Why do we need another show about the end of the world? Probably for the same reason we've gotten another show based on a previous intellectual property. Streaming has tanked; nobody can figure out how to make any money from it. But because every studio went all in on the model, they are left with no choice but to keep producing for streaming. Every executive is looking for a sure thing, but not even the sure thing can turn a solid profit. All that's left is to keep doing what we've always been doing, hoping that eventually some scraps will be left when the implosion of everything finally stops.
Hence Fallout. Amazon Prime shocked absolutely nobody when they announced they were greenlighting an adaptation of one of the most successful video games of all time. Every good decision made in wake of that was conditioned by that decision. And to be fair, most of the choices production has made are very smart. The writing is an incisive balance of dark comedy and tragic pathos, the dialog and story both deftly pivot with enough ease that we never lose sight of the horror of nuclear apocalypse anymore than we do its gallows humor. Likewise, the mysteries at the story's heart — How did the world end? Who or what is preventing it from being rebuilt — unfold with a rhythm straight out of a screenwriting textbook: unremarkable, but nonetheless effective.
The cast is excellent. None of us really know how a human being born and raised in an underground bunker would act after being thrust into a surface wasteland — particularly if said bunker was designed to be a stereotype of a 1950's American suburb — but Ella Purnell's Lucy MacLean seems a believable approximation. Kyle MacLachlan is clearly having a lot of fun with the direction of his career since the Millennials discovered Twin Peaks, and his portrayal of Lucy's father Hank is no exception. There's no doubt, however, that the one stealing the show is Walton Goggins. His rendition of a disillusioned western film star, now mutated into a basically immortal ghoul doomed to roam the wastelands in a sick imitation of what he once was, is everything we should hope it to be. Grizzled, cynically funny, a parody of himself that still somehow manages to drag along a megaton of gravitas.
So yes, Fallout is an enjoyable watch, and plenty intelligent to boot. Just about the only ones who seem to disagree are the hardest core of the video game's fans, which once again shocks absolutely nobody. Their reasons are as predictable as they are tedious, a repeat of the online whingeing that follows whenever any intellectual property crosses the boundaries of medium. The show isn't canon, they say, as if every cultural artifact doesn't change and evolve over time regardless of its specific afterlives. As if the specific posture of the game itself hasn't already changed by simple dint of it being publicly engaged.
It is ironic that devotees of a game that helped introduce the concept of “open world” believe that same world should be closed off, even from the social fissures that run through its own story. The idea of an America technologically dominant but culturally stuck is a fecund one. What would the year 2077 look like if the Cold War never ended, and if the leaps and bounds of consumer culture had continued to widen? How much more tragically stupid does American optimism — complete with its kneejerk anti-communism — look in the face of armageddon? What is the difference between preparing for the end of the world and profiting from it?
None of these questions are asked in anything like a subtle manner. “The future of all humanity comes down to one word,” says the insidious Vice President of the Vault-Tec Corporation. “Management.” We naturally hear the worst boss we've ever had talking to us. You know the one, the supervisor who wholeheartedly believes the mantras of every entrepreneur's seminar they've ever been to, even if they have no idea what half of them mean. The kind of person for whom genuine enthusiasm and petty tyranny are one and the same. Of course these are the people who will usher in the end of the world. Just look at all the money they’re looking to make in Gaza.
This bluntness isn't necessarily a problem. Fallout knows it is swimming in pulpy waters, and it's a good swimmer at that. No, the problem comes when the series' first season comes to a close. It ends on a cliffhanger. We already know that the second season has been greenlit, meaning we will find out what happens next. In some ways, we already know. Lucy and the Ghoul will set off to continue searching for her father, along the way learning more about how the world was pushed into nuclear apocalypse and the role played by Vault-Tec in getting there. We've already been teased with elements of the “New Vegas” plotline, and we can safely assume plenty of mutants and terrifying giant cockroaches working in tandem.
It's “Hero's Journey” 101, which we all grasp on an instinctual level without reading a word of Joseph Campbell. It's just unpredictable enough to give us a sense of ownership over "what comes next," but predictable enough for studios' expectations. Just how a commodity should be, particularly at a time when anyone with the checkbook is so utterly petrified of anything new.
“The future, my friend, is products,” says Matt Berry's Sebastian Leslie, whose voice spews from the Codsworth robot butlers that manage to survive nuclear holocaust. “You're a product. I'm a product. The end of the world is a product.” And there we have it. He's right, of course, and there's plenty of evidence in the real world that supports his argument. Including a well-produced Amazon Prime series based on one of the most successful video games in history.
During the 1970s, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament made an argument about the British government's Protect and Survive ad campaigns. In portraying a global nuclear conflict as survivable, they made it more likely. People reading these pamphlets, watching these informational programs, come to see said conflict as inevitable, quotidian even, a blip in the inertia of civilization rather than its endpoint. Which raises a whole host of annoying questions. How does one portray all the dark absurdity of apocalypse without trivializing it? Does the black humor of everything ending somehow undermine its severity? Is it really impossible to represent the gravest of crises faced by a species?
Then again, maybe all those nerds bickering over the minutiae of a video game have a point. Stopping the collapse brought on by climate change or the death cults of right-wing authoritarianism doesn't make for good entertainment. After all, the billionaires have already built their underground bunkers. Most would rather do so rather than pay their employees what they are worth or invest in the infrastructure of a stable society. Jeff Bezos definitely already has one. I’m sure he wants to hear your creepily specific thoughts on where to put the liquor cabinet.