‘Fallout’ Episode 7 Recap: Two Heads Are Better Than One

You know what they say: If you’re in a Vault, and you’re not conducting an experiment, you’re the experiment. That’s the lesson I think Lucy MacLean ought to take from her madcap adventures in the mysterious Vault 4, which come to a surprising conclusion in this, yet another charmingly nasty episode of Fallout. 

It’s an episode Lucy begins in a bad place. Held captive by Overseer Benjamin, leader of the native Vault-dwellers, and Birdie, leader of the Shady Sands refugees, Lucy learns the awful truth. The residents of this Vault were subjected to horrific experiments by their all-powerful scientist overlords, until the resulting specimens rebelled and escaped. (The Gulpers are just one of what I assume are many species of abomination stemming from these experiments.) All the one-eyed, two-nosed, three-eared people walking around are their descendants, and together with the surface-dwellers, they’re doing things their own way. 

Fortunately for Lucy, this means they simply let her leave with a two-week supply of food rather than executing her. (Maximus gets the message a little late and roughs everyone up.) In exchange for this kindness, Lucy insists that Maximus abandon his armor, remove the stolen fusion core, and return it to the Vault-dwellers. It’s what her dad would want, she insists. 

Here’s the thing about that, though, Lucy. Forget every other hint we’ve had that the MacLean name is special and that Vault 31 comprises some kind of ruling caste. When Benjamin and Birdie ask what experiment went on in Lucy’s Vault and she insists there wasn’t one, the pause that follows speaks volumes, as does the characteristic of Lucy’s that Birdie then chooses to critique: “Your ignorance.” Lucy doesn’t think there’s an experiment going on in Vault 33, because Vault 33 is the experiment, and Vault 31 is doing the experimenting.

Seems like we’re about to find out how and why, too. Mirroring his sister’s quest on the surface, Norm MacLean continues to hunt for the truth down below. He’s deeply skeptical of Overseer Betty and the Vault 32 reclamation plan, even more so when she announces the Vault’s Interim Overseer: You guessed it, former Vault 31 resident Steph. 

Using the farewell ceremony for cover, he hustles into Betty’s office and opens communications with Vault 31. An eerie pregnant pause in which the screen is dominated by the blinking, expectant cursor follows; then he — sorry, “Betty” — is summoned to 31 immediately. When he gets there, what he sees shocks him…but not us, since it’s being withheld as a cliffhanger for the final episode. Fair enough!

Back on the surface, Maximus’s frenemy 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 booby traps. (Given the way many people feel about Armisen’s ubiquity, this casting seems like a very conscious choice.) They use his transmitter to radio for help from the Brotherhood.

Then Maximus and Lucy show up and things kind of go to shit. Earlier in the episode, Thaddeus hired the services of that chicken-fucking snake oil salesman from a few episodes back to repair his hilariously repulsive foot injury. The treatment works instantly, which of course means that it’s turned him into an early-stage ghoul. Surviving one of the radio guy’s booby traps with barely a scratch confirms it.

Maximus makes a couple of remarkable decisions at this point. First he allows Thaddeus to flee, trying to give him as much time as he can so he’ll escape the Brotherhood’s lethal treatment of ghouls. (“Nice meeting you!” Thaddeus calls to Lucy as he scampers off; about two minutes earlier he emptied a full clip in her direction.)

Second, he grabs the severed head of one of the radio guy’s victims, smashes its face until it’s unrecognizable, and tells Lucy he’ll give this ringer to the Brotherhood instead, so that she can escape with the real head and free her father from Moldaver. They kiss. 

The severed heads kiss too. It’s Fallout, after all.

There’s one last plot thread, set in the past. After his first meeting with the Moldaver of the past (I think she’s going by Williams), he takes a listening device she’s asking him to use to help spy on his wife. Why? Because Vault-Tec bought the secret of cold fusion from Williams/Moldaver (“a millionaire Communist,” Cooper sniffs; “I’m not a Communist, Mr. Howard — that’s just a dirty word they use to describe people who aren’t insane,” she says later), but is now sitting on it in order to keep up the destabilizing demand for energy. With Coop’s help, her group can prove it. 

It’s the dog that does it in the end. Coop eventually tosses the bug in the trash, but when he has second thoughts, his continued anger at the idea that somebody decided there are no dogs allowed in the Vault without consulting him sticks in his craw. 

Far in the future, it’s reuniting with that dog of Wilzig’s, abandoned by Thaddeus, that reminds him of the moment; the Ghoul has to tell the dog he isn’t the dog Coop once loved out loud, I suspect just to shake the feeling. It’s the first indication we’ve had that there’s still something human inside the Ghoul. It doesn’t make him any less mean, but it does make him more interesting — and the prospect that the season finale will reveal how he fell from grace more enticing.

Oh, Erik Estrada is in the episode too. 

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