It’s in relatively simple and straightforward episodes like these that we can see just how sturdy a structure Fallout is. It’s obviously full of monsters and moments torn from the video games to please fans of the franchise, but I haven’t so much as hit start on a single one of those things and I’ve had no trouble making sense or feeling the impact of anything on the show. Okay, so I had to look up the name of the big monster with horns, but if I hadn’t, “big monster with horns” gets the point across quite nicely. You don’t need to know a giant radioactive eggshell is an easter egg to appreciate a giant radioactive eggshell.
The insistence on practical sets and effects as often as possible is a huge boon to the show as well. It’s easy to imagine the Ghoul and Lucy’s faceoff with that monster in New Vegas as a Dave Filoni Star Wars show or a late-period MCU movie — two people standing on a volume stage with a bunch of CGI slop surrounding them. Instead, it looks like Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins faced a Balrog that somehow managed to extinguish itself (they can do that underwater, look it up) in a gigantic pile of rubble and abandoned pleasure palaces, which is basically what the set builders constructed.
Finally, the charms of Purnell and Goggins really can’t be oversold. The latter is so likeable as Coop and so vile, yet weirdly endearing, as the Ghoul. The former makes a drug-fueled rampage feel like the next logical outgrowth of Lucy’s cheery, can-do persona. In an opposite register, the tremulous performances of Aaron Moten and Michael Cristofer during Maximus and Quintus’s corresponding showdown go a long way to making you understand that these two people really do share a deep bond, no matter how loathsome you find Quintus personally.
I reviewed this week’s Fallout for Decider.
Tags: decider, fallout, TV, TV reviews