I Guess I Must Be the Only One Who Didn't Rate the 'Fallout' TV Show

By Petr Navovy | TV | April 26, 2024 |

By Petr Navovy | TV | April 26, 2024 |

Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m getting more jaded and difficult to impress with age, but it certainly feels as if that’s the case based on my reaction to most films and (especially) TV shows I see these days. That’s not to say there isn’t good stuff being made. Of course not. There’s a hell of a lot of incredible art out there. It’s just that so much of what is released, mostly on Netflix and other similar streaming platforms, doesn’t feel…finished. We joke about AI algorithms making these projects, but really a lot of them just lack a unifying vision or even purpose.

Some of these films and TV shows look and sound terrible, and that’s nothing new in the medium, but it’s the ones that actually look and sound great, but that still ends up being bad that intrigues me the most. It’s an uncanny disconnect between what your senses experience and what emotions are triggered. I felt this most keenly with HBO’s adaptation of The Last Of Us—a nearly universally beloved TV show that I strongly disliked.

The same thing seems to have happened with Amazon Prime’s Fallout TV show. It started out strong enough! The Last Of Us did, too. Many of these things seem to have a powerful, well-crafted opening, where the basics of storytelling are adhered to, tension and conflict are understood, and compelling worlds (lent to them by existing properties, in the case of these adaptations) are introduced. Fallout’s first episode had me keen on seeing more of the show. And then, just like The Last Of Us, it lost me faster than you can say: ‘Well, hang on, why should I care about all this again?’ (to be fair to The Last Of Us, it was still a lot better at that than Fallout, but still). I just couldn’t find myself caring about anything that happened onscreen. The actors were all good, and the Wasteland looked more lived-in and authentic than many modern post-apocalyptic environments, but the characters felt hollow, and the narrative empty of any compelling hook, its arcs weak and listless.

In trying to diagnose this problem, I come to the possible conclusion that the creative process has been flipped on its head, and everything is coming from the opposite direction to where it should: these studios are throwing money at projects linked to popular franchises in the hopes that name recognition will be enough, without making sure that they’ve got a story worth telling in the first place (again, here The Last Of Us is slightly different, as the original has a fantastic story, but the adaptation bungled the delivery). It’s all very well and good hiring a bunch of talented actors, directors, and cinematographers—they’ll likely all do their individual jobs well, but without a creative vision tying it all together, giving it purpose, it’ll feel empty, like a product, instead of a project born out of passion, out of a need to be told. Obviously, the issue isn’t black and white. Great art can be born out of patronage. But in far too many cases now, we’re not getting that. We’re getting content.

Anyway, rant over; here I will say that Fallout did at least have a few moments that raised a chuckle, like the multiple references to shoddy post-apocalyptic equipment and poor character aim, which this is a nice ode to: