[ “I understand the HOW; I do not understand the WHY.” Winston Smith, the protagonist of 1984, is a sharp guy, and he grasps the contours of the nightmarishly oppressive regime he serves pretty well. He just can’t understand why it works the way it does. What possible ideological justification for giving yourself absolute power … Read more
[ You know what they say: If you’re in a Vault, and you’re not conducting an experiment, you’re the experiment. That’s the lesson I think Lucy MacLean ought to take from her madcap adventures in the mysterious Vault 4, which come to a surprising conclusion in this, yet another charmingly nasty episode of Fallout. It’s … Read more
[ Walton Goggins, in a gruesome starring role in Amazon Prime’s apocalyptic sci-fi series Fallout, said he knew he knew he was in for “an intense experience” having to transform every day on set into The Ghoul, a post-human character with melting flesh, a cowboy persona and some semblance of his humanity still left. But at … Read more
[ Preemptive surrender is the thing they always warn you about with fascism. The danger becomes acute when people decide it’s gonna happen one way or the other, so they may as well show they’re on the side they expect to emerge victorious. In so doing, they help ensure that victory. Cooper Howard starts Fallout … Read more
[ Without having played any of the games, I can’t tell you what elements of Fallout are taken directly from the source material and what aren’t. That said, one can make some educated guesses. For instance, when Maximus unwisely reveals his identity to his “squire” Thaddeus, Thaddeus easily incapacitates him by removing some doohickey from … Read more
[ About fifteen seconds into Fallout Episode 4 (“The Ghouls”), I finally hit my breaking point: This cheery 1940s-1950s Americana musical bullshit is too goddamn much already! Even when I looked up the lyrics to the first song, an inane ditty about how “Life’s worth living when nature’s giving,” and found out that the video … Read more
[ Let’s get this out of the way right up front: I’ve never played a Fallout game. Other than recognizing its ubiquitous blond-haired mascot man and understanding it takes place after some kind of nuclear apocalypse, I knew nothing about the franchise at all prior to pressing play on the television adaptation’s first episode. But … Read more
