Everyone is going to want more Fallout after watching Amazon's Fallout -

My younger children often confound me with questions about my favorite things. What is my favorite color? My favorite food? My favorite candy? I often respond that I don't have favorites. I tell them that there are things that I like, and there are things that I don't like, but it's difficult for me to narrow in on a "favorite". It's just not something I think about. But that's not entirely true. Because I know for a fact that Fallout is my favorite videogame franchise, and now the Fallout show is now my favorite videogame adaptation. Is it the best videogame adaptation ever? Well, that's subjective, and the competition has unexpectedly gotten mighty stiff in recent years. But I can say that it is my favorite, and it is certainly the best show I've watched this year, adaptation or no.

I've seen the entire first season of the Fallout series, and I can definitively say that this show is a dream come true - a show that is faithful to the franchise, but also constructs a complex and ultimately deeply satisfying new narrative within that world. This is not an adaptation of an existing game, but rather a fresh new tale set in the world of Fallout that expands the world in some surprising ways. I frankly couldn't have ever hoped for something this good. 

Of course, I must admit that there is something Pavlovian in my response to the Fallout show, as anything with Fallout branding tickles the pleasure centers in my brain. I have spent my happiest videogame hours wandering the wastes, looking for secrets, and reveling in the quirk-filled apocalyptic setting. The amount of time I've spent in Fallout's world triggers an almost nostalgic response in me, similar to seeing pictures of my old high school. The folks behind this show clearly know this, and they lean into it. Hard. It's all here - the Yum-Yum Deviled Eggs, the terminal hacking minigame, the Vault-Tec vault shenanigans. Rob-Co. Power armor. Nuka-Cola. And the music. Oh lord, the music. The use of traditional Fallout music in this show is spectacularly on point.

The startling thing about Fallout is how well the creators have mastered the singular tone of the thing. Let's face it, Fallout is kinda weird in its awesomeness. Rather than steer away from the retro-futuristic setting or the wild bursts of crazed bloodshed to make the show more palatable for mainstream audiences, the makers of Fallout have leaned into it. The mainstream can get onboard with the pleasures of wallowing in the wasteland with the rest of us.

Every detail in this show is perfect. A large team clearly labored long and hard to bring Fallout's world to life in a non-compromising way that respects the lore of the franchise down to the molecular level. I can't think of another adaptation that equals this one in its fidelity to the source material; watching the show feels like playing the game. And what's more - it makes me want to play the game. The sets are unbelievably faithful to the game series, from the spot-on depiction of the Vaults to the amazing (and seemingly practical) Filly set, which feels the closest to a real-life version of Fallout 4's Diamond City. 

Of course, none of this meticulous attention to detail would matter if the show wasn't fun to watch. Not to worry. Watching Fallout is an absolute blast. The laughs come often, and are frequently very, very dark. Beyond all of the fan service, which indeed had me pointing at the screen and grunting "Ooh! Ooh!" like a monkey, the makers of Fallout are telling a fantastic story that finds ways to expand the lore, offering a peek behind certain curtains that gamers have never before had the chance to breech. A fair amount of the show is spent showing what life was like before the bombs fell, and the stuff that goes down in that context is jaw-dropping.

The primary vessel shuttling us back and forth to that pre-war world is Walton Goggins' character The Ghoul. Prior to the war, The Ghoul was Cooper Howard, a Western serial star. Through a series of flashbacks, we get to witness him living the Hollywood high life, hobnobbing with the Hollywood and Vault-tec elite while in the background, international tensions escalate and the world teeters ever closer to war. The insights this storyline offer into the world of Fallout, and the mystery of how The Ghoul became The Ghoul - able to survive for over two hundred years - are some of the driving forces pushing the story forward. 

The other two primary characters are just as interesting, offering extensive views into other corners of life in the Wasteland. Ella Purnell plays Lucy, an idealistic Vault-dweller who is suddenly given reason to leave the vault and go adventuring into the waste. And Aaron Molton is Maximus, a recruit in the Brotherhood of Steel of...ambiguous morality. The show has these three characters thrown together in a mutual quest, though they aren't exactly driven to work together. The various ways they bounce off of each other, and the culture shock that ensues drives the riotously funny comedy in the show. That, and the prevalence of sudden, shocking ultraviolence. Everyone in the Fallout show has the Bloody Mess perk active, and the slow motion depictions of carnage are glorious indeed.

A fourth, perhaps less publicized lead is Moisés Arias, who plays Norm, Lucy's disenchanted Vault-dweller brother. It's through Norm that we really get a great look at what life is like in the Vault. And when Norm starts to suspect that something hinky is going on in his vault, we get to see the a vault experiment unravel in real-time, which is fascinating after exploring the aftermath of such events so many times. Arias is fantastic as Norm, and his quiet disapproval of the vault status quo, accompanied by his low key investigation into the realities of his situation, is one of the best sub-plots in the series. 

If you get the sense that I'm tap-dancing around the story here, that's because I totally am. I don't want to spoil a single moment of this show for anyone, particularly fans of the game series. I would avoid as much press as I could, and just go in blind, trusting that the makers of this series have constructed something amazingly compelling, with story branches that come crashing together in the most satisfying of ways, while still leaving plenty of room for the Oh-my-God-this-better-happen Season Two. 

The fascinating thing about Fallout in retrospect is not only how much of the universe the game reveals, but also how much stuff they don't show. There are enormous elements of Fallout missing from this show, hinted at and teased out for later inclusion. There is no question that there is so much more here to explore, but what is included is wildly entertaining. This season doesn't need more - there is a ton packed in here - but the fact that there are still so many directions this show could head in leaves me anxious and excited to see what comes next.

Do yourself a favor now, and start your favorite Fallout games downloading before you even press play on the show. Because in the coming weeks, everyone is going to be playing Fallout, watching Fallout, and talking about Fallout. After watching Fallout, you are certainly going to want more Fallout. For now, the only way to get that is to play Fallout, until the makers of Fallout make us more Fallout. I hope to hell they are already working on it.