James Kelley

Great use of the Fallout settings to tell a new version of the same story from Fallout to Fallout 76. Lovers of the games will recognize all sorts of items (the box of preservative-filled deviled eggs, the containers of purified water, the various chems, etc.) and buildings (Red Rocket gas stations, donut shops, a city clearly modeled on Megaton, etc.). The live acting has even been processed in some way to make the characters look more like very high definition renderings in a video game than actors being recorded on set. The best new material for me is the insight into the inner workings of the religo-military cult of the Brotherhood of Steel. Some of the people giving the low reviews here don't like that depiction of the Brotherhood, but for me it seems far more interesting and real than presenting the Brotherhood as a post-apocalyptic yet somehow still pure Knights of the Round Table. Other low ratings here criticize the "woke" agenda, DEI, and even the idea that a white female character and black male character would be paired up. Uh... okay. I thought we were writing a review of the series here, not simply trotting out our half-baked political views. The Fallout games themselves have a very strong mix of realism and over-the-top comedy. The exact percentages vary from game to game, but the mix is always there. This visual adaptation carries on that serio-comic tradition. The disjointedness in the narration is a feature, not a bug. The severed head that's kicked around and chased like a football provides much of the continuity for this first season. I hope there are more to come.