12, and the Overseer does a spit-take when she asks him why they can’t go there. He big mad, and she gets a quick dismissal from his office.

Max is admiring the Power Suit the Vault dwellers rescued for him, though it’s useless without a fusion core. Our shitty idiot decides to go steal the core powering Vault 4 but relents when they offer him a nice comfy room with snacks and TV, and most importantly a hot shower. A hilarious montage of Max showering, eating, drinking, and relaxing in a fluffy robe shows our boy is sold on Vault life.

Fallout Episode Six | Review

Lucy is weary of Vault 4, though. Finding a classroom we see a timeline of events.

2142: Shady Sands Founded
2189: New California Republic Created
2198: Shady Shands Becomes Capital of New Republic
2241: NCR Becomes the Largest Economic and Political Power in California
2277: The Fall of Shady Sands (Blown up by a Nuke)

Then one of my favorite moments happens. Lucy walks over to a flagpole and pulls up the New California Republic flag as the full-on BGS Fallout theme music hits. It’s straight out of the game and I got the biggest, dumbest grin imaginable on my face when it played. From this point on in the show, the theme becomes more of a thing and I couldn’t love it more. Vault 4 is having a “surface dweller tradition”, and they invite Lucy along.

Ghoulgins and the Government lead are friendly. They have a history together, the Ghoul and Sorrel. Ghoulgins uses a needle and thread to sew the finger he cut off of Lucy onto his own stump. Ghoulgins brings up the name Muldaver, and Sorrel calls her “The Flame Mother”. This “government” wants to “step up and bring some order here”. Ghoulgins goes along with their thought that he was the one who destroyed the Super Duper Mart (it was Lucy!). They decide to kill Ghoulgins to show that the Government can’t be messed with and fail terribly as he immediately kills Sorrel’s lackeys. There is a bounty picture up on the board of Muldaver and Ghoulgins recognizes the face, dun dun dunnnnnn.

Vault 4’s residents are now taking off their pip boys and gathering around some sort of altar. Lucy is intrigued until everyone starts taking all of their clothes off. We cut back and forth between the weird nude but not orgy fun times back to Coop visiting the “commie meeting” 200+ years earlier. The future sees lots of boobs as everyone prays to the Flame Mother chanting “Flame Mother we remember, bring back the past as we remember, we bring back shady sands as we remember, we bring back those taken from us by covering ourselves in their ashes” and so on and so forth and it’s all extremely cult-like. As Lucy sees the portrait they’re praying to we are shown Coop meeting the leader of the “commie group”, it’s Muldaver! She’s also the face in the portrait for Lucy, so either she found the key to immortality or kept herself alive in cryo for a very long time.

Fallout Episode Six | Review

Lucy finds Max, who is living it up in his Vault apartment. He asks if she’d like to “make my c*ck explode” again but she’s freaked the f’ out by what she just saw. Lucy tries to convince him that they need to go but he’s too comfy, so we’re heading up to level 12. Lucy goes alone and starts scoping the area out. She sees one of the giant creatures that attacked her at the lake and finds a video of a horrific experiment where a woman gives birth to fish who then start eating her. Further in the vault, she finds said women in cryo alongside multiple other experiments. The guy with a nose on his forehead comes up to check on the cryotubes and eventually spots Lucy. She throws acid in his face while trying to escape but is grabbed by other Vault 4 dwellers and we cut to black, the end!

Wrapping Things Up

A bit of a side-quest feeling episode here, though still highly enjoyable. Vault 4 had a ton of fun in it, with real weird behavior, and got a more interesting backstory for Cooper and Barbara Howard. Only two more episodes left and we’re about to find out who Muldaver is and why she took Hank McLane. I am, as Borat would say, very excite.

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