The Collegio Pittsburg's student voice since 1916
Josh Smith
Philosophy, politics, ethics, economics, and a whole lot of action is not just a great way to answer the question, “What did you do this semester,” but also a description of Amazon Prime’s new hit series, Fallout. Season one, released on Apr. 10, captures the familiar feel of post-apocalyptic adventures through the wasteland found in the video game series of the same name. The show manages to bring new stories to the world of Fallout that are rooted in the source material instead of being put into the safe box of just recreating scenes from the games.
The show takes elements from all the games of the franchise but seems to lean most strongly on the more popular titles with the building blocks of stories and locations from Fallout 3, set to the overall backdrop of Fallout: New Vegas. An existing knowledge of the games’ lore doesn’t ruin any of the twists for viewers, nor is it needed to casually enjoy the show. Much of the explanation and exposition is handled the same way it is in the games, by giving the viewer a clueless character to relate to that is also experiencing this “Wild Wasteland” for the first time.
Producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy brought to Fallout the intense mind puzzles of philosophical and ethical quandaries balanced with action, adventure, and gore all while holding up a giant mirror to society which made their previous work, HBO’s Westworld, such a success. There are many parallels between the two shows, including a gunslinging “Man in Black” hardened by the world, and a constant reminder that “These violent delights have violent ends.”
The story follows three main characters which intersect at many points throughout the season. We have a young woman named Lucy, who was born and raised in the safety of an underground vault. She leaves her overly sheltered life behind to find her father, a reverse of Finding Nemo. Her lack of knowledge about the world that kept going after the nukes fell makes her a great stand in for the audience when exposition is needed and gives a view of how the cruelty of the outside world – the state of nature – may or may not change her while her world views are challenged at every turn.
We also follow the adventures of a young man named Maximus, a squire of The Brotherhood of Steel. This brotherhood is a military organization with religion as their cornerstone, think knights in power-armor. He struggles with his duty to do what is right in a world where power is taken and not given. Starting from a mindset of moral superiority, he quickly finds himself over-encumbered with the weight of lies and misdeeds he uses to protect himself and his ego. Some other themes in his story include forgiveness, trust, and the realization that bullying/hazing is often a cycle.
Our third main character is the typical western trope of the gunslinging bounty hunter who has been around long enough to let the rot of hate build up inside of them so much that there isn’t room for anything else. The difference between this bounty hunter and Westworld’s “Man in Black” is that this one has been rotting for 219 years, and the rot is more than a metaphor. Introduced simply as “The Ghoul”, he was on the surface when the bombs dropped and the radiation he was exposed to extended his life span, given that he is able to maintain a supply of medication that keeps him from going “feral” a state in which the ghoul forgets who they are, loses their humanity, and more or less becomes a horror movie zombie. The themes in his tale range greatly, but any real dive into them would get into spoiler territory. However, it can be said that he has been at war a long time and knows that “war never changes.”
There is a whole range of minor characters fleshing out the world to make it feel more real and lived in, some of which are recurring, but the most important one is CX404, AKA Dogmeat, for those familiar with the games. She is an experimental dog who, much like in the games, doesn’t do much other than provide companionship but that’s enough to be a good dog. Despite some close calls, she does live beyond the first season, a very important detail not for any plot reasons, but for people who won’t watch anything where the dog doesn’t make it.
After 8 episodes, I can easily say that the show will do great with both audiences unfamiliar with the games and longtime fans. At time of writing, Fallout is rated 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, just behind the 96% received by The Last of Us (another recent video game to tv adaptation), showing that video games are not niche source material. The TV-MA rating is well earned as there is a lot of intense gore and some instances of very sudden violence that may be off-putting to some, as well as a random scene with nudity. While the show doesn’t play mind games with you at the same level as Westworld, it still draws a lot of suspense and delivers on great twists. Overall, I rate this 4/5. All 8 episodes are available now on Amazon Prime Video.