We stopped listening.

Instead, stream the uncut version of this discussion by either or both tipping us on Kofi or joining a membership on either Kofi or Patreon via the links in the description we.

Were calling it before you kept saying it wrong.

You know it was her.

She said it was Kafka's gun.

I'm pretty sure I remember you both.

It wasn't me well because I just followed her a lead.

But you did say it wrong.

I did.

Of course I did.

Because she it's her fault.

How can you blame Bridget when she's not here to defend herself?

Easy.

How?

Dare you did.

How dare you?

You're.

All like let's.

Just do zoom.

And you're like, no.

Right, I was and.

Then at one point I had to just shut everything off.

I had to turn the TV.

Off the lights off.

Everything because he needed to record in the living room.

And I'm like, what is?

What happening it's?

Freaky Friday?

I don't know.

And then he like kept setting it up.

He kept setting his moving his camera and like recording different bits.

He's like, can you go in the bathroom and drop something in the tub?

And I'm like.

What?

Like nothing happened.

I'm like a lot happened.

It just wasn't a mystery, right?

Didn't feel like Stranger Things because it's wrapping up.

It's finishing all the mysteries for.

You it's not so strange anymore.

Giving you all the answers you've been waiting for.

It's just called.

Thing people weren't happy with that.

Yeah, fifth season's just things.

We are squawking dead, a podcast pulverizing programs beyond The Walking Dead universe.

Sometimes we give you news.

Sometimes we make you laugh.

Most times we go deep.

I'm your host, David Cameo, and I'm joined by.

Me Cosmo 109.

And me Karina at a Karina art.

And also me Rob at Rob stuff and things on YouTube and TikTok.

And HDP is what Rachel's drinking, according to Jason, who's in the audience as well.

I'm Jason.

And we're here to talk to you about Fallout's third episode of its second season, titled The Profligate.

Head to squathinghead.com and check that website out, but particularly hit the menu in the top left and maybe choose shop merch and maybe even check out what we have on offer for you to peruse and see if there might be something that you might like.

And for members, if you happen to have joined any membership on either our Kofi or Patreon pages, grab your 20% off discount through the end of January, which I hope this episode comes out before the end of the month so you could take advantage of that.

And I guess that's probably the second bit of housekeeping is that I had dropped a little notice that, sorry, we're recording this episode before the second episode has even been released, which I hate so much.

But good news, I finished the edit on that.

That will go out as soon as we're done here, or at least be scheduled.

You don't know because this is getting cut out for you.

This will be for the members who get to stream this episode early in advanced, uncut, and really messy.

Aren't you privileged to have this the?

Lucky ones.

Exactly, and some of you are lucky enough to actually heed the call and be here in the studio, Jason and he who also uses 20% off discount a couple days ago to buy that newer Walking Dead, Daryl Dixon, the book of Carol Sham Lemon Ding Dong T-shirt.

The embroidered one too, by the way.

So that was a clutch move Jason, very clutch.

So he got a steep discount off of that because it's it's pretty expensive.

The embroidered ones.

Jason has a good taste, put it that way.

Again, you can get your discount from our Kofi and Patreon pages to our merch store.

Our new merch store, T Public always has some sort of discount.

If you just head over there, you can get to both shops from our websites.

When you choose shop merch, there's a sub menu and then well, off you go.

Let's move on to this episode, which is called the Profligate, which was mentioned in the last episode because I was editing it, I remembered.

I'm very curious to know how does the Profligate relate to what we just saw?

Well, that's what Macaulay Culkin called Lucy.

So did the girl in the last episode.

I'm looking up the definition again.

A waste of space basically, or resources.

I looked it up as I was watching and I'm like, David's going to ask.

What this means and I need?

Tell me, OK.

Specifically wasteful of resources.

Not just like a waste of space type of person, but someone who is wasteful.

A drain?

Yes, Karina.

Do they call all women that?

They call anyone who's not part of the Legion.

That.

So yeah, I think she's a slave woman, somebody who that they captured and turned into a proper slave in last episode.

She mentioned before she wouldn't want Lucy to get attacked by the wrong people.

Basically anyone.

Well, I don't like to say it.

It's, it's awkward and it is a subject that happens in the game as well.

There's some side quests revolving around getting justice for that type of thing.

I was gonna ask.

You, that's why, yeah.

Yeah, nothing where you participate in it, but like getting justice for someone who.

Experienced question answered.

Yeah, I think that anyone who has been kind of indoctrinated by the Legion, it's going to start referring to anyone who's not part of that group as a profligate.

Because if you're not supporting and boosting up the Legion, then what are you good for as far as they're concerned?

I see, I see.

I have a little bit more of a clear idea of how it relates to the title now.

There's a conversation between Xander and Maximus that leads me to believe he feels like what's happening in this chapter of the Brotherhood is sort of wasteful.

He makes a comment about the clerics and how there's like so many of them, and he was like shocked by that.

I don't know why we haven't seen really where he's from or what it looks like.

He said.

They're there, but they don't wield the kind of power that they do here.

Well, back in the Commonwealth, you mean.

Correct.

To me it was kind of like he was implying that.

They're just a waste of resources.

Yeah, that their power is wasted.

Nicely done.

So I was thinking sort of the same thing, but I didn't know that everybody else besides the Legion was a profligate.

But honestly, this could be a hot take.

My wife is an educator, so let me just preface with that.

She doesn't say this cover her, but I'm saying this.

When I was a kid, you had a principal and you had another assistant principal and that was it.

Or which is what we call a vice principal.

That doesn't exist anymore.

It's the principle and the assistant principle for this department.

That department, that department, assistant Dean principle, plus of another subject.

Hmm.

Maybe in New York.

There's so many more admins in schools today than there ever was when I was a kid, period.

And so when I was thinking of the clerics and watching them walk around, because then you start to notice them, they're walking around looking at the Knights putting up the power armor in the little rack that Karina told us about near the Red Rocket.

And it was like, wait, I hope there are a billion of these guys just walking around being old in their little robes, telling people what to do.

And I was like, oh, that's like the assistant principals and how there's so many and they get paid a lot.

What a waste of resources I am.

HO come at me, bro.

They say education is broken.

Why don't you take some of those salaries and give them to the actual teachers?

Now I'm a hero again.

I'm a good looking Xander Harkness slash Camille Nanjiani which I just saw his comedy special on Hulu should do that as a return to stand up.

I'm going to speak up from my area anyway and say that most of the schools that I visit don't have an assistant principal anymore.

Oh, really?

Mostly at the elementary level, there is no assistant.

Principal.

OK, she teaches high school, so that's where it gets tricky.

Sure, sure.

At high schools, yes.

I see more assistant principals at the high school level.

So did you see what Xander saw when it came to the Elder Cleric Thing peoples?

And that maybe he had a point, Rachel.

I don't know if he had a point yet.

I don't think I personally know enough about any of these particular factions to have an idea of who's right and who's wrong and what's working and what's not working.

I don't have the knowledge to say if it's right or wrong or a good use of resources or not.

I really don't know if Xander has a point, or if he's even telling the truth for that matter, because I think he was more or less trying to get on Max's good side to get what he wanted out of.

It it doesn't matter, basically.

Yeah, maybe they also had the same amount of clerics, but he's just trying to puff his chest being like, it's guys like us that are in charge, not all these old people telling us what to do.

Going to be buddy buddy.

So I would say your analogy to excessive admins is probably accurate for the type of setup that the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel is is dealing with, because Elder is supposed to be one of the highest ranks and clerics.

Yeah, I may be misremembering, but I'm pretty sure this clerics are there for the spiritual aspect of it because they have.

The 1 chapter was like I told you, I don't go in for all that faith stuff.

Different chapters are going to have different levels of that.

So obviously Mojave is putting a lot of importance on that spiritual aspect of it, whereas the Commonwealth mostly get their orders directly from Maxon, which he mentioned.

Elder Max, right?

The yeah, Grand Elder.

It was like the first brotherhood.

Yeah, yeah, he's supposedly the leader of the Commonwealth from and I remember playing the game, the guy looks pretty young in in the the Brotherhood of Steel.

You meet him on the pride win and he looked the same age as your player character, like maybe mid 30s, possibly early 40s.

So to have found the Brotherhood of Steel seems a little weird.

I don't know if it's a different maxim.

Maybe he's a Gary.

Is he a Gary?

He's a clone.

Yeah, well, he's the secret sense, Rob.

Gets it.

Or yeah, maybe.

By the way, that's where I started off on the edit today.

It was like, oh, wait, right.

The episode ends with Harkness getting a hammer.

Hammer Time Maximus.

It's actually a super sledge.

It's a super sledge.

Super sledge.

It's got a super sledge to the head.

And so it could be true that Xander is a synth that would be kind of funny if Camille was still on the show, because as of now, you're like, oh, that was short lived.

Can we see more of that?

Beautiful, beautiful man, right, Rachel?

I mean, when you get a big guest star, you kind of assume that's where that's gonna go.

Yeah, especially for Fallout.

Sure.

Yeah, he's gone now too.

Probably.

Yeah, maybe the Civil War.

I don't know, I feel like out of the two, I'm more inclined to think we'll see McAuley again over Camille.

Because we didn't see him die, whereas we saw McCall ran.

Away or survived powered and.

Yeah, you would think that that battle ensuing in the Legion camp is going to come out with a victor one way or the other.

Possibly.

I don't know whoever or maybe mutual annihilation possibly which good for the Mojave.

Worst, and good for the last bit of the NCR that's hanging out with the tests are out there as well.

I was actually surprised by the twist because I was taking notes about how the ghouls decision makes sense from a gameplay standpoint to go with the side that's stronger.

Because from what I remember playing through the game, the Legion is always the harder fight, so siding with them for the purpose of self preservation makes a lot of sense for the type of character that he's playing.

And then he up and surprised me and did something that Lucy, or maybe more like Max would do.

Because Lucy is such a straight edge, like I'm going to do the right thing from the get go.

I don't think that she would have thought to double cross people like that, but the ghoul did it in such a way that got him what he wanted and protected the allies that he had in the NCR from before and also helped kind of the right side because the NCR does fight.

Right side rights, there's no good.

Guys, in my opinion, right?

In my opinion, the NCR is one of the better groups that you could sign with because what she states is we're fighting for rights for people like you because a lot of people in the Fallout universe don't believe that ghoul are humans or deserving of rights.

They treat them badly.

We have obviously Fatias working a bunch of children in a sweatshop type of situation, so they're fighting for stuff like that to not happen.

So I think that's probably worth siding with.

So I was happy that the goal making laborers.

Were siding with Excuse me, I'm kidding.

Again.

Again.

Hey, most kids their age would be dead by now so.

That's the saying.

That's very.

True.

Say it with me.

Those kids are those kids.

Would be dead by this age.

They all say that.

It's so great.

Yeah.

He does seem like somewhat warm and endearing to them.

Yes, he's for sure running a sweatshop, but like, absolutely.

But he's also really.

Nice.

No name called.

Their situation might be a lot worse under someone else and it's our entire.

Whole percent.

I feel like he's giving them a sense of purpose.

He does talk about working them 25 hours straight, but like.

He was like, you know, 12 hours in.

There's still 10 more to go.

A.

Whole day, like a literal 24 hours.

Yeah, so maybe not the best, but he does seem at least to care about them.

And he even got in front of a Gatling gun to protect that from getting easy.

Yeah, that's.

And.

He didn't at first, though if you remember, it took a whole.

No, yeah, he was.

Much of time before he came out.

He was hiding under the thing for a while.

Doesn't that mirror Maximus?

Shortly after that?

Maximus also took a little longer than it was comfortable to not takedown Zander.

He was trying to get him to stop, but.

Yeah, I think he was reluctant to do anything like that because of what the elder told him is that if he dies, you're going to start a war.

So, like, I could, I could see weighing the consequences of intervening in this situation, which was objectively the right thing to do, but we'll have larger consequences.

That has nothing to do with what happened in this incident.

So I can see the hesitation and the reason why.

Also, you can remember Max's our neutral character, so he's the one who's trying to do good but sometimes does the wrong thing for his own benefit or realizes things are much harder than he thought they were going to be, so he takes the easier route.

So he's going to waver a little bit.

Right.

He like signals virtue, but then in the end kind of goes behind people's back.

It's like.

I mean, a little bit.

I think he's getting better at choosing the right side.

He's getting more confident in himself, I think.

He started off this episode by saying why don't we just kill him?

Alexander because he was resigned to his fate as well.

This is how it's going to be then, yeah, it's like a very the stranger about it, how existential one just resigns himself to their role.

I really couldn't tell if he meant that in the moment though.

I feel like he was almost testing the old guy, like, well let's just kill him.

What do you think?

Isn't that what we do?

Don't we just kill people now?

Should I should?

Typical sword response.

The other old guys are kind of just nodding until the sword.

Whatever.

No I agree because he definitely was getting these very strange mixed signals where like he's getting all this fanfare and people think he's so great because he's Night Maximus who like took down the NCR.

He's also getting forced into these fights to the death in like a stupid pissing magic, you know, where we're going to basically end up having to murder each other over what?

Nothing.

He doesn't want to have anything to do with that.

And so now he's like, we kill each other all the time.

We're thinking about plotting a civil war.

I agree with Rachel.

Like, I think he was probably just testing him to kind of see like, how far are we going to take this?

Well, and then also just earlier in the last episode, Yosemite goes, we don't take arms against the brother, we don't do violence against another when again, we saw this in the first season, they're beating the S out of Maximus in the start.

Right.

Yeah, he's been in his bucket all the time.

That's their version of hazing.

Again, the whole nothing is perfect and everything is very flawed.

I mean, you can put all your heart and soul into the brotherhood of steel like Max does.

And he's starting to see the cracks.

He's starting to see them more clearly than he did when he was like at the bottom of the totem pole.

Now that he's worked his way up a little bit through chance or effort or whatever the case, he's starting to see the things that he doesn't like about the Brotherhood.

Why I was so confused about The Profligate, by the way, as the title.

And maybe it's where you land after you see all these different mirrorings and parallels between the different characters across time too.

Because as they're celebrating Charlie White Knife, he's being commended for saving the life of.

I'm guessing we can clear this up later of Cooper Howard.

Yeah, OK.

In the narrative, he said he looked up and he saw Cooper Howard, who was apparently already a famous actor at that point, recognizable enough.

A fellow actor, if we remember right.

Oh, a fellow actor?

Oh, that's right.

Yeah.

Because he was doing to his savior.

Yeah, that's something we could probably get into in a little bit.

But the whole point being, we hope that the things that we do matter, that they mean something.

We go to war and we hope to win.

Why do we hope to win?

So we can protect our people.

But then you find out, obviously, it's the Fallout universe.

Well, maybe we're sent to make sure that this corporation's test works.

They just wanted to test power armor.

And it could just have been that because he did mention how flawed the I don't know if it was the servos or.

It's where the plate connects at the base of the chest plate.

Well, he mentioned Charlie word.

Specifically about the 45 power armor.

I was thinking of what Cooper said in the season one finale where he was talking about the chest plate had there's a gap or something that the welding has a flaw.

He said it was hard to walk in, so maybe it goes to the joke they made in the first season about the COD piece or whatever that piece was where the balls are anyway.

OK, But that's kind of what I wanted to get to is OK.

It could have been just a test of power armor, OK, we need an enemy enemy to test it on.

Or it could be the government.

It just makes this person look good for their next election, etcetera, all that other stuff.

And you hope it's not that and you believe in your heart as a Marine that what you're doing matters.

Maximus hopes that it's the same thing, even if I have to do bad things to do good, maybe in the sum total of all the things I'm doing.

He's a very practical thinker.

I hope that in the calculus there's more good things that I'm doing, the incremental good right, that we talked about in the last episode.

I hope that in the end it washes out to today was a better day than yesterday.

I left it better than I found it, that sort of thing.

And again, it's also about the Legion and Lucy even, and Norm probably too, like, well, well, I'm saddled with all this.

Let's see if we can make lemonade out of these frozen lemons they're dethawing right now.

It's such a greater narrative, but it really goes to the greater meaning of fallout.

I have to say this, this season at least, I'm noticing A trend how they dropped all the episodes in last season.

But you still can watch this season at the end of the run and binge it because at the end of the last episode, it really stuck in my craw about how what, what is all this about?

And how civilization is the thing that needs improving according to Hank.

Or doesn't the ghoul in this episode says people die because they deserve to die?

And that maybe this whole thing that we were trying to run, this whole thing in the past, civilization deserved to die, essentially, it deserved to fall, right?

That's a good point.

I didn't think of that particularly when he said that.

I was definitely thinking of it in more of a a less big picture kind of way.

I.

Think that's we're slowly learning about this Fallout universe is that it was too rotten.

They didn't deserve the life that they had with what they had to do to maintain it pre war and then in the post war.

They're trying to explain, well, they're just trying to bring it back again.

Billions of people backed into a corner all with their little ideas of how to the not Robert House or maybe it is Robert House, we don't know.

Says it's a Cooper in the bathroom.

They say they have the answers and then went back into a corner.

They do something else like the Brotherhood or like the Legion.

I don't know what their principles are, but still like, what a fascinating episode.

And again, the two episodes back-to-back, if you just kind of watch them one right after the other, the golden rules, the call.

And then this episode was kind of the response like, well, oh, we're going to fix civilization, but why does it need fixing?

Yeah, because it sucks this episode.

Because.

It sucks.

What a pre war or post war?

Yeah, that's Fallout for you.

Was that he's just running a money harvesting workshops.

They're just taking caps off of bottles.

Yeah, I think it was mostly that, but I did want to point out that sunset Sarsaparilla specifically, which is what they were on capping only is in New Vegas.

There's a quest tied to star bottle caps.

So it's sort of like a prize thing that they were running like pre war.

So if you collect fifty of those star bottle caps, you can turn them in at a specific location and get like a special gun or, you know, a prize or something like that.

So my first thought was, oh, he's searching for the star bottle caps, but that's a very game thing.

More than likely he's just harvesting the caps, because caps are caps, you know?

Caps are currency.

It would be cool if they did make a mention of star bottle caps because harvesting in that quantity you're obviously going to find quite a few of them.

Right.

And apparently in the game you get to not only get that weapon, I didn't read about that, but you get to learn the origin of the sunset Sarsaparilla company, that sort of thing.

You get to watch a video of it, like, oh, how great is that?

And then they're like.

Well, yeah, so special.

Oh, actually, yeah.

It was a deputy badge, I believe, because people complained.

Oh, that's what I get.

A video of the Here's a Here's a I.

Know the in game reward is a gun called Pew Pew so I don't remember if it's a good prize or not but that would be.

I do remember it was very difficult to find 50 star caps.

I want to backtrack a little bit on some of the things that we said because here's another mirror parallel not directly related to what I said before about civilization.

How it doesn't deserve to remain Maximus saving Thaddeus and killing Xander to create a civil war between the Commonwealth Brotherhood and the Mojave or the Greater Brotherhood.

It's a lot like what the ghoul was saying just beforehand after unleashing their own civil war, right?

The Legion civil war.

He says maybe this was a mistake.

And Lucy goes, what did you do?

And he goes maybe something good or maybe something stupid.

I do like that he quantifies it as good or stupid, not good or bad like because he definitely knows the legion sucks but like.

Or also it's it's definitely bad to kill somebody is bad, but that's the default, right?

Isn't it?

Isn't.

It right he does that anyway, but like.

It's not about what I did, it's about whether it has a has an actual outcome.

Yeah, which I think it does, because if the Legion is too busy fighting each other, they're not busy trying to find them or cause problems for them in the future 'cause they're a hassle.

So.

And they can't go after the NCR.

Yeah, that little NCR cell of two people that's been trapped there for 10 years.

20 years they've been there.

For 20 years.

Yeah, she's, she's missed.

It depends on how long they've been fighting the Legion and how long the Legion's been.

Well, shady.

Sands happened 20 years ago.

That's how long they said they were there.

Right.

Yeah, I think it's said that the Legion was established in 2260, something I don't recall the exact year.

And so I also wanted to point out, if we didn't know it already, the events of Fallout series are taking place after the events of the New Vegas game.

We are finding out bits and pieces of what possibly the Canon ending of New Vegas is, right?

What the end of that game was, Yeah, of many end scenes, right or.

Yeah, there are many possible outcomes for the game, depending on who you're sided with, who you decide to help control New Vegas at the end of it.

There are some clues that they dropped in this episode to suggest what the innings were not.

So that's helpful.

So obviously the Legion is still fighting each other.

In the games was the Legion fighting each other too?

They were not like a Civil War I.

Take it back.

I miss book.

So no, they were fighting the NCR and everybody else.

Yeah, but not each other.

That's part of what I wanted to point out.

So the events of the game, you have the potential to kill Kaizar, especially if you're not siding with them.

This is suggesting that the player character possibly killed Kaizar and is what started the civil war, because after that Kaizar died.

Now they have a.

Schism.

You know, to fight over who takes over the Kaizar from the game that takes place in 2281 was Edward Salo.

That's what he was born originally.

Edward Salo.

He founded the Legion along with somebody else.

Like I said, it was in 2260 something.

So for about 20 years he ruled the Legion, fighting everybody under the sun.

And what I believe happened is that the Courier, you're always only ever known as the Courier because you're a player character, could be anybody possibly killed this Kaizar and then triggered this civil war because this show is taking place in 2296.

So this has been going on for a while.

The events of New Vegas happened roughly 14 years before, 15 years before.

And many things to point out.

Victor, the Securitron that the Ghoul goes and finds.

Victor is an MPC that actually pulls the Courier, your player character, out of their grave at the beginning and brings him to Good Springs to be nursed back to health.

Then you can talk to Victor in town.

He's one of the only Securitrons that has a unique personality chip.

Most of them are a generic one.

Securitrons are Mr.

House's spy network.

He uses them to watch everything.

And because Victor is so far out from New Vegas, being in Good Springs, he had to have his own personality chips so that he could kind of make decisions on his own and not be connected to the hive mind, as it were.

That alone is interesting.

So when he's talking to the Ghoul, he asks about Mr.

House and he said Mr.

House is gone.

Meaning cold fusion or the.

Right, the meaning.

That was it, the Hoover Dam.

Yeah.

So yeah, yeah.

Whoever controls the Hoover Dam ends up controlling New Vegas.

Since Mr.

House is gone, meaning that the Courier potentially killed him, we're suggesting that Mister House doesn't control New Vegas, and clearly the Legion doesn't.

I don't think that NCR does any either because that group that got cut off from their battalion or whatever for so long for 20 years.

This is from before the events of the New Vegas game.

I'm assuming the NCR does not control New Vegas either.

I'm thinking the Canon ending for New Vegas according to the show is free Vegas, meaning freedom from all influence and the people of New Vegas can run themselves how they please, right?

Because none of the facts that's my theory they didn't deserve.

Right.

Nobody deserved it.

It's the most neutral route.

It makes the most sense from the show standpoint, just not having anyone particular group in power at the end of it and just kind of leaving it neutral.

The fact that it stayed that way potentially, I don't know yet because we haven't been to New Vegas.

That it stayed that way for these last 15 years is kind of amazing considering how many groups are fighting over everything all the time.

Well, I guess the neutral ending, I don't know what it means.

It's fine, but rap with me.

It seems like whatever they did, it tied everybody up in their own little corners, which goes to my comment from last episode of Well, I don't think there's an NCR.

Whatever's left is people who think there's an NCR in their brain and not in reality.

You can see that with the squirrel Wrangler.

Biff is what he's called in the X-ray, which I have a little factoid about that, by the way.

He's in the background going any day now.

They're coming any day.

That's John Greece.

John Greece was with Walton Goggins in the third season of The White Lotus.

It's kind of funny because they play the opposite kind of character.

He is kind of a con man.

Con man is usually like, right.

But this guy was kind of like scary Walton Goggins in Fallout.

Scary Walton Goggins in The White Lotus.

I mean like as in like he's doing some shady stuff, but it's like not John Greece, you know, It's not like that.

Wow, I'm sounding like.

Talking to a squirrel.

I don't know what's happening.

I'm not using words, sometimes words.

Are.

Hard.

You're right, words are hard.

Anyway, I like it when he plays comedic characters though, which is, you know, apropos for Fallout John Greece.

It's just way more funny.

I don't like when he plays bad guys.

He's just too convincing.

I like him when he's cuddly and cute.

But yeah, so I thought that was great.

They were in a scene together.

At first I didn't think he was credited until I looked really careful.

I like, I looked up John Grease.

I'm like, oh, wait, I did the same thing that happened to the not Robert House character.

I figured out that that was Justin Theroux.

Not Justin Trudeau.

Not Justin.

Trudeau.

Trudeau Now I got to look up Justin Trudeau to see what he's been in.

Always in Fallen.

Nothing.

It is audience driven.

IMDb, it's wiki driven.

So you can always put in Justin Trudeau in Fallout episode 2, yeah.

Don't do that.

I think you should, I think somebody should, I don't know, confirmed on the Squawking Dead podcast.

They'll like put that as anyway.

And they come Listen to the episode to find out.

So going back to what you were saying before Karina about the NCR, where in the factions that won or didn't win?

Yeah, Legion's too busy fighting itself, right to be in control of anything.

Unless there are other families in control of Vegas.

Yeah, Well, no, that's a Raider faction.

But like in New Vegas itself, there's three families that own a casino in New Vegas.

The omerta is the White Glove Society, and Mr.

House, the chairman, is part of Mr.

Houses.

So yeah, you can choose to help the families, unseat Mr.

House or unseat all of them.

There's a lot of factions that you can choose to side with or not side with.

Interesting note.

So this game, if I may have mentioned it before, was made in record time.

Yes, nine months.

It was a glitchy mess, I gotta say.

But they did manage to put together a very immersive RPG that allows you to literally kill every single major faction leader in the entire game and still complete the game, which is a feat, especially with a nine months turnaround time.

That's insane.

With the help of the yes man.

Yeah.

So yes, man is there.

He's another Securitron that has a unique personality.

He's there to help you complete the game essentially, or kind of guide you down a path.

You can talk to him and figure out what you need to do if you want a certain faction to take over or something else.

Free Vegas usually involves unseating everybody.

You don't have to completely destroy a faction to get rid of them, or you just have to kill their leader.

I believe for NCR, you have to kill the president in order to get rid of that faction is a player.

And then of course, you have to kill Kaizar.

To get rid of the Legion, you have to kill Mr.

House to get rid of him, you have to kill the leaders of the families.

So go on a shooting spree a little bit.

You know, I got really psyched for the Securitron 'cause I was like, oh, just man, for some reason I was like, I.

Just thought it was yes man.

It was just a malfunctioning securitron.

So it does make sense that they found a securitron that sort of is glitching out.

If Mr.

House is truly deposed, his network would be down as well.

So spoiler alert for anyone who has not played this very old New Vegas game, Mr.

House is connected his body and like implanted his mind into a computer in the game.

So the network is Mr.

House.

That's who Mr.

House is at this point in Fallout.

So if you killed Mr.

House, you shut down the network so.

What I love the most about that scene where it's Harkness and Maximus to take out that Securitron that's glitching out, it flips back and forth between wanting to give you a massage and wanted to massage you out of existence.

Yeah, it was unclear to me, but that was Victor, right?

That was the same one, the goal.

Was talking to or no?

It was different.

Oh OK I saw the picture on it was different but it was glitching out so.

Victor always has the cowboy face.

Yes Man always just has a smiling face.

Like just a cartoon smiling face.

Cartoony.

Yeah, yeah.

And then all the other securitrones usually have the soldier face OK on them so.

That's a helmet part.

Yeah, the cartoon U.S.

government, it's all very vault tech feeling, is it not like the cartoon characters A.

Little So we saw Victor sort of in a dormant stage before the ghoul shows up, and then his presence sort of woke him up.

But Xander and Maximus, they receive a little notification that this thing is already active.

So did somebody have to trigger that to like wake it up or was it just always just sort of patrolling the thing that it was in?

If you're asking from a game standpoint, there are lots of robots that are just wandering around either continuing what they were programmed to do pre war, or they've been reprogrammed by Raiders or whoever else.

Their own.

Yeah, for whoever, whatever.

Because that's what they're protecting is Thaddeus's place.

It could have been dormant and then woken up by a feral ghoul or an animal or something like that.

Or it could have been wandering around this whole time, just doing whatever because it didn't know what its directive was.

Even if it was just lying dormant, it could also be that whatever sensor is in the vertebrae could have sensed just the power cord that was inside of it.

Yeah.

And then them entering the building could have brought it online potentially because they're loud.

And shaky.

I remember you saying something about how the vertebrates vibrate a lot.

Oh yeah, it'll cause your controller to vibrate off the table if you're not.

Which they definitely illustrated.

Exactly.

In the episode, yeah, because they're in there and it just looks uncomfortable to ride in.

It's a troop mover, but it's definitely designed for those giant suits which are uncomfortable to be in.

They make you run slow and weird, but they do make you pretty invincible because you notice when they were getting shot at by this securitron and they didn't spaze them at all because you're in a metal suit.

So what's it going to do, you know?

He's even pointing the gun.

Xander's like you want some of this and he's pointed the gun towards him as he's wrestling.

I love how the different approach in taking down the Securitron because Xander just looks like he's playing with it.

He's having fun with this.

He's not trying to take it down right away.

When Maximus comes in, he immediately punches the face slash screen and pulls out the fusion core.

You see the fusion core in his hand.

It's really easy to miss.

By the way, One and done.

And he's doing the same thing with the kids too.

He's like OK smoked skins to the right.

Yeah, he's just messing around.

Ugly skins to the left, we're not gonna hurt.

You really like OK.

Maximus is like, sure you're not.

You're having too much fun with this.

Yeah.

That was really sick.

Yeah, yeah, It's especially apparent with that scene with hardness.

I mentioned this in last episode too.

Joining a faction has perks and it has consequences, drawbacks.

So Brotherhood of Steel typically is against ghouls.

They'd only want normal people to be thriving in the Commonwealth.

So ghouls and mutants and all that stuff is going to get eradicated in effort of making things better.

Whereas some factions like the NCR are trying to fight for rights for these people because they are people.

They might go feral, but you know the ones that aren't feral are still people.

We need to work at the problem.

Right.

And you can gain followers or companions that are part of all of these different factions, and depending on who you have with you, you're going to learn about their faction and why they believe in it.

And they might sway you to their side.

But then you'll encounter something like this, where Maximus was very taken with what Harkness was saying about the Commonwealth Brotherhood of Steel.

It's not a great, like a sort of perfect version of what he wanted, but then the minute he comes across a group of children, just because they're ghouls, he's going to shoot them down.

Have a great time doing it.

Yeah, and, like, just gleeful about it.

And that really puts it into perspective.

This is the group that you're part of.

Did you make a good choice, did you not?

He made in that split second the choice to take Harkness out, to avoid this tragedy happening.

And it was the right choice.

But again, it's going to have big consequences for not only him, but for the rest of the Mojave and for the Commonwealth, because now they're going to be in a civil war because Maximus didn't want to see children killed for no reason.

Do we think Maximus goes back to the Brotherhood at this point, or does he just kind of run?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

I'd be curious to know what he decides to do because I think he's pretty disillusioned with his chapter of the Brotherhood and he may go try to find the Commonwealth Brotherhood or he might give up altogether because, you know, Harkness was part of Commonwealth Brotherhood.

Like doesn't mean that anybody else over there is going to be any better than him so.

What I really liked about this episode, aside from the whole idea civilization is not worth saving, it goes hand in glove to what the ghoul says in his really weirded out state when he was trying to take out whatever poison was in his leg.

He's talking to dog meat about this like you understand.

Like you already know all this.

Paul's right here for a hot SEC.

What do you think he means by you already know all this?

Because obviously the dog is a clone.

I'm trying to figure out why he would know all about this.

Isn't that interesting?

He might have already told him the story.

Yeah, for all that time that he was with Dog Meat while they were searching for the head, there was a lot of lonely nights camping out.

He might have told Dog Meat the story already.

I kind of took it as like he's saying this is sort of because he knows he's really talking to himself.

The dog is not comprehending anything really, the same way that, you know, you might talk to your animals and you know, they might understand a little bit, but they're not going to understand the whole nuance story that you're telling.

So in a way, he is talking to himself and that's why he's saying you, you already know all of this, but I'm just going to say it all out anyway, you know, because it's been a long time since I had someone worth talking to, you know.

So he's sort of projecting himself onto the dog in a way.

But like using the dog as a companion.

I don't know, it made sense in my head when I.

Started saying.

It more sense.

Let me add a little bit to this Is the Enclave that the guy with the head?

I can't even remember the guy's name.

We talked about it last season.

Ben from Lost.

Yeah, Benjamin Linus from Lost Shoot.

Michael Emerson.

Oh, easy to forget Ziggy Wilzig.

Dr.

Wilzig?

It's the Enclave, right?

That he's from?

Yeah.

Are they still around?

I don't even remember by the end of the first season.

They are, so they're in all the games and everything.

You barely see them right?

And they're not doing what the NCRS do and that's for sure.

They're the remnants of the pre war government.

OK, OK.

Yeah, this is it.

This is it.

So they're still around.

We just.

Got it.

We got it, guys.

We did it because I forgot.

I forgot.

Now I'll tell you why I'm not there yet.

I have to just get this feeling out of me first, OK?

OK.

Well, you said it test what is the enclave with the remnants of the US government and he was talking about, well, you remove one plank from the boat.

It's just a boat with a hole, but it's still a boat.

You remove a couple more planks and it's like, what am I looking at?

Is it even a boat anymore?

Well, isn't that the Enclave?

So CX4-O four knows what this is all about.

And also it goes to the greater point of this episode, which is if the thing you are fighting for doesn't even resemble what is meant to be the thing.

So you could say the US government, you could say the Brotherhood of Steel, you could say the Enclave, which was the remnants of the US government.

But if it doesn't adhere to its core principles or its propositions, is it the US government?

Well, then what are you fighting for?

It's just you're fighting for yourself.

You're just making things up now, but bringing this way back around.

So I'm glad I square that I had this in my notes.

I'm like, what is he talking about?

OK, that's what he's talking about is the enclave is exactly what is the boat that isn't the boat anymore because it's too many planks are missing.

Cool.

Go further, Maximus.

Even when faced with a perfect representation of what the Brotherhood of Seal ought to be, not as many clerics.

The people are in charge.

He's doing what he's supposed to do.

He's getting rid of abominations.

It doesn't matter if he takes pleasure in it while he does it.

It sounds evil, but that's their charge.

Their charges that bring things back.

Even that version of it he could not abide even in a perfect world, right?

Because he's getting disillusioned with the party that he's with.

He's like, OK, there's drawbacks and all right, maybe that's just how it is, they say.

No violence against other brothers, and yet they're planning on a civil war.

Then I killed a guy just a second ago.

And then all the other things the other chapters are doing that aren't really Brotherhood of Steel.

Like, well, we don't believe in the religious stuff.

Well, isn't why you're you doing it then.

Libertarian.

Wow, we want to F robots.

Wait, aren't you supposed to not use technology for your own?

Yeah.

Is it about power?

Yes, it's about power.

Yeah.

We have cold fusion.

You know, your whole thing is to take technology away.

Anyway, he's disillusioned because he's seeing the hypocrisy everywhere.

Because maybe that's just the way life is.

That's everybody like this.

But then when he sees the perfect representation of the Brotherhood of Steel in Zander Harkness, even that turns us up his stomach.

And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute.

There's no ideal I meant to hold uphold that is good enough for the life I once used to live in Shady Sands.

Essentially, I said, then what am I doing?

If this is the perfect version of it, why am I with these people?

Anyway, right, I think he might be coming to that realization, and that's why I'm hopeful that he will sort of break away and be like, you know what?

I'm not part of this anymore.

I just, I'm gonna do my own thing.

What a long winded way to answer your question, Rob.

I don't see him going back honestly.

Yeah, I don't either, but I really don't know.

He's being used by Elder Quintus.

I think he's he's very much like a pawn to him.

And I don't think that that's good for Max or his conscience because the minute he suggested something, you know, oh, why don't we just kill him?

Quintus made it a point to embarrass him in front of all of those other clerics.

He didn't have to do that.

Right, even using his own words, like I have no time to hear what I just said to you, said back to me.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm like, that's kind of messed up.

So I don't think that it's in Max's best interest to go back to this and face the music of what he did, because he's just going to get punished or possibly executed for starting a civil war before they were ready for it to happen.

Even though they were planning the Civil war to begin with, I think he's still going to get punished for that happening because they don't have the support that they wanted to make it happen so.

It's all his fault too.

Yeah, OK, sure.

I think Max needs to just take his power armor and scrape off that brotherhood symbol and just move on and be a rogue paladin on his own.

Or just kill him.

He's.

Got the vertibird there with him too, but he doesn't know how to drive it.

Yeah, he.

Can figure it out.

Yeah, he can figure it out.

Or die trying.

Maybe Fatty's knows how to drive it, I don't know.

He might, because he wasn't right.

Before, I think he was a scribe or yeah.

Whatever.

Yeah, Yeah.

Just like Maximus was.

They were just carried the Yeah.

So there's the other carried stuff around.

They carry bags everywhere.

It was hard anyway.

No, because that actually answers the question.

The bigger question I had was, OK, whether he goes back or doesn't go back, Xander is out there.

What do you do with the body?

You're obviously going to have to move the kids from this wonderful operation that he was just describing at the start of the episode.

You can't stay there no more unless you move that body way far away.

Yeah.

So now this answers even further the question, what does Maximus do?

And it's like, OK, now I'm shepherding the Israelites across the desert, right?

The Israel ghouls.

Only half of them are ghouls.

Yeah.

Many of the rest are on their way 'cause the sunset.

Sarsaparilla maybe?

No, actually isn't nukakola that's radioactive.

Nukakola Quantum is.

Yeah, Yeah.

Oh, everything is slightly radioactive, if you're being honest.

But, like, it's usually fine.

You're not gonna turn into a ghoul just from eating.

Yum Yum.

Deviled eggs and.

And some radiated water.

Yeah.

He's like, what about water?

Just drink soda.

Come on, drink the soda.

That made me laugh.

01 factoid about Victor The Securitron was originally voiced in the games by William Sadler, whom I don't know.

There's so many things he's from.

He was on The Thing with the Creep.

What was it called on HBO?

What was that show The Thing with Tales from the Creep Creep.

He was in Tales from the Clip Creep.

The movie.

The Creep.

Anyway, that's a different thing.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Not in a million years, Dave, but I've gotten that.

The thing with the creep.

He was on Tales of the Crypto movie as well as obviously Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.

He was deaf I remember, but he voiced the voice of Victor in the video games but equally great in the show.

Victor is being voiced by Jesse Birch, who does a number of voices in the games across many games.

It's still Fallout related, but it's not quite William Sadler.

But it's fine because he's still cool.

I love to say Bethesda does a great job of reusing their voice actors throughout each game so that you can start to pick out certain voices.

They're very recognizable to the gamers, but also using certain character actors as well.

Infamously we have Sean Bean in Oblivion, which is a Bethesda game.

Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson at the beginning of Fallout 3.

They always have pretty big name actors doing smaller parts for their games.

They had Lynda Carter do voices for Skyrim as well which was amazing.

So.

Yeah, she's from a lot more than that, but as far as we know, but.

Most notably Wonder Woman.

So yeah, I always enjoy looking up the voice actors, especially if it sounds familiar, because I like to see what the other characters are that they played.

So I'm like, oh, they sound familiar and I don't know why.

Oh, it was Brenyolf in like Skyrim or whatever.

Like that's why I know him.

Where are those big names now, folks?

Let's dovetail a little bit more on another actor like, well, is it?

I lost my mind over John Grease.

Who else is in this?

Well, our Congresswoman Diane Welch.

She.

Was so awkward.

She has the.

Most inimitable deadpan VO slash real life actor voice.

And she's that way in every single project she's in.

The actor's name is Martha Kelly.

I first found her out in Zach Galifianakis's Baskets on FX.

Yes, I remember that show.

Yeah, I.

Forgot what her name on the show is.

I think it was Carol actually.

No, doesn't matter because she's also in Carol in the End of the World on Netflix as well, which is surprisingly emotional, but it's for the most part stupidly bizarre.

She's the focal character too.

The premise of that one is that the moon is going to crash into the earth or it's actually a planet that comes out of nowhere that's going to crash into the earth.

You can see it coming closer and closer every episode and everybody's doing everything they want.

Her parents like nude all the time, and they're in this throuple thing with their care provider.

It's bizarre.

It's a cartoon.

Just Roger, it's a cartoon.

It's a cartoon.

She does voice over for the main character, but yes, it hasn't like a surprisingly heartwarming or like just emotional kind of ending, which is funny because of how bizarre the show is and how deadpan her voice is too.

So it was really cool to see her and also makes sense because again, if you take out the planks from the boat, that is the government doesn't resemble the government anymore.

We're just shuffling paper is a bureaucracy, is just clerics everywhere.

And what is the Brotherhood even doing?

So here's a commemorative lighter for your service.

Yeah, for what?

Exactly.

Saving one person by killing three others.

Yeah, by killing three other people.

And what was that for, right?

Going back to the premise, what did we do something out there?

Did we fight for freedom, Right?

Did we save something?

Also too, the fact that Cooper still has that lighter 200 something years later, he's still using it.

It obviously means something to him, the idea that this man saved his life in service of what he's lived far beyond what he should have normally.

And Lucy just episodes previous telling him, I want your family to like the person that you are, to deal with the person.

Yeah.

I think it got to him because he's looking at this lighter thoughtfully.

He's reminiscing now about these things to the dog or himself.

He is questioning who he is as a person because I don't think that he would have bothered to take out the Legion the way he did if she didn't get through to him in some way.

I think she's definitely breaking him down, but I wondered if he saved her because of that or because he's using her as leverage for Hank.

I think it's maybe both because he does mention to CX404 like I know I don't like her either but we're going to need her later.

So yes, I think it mostly is that at this point.

But yeah, I still think he could have easily did what I thought he was going to do in the beginning, which is just betray the NCR.

There's two people, one of them's talking to a squirrel.

You know, there's not going to do anything against the Legion if he just is like, Oh yeah, they're over there, just go get him and get what he wants and walk away.

No problems whatsoever.

Slit a throat, eat the meat, Yes.

He chose to start that civil war or ignite what was already happening.

He didn't have to do that.

So I think that that was Lucy's influence.

Let's take out this group of people that he knows to be bad people because he tried to warn her off of them.

Not very well, I might add.

Like complaint from last week is that he doesn't explain himself.

So he didn't have to do that, and he chose to do it anyway, whether it was to ingratiate himself with Lucy or if it was because he genuinely felt it would be the best thing to do and the like.

Maybe give the NCRA chance to get away or rebuild or do whatever they're going to do.

Because if the Legion would have found him, they would have wiped him out.

Well, and what they said in this episode regarding the ghouls relationship with the NCR, Captain Rodriguez says their long history which goes to Cooper Howard's transition into the ghoul in the wasteland, probably in his own way fighting for the NCR, having to guess that that's the case.

Potentially or he mercenary for them or something like that.

We saw evidence of that in the first season too, when he's dealing with the two NCR people, even though they're kind of like his captive at that point.

So he saw in his mind that that they were worth saving both in the past and now.

And so they deserve to live because they don't deserve to die.

Because if your dad in the wasteland, you probably deserved it.

They're probably the one people he probably thought didn't deserve it.

Or maybe they did.

Maybe they did something and that soured their relationship.

I don't know.

But he's clearly showing to the audience at least in two ways.

Because again, that scene where Charlie White Knife is giving the speech about what happened is mirroring his return to the Legion, saving Lucy from it and then having to kill everybody, right?

He, as Charlie says, Cooper Howard said you had to kill three people so that I could save you.

Is that what he was saying?

I wanted to clarify that part.

It sounded like he was saying that he had to kill three people to save Cooper.

OK, I didn't understand that particular piece.

Yeah, and I didn't know exactly what that meant, because if you're killing the enemy, what does it matter in a sense.

But then again, I'm also not a soldier, and I'm sure that every life you take weighs on you in some way, whether they're the enemy or not.

I don't know exactly the extent of what that meant, but from what I understood, it was that he had to kill three people in order to save Cooper.

Cooper, OK.

Yeah, well then why would he not accept any of the glory?

As inconsequential as a commemorative lighter is, it still means something.

As he's telling the story, he's describing how he has to like drag.

This ground right?

Cooper and he's like I didn't know if he was alive or dead or what was going on but the end of it all him handing the lighter over and then he says I killed 3 to save the one.

I thought maybe he didn't literally kill 3 of people but left three of their men to die and save.

Over that could be the case, yeah.

That he might carry guilt over.

I could see that.

Yeah, I hate how wording could mean anything.

Sure, sure, but to him saving the one doesn't mean anything if he left.

Three other lost three people.

That makes sense.

OK, I love it obviously because I didn't think of it.

I'm more inclined to think that what the show is trying to say because all the repeating themes and if the ghoul is trying to embrace his most idealized self, that is telling the audience that he was the same Cooper Howard before as he is now.

Only he was fighting on behalf of something before he thought he was at least, and now he's actually fighting.

Well, in this episode at least, he's fighting for something.

He doesn't know if that's the right move, like every Fallout move in the games or even in the show, but he's betting on Lucy at least in this one move that he's making and maybe even saying if there's any hope for the NCR to rise again.

Well, and there isn't, let's be real.

Because you were there for 20 years and not anyway, which by the way, when they're there, you'll notice that when they have that scene with Rodriguez and Biff the squirrel Wrangler, because it goes to the boat with the planks thing, they're in a house.

It's the frame of a house.

And there's some bricks here.

You can see a kitchen that was once there, but there's the stove.

That's fine.

But there's the frame of a door right behind Biff.

And it's funny because if the structure, if all the wood and brick from the house is gone, what am I looking at?

Is it still a house?

I just love that place in this.

A pile of bricks anyway.

Well.

Home is where your heart is, David.

Well.

But a house is a shelter.

That's another thing, because even Charlie White Knife says you just got to hope that we bet on the right side, the ghoul betting on Lucy that protects the people you love.

Because if it did, I guess that's worth doing pretty much anything, even something bad, right?

Right.

Everybody in this show.

Or something stupid.

Or something stupid.

Well, by default it's going to be bad.

But was it stupid to bet on Lucy?

Is it stupid to wipe out an A potential asset in the Legion, let's say?

Right.

Which.

But hey, yeah, some of the things that What was the character's name that Macaulay was playing?

Did he have a name?

I think he was a Leggett but I don't know if they named.

Him, it just said Macaulay Culkin.

I think actually it the X-ray.

Maybe it wasn't that important.

Maybe he's not living past this moment.

But he did say some pretty smart things that really got me thinking.

And they're not good things and they're not right things, but they're things in his own way.

He said maps are drawn by the dead.

It's history is written by the victors.

That's really what he's saying.

Borders don't matter.

They're just little constructs for people who actually made it and didn't.

Mean on a piece of paper.

Exactly.

The same concept of is it a boat?

Because she's like, this is America and he's like, is it exactly like?

Yeah, it's which doesn't matter like if the planks, if it's just a pile of planks, is it a boat?

Yeah.

Is it, is it still America or is it just where we're at right now?

Yeah.

And then he says something else.

He says, good, I brought it in quotes.

Is not a meaningful vector in history, only strength.

And you know what?

This is something that people have really forgotten.

I'm going to go to this and come back to this point because Evelyn and I watching The Witcher last night.

I'm not going to be specific in case you haven't caught up with The Witcher.

And that's fair because she's like, why would so many people side with this bad guy?

I knew the answer right away and I'm like, well, you want to be on the side that's going to win because that means you're going to be around.

Isn't it as bad as they are?

For a lot of people, yeah.

Just the same way I was saying it would make perfect sense for the Ghoul to side with the Legion and betray the NCR because it would be the smarter thing to do.

And the safer thing to do, because the Legion is clearly more capable and more powerful than the NCR is especially that group of them, there's like 3 people in it.

And like I said once talking to a squirrel.

So I don't know how useful they are in a fight.

It would have made perfect sense.

And I think that's part of the reason why he's like, either it was good or it was stupid.

Like, yeah.

Considering what the benefit is to keeping them alive.

I think a lot of people who he would like to say that you would side with the right side or the more morally right side, But when it comes down to like your own safety and your family's safety, like if you don't have the means to protect them, you don't have the means to stand on the moral high ground.

Sometimes you just got to do what gets you a lot out alive.

Yeah, have you seen it?

I'm.

Talking about when faced with an overwhelming force of like a military or an army or something like that, it makes sense to do it that way, yeah.

Whether?

We're talking about The Witcher or Boss, yeah.

Well, I'm only saying this because we can sit here and do say all the things, and I wouldn't do that.

Well, yeah, of course you can say that now we live in society.

The thing that Hank wants to tweak, right?

Didn't quite perfect it and probably deserve to fall.

No.

But here we live in this world.

It is not at all like the fallout.

Like, not at all.

I don't want to hear it.

I get it.

I understand it's not perfect, obviously, but we can still have this society we can use still use persuasion checks, everybody.

We don't have to be murder hobos in this world, so fine.

But compare it to the arc of history, literally, where you had to make smart decisions.

Good was not a virtue, Strength was a virtue.

The ability to defend your family was a virtue and sometimes that involved doing bad things.

And if you weren't doing those things, you were a bad person.

If you weren't doing horrible things to protect your family, you were a terrible person.

That was life before.

Now.

10 minutes ago they stuck us in an air conditioned room and said hey, let's hope for the best.

That's society today.

It's mind boggling.

It definitely reminds me.

This is a little bit off topic, but.

We think.

The Walking Dead, when the survivors get to Alexandria, the clash of cultures there where they're living on this survival level, like do whatever you have to do to survive and protect the people that you love.

Meets this pre fall group of people who have just been so sheltered and have no clue.

And they're sitting there judging everybody in the group.

And the group is like, I don't really care what you think of us.

We'll just take over this whole place.

You don't seem to understand how things work now.

Like what you were saying about 10 minutes ago.

We just became a civilized society.

You know what I mean?

Like in the The Arc of History, Yes, that is a.

Cartoon version actually.

Yeah.

Wildman Ricks big fluffy beard like just going yeah, like one of those cartoon Hanna Barbera cartoon characters of like the hobo with the little stick.

Little like Captain Kate.

Behind.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking actually.

A little less cartoony than Captain Caveman, but still similar vibes.

Let me just say what Jason said really quick.

He said nine months.

Wow.

Regarding Fallout New Vegas, the.

Production time yet?

And then he said, regarding Martha Kelly, I watched her an Adult Swim cartoon with her voice.

It's so unique.

It is so unique, by the way, the congresswoman Diane Welch, which I thought was also funny because Welch, it's like you're welching on a bet, you're betting on America, but it Welch is on you, doesn't give you what you're owed.

Clever fallout.

Clever.

I particularly enjoyed the scene where Lucy spouted out her knowledge.

Yeah, correcting all of their mistakes and telling them why they're why they're wrong.

Oh my gosh, she's having her David moment.

She's like, all right, listen guys, I've seen 15 movies and here's what you're wrong.

Qualifies me to be an expert on this.

It's Caesar's.

It's even the.

Good incident too though so I can't be that bad.

He's the coolest guy.

Even he says they're not particular in the soft.

Sea soft shoe.

I love pretty hard at that scene.

All the while I'm like shut up.

She's David.

They're.

Going to kill you.

Exactly, I think.

She knows that.

We chopped the other lady's head off, but for.

Some.

Reason.

They're like, hey, we're going to string this one up.

But I'm nice.

Rachel, Yeah.

My thing is like why didn't they bother to take the pit boy off her?

They probably.

Didn't know it doesn't match.

Yeah, they have no use for something like that.

I did think it was interesting that they didn't crucify her the way that they would in the game where they would full on nail you to the grass like in game so and leave you there to die.

That's what happens to Benny if you choose to let that happen.

As you mentioned last episode.

Let that happen.

You can choose to have that happen to Benny, but.

What do you sign with the Legion like you said?

Well, yeah, I think the Legion gets him either way because you can find him in New Vegas.

I forget exactly how it goes down because it's been many years since I played this game.

You find him in New Vegas and confront him, and I'm pretty sure he runs away and hides with the Legion.

So if you're hostile with the Legion, you're going to have a harder time getting to him.

But if you're friendly with the Legion, you just walk in there and ask Kizar for Benny.

Like.

Give me that guy.

You can choose to fight him in the arena.

I do remember that.

Or you can choose to have somebody else execute him, or you can do it yourself.

Or you can have them crucify him.

So either way, Benny's Diane, Benny's not.

Yes.

Yeah.

Head.

You want eggs Benny?

You want scrambled, Benny?

Get what he was coming was coming to him, but.

You were surprised that she didn't get actually crucified?

Oh, that she didn't actually get crucified.

Yeah, because the other guy was, I'm pretty sure.

Well, he was dead up there and getting.

Like thrung up the same way.

She was just tied to it.

Yeah, I was looking at that too.

Well, the guy whose eyeball was plucked out by the Ravens, yeah.

Yeah, they were talking about the terms of the prima nocta or whatever, and she was like, that's disgusting.

And she's like, and by the way, I'm not even a virgin.

They're all like.

Give up on the whole idea.

Anyway, like now they're just they, they're turned off.

Never mind.

Rachel, say it.

Typical guys.

Yeah, OK.

Men.

Men for some.

Reason terrible.

Most of us are.

It's fine.

What up Rob, join me on this journey.

Me and Rachel know you don't have to hide anything from us.

We know.

It's, Yeah, this, the whole prima nocta thing is actually a little bit triggering because it's a lot of the reason why Jews are a little whiter, if you know what I'm saying.

A lot of us are like this.

There's olive skin, this beautiful honey olive skin.

But in Europe they had a hard time, apparently, mostly in Hungary.

By the way, the idea is the Lord of the fiefdom got to consummate the marriage before the husband did.

So you can imagine that over the generations the Lord was deflowering all these first timers and you were having kids back in the day.

And so obviously the gene pool gets diluted with all these other genetics and, you know, these white guys that are Jewish too, which is weird.

It's you think.

And then they end up being most of the population, which is so bizarre.

It's been on my mind the last 2 1/2 years.

Zhus prima nocta is really the term for it in Latin.

The justice of the first night with your lady.

What?

A weird.

It's gross.

Yeah, like what a weird thing.

Like just in general like.

But doesn't it go to the theme of this show Slash is it worth saving or the whole idea of it wasn't always like this.

For most of human history, it was rough out there with all these weird laws like, oh, I'm in charge.

I get to have sex with your bride, Your newly nuptial.

Yeah.

Like what?

That's what life was like.

No sense at all.

But then they're bringing it.

But we live, we brought it back.

Everybody with the Legion, I mean, just a weird version of it.

Yeah, You know, Cooper's like, we don't like that forward progress, do we?

We're talking about the Legion Like, let's just go backwards further.

Exactly what's time?

Let's just borrow things, the bad things, from everywhere.

Yeah.

Yeah, it wasn't even the Romans, right?

That's what Lucy was saying it was.

It was the Middle Ages around the Crusades right after you guys, okay, right after fall of the Roman Empire took 100 years.

I think it was something that effect for people to figure it out as Rome was burning.

To be fair, they're probably getting all of their knowledge from a casino somewhere, so like, that's not their fault they don't know what they're talking about.

Yeah, a faulty securitron and whatever they can dig up in the pre war book section.

Of those who could read.

Yeah, if anyone can.

That's why I'm surprised that Macaulay Culkins Leggett character was so well that anybody is well spoken at all in this series or these games because there's not any formal education.

There's not a really ready access to all this stuff.

It's like you learn all of this on the fly.

You learn how to hack a computer by doing it, not because you went to school for computer engineering or anything.

It's surprising that anybody gets by on any any of this stuff it.

Might surprise you, Karina, but another survival tactic is Bsing.

There's that, Yeah.

That is something that I was thinking about from a gameplay perspective.

When the ghoul was lying to them, did he lie?

Because I'm thinking of like the dialogue choices, because it'll tell you right at the end of the dialogue choices if it's a lie or not.

And you can choose to try to lie.

Of course, you have to make a skill check to see if that succeeds.

You brought me back to exactly where I wanted to go because you were surprised that he actually spared the NCR.

I was just surprised he used persuasion at all considering his gameplay.

I think his first play was to shoot the place up because he was going to the NCR for backup.

He needed more guns, and then when he couldn't find more guns, he decided to do something else because he wasn't going to shoot the place up on his own.

He's smarter than that.

Well, is he though?

I think he would have found a better way to kill them all, but he's like well why use all the effort if I.

Could let them shoot themselves, yeah.

Persuasion.

Yeah, he utilized one of the best tactics in the game is to get your enemies to fight each other.

So if you can lure, say, for example, a Death Claw or a pack of Cazadors into a lesion camp to take out half of the enemies, you don't have to shoot as many of them and there won't be as many coming after you because you're the only aggressor in the camp and they've got a giant mutated creature to deal with instead.

So he just used Civil War to his advantage, right?

Well, we don't know what he did before, but all we've seen of him before or up until now is like bam bam bam bam bam bam bam.

Worse than the Barber on Fleet Street.

He just with a gun.

Sweeney Todd.

Yeah, exactly.

The Sweeney Todd, only not nearly as good looking as Johnny Depp.

Also with guns exploding things.

He also eats people.

Wait, he ate people too, didn't he?

The Barber on Fleet Street.

Yeah, they did.

They put him in meat pies.

Well, so he's very much a lot like and he has less hair.

I don't know if it was an editing standpoint or if it's just he just left it in.

When he takes the drugs from believe the NCR he drops a vial and doesn't bother to pick.

It up I noticed that.

It just falls out of his hand.

He just leaves it you.

Could even see it on the floor in the other camera angle too.

It's like, really funny.

You would think he'd be more cautious with those things because it's what's keeping him from going feral, right?

He was like, I didn't drop that.

I'm not going to be.

Yeah, I'm.

I'm too cool to pick it up.

It's just a cool factor.

He's not.

Going to watch me bend over.

Yeah, well, actually I did have something to say about that one specifically.

He was cruelly telling them that the NCR is gone, but going with the theme is.

But isn't it kind of the kindness because they've been there for so long and nobody told, not even Victor, who incidentally told him him that they were in the hills.

He had to trick Victor.

See, he used trickery again with Victor.

But it's kindness in his own ghoul way.

It was kind to be cruel with the people who were leftover with Captain Rodriguez and Biff, because in telling him that they can move on with their lives because the NCR is just planks of wood.

It's it's no longer there.

It's whatever is in your mind.

Maybe you can build it again, but you'd have to put it together and you being out there just waiting for somebody to come.

Oh, any day now, Biff, any day.

It's not going to happen.

Their plan was to go to Shady Sands, which has been blown up for 20 years.

I.

Think she makes clear that we have a thing on the other side of Shady because she's aware of that Shady Sands is gone.

It's just that whatever was leftover, she was said.

They were separated by this legion basically.

I didn't.

Yeah, They were pinned down.

I think that's the reason why they couldn't.

They weren't just waiting for the heck of it.

They just.

They couldn't leave.

Exactly.

They couldn't get out without getting caught by the Legion.

Exactly, and Shady Sands was only 17 years ago.

Like is however old Maximus is.

Plus a couple years.

Maximus was like about 8 when he went into the fridge.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, Yeah.

Also says over 20 years ago so.

He said over 20, yeah, which means could be 21 or infinitely more than that.

Yeah, he's got to be like a almost mid 20s, late 20s, something like that.

He's got to be that.

That's just could be 30.

Because he was a kid when he went to the fridge.

The Shady Sands.

Yeah, I.

Don't think that he's 30, I think he and Lucy are the same age generally.

Just about yeah, that's that's kind of what we could surmise is they were just probably about the same age, but late 20s.

Something like that would had to be because she was 6 when the whole Shady Sands thing pre exploding Shady Sands.

I feel like his parents made mention of his age in that flashback that we saw.

I.

Feel like it too, but then we also calculated it based on a lot of factors in the last season.

2628 is what I thought.

Is that how old they are now?

For some reason I'm feeling like 7.

Yeah, 68.

Well, that would line up.

7 year old boy wink wink audience.

Kid in the fridge.

By the way, that's kind of what I've had in my head the whole time.

Wake up, wait a minute, there's all these school children.

And I was like thinking to myself, how did Maximus not turn into a ghoul?

A lead line fridge, Yeah.

It's not how that works I think.

Somebody had it didn't follow.

Yeah, you're right.

You know what?

All right.

You're right, David.

We're we're talking the video game logic.

So we're like.

In the fridge, they're asking questions.

You're so lucky though, that's what I'm trying to say.

It was also a little more beat up, like there were openings and stuff, so like, but you saw.

That sand in the back, it just looked like it was open.

Exactly.

My thought too was when Norm and the junior executives were all escaping, there was a air vent that led right outside.

What's keeping the radiation out of this vault?

I don't know.

I don't know science.

You're right.

The vent was big enough for people to get through, so obviously there was no seal at any point.

Either way, you win, Karina.

I'm just saying we're trying to put logic into video game stuff and it's.

Not always.

No.

We're trying.

I was trying to be Bridget for hot sake.

Bridges, officially now the science person.

Because I what happened?

Question.

What happened to me?

Don't question it.

Anyway, now you're right.

You're right.

Just don't think about it.

The only other thought that I had was that they've confirmed that Thaddeus is turning into a ghoul and not a super mutant.

A little bit disappointed about it, but it's fine.

We'll.

See one?

Eventually they have to.

I'm sure they hinted at it already in the very first episode.

You remember the Enclave was like carting away a green body under a sheet?

I'm pretty sure that was a super mutant.

So I'm sure we're gonna get them eventually.

I know we're gonna get a death clock at some point this season.

I'm excited for the death clock.

It's terrifying.

I sent you that video.

I.

Know, I know.

I'm very excited.

But it's not gonna be Randy Savage.

But if it is, that'd be cool anyway.

Wouldn't that be something though?

It would be like something for the deep.

Wild people who've never played the game before would be like, why does the death Call look like Randy's I?

Think the gamers.

Would be like yeah we get it, it's a mod.

Forgot to uninstall the mod.

Jason says in the chat.

Macho Man.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's a mod in the game.

They swap out the voice of the voice, the growlings of the the.

Roar.

Whatever the whatever, what is it called again?

The Death Claw with macho man's voice They.

Do it for Sky and the.

Skin too, the skin, the death claw to look, however loosely, like Randy Savage, which I have some images somewhere.

That's actually hilarious, yeah.

It's pretty funny when you've played a game that's unserious, like Fallout for enough times, you just like, you know what?

Let's make it more unserious.

Yeah, the models.

Really ridiculous as the games are ridiculous and they're really.

Funny, they showed the recap to this episode of Thaddeus pulling the arrow from his neck, and I remember we were covering it at the time.

It's like, well, I guess he's turning into a ghoul because they mentioned it.

It was like, but then we're stupid because we're not.

We're stupid, but we're funny.

We're like, no, but they're just faking out.

He's going to end up being a super mutant.

Like he's they're trying to fool the audience.

Probably not at this point.

Well my my reasoning for that was more for the serum that he took to heal himself felt more like an in game thing that turns you into a Superman.

So I was using game based evidence to make that hypothesis, which was not accurate, but that's fine.

You were on the right track, I.

Think.

I had every reason to believe it was.

Yeah, it.

Just felt like it was that, yeah, it's fine.

I'm not that disappointed.

I mean, to shed many tears over it.

Well.

It's fine.

I will.

It's fine.

I'll do it for you.

Because I was like, oh come on, introduce something that's expensive.

Probably like the ghoul noses in this episode.

So.

I could think I was like 1234.

How expensive was the shot for these kids?

All these kids are doing great in this makeup.

Right, yeah, Walton Goggins talks about, I think the one that's on his chin bothers him the most, or the one on his.

Neck, yeah.

Irritates him because he always rips that one off 1st as soon as they hit.

They say they.

Call it a wrap, it looks so good.

Though they should not be ripping it.

Off.

Yeah, well, he you should see.

I'll send you a video the next time I see it because he's like as soon as they say it's a wrap he grabs it and rips it off like Oh my God.

Irritates him.

By the way, Yeah.

And so, you know, they're filming in Nairobi, in the actual desert out there.

And so Can you imagine the sweat that's building up behind that?

Yeah.

You pull it off, it's like.

Goodness.

Yeah, squeegee off.

So I've been wearing a mask at work because I'm sick and I don't like when it touches this part of my chin.

Like under.

Jaw area, it irritates me, like I feel like I'm clawing at my skin all day long.

So I kind of understand how he feels if that's the same area that's bothering him because it's touching me and I'm overstimulated.

Touching me and I'm caffeinated.

Or not caffeinated enough, Something is wrong and I got to do this thing off my face.

Well, let's, let's get you redeemed a little bit because they had mentioned Captain Roger Maxon, the origin of the Brotherhood of Steel.

And I am not going to go into the origins at all.

But what I did want to mention was the reason why Captain Roger Maxon rebelled against the US government was because of their experiments on the forced evolutionary virus.

That's right.

That's why.

Which is the Super mutant serum.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah, Elder Claire Quintus is talking directly to Maximus on what he should do.

Rebel against them.

Be like Roger Maxon and rebel against us.

Because we're terrible.

We're the worst.

The dim sword.

Yeah, Whatever.

That's so good.

Got my.

Cross so pretentious.

Yeah, he's so pretentious.

Can I just say this one thing?

The actor is amazing.

His same.

His name is Christopher something or something Christopher, but he was in Mr.

Robot and he was equally as irritatingly holier than thou slash condescending in Mr.

Robot.

I was so fantastic to watch.

So this comes from Battlestar Galactica, the newer version of the Battlestar Galactica, the character or the actor who plays Gaius Baltar Baltar.

Yeah, OK, I know with this cake the.

Worst character.

You love to hate him because he's so.

Hate to love.

Him like just, yeah, one of the two.

Like he's so insufferably selfish and self-centered through the entirety of the series.

I mean, until the very, very end, the very end, he starts to redeem himself barely.

But he's such a great character.

Not a good person, a great character because it's done so well.

Everything he does feels believable.

Everything he does has a purpose.

Even if you are annoyed by the purpose, it'll has purpose.

But yeah, it's I'll always defend a good character, even if they're the worst person on the show.

For a smart guy, he was so stupid.

He was really dumb for some reason.

He's stupid in the way that we're all stupid.

Yeah, we get tripped up by our own desires or competing desires or vanity, which is part of this.

Was like, everything he did is totally believable and totally understandable.

I'm not gonna get into the nuances of all the things that he did, but everything was understandable to a point.

And then the cult thing happened and I was like, okay.

But even that to a point was like, OK, I feel like I understand his motivations for just going with this because it's not something he chose to do and it's just something that's sort of happening and he's gotten used to just letting things happen to him, like not taking control of his own life.

Anyway, again, a great character.

I hated the character.

I hated the character, but I still think he's a great character.

And I of course will never fault an actor for portraying a really good villainous or unlikeable character, because Quintus wouldn't be nearly as unlikable if the actor wasn't good at what he was doing for.

Sure.

So Elder Clara Quintus is played by Michael Christopher and it's spelled CRISTOFER.

Just for reference.

It's not Phi.

Wish I could hire him for certain activities like birthdays.

It could be, oh, this is my uncle, this is my uncle.

He's the CEO of a corporation.

Fun squawking dead.

And then he'll be the not me I the role of bad guy can be transferred on to Michael Christopher.

Hey, can you tilt your your camera?

Get Michael Christopher to say it exactly.

Yeah, I thought you were asking me to tell my camera and I was like, oh, that.

Happened.

I just slumped anyway.

Michael, Christopher, can you get her to tilt her?

Thank you, Michael.

Christie was there, so next.

Time we record better.

Maybe I'll just sit up.

There we go.

I'll just fix myself in the seat.

It's too late.

It's too late.

Just zoom in.

It's fine.

I look like death warmed over whether I'm zoomed in or not.

It's fine.

We're never going to know.

It's fine.

There's the hint of something that may be relevant, may not be relevant, but at the beginning of the scene where we're at the Veterans Affairs place, I forget what it's called.

It was right after the keepsakes, right?

With ARB trying to put the teddy bear into the keepsakes box for the vault.

And he says he has to go to the thing and we see the thing.

Mitch Miller plays the yellow rose of Texas.

The Yellow Rose of Texas refers to a popular legend and song about Emily West or Morgan, depending on your version of history.

If free black servant believed to have distracted Mexican General Santa Ana at the Battle of San Jacinto or Jacinto whatever whatever helping Texas win independence in 1836 Though historians debate the accuracy of the tale, the song itself, rooted in minstrel traditions in celebrating this symbolic figure, evolved to a beloved anthem representing Texas resilience pride in the iconic yellow rose flower.

The woman, Emily West, is a free black woman was working as a housekeeper for a Texan commander when she was captured by Santa Ana's troops and brought to his encampment.

The distraction.

The legend claims she was sent to distract Santa Ana during the crucial attack by the Texans, allowing them to win the battle.

Distract his quotes because the interpretation is she either seduced him or he.

Yeah.

The thing that we can't see, I can't say it now too.

He what was what was the term that you used?

Attacked her.

Attacked, Yeah.

Attacked or something?

An assault.

Attacked scare quotes literally.

Scare quotes.

Historical truth While Emily West was present at San Jacinto, it's just debated if she actively seduced Santa Ana or was simply held captive.

She later sought a passport to leave Texas, suggesting that she was a victim, not a spy.

But the point of the song is the Texas resilience and everybody, even especially Emily West, was crucial in Texas's independence.

So where does that take us?

Well, what might happen in the series is something similar, somebody going behind enemy lines or could be with Hank.

But OK, we said.

Where does Norm McClain go next?

Does he follow his dad and figure out what the hell and pretend to be on his side with all his buds, buds and stuff behind him being like junior executives?

Exactly.

Junior executives and he's the Super executive manager assistant.

Super manager, Yeah.

Yeah.

And so maybe he's like, yeah, Dad, we're here to help you.

And he'll be like I'm about to F dress up like Emily West with the yellow Rosa text.

I had a question though, do we think that Moldaver asked Cooper to assassinate Mr.

House?

Because I feel like that's what they're hinting at is that.

He's like, you want me?

To he's like, you want me to spy on him?

She's like, not spy.

And then basically like, you're supposed to go assassinate him and they're driving home this.

Sometimes you have to do something bad to protect the people you love.

He might feel personally bad about just murdering A civilian.

Technically that's what he is, but it would save millions or billions of other people because he's the one who's going to pull the trigger, apparently.

Clearly it didn't happen for whatever reason.

Is that the reason that Cooper now is, well, the ghoul is now pretty trigger happy?

Like I learned my lesson.

I should have just pulled the trigger when I had the chance.

I wimped out, didn't do it for whatever moral reason, and now all of this happened because I couldn't bring myself to get rid of one person.

And now he just doesn't seem to care who he gets rid of.

It was just something I was thinking about.

I think that they're hinting at the fact that he failed in his mission, whether by refusing to do it or missing his opportunity or something like that.

I was wondering if that maybe was hinting at that in some way?

He could be putting it all on his shoulders that Yeah.

Because he didn't act, the whole world ended.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, so you see what he was talking about in the last episode, how he used to be like Lucy.

In this episode, he's wondering, he's having and hawing about whether it's OK to kill a civilian.

But even Charlie White Knife says if it means not having to go into war and kill a bunch of people for who knows what, probably not a good thing.

Well, then, yeah, But in this case, it's nuclear fallout, right?

Why wouldn't you?

And yet you're still doing the Lucy thing.

Because I really do want to know.

And we're starting to figure out where even the ghoul slash Cooper Howard has a schism how he turns into this, whereas beforehand he's being pushed to do things he wouldn't normally do.

He's an honest guy.

He wants just to be with his horses in his ranch.

That's a simple life for him, but that's not.

Wants to bring his DD cards.

With him.

Okay yeah, so I write the following.

Barb is packing up Jamie things right?

We're just talking about that.

And Cooper says to Barb, we may not have to, right?

But we both know that's not true.

And I think he's more determined in this episode to do the right thing, quote UN quote, even though it's a bad thing, something that Moldava told him in the last episode, not spy on him because it's making her have to cry.

And he's realizing that two things can be true.

I feel like I have to do this.

And Rob House is going to push the button ultimately because I gave him the damn idea to do it.

But she doesn't like having to do this, right?

It's one thing to make the decision and another thing to live with it.

And I think his solution to this is to for her to never know that he knows and also to kill the person that might make him have to do what she said, which is Rob House and then Charlie White Knife saying you may have to do this thing so that other people don't have to suffer that fallout from that decision because he still loves her.

And like Lucy, it's like, well, I'm in this bad situation, but doesn't mean I can't be human.

Doesn't mean that I can't fight for what's right.

So there's that Lucy component to this whole thing and asking the question about do I have to kill a civilian?

That's a Lucy component too.

It's just interesting to see we're finally starting to see the similarities between two and now just at the right time where he's thinking to himself, maybe I can be the man I used to be before I end up meeting Barb and Janie, if that's ever to happen by the way.

Which got me to thinking.

You see there's a gentleness to the ghouls face as he's carrying Lucy away.

It's a bit more solemn, I think less, more like this annoying bitch like that, you know what I mean?

It's like it's less being like, move it along.

There's more of a I'm betting on you like like I said before.

And after a while, you can only be so annoyed with your protagonist until you realize, OK, this is a buddy cop thing that you've just walked into.

Just now I had this idea in the games as you progress if you're playing a somewhat good character.

So aside from a totally evil playthrough, most of the NPCS that you help are usually pretty amazed that you would go out of your way to do something nice for them that you would help, or go above and beyond, or do something spectacular like take out a whole camp of Raiders to save an heirloom or whatever the case it is.

You start to have a positive influence on the world as you move through it.

And I think that Lucy is kind of doing the same thing where if you think about the ghoul, he's had however many decades or centuries where he's experienced nothing but people doing the most selfish possible thing.

And it sort of turned him into this jaded shadow of himself because he's never seen someone stand up to it.

Or he's been beaten down so many times because he used to be the person that stood up to it and it just got nowhere or screwed over however many times, you know, and just sort of lost it when he meets Lucy.

And she's just so determined, no matter what happens, to like, continue to be the best it's possible person.

And I think it really is inspiring him.

And she is having that sort of main character effect on the world, including on Cooper.

He's so Cooper on the inside.

Don't touch that dial.

We'll be right back after these messages.

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I'll draw this parallel and then we'll leave it at that.

Let's read my notes.

Literally Charlie's speech to all the veterans.

I have it all written down.

Not necessary.

Again, it's being said in the past, matching with the present actions of the ghoul freeing Lucy, which is in itself stupid and also hopefully good.

Charlie's speech is a solemn response to Cooper, his friend, but also as the goal.

Right now, it's a parallel to Elder Cleric Quintus's sermon to Maximus that if your path is righteous, protecting the people you love will be rewarded.

Even if it means bloodshed, it will have meant something.

Charlie White Knife's speech kind of ties up all the themes together.

It means your institution has legs.

It's not just a plank of wood.

It means that you're doing something.

It means that whatever you are, your institution, that is your family, whatever it is, is still alive and well.

So maybe the answer is with the NCR.

Maybe for as long as they survive, maybe as long as they keep to their principles, the answer never dies.

Karina loves that because she loves the NCR, but it's a real.

Choice.

And isn't Lucy also a representative of that?

If you're not willing to abscond with your humanity in the process of trying to survive the wasteland, well then isn't humanity alive in you as long as you remain alive?

Anything's possible, folks.

Maybe I shouldn't be so pessimistic about the wasteland.

Or maybe, like Hank says, maybe we weren't meant to survive.

Or maybe we're surviving in spite of ourselves.

Who knows?

That everybody you've heard the call to action already.

Why haven't you?

He heeded it like this video, you can do the things.

I really enjoyed this episode more than any other.

I think Rob, you'd for the first one to mention how much you like this episode.

Why is it so you like this episode so much?

I just think it gave us a lot of meat on the bone is a phrase I'll use for this one.

It gave us the own TR, the Kaiser's Legion, everything going into that little bit more back story on Cooper and so why he's doing what he's doing, it filled me up, I will say.

I like the repeating themes and the interconnected interwoven the house, the boat, the institution, all of that stuff is so good.

So good.

We had many episodes like that in the first season 2 at where like things were repeating and digging into the other and well received, well written episode is written.

And not to say that the last few weren't.

They were a little slower and maybe there were some connections that we didn't quite get.

This one was so clear.

This blew my mind.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Well, I'll say one more thing about that.

It feels like based on what we said in this episode about New Vegas and its ties to the games and it's par for the course.

This is a perfect way of adapting a game is to to say, well, we're not going to give you what happened in the game.

I'm going to give you what happened after the game, the consequence of a certain player's decisions.

Which means you might not see a death glow.

No, you will.

No, you probably will.

No, but I think we can extrapolate, like I said, the possible path that the Courier took in their adventure through New Vegas.

I am so glad there's this many episodes to go.

It's getting hot in here.

Don't take off all your clothes.

And I'm hoping to see you all here watching us or listening to us talk about this.

I've been your host David Cameo, and I was joined by.

Me 'cause my mom 09.

And me Karina at at a Karina art on TikTok.

And Rob at Rob stuff and thanks on TikTok and YouTube.

More than anything else, when I wish you a happy new year because it is happy.

New Year.

Happy New Year.

January 1st, 2026.

I'm wishing you and hoping that you have a wonderful and even better year than the last.

Doesn't matter how bad or good the last year was, I want you to have a better one this year.

Yeah, that's right.

Always room for improvement.

Yeah, you got to leave this year better than the last.

Everybody you have to take responsibility over your year.

That's what I wish for you, this.

Is a whole other podcast.

Bye everybody.

Thanks so much and.

Furthermore, that's it.

Furthermore, that's all.

And one more thing.

And.

One more thing, Jason says, happy New year, right?

Happy new year and happy new Year, Jason, thank you for making our year so good.

Yeah.

Big part of that, Jason.

Bye everybody.

Indeed, indeed.

That's all folks.

Thank you so much for making it to the end of yet another episode of Squawking Dead.

This one, Fallout's third episode of its second season, titled The Profligate.

And we're just about caught up, even though this episode is coming out the day of the following episode, the 4th episode of the second season of Fallout.

I don't even know the title.

I haven't even watched it yet.

That's how much I love these shows.

Each episode is little sacred nugget to me, and I treat it accordingly.

First, watch for pleasure.

Second, watch for notes, maybe even a third.

And I hope you enjoy these episodes, not only the ones you've been watching, but also our little podcast Nuggets.

Everything is a nugget lately.

Don't know why, wink, wink.

To those who know.

Now you've reached the part of our podcast, the end, obviously.

But at the end, we love to shout out our supporters for making this show viable in 2026.

It's a little nugget that they receive at the end of every episode.

I'm just going to call everything a nugget.

Since we don't have any survivors members.

We are moving on to our whispers.

I'll start with Rob Lucchesi.

You can reach on Tiktok at Rob's stuff under score N is Nancy under score.

Thanks THANGS, newly minted Whispers member Jason who was in the chat and you too could be in the chat if you just follow for free.

Either are Co for your Patreon accounts.

It's free to attend the recording studio sessions.

It's free to follow.

All you got to do is follow our Co for your Patreon because we do not post these links on social media.

We don't want to be brigaded by randos who aren't really the real ones.

Do you know what I mean?

You post the link publicly on the Internet, somebody crashes your recording, then you had a problem because you really care about what we're doing, just care about disrupting things, you know what I'm saying, right?

In any case, you can reach Jason at Neos, the one on Instagram that spelled Neos the number one HEONE.

And of course, last but not least, Kim Rally on Facebook.

That's Kim dot Rowley, the number one rock'n'roll in here at Squawking Dead HQ.

And I know I hadn't mentioned to visit our merch store explicitly, but if you hit the Squawking dead.com, choose the main menu, choose shop merch, there is a sub menu where you can reach both the old and the new store.

The new store on squawkingdead.com directly has some really cool designs and we'll be updating our store shortly to include the wonderful caricatures that we had mentioned at the top of of the Season 2 of Fallout that Karina had made, which we're going to be incorporating in our design for both the art and the logo design.

Perhaps we'll see kind of like the art design from last season, which you can still get on the old store as well as the logo, but maybe we can figure out a way to update the art design with the new caricatures and see how that goes.

I am looking very much forward to posting an update on that on our social media.

So consider following us there so that you know when that drop occurs, because when it does, we'll probably be including a discount with that.

And as I had mentioned also, members of any tier will get a 20% off discount at the store.

And of course, T public, there's always a discount, but we won't be including or making new designs for that store.

We'll only be including new designs on squawkingda.com.

In any case, I'll see you on the Flippity flop.

I hope you enjoy the next episode of Fallout and get ready for us discussing the Night of the Seven Kingdoms on HBO slash HBO Max.

We dropped our season finale discussion on Pluribus not too long ago.

I hope you enjoyed that as well.

Very much looking forward to your feedback on that.

Please consider doing so on whatever podcast platform you're listening to or just head on over to ratethispodcast.com/walkingdead.

And of course, if you're listening on YouTube, just leave a comment.

Love to hear back from you.

Been receiving a lot of really, really cool comments on so many platforms, mostly TikTok and YouTube.

It's been very, very heartening and I really, really appreciate it.

Some of you guys really have been coming out of the woodwork.

Some really good insights and I can't wait to talk about them on the next episode.

But until then, just remember that we are squawking dead.