"Is the wasteland really worth saving when it is so rife with bloodshed, barbarism, and brutality? What is it about our species' propensity for war, anyway? Why the hell doesn't war ever change? At this point, should humanity just be relegated to the irradiated scrapheap? Take Hank's monologue about All's Quiet on the Western Front, one of the more egregious examples of the series' writers deploying a somewhat hammy, but appropriate, metaphor for our never-ending cycle of conflict"
""I saw the same thing on the surface," says Hank, confronted by Lucy in the executive vault. "People fighting over petty things, like bottlecaps." (He'll be familiar enough with the world of Fallout not to bat an eyelid by now, but there's something deeply amusing in imagining Kyle MacLachlan reading that line in the script for the first time. "Why the hell are they fighting over ... bottlecaps?" It is, of course, the preeminent currency deployed throughout the wasteland, curiously standardized from coast to coast.)"
The episode probes whether the wasteland merits preservation amid pervasive bloodshed, barbarism, and brutality. Characters repeatedly question humanity's propensity for war and the stubborn persistence of conflict. Hank delivers a wartime metaphor to frame the series' recurring theme of never-ending violence. Hank assembles docile automaton worker bees controlled by a refined mind-control chip, suggesting technological domination of survivors. The narrative hints that overt gore has lessened while human sacrifice and corporate progress remain linked. Surface dwellers include dangerous figures such as ex-cannibals, complicating the ethics of saving a brutal world.
Read at Vulture
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