Fallout TV Show - Vault-Talk Ep 6

In this engaging episode of Vault-Talk, Ray, Andrew, Wil, Jessica-Star, and special guest Clint recap and discuss episode 6 of the Fallout TV series, 'The Trap.'

Join us as we talk through Maximus and Lucy's encounters in Vault 4, unravel the vault's customs and dark experiments on Level 12. Cooper's pre-war disillusionment with Vault Tec is growing and begins to entwine with politics and power struggles. Finally the discovery that there's more to Moldaver, The Flame Mother, reveals some pretty disturbing connections.

Unpack the characters, lore, and connections to the greater Fallout universe with us!
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01:01 Episode 6 Summary: The Trap
02:16 Production Details and Filming
04:42 Storyline Analysis: Time Jumps and Missing Factions
07:33 Vault 4 Advertisement Breakdown
16:50 Cooper Howard's Hollywood Life
34:49 Maximus and Lucy in Vault 4
37:42 Quarantine Room Reflections
39:02 Awkward Small Talk and THAT line
42:14 Test Subjects Revelation
42:52 Meeting the Vault 4 Residents
47:57 Cooper's Disillusionment
55:03 Vault Rules and Tensions
01:05:30 Maximus' Temptation
01:09:55 The Good Life in the Vault
01:13:20 History Class and The Fall of Shady Sands
01:23:22 Cooper's Encounter with Sorrel
01:31:58 The Flame Mother Revelation
01:38:22 Lucy's Discovery in the Lab
01:44:04 Closing Thoughts and Credits

Transcript

A few pulled quotes for the transcript!

Hello and welcome back to Vault Talk, the show where we recap and discuss each episode of the Fallout TV show on Amazon Prime. This week we'll be discussing Episode 6. Fallout feed listeners will recognize Clint as a listener and occasional co host from Australia.

So, this episode is called The Trap. Let me read down the summary real quick of what we'll be talking about. Then we're gonna dive into the details, get into what happens.  Last episode had a ton of mystery. But this one we get a new mystery, yet still in a vault.

Lucy and Maximus are greeted by Birdie, a Shady Sand Survivor, and Ben, the Vault 4 Overseer. They explain that Vault 4 has opened itself to the surface, taking in many refugees from Shady Sands and the surrounding area. While Maximus slowly acclimates to the vault, Lucy is horrified over the refugees eccentric rituals and worship of Moldaver as the Flame Mother.

Howard wakes up to find an armed posse has arrested him for past crime. He scalds for time to regain strength and then easily overpowers and kills them. Back at the vault, convinced that Vault 4 is hiding something, Lucy ventures to the Forbidden Level 12. She uncovers human experiments before getting caught. Back before the war Cooper becomes conflicted over the secrecy of Barb's association with Vault Tec. He's invited to a covert meeting to discuss the conspiracy going on behind Vault Tec, hosted by none other than a younger Moldaver. 

We haven't really seen that kind of making of with any filming from set, which chances are they probably didn’t do much of that since a lot of this was wrapped in secrecy.

It was directed by Frederick E. O. Toy and written Carrie Dornetto.

In this time, when you think about the vaults, you think about people rushing, to get to the vaults and be safe in the case of Total nuclear annihilation and nuclear destruction.

A woman comes up to the window and starts talking and her name is Birdie.

And we find out that she's kind of the second in command here. And she's saying that she wants to make sure that they feel comfortable  that it can take a little period of adjustment. And that's when Lucy mentions that she was from a vault too. She's just so happy to be back here and  that  it's so different on the surface.

And Birdie mentions she was born on the surface. So Lucy immediately, a little embarrassed, walks it back, but she's surprised. And they say, , they have a policy of accepting people from the surface.  But she does mention that she came from Shady Sands. And actually there's a, there's an interesting line here too because she mentions that she was from Shady Sands and a lot of survivors after that was blown up. She and her mother had gone to Philly. She was a courier. Her mother was a courier. So she was with her mother  on a courier run to Philly.  That's why they weren't there when it blew up. And she says, three days walk from Shady Sands and we could still feel the heat from the blast. That gives us a little, another thing about scale there. Philly is about three days walk from where Shady Sands is, with where we were kind of placing it around Greater LA we felt like it was probably only 15 to 20 miles, which that could be three days walk in rough terrain.

Normally, if you figure 10 miles a day is perfectly reasonable. And then that would be more like two days walk. So it seems a little further than I would have guessed, but it makes sense, especially if she was a child. 

I get it. You haven't had this before, but there's something going on here.

People survived it, lost family. So that's horrifying.

Barb pulls out a Pip Boy and Cooper looks a little bit unhappy.

Lucy very much wanted to know about the history since the war. She was asking Maximus about it last episode, like what happened in the last 200 years. 

Well, it makes sense. I mean, it's a huge blind spot for her.

Right. What has happened the last 200 years. She's only been alive for 21 or 22 of them, but this is a whole time period she doesn't know anything about, so it's all in the chalkboard, she sees these are people from Shady Sands, as she's learned, and they're teaching about the local history in the area, and it shows 2142, Shady Sands was founded, as we know, before the first game.

2189 the NCR was formed. 2198 Shady Sands becomes the capital of NCR and was just actually referred to as NCR a lot after that. In the second game, I think it's just called NCR and not Shady Sands a lot of the time. In 2241 the NCR becomes the largest economic and political power in California. So, kind of makes you wonder, who was before that?

The Khans, the ADA, we know the Legion wasn't there yet, Brotherhood. I mean, maybe it was just a mix. They're saying there was no dominant power at that point. As we see now around Philly, they become the  largest political power. And 2277. the fall of Shady Sand and then arrow over, boom, mushroom cloud, nuclear explosion.

And so this is where, she kind of learns about this whole progression, about the arc here, but not as much as we'd want to know. And as we know, this whole thing caused some consternation because people looking at it, 2277, if that's when Shady Sands was blown up and exploded, that makes no sense.

With New Vegas in 2281, that's since been clarified, like we talked about.  And I think you said the key thing there is  when you said arrow over from the 2277, right? At some time after the fall of Shady Sands, there was a big nuclear explosion. But you wonder, okay, wait, but if Shady Sands destroyed, how would it have fallen before that?

I do think when they were creating that board they wanted it to be indeterminate. I think they were kind of in a way trying to respect the lore by not putting a specific date on it. But it backfired.  

I think it's a good thing that we're finally getting answers and look forward to the rest of the season.

As we've talked about, we know a lot of vaults do have 500 capacity, but because the mailbox numbers and all that thing as he's walking down, the mailboxes, like, there are 428, 429, and things like that, and I guess, Those aren't necessarily all resident, it's probably they have just different numbers for like whatever sort of science building or whatever also.

Any thoughts on this episode? I know we covered a lot. It's been a little bit long. So it was a lot. We went a long time, but you know what? I felt like this was a very sort of a dialogue heavy episode, not as much like action scenes. And there was a little bit of gunfighting, like with the ghoul and stuff, killing the deputies, but it wasn't a lot.

They were giving us a lot of information about.  Pre war vaults the  Commies, Cooper, Howard, stinking going into that.  Really learning sort of maybe the shadiness of Vault Tec. This really kind of plays into it because so far, while we got the mystery happening with what's going on with 32, 33, 31, we're not at the bottom of it all yet.

We don't know what the experiment was there, if anything, just that there's something odd going on, but here we get classic Vault Tec, where it does appear that the Vault Dwellers are experimenting on people. We'll learn next episode, there's more to the story, but yeah, I thought this was a really good one.

Very dark. 

And also, you know, if you look at it from the perspective of not, being familiar with the game series and not being familiar with Vault Tec, they're kind of introducing that idea that, we already know, all the different experiments that Vault Tec ran.

But this is  the first we've really seen of it in the show, the TV show viewing audiences, first glimpse into it, we got to get their little mind spinning there too, because with the way it's framed with Cooper actually introducing us to Vault 4 at the beginning, you learn a lot about Vault Tec, people behind it.

Some of the distrust of the company, like, and why would they distrust them? I mean, obviously, Lucy trusts them implicitly. Everybody does. They're Vault Tec, nothing more American than that. And then, here, you're pulling back the layers of the onion. You're seeing there's way, way more to it.

We also, you're right, you mentioned there's a lot to talk about, Will, because we got the whole J. D. Sands thing, like, in our face. Like, people watching this, they have all that Shady Sands stuff that they might be upset about. No, but still tons of questions regardless. They got the whole Moldaver thing.

Why is she called the Flame Mother? Why does people seem to almost worship her, saying that they'll be their salvation? What is she doing? How is she alive 200 years later?  

Why would they worship a raider? And yeah, how is she alive 200 years later? Yeah. So this whole thing, like there's so many questions from this episode. It was the whole thing really  is all set around both for the trap, . set up that way to trap anyone who goes looking for medical assistance.  Yeah. Comes one of their experiments, that was the idea. The whole test subject thing, it set right up for us.

And Moldaver, her legend really grew through this   up until now, we just knew that she ran a gang of raiders. She wanted something important. And people respected and feared her as we learn that people really respect and fear her. even though, because in that 1st or 2nd episode  remember, they did show that sort of mercy when she left, like, letting the people involved 33, like, run away, or live.

They killed several people, but she didn't kill all of them. 

She gave the survivors a chance. 

Right.  Also Maximus, in this episode, the whole Maxy relationship, like, it started last episode of it, and they got more comfortable with each other, but this time, finally, like the first time they actually really had peace and quiet--until it wasn't. You got to see that relationship blossom a bit and how they're really getting along well.