Prime Video Fallout review: Wasteland of opportunity

Amazon Studios

It took roughly six hours, but I finally found the Fallout show’s voice, and all it took was watching a man eat popcorn in a bathrobe while the world burned around him. It was the first time Prime Video’s Fallout series actually did something with its dangling plot threads and faint whispers of thematic development, most of which get lost in a muddled first act. That it takes six episodes and multiple tries for the Fallout show to actually land that message is indicative of the series’ broader problems, namely, that it’s confused and spends half its time doing nothing.

The Fallout show is a tale of two. The official description says it’s a story about the haves and have-nots, but that’s only partially true, as the concept barely comes up until the season’s last few episodes. The more accurate description is that it’s a tale of two stories. One is an incisive story about conflict and control that the writers tell confidently, and the other is a stretched and forced trek across the wasteland that feels perfunctory because you can’t have Fallout without a wasteland. 

Fallout is still fun, even at its lowest point, though given how strong the back half is, it’s hard not to feel like the show doesn’t live up to its full potential.

Trust the businessman selling you a vault. Nothing could go wrong. / Amazon Studios

The Fallout show starts with a brief pre-fallout scene before switching to an underground vault 200 years in the future and a cultural exchange gone horribly wrong. The seemingly innocent, happy people of Vault 33 – some of the old world’s elite who escaped nuclear war by living underground – ready themselves to greet new friends from a neighboring vault, including a husband for Lucy MacLean, the vault overseer’s daughter. What they get instead is a night of murder, as a group of surface dwellers raids their vault and kidnaps Overseer MacLean.

While all this is happening underground, Fallout introduces its second protagonist, Maximus, an aspirant in the Brotherhood of Steel with dreams of spreading justice across the Wasteland, and ends with a brief, but excellently staged introduction of the Ghoul.

The Fallout show handles its inspiration and proper nouns from Bethesda's open-world games and the earlier CRPGs well, with smartly chosen Easter eggs that never feel forced and don’t expect you to know what’s going on already. These range from the longrunning fan theory about why Pip Boy gives the thumbs-up sign to a clever inversion of Fallout 3’s prologue where you hit your friend’s dad – the current Overseer – over the head with a stick to save her. This time, it’s the Overseer saving his daughter by whacking someone on the head with a shovel.

It might be fake and a little cult-y, but this is the best place you could possibly be / Amazon Studios

My favorite nod to the Fallout games is how the Fallout show handles Bethesda’s signature “step out” moments, where the protagonist leaves a small area behind and gets a first look at the world’s vastness. That moment can’t happen the way Bethesda usually does it, since viewers see the wider world when Maximus comes onto the scene. Instead, the show makes it more about Lucy stepping outside of herself and seeing a world that exists beyond the narrow confines of her experience. Some clever camera work underscores this idea when she first leaves Vault 33, and the rest of the series ends up being a continuation of that step out, until Lucy finally learns the truth about herself, the Vaults, and the nation’s history.

That sounds pretty promising, but Fallout plays it safe with these characters and their personal development for the most part. You’ve got the naive do-gooder who learns the world is a harsh place after all. The reject who sees others achieve his dreams and longs for acceptance, and the lone gunslinger haunted by specters from his past more foul than the fiends he lays to rest in the Wasteland. It doesn’t really try doing anything unusual or even particularly interesting with its main cast until the last two episodes.

That drawback stems from the series’ big structural weakness. On the cusp of what seems like a strong setup for two of its protagonists, Fallout throws a spanner in the works with not one, but two MacGuffin hunts. Lucy has to find her father, and Maximus has to find a rogue scientist and a powerful piece of technology. 

Lucy's not in Fake Nebraska Number 33 anymore / Amazon Studios

The result is four episodes of aimless wandering in the Wasteland without the benefit of the Fallout games’ worldbuilding or interesting side characters. You get a few good jokes, sure, and the occasional weirdo who likes making love to chickens or something, but there’s just no point in any of it. The plot goes nowhere, and Fallout does nothing with its main cast aside from getting them punched, kicked, and dismembered.

Since the show is light on character development, the only moments of interest are when things happen to the three protagonists – something that’s a bit hit-and-miss. The second episode spins its wheels on a low-stakes gunfight seemingly included just for the sake of making bodies explode. Episode three made me groan audibly with its plot contrivances, a series of lost items and mishaps that replace any attempt at storytelling and seem like they came straight from the worst kind of video games. The fourth episode resembles a side quest more than anything, and while it’s a good one,  it’s just an excuse to get Lucy away from the Ghoul. It adds nothing to the plot or characters. The fifth episode puts Lucy and Maximus together for the first time but squanders its opportunity for meaningful character development.

It’s to the actors’ credit that these episodes remain entertaining despite the weakness of the material they’re working with. Ella Purnell makes every scene with Lucy a delight, even if you know beforehand exactly how a situation will play out. Aaron Moten’s expressions and delivery give Maximus a depth the script withholds until much later in the season, and Walton Goggins is exceptional as Cooper Howard and the Ghoul, with nuanced performances that makes the characters much more interesting than they initially seem.

Sure hope there's nothing awful waiting in here! / Amazon Studios

What seems like a subplot in Vault 33 eventually takes on greater meaning and becomes the season’s primary focus starting in episode six, and it’s here where you finally get a sense of what the team wanted to do with Fallout. Cooper Howard’s rather drawn-out backstory starts touching on relevant points at last, and where the perspective changes felt a bit forced before, there’s thematic weight in how Fallout handles them leading up to the finale. 

Suddenly, the Fallout show has a lot to say, on all manner of subjects, and it can be incisive when it wants to. There’s commentary on immigration, thoughtful critiques of the American Dream and the damage it caused – and can still cause – and even some well-chosen words about a future where products matter more than people. 

There’s irony in that last message coming from a studio run by a mega-corporation whose mission is to turn every aspect of life into a product, but I suspect that’s partly the point.

At the center of all this is the idea that fear and isolation make people susceptible to exploitation and let oppressive systems of control flourish. That concept is true whether it’s the happy-faced totalitarianism masquerading as democratic individualism in the Vaults, the more overt authoritarian rule of the Brotherhood, or the lie Cooper Howard faces before the bombs drop that “the other” is out to get you.

This is the Fallout show’s biggest strength, and I just wish it leaned into these ideas earlier instead of killing time in the Wasteland. Still, it’s a strong foundation for whatever the team is cooking up for season two, even if it never lives up to its full potential.

Score: 6/10