You know what they say: if you’re in a vault and you’re not running an experiment, are the experiment. That’s the lesson I think Lucy MacLean should learn from her crazy adventures in the mysterious Vault 4, which come to a surprising conclusion in this, another charmingly unpleasant episode of Fall.
It’s an episode that Lucy starts off in a bad place. Held captive by Overseer Benjamin, leader of the Vault’s native inhabitants, and Birdie, leader of the Shady Sands refugees, Lucy discovers the terrible truth. The residents of this Vault were subjected to horrible experiments by their all-powerful scientific overlords, until the resulting specimens rebelled and escaped. (Gulpers are just one of the many species of abominations that I assume arise from these experiments.) All the one-eyed, two-nosed, three-eared people walking around are her descendants, and along with the surface dwellers, they’re doing things their own way.
Luckily for Lucy, this means they just let her leave with a two-week supply of food instead of executing her. (Maximus receives the message a little late and mistreats everyone). In exchange for this kindness, Lucy insists that Maximus abandon his armor, remove the stolen fusion core, and return it to the Vault’s inhabitants. It’s what her father would want, she insists.
But here’s the thing about it, Lucy. Forget any other hint we’ve had that the name MacLean is special and that Vault 31 comprises some sort of ruling caste. When Benjamin and Birdie ask what experiment was performed in Lucy’s Vault and she insists there was none, the pause that follows says it all, as does the characteristic of Lucy that Birdie later decides to criticize: “Your ignorance.” Lucy doesn’t believe there is an experiment going on in Vault 33, because Vault 33 it’s the experimentand Vault 31 is doing the experiments.
It seems we’re also about to find out how and why. Mirroring his sister’s search on the surface, Norm MacLean continues searching for the truth deep down. He is deeply skeptical of Supervisor Betty and Vault 32’s recovery plan, even more so when she announces to the Vault’s acting supervisor: You guessed it, Steph, former resident of Vault 31.
Using the farewell ceremony as cover, he rushes into Betty’s office and opens communications with Vault 31. An eerie, embarrassing pause follows in which the screen is dominated by the blinking, expectant cursor; then he (sorry, “Betty”) is immediately summoned to the 31st. When he gets there, what he sees surprises him… but not us, as he is held back as a cliffhanger for the final episode. That seems fine to me!
Back on the surface, Maximus’ enemy Thaddeus briefly befriends an eccentric radio operator played by Fred Armisen, whose mild-mannered exterior is belied by his penchant for brutally murdering anyone who objects to his annoying programming with explosive traps. (Given the way many people feel about Armisen’s ubiquity, this casting seems like a very conscious choice.) They use their transmitter to radio the Brotherhood for help.
Then Maximus and Lucy show up and things go to shit. At the beginning of the episode, Thaddeus enlisted the services of that snake oil salesman from a few episodes ago to repair his hilariously repulsive foot injury. The treatment works instantly, which of course means it turned him into an early stage demon. Surviving one of the radio guy’s booby traps with barely a scratch confirms this.
Maximus makes a couple of notable decisions at this point. First, he allows Thaddeus to flee, trying to give him as much time as possible to escape the Brotherhood’s lethal treatment of ghouls. (“Nice to meet you!” Thaddeus calls to Lucy as she runs away from her; about two minutes earlier he had emptied an entire magazine in her direction.)
Second, he grabs the severed head of one of the radio guy’s victims, smashes her face beyond recognition, and tells Lucy that he will give this ring to the Brotherhood, so she can escape with the real head and free his father from Moldavia. They kiss.
Severed heads also kiss. Is Fallafter all.
There is a final plot thread, set in the past. After her first encounter with the Moldaver from the past (I think he calls himself Williams), he takes a listening device that she asks him to use to help spy on her wife. Because? Because Vault-Tec bought the secret of cold fusion from Williams/Moldaver (“a millionaire communist,” Cooper says; “I’m not a communist, Mr. Howard; that’s just a dirty word they use to describe people who don’t). are). crazy,” he says later), but now he’s sitting on it to keep up with the destabilizing demand for energy. With Coop’s help, his group can prove it.
It’s the dog that does it in the end. Coop finally throws the bug in the trash, but when he thinks better of it, he continues to get angry at the thought of it. someone He decided that dogs are not allowed in the Vault without consulting him.
In the distant future, it is the reunion with that dog from Wilzig, abandoned by Tadeo, that reminds him of the moment; the Ghoul has to tell the dog out loud that he’s not the dog Coop once loved, I suspect just to shake off the sentiment. It’s the first hint we’ve had that there’s still something human inside the Ghoul. It doesn’t make him any less bad, but it does make him more interesting, and the prospect of the season finale revealing how he fell from grace is more tantalizing.
Oh, Erik Estrada is in the episode too.
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.
