Fallout is a show that does a great job of fooling you into thinking it's actually good. It does a great job of recreating the look of the game, but beneath that impressive surface is a tangled mess of stories and hollow moments.
Picking up after the big teaser at the end of last season, this season centers on New Vegas. It was the setting of the beloved game of the same name from 2010, and this season had some big shoes to fill.
The end of the previous season was messy, but it left things in an interesting place where all the major characters could convene in New Vegas for some sort of showdown. The problem is that all the different storylines in the show move at a snail’s pace.
A big reason why the pacing is off is that the writers have insisted on including every minor storyline from the previous season and juggling them with more important ones. The result is a show that constantly jumps between different groups of characters and only gives each storyline a few minutes of development at a time.
There’s also an obnoxious amount of flashback scenes from the time before the bombs fell that interrupt the flow of the plot. There’s simply too much fluff for a show that only puts out eight episodes every season.
It’s a shame because the props, costumes, and set designs are all fantastic. The creators have done a great job of recreating the world of Fallout with all of its brands, weapons, monsters, and factions on display. When combined with the weak storytelling, however, it’s like touring a theme park where nothing deeper is offered.
The writers love to include elements that will be familiar to people who played the games, but constantly fail to write storylines that do them justice. The thing is, those stories progress so slowly that you won’t know there's a problem until later episodes. The show relies on mystery and the mystique of its most powerful characters to justify the lack of any explanation or motives.
The central trio of characters (Lucy, Cooper and Maximus) still go through their own arcs in the season, with Walton Goggins having the bulk of the best scenes. Maximus’s backstory is fleshed out, which makes him a more sympathetic character. (The ending of Season 1 made it seem as though Maximus would become a more important character, but surprisingly, he has the least impactful arc of the trio.)
Ella Purnell continues to do good work as Lucy, although Lucy’s naivete goes from charming to annoying by the end of the season. It’s a shame that even the show’s most important characters have their stories bogged down by a jumbled plot that has way too many players involved.
The first half of the season is especially slow and sets up a lot of intriguing plot points. The factions of New Vegas are all vying for control, but it’s the humans from the old world that seemingly hold all the chips – which was never a part of the games.
The hook of Fallout is that it examined the human condition in a world that was destroyed by the hubris of the rich and powerful. The factions that would rise from the ashes tried to find meaning and survival while picking at the remains of the old world.
There’s so much focus on characters that were alive before the destruction that it makes it harder for the show to capitalize on the themes that made the games engrossing. So many of the show’s big revelations are that a shady character was actually born 200 years ago and that they have a secret plan no one knows about -- and there’s almost always a secret facility involved. It’s like watching a live-action version of a Saturday morning cartoon where the villain always has a new trick up their sleeve.
It seems like Fallout is another show that will be slowly milked for years, with short seasons that constantly tease fans with things ripped from the games. It looks marvelous, but the writing doesn’t do the setting justice and, in many ways, cheapens the source material with its trite interpretation of its themes and lore. Whether you’re a fan of the games or not, the show doesn’t offer enough substance to make it worth watching.
Author Bio:
Ulises Duenas is a senior writer and film critic at Highbrow Magazine.
For Highbrow Magazine