Fallout TV show review: The best Fallout since New Vegas

Movies & TVFalloutFallout TV show review: The best Fallout since New VegasWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Amazon)

Lucy advertizes Nuka Cola

“New videogame adaptation turns out not to be absolute catshit” isn’t really headline news any more, is it? After Castlevania and The Last of Us and so on, the idea that a game adaptation might be good has stopped being shocking. EvenWerewolves Within, the horror-comedy movie loosely based onUbisoft’s VR version of the social deduction game Werewolf, turned out great. Fallout isn’t coming into a world where it’s unbelievable that a videogame show might be worth watching. I’m just glad it doesn’t buck the trend.

While those three main characters get the most screentime, they’re not the only thing going on. There’s an escapee from the Enclave, extended flashbacks to Goggins' character in his pre-war life, and—in the same way Fallout 3 has things carry on in the Vault in your absence—Fallout the TV show has an entire B-plot where Lucy’s brother Norm investigates the mystery of his home, Vault 33, and the connected Vault 32. It leads to a full-on spooky side story complete with Bethesda-esque environmental storytelling right down to the messages written on the walls, which is one of the best parts of the show.

Fallout (the show) really does feel like Fallout (the games), and not just because it has characters wearing Pip-Boys and power armor. It has a structure so familiar that when Lucy accepted a job to escort someone across the Wasteland I heard the rumble of a “mission accepted” notification in my head.

(Image credit: Prime TV)

Fallout characters

This won’t stop the people who have been complaining about trivialities since the first trailer, like “the characters don’t look dirty enough.” Though there are plenty of scenes where people trudge across dustbowls with dried blood on their clothes from a previous fight, the color palette goes beyond brown and gray, which the realism brigade won’t be happy about. Nor will the people who insist on having “what the NCR is up to” explained to them in episode one, or want the characters to take time out of the story to explain to the screen why they’re using specific gun models, or whatever else the deep nerds have decided to fixate on. None of that would have made the show better, if you ask me.

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The final thing Fallout gets right is the tone, in a way that even the Fallout games sometimes don’t. The TV show, for instance, treats the Brotherhood of Steel like the joke it’s supposed to be. They’re gung-ho and daft, more like bros than a Brotherhood, as you’d expect from the kind of isolationists who hark back to a fantasy Middle Ages with their paladins and clerics. The scenes where a Brotherhood squire and a knight try to cross the Wasteland in the TV show are more reminiscent of the movieJabberwockythan an epic quest.

(Image credit: Prime TV)

Fallout characters

(Image credit: Prime TV)

Fallout characters

The one thing I didn’t like about Fallout was that it ended, and specifically that it ended without tying up all the loose ends. The eight episodes of this first season are less self-contained than I hoped, climaxing with a lot more setup for season two than I expected given how many streaming shows get canceled out of the blue. Season two seems likely to happen, and thank goodness for that, because I’m more excited to see where Fallout goes from here than I was after playing Fallout 4 or 76.

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