Of course, the surface is a very different place from the idyllic vault, populated by monstrous creatures and bona fide weirdos. Someone who falls into both categories is a gunslinger known as The Ghoul, played with slimy perfection by the great Walton Goggins. A survivor for the two centuries since the bombs fell, The Ghoul is a bounty hunter with secrets (arguably too many) that connect him to not just Lucy’s arc but kind of everything “Fallout.” He’s the Man in Black of this show, the Ed Harris character on “Westworld” who became something of a thematic lynchpin for the entire endeavor. Finally, there’s a soldier in the faction known as the Brotherhood of Steel named Maximus (Aaron Moten), who gets thrust into a hero role for which he is distinctly unprepared. However, the writers are smart never to make him into Lucy’s savior. If anything, despite being raised underground, she’s more street-savvy than him.
There are several direct nods to the “Fallout” games, but it’s the general tone that’s most well-adapted to television. The first few episodes replicate the unpredictable terror of an open-world game, in which you can be assaulted by nightmare fuel at any given moment. The games have a unique combat system that often leads to slo-mo shots of body parts being ripped from their rightful place, and that’s here too, although the show smartly doesn’t lean on any of those mechanics too heavily. There’s a phenomenal Wild West shootout early on that’s very reminiscent of the game, but the writers don’t resort to that kind of thing every episode. As a fan of the games, what I like most about the overall aesthetic is how much it nails the unpredictability of the world, which always keep you on your toes.
However, that can be hard to maintain for an entire season, and “Fallout” stumbles a little bit around the halfway point when two of the protagonists go on a sidequest of sorts. Again, the willingness to break narrative predictability is admirable, but it kind of hurts the momentum, making the 8-episode season feel longer than it is. It also takes a long time for any performance but Goggins to make an impact. By the end, I liked what Purnell was doing. But this is really The Walton Goggins Show, through and through, to the point that it dips when he’s not on-screen, either in Ghoul form or doing some of the best dramatic work of his career in extended flashbacks.