We Liked: The Show’s Evolving Approach to Violence
Speaking of its comical underpinnings, Fallout starts almost reveling in a sense of silly, gory glee—from the Raider attack on Vault 33 to the Ghoul’s shoot-out in Filly, the early episodes of the series really want you to know that a) it can show blood, b) it can show a lot of it, and c) look how silly it can be when someone’s entire torso explodes, and so on and so forth. Some of it can be taken as an homage to the VATS system from the games—a mode that slows down time for players to make percentage-based shots on different parts of an opponent’s body, often comically exploding those parts in meaty viscera while doing so—but for the most part it mostly feels like a show that’s really eager to show you it’s intended for adults, albeit ones with a penchant for gross-out humor.
But as the series progresses, so too does its use of violence—still stark and brutal, but less “ha ha that guy got his head turned to mulch” and more of a way to much more interestingly examine the different moralities at play in our trifecta of protagonists, and the moral core of the show itself (especially as Lucy gets more accustomed to conflict). Speaking of…
