I became aFalloutfan only about a decade ago, and I’m sure many would claim I’m not even a real fan when they hearmy favorite entry is Fallout 4. It’s an immediately intriguing world, which is why I did have average expectations for theannouncement of the live-action seriesover onAmazon Prime Video. Fallout’s characters and story have always been the main focus, so adapting that to a medium without any gameplay sounded like it would make a decent product at the very least.
I’ve watched the whole first episode, which is the length of a shorter motion picture at over an hour and ten minutes, and yet the first seven minutes were more than enough to completely win me over. I’m not joking — it was a perfect intro in terms of setting the scene, quickly writing characters, and throwing in game references without ever feeling forced.
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Is It Your Thumb, Or Mine?
The opening takes a page out ofFallout 4by showing what life was like in America just before the bombs fell, hundreds of years before the post-apocalypse the games are set in. Out of the main stars, the only one we see in this section is Walter Goggins, playing a professional actor playing a cowboy for a young boy’s birthday party, while Orange Colored Sky is playing as party music. It’s classic 1950s Americana from the outlook, and in attitude, as the attendants at the party quickly show how vapid they are in pretending there isn’t a world-shattering event they’ve all been warned about. At one point, they even turn on a weather program in which the anchor breaks on air, claiming he can’t go on “not knowing if there’s a next week,” which only results in the channel being changed.
I still really liked these other stories, but in both cases, I found myself wishing they’d been as flawlessly executed as the opening scenes.
The father of the boy asks Goggins to give a thumbs up, and Goggins politely declines, “given the state of things.” I actually got the reference from the start; the history of “the rule of thumb” involves a survival tactic for the mushroom clouds from atomic bombs. If the cloud was smaller than your thumb, you had time to escape. If the cloud was larger, you would have already suffered a lethal amount of radiation. He gets called a “pinko” behind his back for the refusal.
Goggins' daughter asks him to explain why he refused, and at first, I wasn’t sure if I liked that the show felt the need to explain it. It felt fine as something only some viewers would pick up — a bonus for us history buffs, not uncommon for the Fallout series. However, the daughter’s new knowledge suddenly leads to a harrowing moment.
Again, a page was taken from Fallout 4’s book, but even as a massive Fallout 4 fan, I think this seven-minute intro does that conceptfarbetter. The satire hits perfectly, Goggins' character is perfectly established, and the shock of how bleak the story turns is jaw-dropping in all the right ways. Without much disrespect intended, the rest of the episode doesn’t live up to how perfect the intro was.
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Lone Wandering Through The Plot
I’ll be quick with my gripes on the rest of the episode, as they are really quite minor. The plot given to the Vault Dweller, Lucy (Ella Purnell), works great as world-building, whether you’re already familiar with the franchise or not. She’s a great character as well, with defined goals and personality. However, her ultimate goal feels a bit too copied fromFallout 3and 4, and her plot is given the most screen time, which results in the pacing taking a bit to get going.
Then, at essentially the exact opposite end of things was Maximus of theBrotherhood Of Steel(Aaron Clifton Moten). His story gets less screen time, and his character feels a lot less defined. I’m not sure how I felt about that, because part of me felt the information wasn’t always delivered to the audience well enough, but then another part of me felt it was deliberate, so we’d question Maximus and his real goals. I’m intrigued, but at the same time, worried I was just poorly informed.
I still really liked these other stories, but in both cases, I found myself wishing they’d been as flawlessly executed as the opening scenes. I’mlooking forward to seeing how it keeps going, especially to see if the show can nail something as great as its opener again.
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