Chet's storyline is such a good example of what the Fallout show does all the time. Which is comment upon and explore fucked up aspects of American values - through a different enough lens that it doesn't become one-dimensional torture porn about the typical victims of those systems.
One of my absolute favorite examples of this is Chet. On its face, Chet's storyline is absurdly comical. But there is an unmistakable, unsubtle horror there, too. In the way that Chet's grief, fear, vulnerability, and sexual desire was exploited by a more powerful figure who knows a lot more about how the world actually works than he does. During which time he is, surprisingly quickly, coerced into being that powerful figure's domestic laborer.
Steph quickly incorporates Chet into her life as a support system, allowing her to offload the domestic labor of childrearing onto him while she moves higher in the ranks of a symbolic corporate American structure (one which maintains an air of secrecy + suppression of dissenters to keep that power). Despite the fact that this is not at all Chet's fault and he did nothing wrong, and the fact that Steph is doing all this to him deliberately, everyone around him only see Steph's power and the image of domestic normality. To the point where, very quickly, people stop remembering Chet as a separate entity outside Steph's family unit. Constantly referring to Chet as Steph's husband and the father of her child. Despite the fact that he's neither of those things and never was.
Chet maybe could've gotten free of this dynamic earlier, if he had gone further along with Norm in questioning the forces behind the scenes at work in their way of life. But he was too scared, and didn't want things to change. Or to get in more trouble than he'd already been in.
Unfortunately this has led to a situation in which he's now effectively trapped with Steph, a woman he can no longer ignore is dangerous, a liar, and in charge of the community in which he lives. Nor can he rely on help from the people around him. The brave ones like Norm and Lucy are gone and he's cut off from them. Other dissenters have been disappeared. He knows the entire social hierarchy is structured around keeping people like Steph in power at all costs, so he cannot rely on those structures for help. And everyone is so blinded by the image of a normal domestic family they literally can't comprehend he's not Steph's family (possession) and is his own person. Even when he takes every opportunity to remind them.
And on top of all that, now he's the primary caretaker of a baby who didn't ask for any of this, and which he never asked for either. Causing him an even greater potential dilemma because in order to be free he'd have to leave the baby. But in order to save the baby from Steph and her twisted, manipulative way of life, he'd have to take it. And probably end up being hunted forever through a much more dangerous world (like Lucy's mother), which is debatable if it'd be better for the baby in the first place. And all that is even more complicated; he doesn't seem to love the baby as a father, which makes sense because he never chose fatherhood. But he's not enough of a scumbag to not take care of the baby, because... It's a baby. And because somehow, the one other person who should really care and feel responsible... kinda doesn't. Not really.
No matter what option he chooses, Chet's fucked. There's no actual good solutions. And none of this is, at the highest level, even really his fault.
It all basically happened because he was authentically sharing mutual grief with someone he thought he could trust, and decided to go through with it when she came onto him.
Apparently the punishment for that is a life of fear, domestic servitude, and loss of selfhood
dailybridgerton
romaincrisis
2087
dededos
