‘Fallout’ Episode 5 Recap: Under New Management (2024)

Without having played any of the games, I can’t tell you what elements of Fallout are taken directly from the source material and what aren’t. That said, one can make some educated guesses. For instance, when Maximus unwisely reveals his identity to his “squire” Thaddeus, Thaddeus easily incapacitates him by removing some doohickey from the back of his armor, shutting it down instantly. Why would anyone design battle armor that easy to nerf from the outside? Because every powerful enemy in a video game has one big stupid weakness. Better to lean into the goofiness than pretend it has no bearing on the story you’ve chosen to adapt.

At any rate, Maximus is saved from slow smothering by Lucy, who comes along and teams up with him to track down Wilzig’s missing head, now in Thaddeus’s possession. Maybe they can both use it to get what they want. In the interim, their team-up is a real wake-up call. Maximus — who, by the way, is still pretending to be knight Titus — learns there are people in some of the Vaults after all, not the monsters he suspected.

But Lucy’s the one who really has her eyes opened. It’s not just that she gets a taste of the kill-or-be-killed ethos of the surface when she and Maximus encounter a pair of cannibalistic “fiends.” The Vault-dweller and the would-be knight also reach 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 kid. Suddenly Lucy realizes that the Vaults are superfluous. People have already reclaimed the surface and rebuilt civilization, only for it to fall all over again.

The Vaults are like Ayn Rand’s Galt’s Gulch, the place to which all the self-proclaimed productive members of society retreat to show the rest of the pinko moochers how bad things will get without them…except here, when they emerge from the Gulch, they find things have moved on without them. They aren’t the center of the universe after all.

That said, some Vault-dwellers really do appear to be self-appointed masters of the universe. Continuing to dig into the mystery of Vault 32, Lucy’s brother Norm discovers that every single Overseer in both Vaults 32 and 33 for the entire 200-year history of the Vaults originally came from Vault 31. This includes both his father Hank and his newly elected replacement, Betty.

Though Chet is predisposed to be suspicious too, he’s reluctant to take Norm’s warnings at face value. For one thing, his newfound mate Steph is from Vault 31 too, and she’s extremely creepy about it to boot. For another, he says, everyone prefers jello cakes to apple pie — it’s just one of those things, right? To be honest, Chet, you’re making me start to wonder what they’re putting in the food.

Betty has the makings of a really fun heel. The credit goes almost entirely to the terrific Leslie Uggams, who plays Betty with the demeanor of a university librarian and the eyes of a serial killer in predator mode. It’s an interesting contrast to the more outwardly Type A chipperness that actor Annabel O’Hagan gives Betty’s fellow Vault 31 ringer Steph; she’s like if 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 Mutt and Jeff pairing who are funny just to look at together.

Things end for the gang on an ominous note. Betty announces a plan to repopulate Vault 32, which has been completely cleaned up to hide any evidence of the murder-suicide outbreak that truly brought it to an end, or the secrets that sparked it. Meanwhile, on the hunt for power-ups — excuse me, first aid kits — Lucy and Maximus fall through a trap door and wind up in a Vault. They ought to be safe there, right?

Coming back to video games, I mentioned in a previous review that each episode of Fallout feels like reaching a new level, or unlocking a new area, or launching a new side quest. This, perhaps, is how to adapt video games: Translate 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 generation of television that followed seemed determined to learn every wrong lesson they could from it instead? Lost. Not a bad place to be.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York Times, andanyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.