Fallout (Season 1)

Creators: Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson Dworet
Starring: Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan, Moisés Arias, Xelia Mendes-Jones, Walton Goggins, Sarita Choudhury, Leslie Uggams, Johnny Pemberton, Zach Cherry, Annabel O'Hagan, Dave Register, Teagan Meredith, Frances Turner, Michael Cristofer, Mykelti Williamson, Cameron Cowperthwaite, Michael Emerson, Michael Rapaport, Dale Dickey, Jon Daly, Chris Parnell, Fred Armisen, Erik Estrada
Original Airdate: 2024

★★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Destroying any and all preconceived notions about the viability of popular video game adaptations, Prime Video's Fallout presents a quirky, one-of-a-kind post-apocalyptic universe that's accessible to fans and non-fans alike. Its eight episodes hit all the right notes, telling a simple but surprisingly complex, action packed story that takes itself just seriously enough. At first, you'll worry we've entered one of those "mystery boxes" intended to string viewers along without revealing anything of consequence. But it instead delivers more answers than we know what to do with, generating enough creative juice to spill into future seasons. 

Envisioned by Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Roy, the biggest thrill is seeing how all the pieces fit to form a fuller picture by its end. Players of the game are probably well versed in the broader details, but those going in cold are in for a trip, with no foreknowledge required to appreciate all that must have gone into translating this to the small screen. And in recalling the better elements of genre staples like Mad Max, Star Wars and Lost, it also manages to sidestep the frustrating narrative baggage that's occasionally accompanied them. 

Filled with dark, satiric humor, spectacular visual effects and a trio of award-worthy performances, what most stands out is its timeliness, or in an even larger context, its timelessness. Considering the game itself came out in the late nineties, this interpretation arrives at just the right moment, mixing themes of nuclear war, political strife, socioeconomic collapse, capitalism and governmental control into an entertainingly subversive package that aims much higher than anticipated.

In the Great War of 2077, a nuclear blast decimated Earth, leaving a retrofuturistic society with scarce resources. Survivors took refuge in fallout shelters or Vaults, designed by a technology company called Vault-Tec. It's 200 years later when Vault 33's cheery, optimistic Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) volunteers to marry a neighboring 32 Dweller, but when a violent raid occurs, her father and Vault overseer Hank (Kyle MacLachlan) is abducted by the mysterious Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury).

With help from her brother Norm (Moisés Arias), Lucy ventures outside the vault into a devastated Los Angeles Wasteland to locate Hank. While searching, she'll encounter newly promoted Brotherhood of Steel squire Maximus (Aaron Moten), who's on a mission of his own. She'll also cross paths with The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a gunslinging bounty hunter once known as famous movie actor Cooper Howard. Caught in the crosshairs is escaped Enclave scientist Dr. Siggi Wilzig (Michael Emerson), who holds the key to a valuable energy source and might be Lucy's most important bargaining chip.

Focusing primarily on three main characters, the series really revolves around Vault-Tec's history and how it informs their present situation. After a brief, but unforgettable flashback showing actor Cooper Howard and his daughter Janey on the day of 2077's nuclear attack, we're taken out of a 50's looking milieu that's technology stalled post-World II and thrust into the confines of Vault 33 in 2296.  Eventually, we'll not only discover how this whole project came to be, but its entire purpose for the survivors inhabiting it.

Everyday life down below and in the adjacent Vaults of 31 and 32 appear almost utopian at first, which is exactly what the designated overseers intended. And it isn't as if the citizens have much choice since their only alternative is the dog eat dog landscape of the Wasteland, complete with its deadly radiation levels and random carnage. 

The Vaults may reflect the illusion of community, but it's also a tightly controlled, antiseptic environment that leaves little room for independence. While easily identifiable as a cult, for characters who've known nothing else their entire lives and are deprived the freedom to think or feel for themselves, it's simply business as usual. 

Being the daughter of Vault 33's overseer, the innocent, impressionable Lucy is all in with Vault-Tec's philosophy until a catastrophic breach threatens to reveal organizational secrets her brother Norm is hell-bent on uncovering, whatever the consequences. The attack on the Vault itself is one of the series' defining moments, as a soundtrack of oldies play over a brilliantly choreographed ballet of gruesome violence, with the residents' idyllic existence juxtaposed against blood soaked brutality. 

When a traumatized Lucy escapes the Vault to find Hank, she's warned how life outside that bubble will challenge her loyal optimism. These are the sacrifices some must make to adapt and survive, in certain cases morally transforming into something they'd never imagine. No one knows this better than Cooper Howard, the once popular Hollywood actor now roaming the L.A. Wasteland as a disfigured bounty hunter who eerily resembles Captain America nemesis Red Skull. 

Cooper's motivations are the most intriguing since his centuries-spanning biography plays as a supervillain origin story, with Goggins bridging the gap between charismatic celebrity and family man we see in flashbacks and the mutated monster he'll later become. But once we're given glimpses into the Cooper's role as Vault-Tec pitchman and wife Barb's (Frances Turner) pull as a high ranking executive within the company, his downfall becomes clearer. 

Lucy finds the ideal ally in Maximus, a bullied squire from the Brotherhood of Steel, who steps into the position vacated by his injured best friend Dane (Xelia Mendes-Jones). But when a controversial decision lands him in the power armor of the knight he's assisting, he and Lucy realize their shared goal is best accomplished together. But not until facing down some serious obstacles like The Ghoul, who's after exactly what they are. An awe-inspiring western style shootout in the second episode establishes just how dangerous he is, as Lucy finds herself on the receiving end of his wrath for reasons that aren't entirely coincidental.

Trust ceases to exist in the Wasteland so the toughest battle for Lucy is coming to grips with this and accepting her life wasn't as rosy as she'd assumed. With intersecting storylines balancing simultaneously, all roads lead to the finale, which fills in a lot blanks, clarifying the events that brought these characters to this point. 

After proving just how engaging she can be as popular soccer team captain turned plane crash survivor in Showtime's Yellowjackets, Ella Purnell's superstar card is now punched with her affecting turn as Lucy. While the expressive, saucer eyed actress excels in the action scenes, what stands out is how well she conveys her character's evolution, slowly waking to the realization everything she assumed about the world was a lie. Through it all, her upbeat "okey dokey" attitude and inherent belief in good rarely crumbles, remaining determined to push forward without being infected with the bitterness that's consumed others. 

Purnell and Moten share believable chemistry as a tandem, with the self-loathing Maximus suffering a similar crisis of conscious, wrestling with who he is and pretends to be, but still baring the emotional scars of a tragic childhood event. It's hard not to compare his arc under the knight's armor to what Disney's Star Wars sequels failed in doing with Finn's storm trooper, instead pushing that character to the sidelines. Front and center throughout, Maximus is anything but an afterthought here, with Moten carrying a large share of the plot.

Journeyman character actor Walton Goggins steals every scene as Cooper Howard/The Ghoul, disappearing into each while still somehow convincing us they're one in the same under all those layers of makeup. His flashbacks are a highlight of the series, invoking Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as the Rick Dalton-esque Cooper wrestles with his marriage and public endorsement of a very controversial program.

Goggins is also downright brilliant as the gunslinging Ghoul, ruthlessly letting everyone know just how easily they could have wound up in his shoes. Only by the end is it confirmed what and whom he's really after, hinting that he may still have a small shred of humanity left. And however brief, it's great to see Lost's Michael Emerson again, as the former Benjamin Linus brings his unmistakable eccentricity to a role that doesn't veer all that far from what his fans would eagerly expect.

The finale gives a lot up while still laying plenty of road for this story to continue as long as its creators want it to. Whether or not the momentum can be maintained is another matter, but based on what comes to light in the closing minutes, there's a lot left to explore. With certain characters revealing their true colors, uneasy alliances being forged and some questions still left about what we've seen, it's anyone's guess where it could lead. 

Fallout picks up steam with each new development, pulling its characters in different directions before delivering a twisty, cliffhanger finale that sets the stage for subsequent chapters. We're not getting more because we need answers, but to see where the story goes next. It's addictive sci-fi TV done right, overcoming limitations even the best in this genre face when attempting to deliver an adventure of this size and scope.

Unraveling The Lost Season 5 Finale ("The Incident")

You wanted answers and now you have them. We knew the Season 3 finale, "Through The Looking Glass" would be a turning point for the show but at the time completely unsure how. In the final shocking minutes of that episode when it was revealed that the flashback centering on Jack was actually a flashforward and what came to be known as the "Oceanic Six" had gotten off the island, Lost became a completely different show. A far better one. It's been deeper and more complex, going places we never thought it would with characters and situations we could have never expected. And it probably lost some viewers in that transformation. Forget about missing an episode. You can't miss 30 seconds. It requires a lot of commitment and if you're not a hardcore sci-fi fan the series' descent down the worm hole likely caused nothing but frustration. But if you're like me and are, what occurred this season was pure magic.

As confusing and complicated as it's all been there's also been a nagging feeling that we've been building toward this all along and that if you went back and watched from the pilot episode the pieces would fit together. Not all of them perfectly, but enough of them to think that writers/producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse did have a master plan all along. And this plan, while it may have gotten derailed at times (notably in season 3) is only now starting to come into full view. We can now say we've been given more answers than questions, not that there aren't still a whole lot of questions. STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FINALE YET.

The big picture was far bigger than we had originally thought, which is really saying something considering all the crazy theories that were floating around. As we suspected it was bigger than the crash of Oceanic 815. But it's also bigger than the Dharma Initiative, The Others, the ageless Richard Alpert, and the ongoing power struggle between Benjamin Linus and Charles Widmore. All of these elements were, in the most literal sense, pawns in a giant game between Good and Evil or God and Satan, or something. That became clear in the opening minutes Wednesday's Season 5 finale "The Incident," and then became even more clear by the end.

We were treated to the long awaited debut of Jacob (Mark Pelligrino) and introduced to his arch-nemesis (Titus Welliver) who seems to have shape shifting abilities of some sort. Through flashbacks we saw Jacob was present in pivotal moments in the characters' lives, such as when Locke's evil kidney-stealing father through him out of a window. And now Ben (manipulated by a man we now know ISN'T John Locke but Jacob's nemesis) has killed him. Or has he?

One of the more interesting developments to come out of the latter episodes of this season was the complete psychological castration of Ben. The master manipulator is now a shell of his former self and it's really been something else seeing Michael Emerson completely shift gears to play a character who's weak and helpless He's now as much a victim as those he's victimized for the past three seasons. Turns out he was never REALLY in charge. He just thought he was.

The only thing I was completely certain of before the episode started was that Juliet would die. She just seemed to be a character who was MARKED FOR DEATH and that Jacob was excluded from her flashback scene at the beginning of this episode just further spoke to that. But I was hoping I'd be wrong about her demise because right behind Ben she'd rank as my favorite character and is was screaming "NO!" at my TV when she fell down the shaft. And it's still unclear what her fate is. She's been the most under-appreciated, underrated contributor for the past three seasons, hitting her peak in this one. It's fitting that she was at the center of what was arguably the series' most pivotal moment thus far, when bruised, beaten and with every last ounce of strength she tried to detonate the bomb with a rock. Then...FADE TO WHITE. See you in 2010.
If Juliet is gone the show's lost their best actress in Elizabeth Mitchell, but I have a feeling no matter happened or didn't in the finale's closing seconds she'll be around in some form or another (however limited) in the final season. I always far preferred her to the whiny, complaining Kate. And if one absolutely had to go I would have picked Kate, whose snooze-inducing flashbacks have always stunk up the show. At least Jack's whining and whimpering is entertaining, especially when he's bearded, on too many prescription drugs or being given a "timeout" by his daddy during major surgery.

The one, major glaring flaw in the finale was a dreaded re-focus on the Jack-Kate-Sawyer triangle at the most inopportune time possible, just as Jack was going to detonate the hydrogen bomb, presumably preventing the crash of Oceanic 815 and wiping away everything they've gone through in the past 5 years. His explanation? He wants a second chance with Kate. I really hope he was kidding, considering if he was successful the two would have never met and had no shared experiences together. That doesn't exactly improve his "chances" with her. I also didn't buy that Juliet suddenly changed her mind so quickly about Jack setting off "Jughead" solely on the basis that she thought Sawyer still had feelings for Kate. Either way, despite a kick ass Jack/Sawyer fight, that wasn't the best moment for couples counseling.

This season marked the first I actually gave a damn about Sawyer (a.k.a. LeFleur) and I'm convinced it's because of his relationship with Juliet, which was the best developed and most surprising storyline of the year, breathing new life into a previously predictable character. What a shift to actually see him happy and in control for a change, as opposed to the brooding rebel we've seen over and over again throughout the show's run. Actually, nearly everything that took place in the 1977 timeline was pretty flawless.

Who would have ever thought we'd get the curtain pulled back on Dharma operating in its prime (with the Oceanic Six as undercover members to boot), the mysterious Dr. Chang from the videos in action and young Ben shot by Sayid. Every supporting character served a purpose and ones we thought may not have been as important, like Miles and Faraday, were given rich backstories via flashbacks. Even Sun and Jin were tolerable for once. This combined with the time travel aspect would rank this as probably my favorite season.

Other Burning Questions and Observations:

-Rose and Bernard? I was wondering what happened to them. Was anyone else thinking they could have been the two skeletons Jack discovered in the first season?

-Looking back doesn't it seem like Locke was acting way too confident and self-assured to actually be the REAL John Locke?

-Didn't he make a convincing case for why Ben should want to kill Jacob?

-Did anyone else think back to Locke and Walt and the black and white stones from the pilot episode during all of this?

-So what do they do with Locke's body NOW?

-Am I the only one NOT looking forward to Claire returning next season?

-So I guess this means Hurley never gets around to finishing his script for The Empire Strikes Back?

-"I'm a Pisces." Yet another classic Ben quote. Emerson is the man.

-Didn't you just know Miles would rush to his dad's rescue?

-Did you miss a certain character in this episode, "brotha?"

When the show does finally return from its lengthy hiatus in 2010 with its sixth and final season the big question will be whether it opens in LAX. I'm guessing not. Too simple. And if we've learned anything this season (or any other one) it's that Lost is never simple. But I do think most of the action will start to take place in 2007, bringing everyone together and returning the show to its first season roots before closing things out.

I never thought the show to be this strong this late. Choosing an end date has really helped the series re-gain its focus in a huge way. Now the pressure's really on to close to this out right. Its legacy hinges on it. Shows surrounded by giant mysteries often come loaded with expectations that can't be met. Lost has been one of the few to survive that challenge and I'm more curious than ever to go back and watch the previous seasons to see how it all fits together since those episodes would now make more sense. There's something to be said for planning. I never thought Lost would hold together well enough to be ranked among TV's greatest serialized dramas but now I'm starting to wonder.

Lost Season 3 Finale

Last night Lost delivered one of the most captivating, yet maddingly frustrating episodes in the show's history. With scalpel in hand Jack (Matthew Fox) performed surgery on the villainous "other," Ben (Michael Emerson) to remove a spinal tumor only to intentionally cut his kidney and threaten to let him bleed out unless "the others" agree to let Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) go. If you want to know what happens you have to wait...until February 7, 2007! Next year!

In either a really ballsy or really stupid move, ABC listened to all those complaints about too many repeats last year and decided to fix the problem by airing no repeats this season. Instead, they're taking the show off the air for over 3 months and praying the viewers come back. The question is with ratings already slipping slightly, will anyone care when it returns or will they be too frustrated? I will be back in February and I'll tell you why. Despite claims to the contrary, Lost is still at the top of it's game.

A lot of viewers seem to think Lost is no longer the best serialized drama on television anymore and that title now belongs to NBC's Heroes. Heroes, while a great show, is only in it's infancy and has yet to even develop to a point where we can care about any of the characters outside it's gigantic"save the world" premise. It's still too early and there's so much going on to establish things, it has yet to settle into a groove. Even though Lost has been accused of just posing more questions than it's answered, it has actually answered alot of them at the end of last season and into the first six episodes of this one. The amount of information we're getting and advancement of storylines have been just right.

Just think of how much more we know now. We know "the others" were on the island for a while and saw the plane crash (they even had a village complete with a book club), We at least know there's an outside world that's aware of their plane crash. We also know the time frame as demonstrated in that awesome scene where Jack gets to see footage of the Red Sox winning the World Series. This debunks any theory of the island being some kind of purgatory or hallucination. I still stick with my original theory that everything, starting with and maybe dating before the plane crash, is a government experiment. We finally have some kind of culmination of the Jack/Kate/Sawyer triangle with Kate picking Sawyer. In last night's flashback (one of the show's best) we also discovered Kate left her cop husband out of guilt that she was hiding her criminal past from him. Plus, they killed off Mr. Echo (which was a wise move-he served his purpose). I don't know what more anyone could possibly want out of a season.

If the show is to continue, there still has to be some mystery and questions left unanswered. That central question is, who are "the others" and what do they want? The introduction of Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell) further complicates that question, at least for Jack. The character is intriguing because she doesn't seem to be on the same page as "the others" even though she is one. The scene where she let Jack know she wants him to kill Ben on the operating table was shocking. I think the writers know where they're going with this, even if we don't have a clue.

Whether Lost will be remembered as legendary among television dramas is entirely up to ABC at this point. The time will come when they have a choice to make: give in to greed and let the show run well past it's saturation point or leave on top wrapping everything up clearly and crisply, ending the series on the highest note possible. The latter doesn't happen too often. The next season or two of Lost will really tell the story of its future. However, it's way too early for viewers to start losing their patience with a show that has, at the very least, earned the benefit of the doubt.