Did anyone doubt that, when a major series about a beloved video game dropped, I wouldn’t review it, lol? It’s a Fallout show, and I have played this game up and down, backwards and forwards. I’ve had huge anticipation and dread, hoping the showrunners would do a good job representing the tone of the world.
So, how did they do? This is a freshly dropped series. Spoilers will be everywhere in the following. And, I’m reviewing it as I watch. I don’t know where the series will take us.
In Episode One, we basically have three stories. I hope (and intend to find out) that each has its own Enneagram structure. The great Walton Goggins opens the series, showing us the pre-apocalyptic world. He will bookend the beginning of the episode and coming in at the close. I’ll deal with him later. Another storyline involves an initiate to the Brotherhood of Steel, Maximus. I’ll cover him in the next analysis.
For this post, let’s look at our Vault Dweller, Lucy MacLean. (Why they named her after Die Hard’s daughter, I’m not sure. I think it’s just a nod.) I’m going to be overwhelmed by all the brilliant easter eggs this series includes. How am I supposed to gush without bogging down my comments? The details — and in a game where you collect junk for scrap, every detail is instantly recognizable — are beautiful. I won’t be able to resist some happy pointing and clapping. Please excuse my ‘stanning.
Title card: 219 Years Later
ONE
After the Goggins intro, we’re in the vault. Lucy presents her qualifications to a committee. She’s a well-rounded, cheerful member. (It’s a tongue-in-cheek joke about how vault dwellers’ optimism contrasts with Wasteland reality.) Her overview shows us her father and brother, her Pip Boy wrist computer (YAY!), and her enthusiasm.
TWO
Then something not-in-game happens. Lucy applies to exchange with another vault in order to breed. (Although we understand these conditions would be necessary in a post-apocalyptic future, the game doesn’t focus on the social mechanics of perpetuating the species.)
THREE
The committee accepts her application. Roll title card: LUCY.
FOUR
A pregnant woman helps Lucy dress in a hand-me-down wedding tea gown. The community sets up a party in its underground cornfield. Lucy asks her father if he was scared when he met her mother. (Inter-vault exchange marriages have apparently been going on since the beginning.) We see a blurry memory of a young, beautiful woman in Vault 33 gear as Hank says the fear left the minute he met her. Then he’s addressed as The Overseer.
(Kyle MacLachlan is happy and sincere as Hank, but anyone who knows the game will suspect and maybe dread a vault’s overseer. It’s brilliant casting.)
He escorts Lucy through the cornfield to a darkened vault corridor. Anticipation builds about this blind meeting. At the end of the hallway is a Vault 32 door. The Gatekeeper prepares to connect his Pip Boy to the panel. (Just like in the game!!) The button won’t activate, though. We get a little moment about cousin love and how Chet, for the good of genetics, must let go of his feelings for Lucy. He wiggles the panel and the button works.
The door rumbles open, and the neighbors walk through. Overseer Moldaver (who looks like she ported right in from a character build screen) greets Hank. Their prior overseer died and their wheat crop was hit with blight. Hank offers plant seeds and machine parts; Lee offers “a breeder”. Anticipation builds until Monty shows himself. He’s virile; Lucy is relieved.
The wedding ceremony and the party. The Vault 32 residents are a little sketchy and unkempt. Hank gives the wedding speech, suggesting that radiation levels on the surface are almost livable. He believes in hope! (Lucy accepts his optimism and obviously admires him.) He leads her out for the first wedding dance. Chet moons at Lucy and Monty’s dance. Later in the party: Monty asks Lucy to show him her room.
While Lucy marvels at their wedding apartment, Monty strips off his vault suit, giving us a bare-buttocks shot. Smiling, she says, “Okey dokey.” A table top sex scene follows with Lucy still in her dress. Briefly, we see that Monty has a scar on his back that looks like a bullet wound.
Meanwhile, brother Norm, who’s been observing the visitors with some suspicion, leaves the party and wanders into Vault 32. He finds a darkened space with dead plants.
Back to Lucy and Monty in bed. An angry and prominent scar is very visible on Monty’s side. She still wears the wedding dress. She’s content; he gets up and uses the clean curtain to wipe his crotch.
SWITCH
Norm continues through the dead vault. The schoolroom has toppled desks. Reveal a dismembered man who sits in the nursery rocking chair. Norm runs.
FIVE
Noises in the field bring Lucy out of bed. At the sink, Monty fills the blender with water and drinks. Screams in the distance. Lucy holds out her Pip Boy arm and takes a reading. Monty trips the geiger counter. “You’re from the surface,” she says. “Raiders.” He grabs her before she can run. Violence. She ends up stabbed in the abdomen with a knife. As Monty strangles her, Lucy finds the blender and breaks it against his head, slashing his face with the exposed blades. He’s down. In the bathroom Lucy takes a med kit from the wall (YAY!) and uses a stimpak on her knife wound, healing herself completely.
In her blood-stained wedding dress, Lucy holds the knife and investigates. People are dead in the hallway. The Armory is ransacked. Lucy suits up with all that’s left, a tranq gun. Slowmo and music as the Raiders assault the community. The projector that has been giving a lovely evening light to the cornfield is hit. As the celluloid burns, the wall screen turns into a conflagration scene. Pregnant woman Steph, after taking a fork in the eye, grabs an assault rifle and attacks. A Raider, inhaling a hit of the drug Jet (YAY!), attacks Chet at the door. (He survives.) Lucy saves Norm, only to have Monty, his face shredded, grab her. Hank, wielding a shovel, rescues her, and then drowns Monty in a pickle barrel. Everyone in the field is dead, and a “Please Stand By” test pattern (YAY!) plays on the wall screen.
They find Overseer Moldaver and her Raiders with a bomb, holding the remaining vault members hostage (including Steph and Chet). Hank says he knows who she is; she replies that everyone knows who she is. She offers Hank a choice: them (the hostages) or her (Lucy). He grabs Lucy and forces her into a closet with a porthole window. She watches as Hank is tranqued. Moldaver walks up to the window to look at Lucy. “You look like your mother,” she says with an intense face. Hank’s dragged away to “the real world”, Moldaver says. Leaving, she activates the bomb. Everyone runs as it explodes.
Fade to Black. (Now begins the Maximus storyline. The first episode is half over.)
Return to Vault 33 after some of Maximus’ plot.
With happy music playing, over, the survivors paint the blood-stained walls and drag the corpses into the Compost area. Lucy staples her knife wound. At an assembly in the cornfield, she suggests they send a search party for Hank.
SIX
The leaders vehemently disagree. They won’t open the exterior door and risk their security. Norm whispers to Lucy that the leaders don’t want to find Hank; without him, they’re in charge.
(The same people who accepted Lucy for the breeding mission at the Three now reject her.)
SEVEN
Despairing, Lucy leans against a hallway wall. She begins to focus on the poster next to her: it’s Vault Boy, his thumb out and his positive smile beaming. Resolved, Lucy strides away.
EIGHT
When no one’s looking, Lucy with Chet and Norm take the elevator up to the surface exit door.
The action of the ramp leading to the exterior is exactly like in the game. (YAY!)
Chet argues that he’ll go outside with Lucy. She refuses and finally tranqs him. Norm says his goodbyes, the ramp retracts, and the door opens. Sunlight blares in. Squinting, Lucy exits and the door closes behind her.
NINE
Outside is rust, sand, and bleached skeletons. Coming around a crumbling wall, Lucy sees the ocean for the first time in her life. Wind blows her hair. With an overwhelmed and excited face, Lucy says, “Okey dokey.”
CRITICAL NOTES
The episode here shifts back to Maximus’ story. It’s a little disconcerting to go from an Enneagram Nine to the middle of a different plot, but okay.
As you can see, the showrunners did a bang-up job on the Vault line of the episode. Look at that beautiful Story Enneagram. Breaking the flow near the end of the Five to flip to Maximus is probably the best place to make a shift. We have a chance to return with a tiny bit of Five, enough to remind us of the tone, and then we’re into the Six and the end of the plot. During my first watch, I felt very connected to Lucy’s story. The mix of fan service easter eggs and straightforward storytelling hit just right. I also love that, in the game, your time in the vault is always the beginning and the tutorial. That pacing made for a fun first episode.
On a rewatch, I’m not surprised to see the Vault line’s structural strength. I could feel its confidence right away. It’s the Maximus line that worries me. We’ll see what kind of structure its story managed in the next post.