RPS verdict: The Fallout TV Show season 2

The second series of Amazon’s Fallout adaptation has now fully emerged from the vault, its eight episodes having been plinked out gradually, rather than whipped out in one fell swoop. Naturally, one of us has taken in the show how its distributors intended, injecting a stimpak a week in calm and measured fashion. The other waited until all the episodes were out, and then injected them all at once like an unhinged adventurer blowing through half their chem stash in a mid-fight panic. I’ll let you try to work out which is which, here’s our verdict.

Major spoilers for season 2 of the Fallout TV Show lie ahead.

Mark: Ah, bollocks. I fear I’m about to come off like the grumbly killjoy I most certainly am here. There was very little in that series of Fallout which caused me to feel anything beyond mild disinterest or disappointment. So, in order to put off dropping a big old bomb on the mood, I’ll kick off by asking you a nice question, James. Which aspects of Fallout series 2 did you enjoy most?

James: I…let me think. I liked Max. I liked the delivery of “She’s Canadian!”. I liked how some of the individual storylines finally went somewhere after those first few, flailing episodes. I liked Ron “Forty bucks and a sandwich” Perlman as a super mutant.

There was enough there to stop me actively disliking it, basically. But it did feel like this season was maybe a sprinkling of highlights on top of a whole lot of not much happening? Like finding the occasional, juicy cherry tomato in a salad made largely of sand. In the interest of answering the question, and because we’ll probably get get back to moaning shortly, I think the sweetest of those tommies really is Max – whereas Lucy’s idealism is put under constant threat of breaking, Max’s is something he spends season 2 learning to bend, which for me, made for a more interesting watch. It works out for him too, having that nice little moment with the Freeside kid looking up to him: just like he once did to the Brotherhood of Steel, only this time, earned and justified.

Was there nothing you appreciated at all? Not even Aaron Moten’s youthful smile?

Mark: I did like the story arc surrounding Overseer Steph Harper, as its short exploration of her journey to the vault from occupied Canada was one of the few times it felt like the show was delving into aspects fresh of Fallout’s worldbuilding, rather than just regurgitating people, places and themes done better elsewhere. There’s a line in my notes which literally reads ‘She’s Canadian meme’ because I could instantly see it becoming a quotable line I whip out for a laugh whenever a friend teases a reveal. Giggles aside, Annabel O’Hagan’s portrayal of Steph’s paranoid and intimidating attempts to hold onto power while guarding her secrets is the closest the show’s come yet to having an actor’s performance reach a level that definitively enhances the material they’ve been given.

Outside of that, I thought the brief cameo of Ron Pearlman’s super mutant was handled very well, with the tension building up to the quick shot of his big green face. Finally, Cooper Howard’s pre-war storyline felt to me like the bit the show’s makers had enjoyed putting together the most. It was cool to see Vegas pre-decimation, even if the eventual endpoint of that rung of the show – with the Enclave being revealed as the big bad Mr House is all confused about – was as uninventive as you can get.

Well, I say that, the fact Mr House now canonically invents mind control chips only to flog them to Vault-Tec so Kyle MacLachlan can spend six or seven episodes dicking around in a bunker hundreds of years later certainly gives that a run for its money. Dragging myself back to Aaron Moten’s youthful smile, I found the portrayals of all of the factions – Brotherhood, NCR and Legion – frustratingly reductive, to the point the series felt a more like a trip to a New Vegas theme park than a believable glimpse of the Mojave’s future. Would you agree with that, or do you reckon my perspective’s tainted by a rose-tinted view of how New Vegas itself handles them?

James: Well, we were never going to get as much facetime with any faction in an eight-episode TV series as we would in an Obsidian RPG. Though I definitely wasn’t a fan of how specific places and peoples from the game were almost always destroyed, abandoned, or reduced to remnants fighting over scraps. I’m sure that sounds like I just wanted to SEE THINGS FROM GAME, probably while doing a Leonardo DiCaprio point, but Fallout’s portrayal of societies and communities attempting to build something new has always been more interesting than the desolation around them. It’s not so much the factions I mourned in these ‘No, wait, they’re all dead’ reveals as the potential for the stories and conflicts that could arise within them; instead, it’s just yet another scene of Lucy and/or Ghoulggins getting something they want and moving on. A little bit, you could say, like a theme park.

But then, something else that bothered me about season 2 – or maybe to be more specific, the finale – is that all that mass New Vegas cast murder wasn’t actually the case, and there are in fact loads of NCR and Legion members about. If you’re going to decimate a civilisation offscreen, at least stick to it.

Mark: Oh, you mean the NCR reinforcements who’ve been AWOL for a decade, then show up out of the blue right in time to save Maximus once the show’s had its fill of mandatory power armour deathclaw wrestling? The ones who’re also suddenly well placed to fight the second battle for Vegas set in motion when Legate Home Alone finally decides to just stroll over and see what was on that note in Caesar’s pocket? You know, because the dying leader of a faction bearing his own name thought it necessary to write an informal will rather than wordlessly leaving what he’d built to fall apart, but didn’t take the time to tell anyone what it said.

Ok, I’m being facetious, but I did think it said a lot that the series ends before the big battle it builds up even takes place. The practical reason is likely the same fear of presenting any one side as a winner that fuels a lot of the steamrolling you outlined, but it also implied to me a total indifference on behalf of the showrunners in getting the audience invested in the fate of anyone in this series who isn’t part of the little cluster of protagonists. It’s a show which happens to take place in New Vegas, is more than happy to use elements of that backdrop as appealing window-dressing and fonts of fan service, but it certainly isn’t a show about New Vegas. I appreciate delivering such a thing in eight hour-long episodes is a tough ask, but in that case why not pick a different wasteland setting and save yourself the substantial headache of doing this established one justice?

Well, at least it looks like the show’s next season shouldn’t be as hamstrung by such concerns. Colorado, if indeed that is the destination the three knuckleheads are headed to next, is home to elements from Black Isle’s cancelled Fallout Van Buren the show could mix in, but honestly I’m not sure its creators will be interested in resurrecting them.

James: I actually think going off somewhere entirely new, with a smaller cast, could be the best thing for season 3. Not that all of season 2’s wholly original stuff was good – did we really need multiple episodes on the incest support group’s food hogging? – but then cutting these extraneous threads would leave more breathing room for the core trio. All three of whom I still find highly watchable, to be fair, and frankly if the show isn’t going to consistently engage with specific entities from the games, it’s probably better for everyone if it does its own thing. Fewer constraints for the makers, fewer opportunities for game likers to be disappointed by the details. It’s not like there’s exceptionally strong continuity in the source material anyway, even down to how those blue jumpsuits are supposed to look.

All that said, it seems that at least Lucy and Max will be stuck in Vegas for a bit. How would you, Mark, who I’ve just hypothetically promoted to hypothetical showrunner, make sure the next season does do Fallout justice?

Mark: Well, cheers for the promotion! I think my main order of business would be to have Cooper find his family early doors. The show feels like it’s had enough of the ‘I’ve got to find my family’ chase already, and that’d allow the bulk of The Ghoul’s next storyline to focus on the difficulty of reconnecting with loved ones he’s lived multiple lifetimes without. That could bring about intriguing shifts and dilemmas in his established cynical wandering character, and it’d lean towards rebuilding thematically, which is something I reckon the show could benefit from more of.

Aside from that, maybe have Lucy take the next step after drug addiction in any Fallout playthrough and grapple with the effects of becoming a cannibal. The bottom line – the more original work not just pointing at things from the games that the creators can weave into it, the better chance of the series capturing my imagination.

James: Oh, you and your pessimism. I read somewhere that New Vegas isn’t even good anyway.