Without having played any of the games, I can’t tell you what elements of Fall are taken directly from the original material and which are not. That said, some educated guesses can be made. For example, when Maximus recklessly reveals his identity to his “squire” Thaddeus, Thaddeus easily incapacitates him by removing something from the back of his armor, instantly turning it off. Why would someone design battle armor so easy to weaken from the outside? Because every powerful enemy in a video game has a big, stupid weakness. Better to trust nonsense than to pretend it has no bearing on the story you’ve chosen to adapt.
In any case, Maximus is saved from slow suffocation by Lucy, who arrives and teams up with him to locate Wilzig’s missing head, now in Thaddeus’ possession. Maybe you both can use it to get what you want. Meanwhile, his team is a real wake-up call. Maximus, who, by the way, is still posing as the knight Titus, discovers that there are people in some of the Vaults after all, not the monsters he suspected.
But Lucy is the one who really has her eyes open. It’s not just that she gets a taste of the surface’s kill-or-be-killed spirit when she and Maximus encounter a pair of cannibalistic “demons.” The vault dweller and would-be knight also arrive at Shady Sands, the once-thriving surface community and capital of an entire republic where Maximus lived until it was destroyed by a nuclear bomb when he was a child. Lucy suddenly realizes that the Vaults are superfluous. People have already claimed the surface and rebuilt civilization, only for it to fall again.
The Vaults are like Ayn Rand’s Galt’s Gulch, the place where all the self-proclaimed productive members of society retreat to show the rest of the rogues how bad things will get without them… except here, when they emerge from Gulch, discovering that things have moved on without them. After all, they are not the center of the universe.
Said that, some The vault dwellers really do seem to be self-proclaimed masters of the universe. Continuing to delve into the mystery of Vault 32, Lucy’s brother Norm discovers that every single Overseer of Vaults 32 and 33 during the Vaults’ 200-year history originally came from Vault 31. This includes both his father Hank as his newly chosen one. Replacement, Betty.
Although Chet is also predisposed to be suspicious, he is reluctant to take Norm’s warnings at face value. For one, his new partner Steph is also from Vault 31 and is also extremely creepy. On the other hand, she says, everyone prefers jello pies to apple pie; It’s just one of those things, right? To be honest, Chet, you’re making me start wondering what they put in food.
Betty has the makings of a really fun heel. The credit goes almost entirely to the wonderful Leslie Uggams, who plays Betty with the demeanor of a college librarian and the eyes of a serial killer in predator mode. It’s an interesting contrast to the more outward, Type-A playfulness that actress Annabel O’Hagan brings to Steph, Betty’s companion from Vault 31; she’s like you made a whole character out of that scene where Betty Draper has a gun. Dave Register and Moisés Arias are equally well cast as Chet and Norm, a perfect pairing of Mutt and Jeff who are fun just to watch together.
Things end for the gang on a sinister note. Betty announces a plan to repopulate Vault 32, which has been completely cleaned out to hide any evidence of the murder-suicide outbreak that actually ended it, or the secrets that caused it. Meanwhile, searching for power-ups (excuse me, first aid kits), Lucy and Maximus fall through a trapdoor and end up in a vault. They should be safe there, right?
Getting back to video games, I mentioned in a previous review that each episode of Fall It feels like reaching a new level, unlocking a new area, or launching a new side quest. Maybe this is what adapting video games is like: translating their iterative structure into episodic storytelling in the old television tradition, with cliffhangers to keep things going. You know what show did this really well, even though a TV generation that followed seemed determined to learn all the wrong lessons they could from it? Lost. It’s not a bad place to be.
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York TimesandAnywhere that has it, In fact. He and his family live on Long Island.
