What I Have Been (or Am) Watching, or now shortened to Watching, for what is life but for Change, comes from when we, admittedly, spend too much (almost all?) time in front of the TV. This time round, I will catch up in reverse-chronological order as I finish seasons of a show, as individual posts, not the usual kaiju-post broken into Parts. There are likely to be some collective posts, where I comment on incomplete seasons, or British panel shows, or whatnot. Herein ends the explainer paragraph. It will be resurrected only for said collective posts.
First up...
Of course I watched this series, and pretty much binged it, against our better judgement. I usually try and stretch these things out a bit longer. I love the game, and I like what Jonathan Nolan does so I didn't have many worries this show would satisfy me.
So, a bit of background that you would glean from the show but also may be a bit confused by. Its an alternate reality, one where atomic power took off but all the other 50s style and technology became stagnant. Its not trying to make a lot of sense, but atomic power, robots, suits of power armour, old timey music, pinup posters, gelatin desserts, vacuum tubes, etc. And a Big Bad -- China. And China does Drop the Bomb all but devastating the US and the world. But people survived, both on the surface and in deep underground vaults, which were large scale fallout shelters meant to house entire societies, who would emerge to take back the world once the radiation levels had diminished.
Lucy McLean (Ella Purnell, Army of the Dead) lives in one such vault -- 33. Her vault trades goods and people with Vault 31 and Vault 32. After 200 years isolated underground, you have to spread the blood around or... well, you know what happens when cousins fuck. Lucy is perky, has high test scores and is the daughter of the leader of her vault, Overseer Hank (Kyle MacLachlan, Sex and the City). I was really disappointed her father's name wasn't John.
The show begins as Lucy is meeting her husband to be, so you know, they can have sex and make babies. Exceeeeept, the people who come through the vault door are not vault 32 folks but raiders from the surface. Vault 33 is decimated and Hank is stolen away. Lucy has to get her father back, against the wishes of the interim overseers. So yeah, the entire show is her quest to rescue him but is also wrapped in a mystery to Uncover the Truth (!!) a truth Lucy doesn't know needs uncovering.
On the surface, pretty much everyone Lucy meets is trying to kill her. And her perky, all about manners, be polite and friendly and helpful demeanour is not helping things. She meets The Ghoul (Walton Goggins, Maze Runner: the Death Cure), a 200 year old man (from before the bombs dropped !), essentially a wandering cowboy with a big gun and the face of a desiccated corpse. And she meets Maximus (or Knight Titus as she thinks he is for much of the show; Aaron Moten, Emancipation), a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, militaristic zealots in power armour. And she briefly meets a scientist (Michael Emerson, Person of Interest) from some society or another that seems to have weathered the apocalypse rather well, considering his technology and white lab coat. He implants himself with a rice grain sized macguffin which has everyone chasing him. I said briefly, because he almost immediately dies, and Lucy ends up either carrying or chasing after his head. What's in the head is important to everyone.
Its a rather fun show, full of violence, gore and black comedy galore. The lore is probably basted on pretty thick but there is enough exposition to explain things to non-game-players, and soooo many easter eggs to make fans (real fans, not the whiney fanboys who will debate every inconsistency that comes with adaptations) squee. Of course, the entire season is setting up the world and the characters, with a juicy amount of pre-war background establishment, so the real meaty stuff can take place in later seasons. That is the way of TV these days.
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