Three stars for a few reasons:
I was super excited to see this show, and for the most part, I found it entertaining to a point, and cool, buuuuuuut... I have a few bones to pick as a die-hard Fallout fan.
1. Sex & Nudity: I'm an adult, but even for me, the unnecessary sex scenes and briefly jacking off moment in the very FIRST episode was enough to make me hella uncomfortable (and from what I hear, there's only going to be more). I feel like adding sex scenes/jokes/masturbation into the show was unnecessary because whereas sex has always existed in the games, it was never explicit and only ever mentioned in brief dialogue or was done in 'cut to black' scenes like in Fallout 4.
My problem is, is if 14 year-old me (coming from a Christian household) was allowed to play Fallout 4 and not be worried about getting exposed to explicit content, but 14 year-old me wouldn't be caught DEAD watching this show, that's a problem.
The Fallout games were always censored just enough for younger teens to still play and enjoy them, but the show has created an 'R' rated atmosphere that excludes younger audiences. There's honestly something inherently deprived about them adding so much sexual content to the Fallout show.
If the original Star Wars could be mega intense & mature without the mention of sex once, allowing younger audiences to watch the movies, why couldn't they have done the same thing with Fallout? Even 'The Last of Us' didn't abuse the use of sex to make it seem more 'mature and intense'.
2. Atmosphere & Writing: Okay, so the set designs as far as episode one goes were absolutely beautiful! But something about the writing, (not sure if it's dialogue wise or character wise), leaves something to be desired.
The shows writing felt more akin to an Adult Swim show that was trying to capture 1950s atomic fallout vibes, but was just unable to fully comprehend how to balance the seriousness over the adult humor, or even understand how 1950s wasteland survivors would act and talk.
I can't put my finger on it, but the show doesn't really feel any different thus far from your average FX, HBO, HULU adult TV show with kind of cringy jokes, ham-fisted sex scenes, and VivziePop levels of cussing that could've been removed to lower its age rating.
From someone who's played a lot of the Fallout games, I'm kind of disappointed they weren't able to find that sweet balance between seriousness and humor. The video games knew when to be funny and when they needed to take things seriously and the show just doesn't really get that.