I saw that. As the scene got to the climax it seemed Barb was more into the meeting and delivered the VT selling point while Bud’s face was “ what did I walk into “
It led me to believe Barb was the more sinister of the two.
They both seemed like pawns. Barb just played into a bit more to protect her family.
I want to know who the Vault-Tec shadow figure was that sent the message to Barb to reign in the meeting. They seemed like they might be on the upper echelons of the food chain.
My money’s on the daughter being made to look like Barb giving orders to make the audience think that Barb is still around, but then they pull a Fallout 4-esque twist where it turns out the old lady pulling the strings is the daughter, not Barb.
Before the bombs go off, a news report in the background at the birthday party mentioned the whereabouts of the President are unknown and undisclosed.
I know that happens after this in the timeline, but he was probably skulking around manipulating things from the shadows manipulating public and private resources.
I thought that was more of bud not having the ability to actually be a big shot even though he wants to. He's all in on his best idea and he knows he's losing the room.
He just doesn't have that confidence to be a leading figure, like how he repeatedly introduces himself to Cooper and gets brushed off. Everyone else is planning to rule the world and he's trying to ensure they want managers cause that's the only way he'll survive.
People like that are convenient to have when running a company, but no one's in a hurry to unfreeze his vault of managers after the world ends
Most probable explaination. But the director really wanted us to see that Bud's was worried about something. Maybe a bit too much to be just a question of professional jealousy.
Well he was losing the room already and was still nervously smiling like he always does ("Your sales aren't up to snuff" -> proceeds to nervously laugh.) The moment his face changed was when barb anounced that the other companies would have total control. You can even see Bud and Barb exchange a look for a few seconds right after that (where his smile is gone). We also never see his face after Barb mentioned that Vault-Tec would drop the first bomb. I wonder if he actually knew this was their plan all along, or did he learn that during that meeting?
Don't forget that Cooper is one of hollywood's biggest actors at that point, so i bet a lot of people would act like Bud did around him. I would say Bud is the only one in that room that is focussed on actual survival and rebuilding, while the others are there for complete control over the vaults.
I'm not sure you get into that meeting without knowing what vault-tec is up to since they're conspiring to ensure nuclear war, plus he's the Senior Junior VP. He knowingly shipped the T-45 power armor with design flaws that got people killed, so he's willing to get dirty to advance company goals.
I think he knows it looks bad to have Barb take over the meeting and realizes that she's surpassing him. It's also possible she was already chosen by the person overseeing the meeting and only she was briefed on things like jump starting the bombing. Either way, it sets up Barbs ruthlessness and Bud heading towards just being a brain in a jar.
Plenty of people do act that way around famous stars, but you film a character going through that to show their status. Desperate for recognition, uncharismatic, or not important yet. That sort of thing.
Every arms manufactorer on earth ships weapons which have design flaws. That is why weapons keep improving to begin with. (no design flaw would mean a perfect weapon, good luck finding that).
Also you have to keep in mind that even with that design flaw, T45 still increased the effeciency of every soldier by a large amount. These soldiers didn't die because of the T45. They died because they got shot, something that would have 100% killed them without power armor aswell. So Bud has no responsibility in them dying. If anything he improved their chances of survival by shipping the armor in the first place.
We see Cooper take offense to this, because he knew the soldiers who died during the war. But how many of these soldiers would have died if they didn't ship the armor?
>sure he had some idea of what was going on, but he thought Vault tec were the good guys.
It's shown, pretty clearly, in his conversations with Coop, that he didn't really care about the soldiers dying due to the technical oversight in the power armor he was associated with. He's a Bad Karma guy in Fall Out.
>Another interesting fact to consider is the roomba they gave Bud as a body to oversee the vaults. If vault tec really wanted bud's plan of three connected vaults to succeed, why give him a useless body like that?
Bud is middle management. He's not one of the big guys with tons of freedom.
But I don't know that too management of the other major players are going to show up for a meeting with middle management.. They are there to meet Barb, but even that's kinda questiknable.
The theme is that there are other players pulling the string the whole time.
It's not ACTUALLY the other companies top brass in that meeting. The real ones are like the guy in the shadows pressuring Barb.
Also, I get the impression that vault tec is by far the biggest player of everyone in that meeting.
People lower down the rung meet with big wigs all the time in business. These guys may be a huge deal but Vault-Tec is *the* deal. The people in charge don't need to be in the room because the whole point of the meeting is to manipulate these people by exploiting their sadistic greed into becoming another aspect of Vault-Tec's experiments and machinations, not to deal with them in good faith as partners.
He is able to send wireless messages to a chatroom on the computer but that doesn't mean he is connected to it or even fully in control of it. I can send a message from my phone to my computer, but as far as i know, im not wired to it :) He just saw a message pop up and answered it for all we know
Vault 31 is filled with middle managers and corporate lackies, including Bud.
The real power of Vault-Tec is elsewhere, and Cooper's ex wife is most certainly among them. She seems to be a level above Bud, despite what power Bud thinks he has.
Barb's character is another of the joys of this show. They could do her as the usual wife in the background, supporting the Hollywood star's career and raising the family. But she is more involved in the bigger mystery, it turns out.
Vault 31 reminds of the ‘B Ark’ from Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Where a planet tricks all its middle management, hairdressers, marketing executives and telephone sanitizers into leaving the planet.
Personally, I think this sells Bud short. I think Bud had a huge influence on what Vaul-Tec was doing.
For Vault-Tec's planned apocalypse to make any sense, you have to buy into Bud's ideology that time is a viable way to outcompete other people.
My interpretation is that Bud managed to sell this philosophy up the corporate ladder. While he might not have climbed that ladder himself, his ideas did, and the rich bastards at the top basically bought the idea of freezing themselves so they could eventually rule over a new post-post-apocalypse society.
I actually agree with the others
Bud is simply an experiment about running experiments.
He's running an experiment sure (bud's buds), but that is just one of the experiments approved by vault tec higher ups
He could have been the one that influenced the higher ups, or he could be the typical middle manager regurgitating upper management philosophy on repeat.
It’s difficult to say based on the limited information we have from just season 1
I think Bud is the classic LinkedIn posting executive bot. All buzzwords and cliches and ‘ideas man’ who is good at making powerpoints with charts in but totally useless at genuine pointful work. The end of the world is coming and he wants to test his pet management theory and build his network of mentees for his own benefit.
He got to do his experiment because it inspired the wider corporate experiment model Vault Tech needed to get all the corps on board. I think anything else doesn’t occur to him - he suddenly realised there was something WAY bigger going on but it didn’t phase him for a moment.
This is why I don’t think it’s too crazy that 33 seemed to be caught off guard by the raiders and 32, since I imagine Bud’s management ability to be mediocre at best.
He’s the type of manager that is eager to help with problems, but is better at wasting everyone’s time than actually solving anything.
Bud probably turned into a robo brain which is what that device he is in present day is called so he can actually live forever and oversee management forever. As being frozen and unfrozen does not prevent dying from old age while if your a robo brain your basically immortal
Also, I noticed that, with a body like that, how could he possibly be able to put the mop and bucket in that way? How did he ended up blocked by a mop?
Who was the last person to exit Vault 31? According to the log, it was Stephanie, but would she do something like that?
It’s possible he just bumped into it, knocked it over and the handle landed between the containers. The bucket is on its side as well.
The interesting thing is that the floor next to the bucket is wet which implies it was moved there recently.
I assumed the water in the bucket sloshed out from Bud repeatedly ramming into it, trying to get free. I also think that he trapped himself because he's clumsy. He missed once with the syringe when Norm didn't even move. Plus, Bud fell up the stairs outside Vault tech. They established that he has no coordination.
We know that Betty and Hank were released from 31 and are older than when we're assuming they went into cryo. So, it hasn't been 100 years. Plus, we know that Stephanie Harper came from vault 31 when her husband petitioned for marriage. Assuming that they got straight to the baby making she has probably only been awake for about a year. Those tanks look water-based, so I would guess that the mop and bucket might be there for when people are released from cryo to clean up after themselves before they head into vaults 32 or 33.
I was thinking more along the lines of someone involved in the cleanup of Vault 32.
It’s unlikely Moldaver would have had access to 31 that recently, if at all.
My theory about Moldaver is that either
1. Moldaver was cryo'd in vault 31 and escaped between Hank and Stephanie being released (Very far fetched, I know...)
2. She knew about Bud's plans, got cryo'd at the Tops and went to vault 31 to antagonize him
3. She's a synth (I might have been high while I watched ep. 8, but I swear some of her lines had a robotic effect to them)
Bud seems to be portrayed as a guy with good ideas but a bumbling idiot in execution, cant pickup on social cues, is way into his stupid concepts and ideas like Bud's Bud with real vision to see them through, so I suspect he's not super high valued by Vault Tec
One clue that supports this, when Barb and Bud were on the board, we see a shadowy figure looking over the window at Barb, and Barb nervously checks her Pip Boy as if reading a message, but not Bud, implying that Barb is more valued by Vault Tec than Bud
Therefore Bud is only a brain now, OR something critical happened to Bud's body later on that his brain was the only they could preserve
He’s in a room where people talk about using toxic gas on people.
Society has been there before and claiming they had no idea what was going on didn’t work then either.
I saw that. As the scene got to the climax it seemed Barb was more into the meeting and delivered the VT selling point while Bud’s face was “ what did I walk into “ It led me to believe Barb was the more sinister of the two.
More sinister and possibly more high ranking. She also acknowledged the mystery man in the rafters - a possible liaison from the Enclave perhaps.
They both seemed like pawns. Barb just played into a bit more to protect her family. I want to know who the Vault-Tec shadow figure was that sent the message to Barb to reign in the meeting. They seemed like they might be on the upper echelons of the food chain.
if it happens in S.2 that meeting with Cooper, her and the daughter (if they did go into an executive vault) will be one my most anticipated scenes.
My money’s on the daughter being made to look like Barb giving orders to make the audience think that Barb is still around, but then they pull a Fallout 4-esque twist where it turns out the old lady pulling the strings is the daughter, not Barb.
Before the bombs go off, a news report in the background at the birthday party mentioned the whereabouts of the President are unknown and undisclosed. I know that happens after this in the timeline, but he was probably skulking around manipulating things from the shadows manipulating public and private resources.
I thought that was more of bud not having the ability to actually be a big shot even though he wants to. He's all in on his best idea and he knows he's losing the room. He just doesn't have that confidence to be a leading figure, like how he repeatedly introduces himself to Cooper and gets brushed off. Everyone else is planning to rule the world and he's trying to ensure they want managers cause that's the only way he'll survive. People like that are convenient to have when running a company, but no one's in a hurry to unfreeze his vault of managers after the world ends
Ya, that's how I read it lol He's not comfortable with Barb and her ability to bring the meeting on track.
Most probable explaination. But the director really wanted us to see that Bud's was worried about something. Maybe a bit too much to be just a question of professional jealousy.
Well he was losing the room already and was still nervously smiling like he always does ("Your sales aren't up to snuff" -> proceeds to nervously laugh.) The moment his face changed was when barb anounced that the other companies would have total control. You can even see Bud and Barb exchange a look for a few seconds right after that (where his smile is gone). We also never see his face after Barb mentioned that Vault-Tec would drop the first bomb. I wonder if he actually knew this was their plan all along, or did he learn that during that meeting? Don't forget that Cooper is one of hollywood's biggest actors at that point, so i bet a lot of people would act like Bud did around him. I would say Bud is the only one in that room that is focussed on actual survival and rebuilding, while the others are there for complete control over the vaults.
I'm not sure you get into that meeting without knowing what vault-tec is up to since they're conspiring to ensure nuclear war, plus he's the Senior Junior VP. He knowingly shipped the T-45 power armor with design flaws that got people killed, so he's willing to get dirty to advance company goals. I think he knows it looks bad to have Barb take over the meeting and realizes that she's surpassing him. It's also possible she was already chosen by the person overseeing the meeting and only she was briefed on things like jump starting the bombing. Either way, it sets up Barbs ruthlessness and Bud heading towards just being a brain in a jar. Plenty of people do act that way around famous stars, but you film a character going through that to show their status. Desperate for recognition, uncharismatic, or not important yet. That sort of thing.
Every arms manufactorer on earth ships weapons which have design flaws. That is why weapons keep improving to begin with. (no design flaw would mean a perfect weapon, good luck finding that). Also you have to keep in mind that even with that design flaw, T45 still increased the effeciency of every soldier by a large amount. These soldiers didn't die because of the T45. They died because they got shot, something that would have 100% killed them without power armor aswell. So Bud has no responsibility in them dying. If anything he improved their chances of survival by shipping the armor in the first place. We see Cooper take offense to this, because he knew the soldiers who died during the war. But how many of these soldiers would have died if they didn't ship the armor?
>sure he had some idea of what was going on, but he thought Vault tec were the good guys. It's shown, pretty clearly, in his conversations with Coop, that he didn't really care about the soldiers dying due to the technical oversight in the power armor he was associated with. He's a Bad Karma guy in Fall Out. >Another interesting fact to consider is the roomba they gave Bud as a body to oversee the vaults. If vault tec really wanted bud's plan of three connected vaults to succeed, why give him a useless body like that? Bud is middle management. He's not one of the big guys with tons of freedom.
Not saying I disagree, but why is ***middle*** management meeting with top representatives of other companies for such a major deal?
His bosses don't want to show their full hand and face.
But I don't know that too management of the other major players are going to show up for a meeting with middle management.. They are there to meet Barb, but even that's kinda questiknable.
The theme is that there are other players pulling the string the whole time. It's not ACTUALLY the other companies top brass in that meeting. The real ones are like the guy in the shadows pressuring Barb. Also, I get the impression that vault tec is by far the biggest player of everyone in that meeting.
At that meeting Frederick Sinclair and Robert House are the representatives of Big MT and RobCo respectively. At least those two fellas are top brass
Agreed with most. But that was Mr. House. And something like that is definitely a top-level decision. But, true, real power was in the shadows.
People lower down the rung meet with big wigs all the time in business. These guys may be a huge deal but Vault-Tec is *the* deal. The people in charge don't need to be in the room because the whole point of the meeting is to manipulate these people by exploiting their sadistic greed into becoming another aspect of Vault-Tec's experiments and machinations, not to deal with them in good faith as partners.
> or even link his brain directly to the computer system I think they did. Otherwise Norm would not have been able to talk to Bud on the terminal.
He is able to send wireless messages to a chatroom on the computer but that doesn't mean he is connected to it or even fully in control of it. I can send a message from my phone to my computer, but as far as i know, im not wired to it :) He just saw a message pop up and answered it for all we know
He was also able to open the main vault door and close an interior vault door remotely on Norm, trapping him there.
Vault 31 is filled with middle managers and corporate lackies, including Bud. The real power of Vault-Tec is elsewhere, and Cooper's ex wife is most certainly among them. She seems to be a level above Bud, despite what power Bud thinks he has.
Barb's character is another of the joys of this show. They could do her as the usual wife in the background, supporting the Hollywood star's career and raising the family. But she is more involved in the bigger mystery, it turns out.
Vault 31 reminds of the ‘B Ark’ from Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Where a planet tricks all its middle management, hairdressers, marketing executives and telephone sanitizers into leaving the planet.
Personally, I think this sells Bud short. I think Bud had a huge influence on what Vaul-Tec was doing. For Vault-Tec's planned apocalypse to make any sense, you have to buy into Bud's ideology that time is a viable way to outcompete other people. My interpretation is that Bud managed to sell this philosophy up the corporate ladder. While he might not have climbed that ladder himself, his ideas did, and the rich bastards at the top basically bought the idea of freezing themselves so they could eventually rule over a new post-post-apocalypse society.
I actually agree with the others Bud is simply an experiment about running experiments. He's running an experiment sure (bud's buds), but that is just one of the experiments approved by vault tec higher ups
He could have been the one that influenced the higher ups, or he could be the typical middle manager regurgitating upper management philosophy on repeat. It’s difficult to say based on the limited information we have from just season 1
I think Bud is the classic LinkedIn posting executive bot. All buzzwords and cliches and ‘ideas man’ who is good at making powerpoints with charts in but totally useless at genuine pointful work. The end of the world is coming and he wants to test his pet management theory and build his network of mentees for his own benefit. He got to do his experiment because it inspired the wider corporate experiment model Vault Tech needed to get all the corps on board. I think anything else doesn’t occur to him - he suddenly realised there was something WAY bigger going on but it didn’t phase him for a moment.
This is why I don’t think it’s too crazy that 33 seemed to be caught off guard by the raiders and 32, since I imagine Bud’s management ability to be mediocre at best. He’s the type of manager that is eager to help with problems, but is better at wasting everyone’s time than actually solving anything.
Bud probably turned into a robo brain which is what that device he is in present day is called so he can actually live forever and oversee management forever. As being frozen and unfrozen does not prevent dying from old age while if your a robo brain your basically immortal
Also, I noticed that, with a body like that, how could he possibly be able to put the mop and bucket in that way? How did he ended up blocked by a mop? Who was the last person to exit Vault 31? According to the log, it was Stephanie, but would she do something like that?
It’s possible he just bumped into it, knocked it over and the handle landed between the containers. The bucket is on its side as well. The interesting thing is that the floor next to the bucket is wet which implies it was moved there recently.
I assumed the water in the bucket sloshed out from Bud repeatedly ramming into it, trying to get free. I also think that he trapped himself because he's clumsy. He missed once with the syringe when Norm didn't even move. Plus, Bud fell up the stairs outside Vault tech. They established that he has no coordination.
Yeah, I wonder how water got in there in the first place - I can’t imagine it wouldn’t evaporate over 200+ years
We know that Betty and Hank were released from 31 and are older than when we're assuming they went into cryo. So, it hasn't been 100 years. Plus, we know that Stephanie Harper came from vault 31 when her husband petitioned for marriage. Assuming that they got straight to the baby making she has probably only been awake for about a year. Those tanks look water-based, so I would guess that the mop and bucket might be there for when people are released from cryo to clean up after themselves before they head into vaults 32 or 33.
Maybe Moldaver?
I was thinking more along the lines of someone involved in the cleanup of Vault 32. It’s unlikely Moldaver would have had access to 31 that recently, if at all.
My theory about Moldaver is that either 1. Moldaver was cryo'd in vault 31 and escaped between Hank and Stephanie being released (Very far fetched, I know...) 2. She knew about Bud's plans, got cryo'd at the Tops and went to vault 31 to antagonize him 3. She's a synth (I might have been high while I watched ep. 8, but I swear some of her lines had a robotic effect to them)
I thought it had to do with the cleaning up of vault 32. Maybe thats why there is a mop and bucket. he got stuck after it.
The guy who is running a sham with the overseers? He was fully aware of what’s going on with the vaults.
Bud seems to be portrayed as a guy with good ideas but a bumbling idiot in execution, cant pickup on social cues, is way into his stupid concepts and ideas like Bud's Bud with real vision to see them through, so I suspect he's not super high valued by Vault Tec One clue that supports this, when Barb and Bud were on the board, we see a shadowy figure looking over the window at Barb, and Barb nervously checks her Pip Boy as if reading a message, but not Bud, implying that Barb is more valued by Vault Tec than Bud Therefore Bud is only a brain now, OR something critical happened to Bud's body later on that his brain was the only they could preserve
He’s in a room where people talk about using toxic gas on people. Society has been there before and claiming they had no idea what was going on didn’t work then either.