Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but it’s beginning to feel a little like Fallout has gone off the boil. While the last two episodes has played with the video game trope of side missions distracting the characters from what we thought was the main thrust of the plot (deliver severed head to save kidnapped dad), we’re now onto our third consecutive installment where something else crops up to complicate matters in the form of a whole other Vault that brings the adventures of Lucy and Maximus to a skidding halt. On top of that, this latest episode chooses to also delve into the tragic backstory of Cooper Howard’s Ghoul, which, while is admittedly intriguing, also means that all three characters are technically standing in place for the entire runtime.
But can a show that started with so much freakish energy, manage to focus on making such weaponized inaction fun? Hopefully they’ll cue up a trusty thumbs up…
After falling into the clutches of a trap, both Lucy and Maxumus awake to find themselves in Vault 4, a Vault-Tech installation that runs things a little differently to how Vault 33 used to do things. At first, Vault-Dweller-from-birth Lucy is ecstatic to find herself back in the warm bossom of boring, predictable Vault life, but on closer inspection, she starts to worry about the differences. Firstly, Vault 4 frequently takes in survivors from the remains of nuked surface city, Shady Sands, who are regularly allowed to exercise their own religions, even though it often unnerves the “actual” Vault Dwellers. Secondly, Lucy is also unnerved by the mutation that’s occurred in some of the residents that is possibly from a couple of generations of in-breeding, but while Vault 4’s Overseer, Ben, has the rather distinguishing feature of being a cyclops, he seems willing to let Lucy and Maximus stay.
While Maximus is initially wary of this place and Plans to steal a power coil in order to get his mech-suit working again, he’s soon seduced by free slippers and servings of popcorn and caviar; but while Maximus’ guard comes way down, Lucy’s only increases when she watches the Shady Sands survivors enact a bizarre ritual that involves rampant nudity and apparent blood drinking. However, while you’d think all the disrobing and blood would be the upsetting thing, the mistcalarming aspect of the ritual is that they all seem to be worshiping Moldaver, to woman who kidnapped Lucy’s dad in the first place!
Meanwhile, back on the surface, the Ghoul is taken to task over some of his past crimes, but as he is run through a ramshackle legal system, we take frequent looks back at the events that shaped his life and his connections to Vault-Tec that occured over 200 years ago.
With Fallout’s sixth offering, we disappointingly find Ella Purnell’s Lucy essentially running on the spot for a whole third episode in a row after seeing her previously distracted by being used as bait for a giant salamander and trying to cross a bridge peacefully with some duplicitous cannibals. Yes, the last couple of installments have given her lots to do – fighting a medical robot with the voice of Matt Berry, for one – and yes, it all plays into the concept of her good nature repeatedly being repeatedly lambasted by the harsh existence of living on the surface – but couldn’t they have stayed a little more on-mission with some of this stuff? Of course, I could just being wildly impatient about all this as everything may end up being utterly connected, but as it stands, I just feel that maybe the show might benefit from going back to its original mission statement rather than dropping a whole new scenario of the week on us in an attempt to expand this messed up world. Further adding to my point is the fact that the ongoing mystery concerning the conspiracy that Norm is uncovering back in Vault 33 doesn’t even warrant a mention at all and you’d think that the show would want to maintain momentum of such an important plot thread rather than focusing on Maximus’ growing love for fish eggs.
Anyway, now that I’ve gotten all that out of my system, The Trap does manage to create a larger picture of just how big this conspiracy is, not just because surface dwellers are worshiping Moldaver in Vault 4, but because of the expansive flashbacks we get for Walton Goggins’ Ghoul which take us back to when he was all nosed up and still alive. In case you’d forgotten, Cooper Howard was a noticable movie star who has previously fought in some unnamed war against the Reds in this future that riffs heavily from the 1950s, but due to the rising fear of communism, it seems that a far more lucrative form of work for actors is to go into advertising. After agreeing to be the face of Vault-Tec on behest of his wife who works for their advertising arm, we find that a lot of Howard’s peers are shunning him and the reason for that is that there’s a big fear that the corporation may be affecting global peace talks in order to keep orders for pricey slots in their vaults open.
This, obviously is quite unsettling, and while Howard’s wife doesn’t exactly deny it, shecseems to hint that they need to do all they can to get residency at one of the “better” vaults, even if it means giving up some personal freedoms to do it.
One thing Fallout has consistently done well – aside from giving us a memorably eccentric glimpse at a dystopian hell – is when it envokes the clipped, bizarrely positive nature of the 50s and 60s as all the tropes of the McCarthy era bubble under the surface and even though the “present” stuff gives us a more obvious sense of something being amiss with weird rituals and human experiments being conducted on level 12, the sheer foreboding that comes from the fact that Howard may be entangled with a corporation that not only owns everything, but very well may be willing to fuck everything up in order to turn a profit is far creepier.
As it stands, the flashbacks, along with the revelation that Moldaver was somehow alive 200 years ago and is leading an anti-Vault-Tec movement within the Hollywood elite, prevent this episode into becoming too much of another “side track” episode. However, what with the matter of a missing head, the Brotherhood of Steel waiting in the wings, a highly intelligent dog roaming the wasteland and numerous conspiracies involving at least four different Vaults, maybe it’s time that Fallout started to show some of its hand before it collapses under the weight of its multiple plots.
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