If fears about “the bomb” permeated life in the mid-20th century, the video game “Fallout” takes that premise to its worst conclusion. In a post-nuclear wasteland, some survivors have been recreating their 1950s-era idyll underground in elaborate bomb shelters called vaults. Those less lucky have been eking out a life on the surface, where it is dusty and brutal, and nasty oddities abound in the form of ghouls, who exist in a liminal space between human and zombie. How the hell did we get here? The Amazon TV adaptation explains by toggling between two timelines: Los Angeles of 2077 and what remains of the place a couple of centuries into the future.
Inside Vault 33, the community’s cult-like tranquility is invaded by surface dwellers who kidnap the man in charge (Kyle MacLachlan) and this sets the story in motion. His daughter Lucy ventures outside for the first time on a mission to save him and learns some ugly truths about the inevitable consequences of end-stage capitalism along the way.
Played by Ella Purnell, Lucy is perky and naive but exceptionally skilled with a weapon. Her trek on the surface is one long rude awakening, but what do you expect? She’s literally been sheltered all her life. She’s more or less introduced as a character worthy of “Leave It to Beaver” who is unceremoniously yanked into a darker show by the end of the first episode. That’s typical of “Fallout’s” sense of humor, a lot of which comes through in the production design (which takes a page from the 1999 comedy “Blast From the Past” in amusing ways) and the intentional tonal discord that is irony-drenched and kitschy but not actually funny (a missed opportunity). Chris Parnell and Matt Berry show up separately, and briefly, for comic relief as well.
I haven’t played “Fallout,” but it came up when I wrote about Marvel’s “WandaVision” in 2021. I was curious if younger generations would understand its parodies of shows like “I Love Lucy” and Northwestern professor and screenwriter Brett Neveu was convinced many viewers would, thanks to this game specifically, where “only the pop culture from the 1950s has remained behind. So the jokes that are in the game, the references, they are all part of a culture that is long gone. And if you invest in this puzzle, you have to know these reference points.” Stylistically, the show has stuck with this idea to an extent, primarily through its old-school needle drops.