Fallout

Fallout, like many recent TV shows, demonstrates the old rule, of video game adaptations always being awful, is obsolete.

At first Fallout seems similar to a lot of other post-apocalyptic shows. There’s been a nuclear war and the world is a wasteland. Life on the surface is a brutal battle for survival, even two hundred years after the war. There are people living in small groups, and apparently some abortive attempts at civilization. There are also lots of mutated beasts and monsters roaming around, including humans, although it eventually turns out that it’s not all caused by radiation.

In particular, a lot of humans have been turned into “ghouls”, who can apparently rapidly recover from any wound, or go on with very damaged bodies, and who don’t seem to age. The catch is that they need a drug to avoid “turning”. If they do turn, they seem to behave very similar to the walking dead of other franchises. The drug keeps them lucid and intelligent.

And there are the descendants of elites living in underground bunkers. They live a civilized and fairly comfortable existence, waiting for the day that the surface radiation will have subsided enough for their descendants to emerge, and “bring civilization” back to the surface dwellers.

Lucy is the daughter of her bunker’s leader, who has trained her in shooting and a number of survival skills. When raiders from the surface are able to enter the bunker, they kill many of her friends and kidnap her father. Against the wishes of the bunker’s remaining leadership, Lucy decides to leave the bunker and find her father. At first, she seems naive, but it quickly becomes apparent she is very smart and resourceful.

One surface dweller, Maximus, is training to be in the “Brotherhood of Steel”, a group of warriors whose mission appears to be confiscating “old world” technology. Maximus ends up as a squire to a knight who fights in mechanized battle armor. When the knight is killed, Maximus takes over the armor to continue the mission, despite knowing that the unforgiving Brotherhood is likely to kill him for allowing his knight to die and taking his armor.

But maybe the most interesting character is Cooper Howard. Cooper is a ghoul who was a movie star in the old world. A substantial portion of the series is flashbacks of events in his life prior to the war.

There’s a 1940/1950s feel to America just before the war, and Cooper in his pre-war period seems like a sort of John Wayne analogue. At first I took it to be an alternate history thing, where the nuclear war happens a few years after World War II. But it becomes evident the war happens in the latter part of the 21st century. So it might still be alt history, but in the way society and technology developed in the late 20th and 21st centuries.

Cooper in his post war ghoulish period ends up fulfilling a trend that John Scalzi recently labeled “protagonization”. Scalzi was talking about movie monsters like Godzilla and King Kong evolving over time into heroes. But it’s a special case of a trend we’ve seen over the decades where vampires, pirates, criminals, and many other traditional villains evolve into heroes, or at least into sympathetic protagonists.

A few years ago, I had a conversation wondering if we’d ever see that happen with zombies. At the time, it seemed hard to imagine. But Cooper sort of delivers on it. Although it’s probably more accurate to describe him as a semi-zombie, since he remains lucid and intelligent, although in constant danger of slipping into full zombiehood.

Anyway, he’s largely introduced as a villain, but as we see his backstory, he gradually starts to become more sympathetic, although it’s clear the centuries have changed more than just his appearance.

It’s obvious early on in this show that everything is not as it seems. And we get plenty of reveals throughout the first season. That and the plights and ordeals of Lucy, Maximus, and eventually Cooper are strongly compelling. It’s a seriously good show. If you don’t mind some gore and violence, I recommend checking it out.

My only nits with it is that the societies portrayed seem strangely undeveloped after 200 years of recovery. It’s a pretty pessimistic take on what humans would be capable of doing centuries after a civilization’s fall. And that the McGuffin of the show turns out to be something that’s in danger of giving oxygen to a contemporary pseudoscientific conspiracy theory. But these nits weren’t enough to stop me from enjoying the overall show.

Have you watched it? If so, what did you think?