So I’m back on my nonsense for some TV reviews, and for SciFi Month 2024 we’re surviving an apocalypse – by any means necessary, it seems.

Let’s discuss Fallout.

So, full disclaimer – I’ve never played the computer games this show is based on, and though I have a close friend who’s super into them, she was kind enough to avoid spoilers when I told her I’d be watching this. So I have/had very little idea of what to expect. These thoughts and opinions will be based entirely upon what I see, and not influenced at all by whatever came before it.

Judging from this first episode, however, what I can expect is delightful entertainment and also some very fascinating character work. Because two of our three main characters have some remarkable competence and deeply interesting dedication to their ways of life. They also have Absolutely No Clue and are precious babies and I’m intrigued by and scared for them at the same time.

Let’s start with Lucy. Born and raised in an underground nuclear bunker, or “vault”, she received what appears to be a remarkably well-rounded education and also the fighting skills necessary to survive in a very harsh post-apocalyptic world. Which is a very good thing, because not much sooner than we meet her, her vault-family is attacked by literal outsiders posing as the neighbouring denizens of another vault. Lucy is quick off the mark in figuring out what’s going on as their trap is sprung and the assault begins, though not so quick that we don’t get treated to a very informative eyeful of her as a young hopeful bride, newly married off to one of said “neighbours”, before the truth is revealed.

That’s one hell of a wedding night, but Lucy doesn’t waste time crying about it. When her father is captured and taken from the vault to the outside world, she proposes a rescue mission. The surviving elders refuse, because radiation, duh. So instead of meekly accepting her father’s fate, Lucy decides to go out after him herself. This is all very admirable and I’m eager to get to her adventures beyond Vault 33 despite the painfully apparent fact that Lucy has not stopped to consider what might happen if she succeeds.

Now, let’s pause here for a bit of gleeful discussion of the setting, and all the lovingly vintage detail that went into it. From picture-perfect 1950s America to nuclear apocalypse and insular, generational survivor culture, and with enough of an era-appropriate soundtrack to delight me further, I’m pretty well enamoured of this show so far. The people of Vault 33 are living peacefully, but not necessarily harmoniously. They love each other, perhaps a little too well in some cases (side-eye for Lucy’s cousin, reluctant to see her marrying someone else, AHEM), but for Lucy that’s not reason enough to remain in place and allow her father to be lost to her. She’s fully prepared to handle the outside world, find him and bring him home.

Except she’s not, is she. She’s been living in a microcosmic world that’s inevitably been stuck in place in terms of the technology that built it over two hundred years previously, and all she knows about what’s beyond those vault doors is what her elders have told her. How they’ve come by these reports they share is not revealed, but I am instantly suspicious – all we’re given is facts and figures, projections based on them, and these are taken as nothing but a good sign that the world is almost all better now.

Is it, aye?

Let that lead us to Maximus. Born on the surface, without the luxury of protected vault life, it’s unclear if Maximus – or any of the people around him – are even aware that there are generations of survivors living below their feet. Maximus’s life is a militant one, and a cultist militant one at that. Because we all know that’s a great combination.

Maximus has ambitions; he wants to serve a Knight. Some hulking, faceless body in a mech suit from which he will take orders, presumably until he steps into those giant metal boots himself one day. In short, if there’s anything at all like a governing body left on the surface at this point, this “Enclave” would appear to be it. What their goals or their purpose is remains to be seen, but no doubt we’ll see it as they go on the hunt for someone who stole something from them. I have a feeling that shine is going to wear off quickly for young Maximus…

So we’ve got our Plucky Heroine, and our Dubious Warrior For Good. What we need now is a Wild Card, right? That would seem to be where The Ghoul comes in – and I never thought I’d be even remotely attracted to someone who’s introduced literally climbing out of a coffin and missing parts of his face, but such is the power of Walton Goggins to immediately hook me in. The fact that we meet him in the opening atomic bomb sequence as a father with a heart of gold, making a living playing a cowboy at kids’ birthday parties, and only see him again in this form, more than two hundred years later, is immediately, completely intriguing. There’s no explanation of how he got here yet, but I’m dying to get that story.

And the bit with the chicken was hilarious. (Don’t worry, the chicken lived.)

So! First impressions are pretty dang good. I wonder what my second impressions will be? Let’s find out!

The complete Season 1 of Fallout is available on Prime Video.