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As a rule, I don’t binge watch shows. Maybe three episodes in one sitting would be my record before I feel the urge to take a break. Most of the time it’s a single dose.
I binged the Fallout tv show.
Oh not completely start to finish, I did take a break after Episode 1. But Episode 2-9 ended up as a seven hour or so marathon as I got sucked in. Wham, bam, allakazam. I wasn’t even particularly hyped for it, it looked pretty good in the trailers but then so did The Phantom Menace. You can’t trust trailers. And video game adaptations? The Last of Us was good and by accounts pretty faithful to the source, ditto for Arcane with League of Legends, but in the overall scheme of things they still seem like exceptions to the rule. And neither of those were dear to my heart the way the Fallout franchise is.
So I skipped the Amazon Prime premiere on April 11th, and only later as word of mouth started to build did I begin to allow myself some measure of excitement. Did they do it? Did the showrunners manage to bring the violent, darkly humorous world of Fallout to live-action life?
Well, I’m keeping this entry spoiler-free but I’ll just spoiler that bit and say: they did. Immaculately (if that word can be applied to post-apocalyptic grime).
Sometimes I’ve reviewed a series in this blog after watching a few episodes and gushed about it only to then see it go off the rails, but here I’ve now watched the whole thing not once, but twice. I even showed my 80 year old dad and my sister and they know nothing of the setting but were hooked into the story and that lovely balance of ridiculous and sublime that the series managed to faithfully recreate.
“They stole your plot!” my sister half-jokingly mused at one scene that certainly had a bit of Zombie-Ranch-ish flavor.
“Nah,” I replied. “This setting has been around since 1997. If anything it’s Fallout that inspired *me*.”
And then there’s the properties that inspired both, which you’ll definitely catch if you’re a fan of Spaghetti Westerns.
Anyhow, it’s not only fun and full of giddiness-inducing easter eggs, it’s got dramatic heft to go with the humor and is a real masterclass in “show, don’t tell” exposition even where some really weird things have to be introduced to an audience that might not necessarily take them for granted.
Fan of the Fallout franchise or not, watch it if you can. Though maybe try not to binge like I did, as the worst part is that there’s a long ways off until Season 2. Welcome to Team Paranoid, Oscar! Spoiler alert: they really are out to getcha!