Genre – Drama Series
Movie Total Runtime – 7 Hours 31 Minutes
Spoilers – Yes

Six episodes of eight in and I’m coming to realize the biggest problem with the work – I don’t care. I am not invested in the main plot, the side plots, or the characters. My enjoyment has come from nitpicking, and dissecting the craft of filmmaking. At 75% of the way in, this is not a good state for the show to be in. Episode seven starts with the Ghoul gunning down a wasteland teenager for some info, then switches to a flashback. Raider Queen is spewing the same sort of keyboard warrior online essay that makes me avoid most comments sections, followed by the same style of argumentation. Starting off with an ad hom against the cowboy when he stands up to leave, with the discourse rising no higher. Raider Queen claims to have been working on developing cold fusion before being bought out by Vault-Tek. Raider Queen also claims that this is “difficult to monetize”. It took me all of five seconds to come up with a monetization scheme – two words “Maintenance Contract”. It’s easy to make money off of cheap electricity. Though the real claim in the drivel was that the tech was bought up so that it could be buried. I’m still not sure, but the Raider Queen might be a man. I can’t be bothered to do the research, so I’ll just avoid pronoun usage, even though the character is supposed to be a woman.

Returning to Lucy, we get exposition that indicate that Vault 4’s current crop of vaulties are descended from test subjects who rebelled against the scientists who’d previously run the vault and were the source of the experiments on the forbidden level. But, Lucy did throw acid in the face of one of the vaulties when they caught her on the forbidden level, so she’s still getting punished. While she’s being dragged off, we check in with Squire Dude and find out just how badly hie foot was injured in the fight. What is this show’s, erm, fixation with foot injuries. Dane had boot razors, Enclave Scientist had his foot shot off by the Ghoul, now Squire Dude has crushed bone and compound fracturing. Of course he walks away when he shouldn’t be able to. Crippled limbs only slow you down in Fallout.

The vaulties kick Lucy and Maximus out of vault 4. After a simplistic ethical debate, the two opt not to steal the power core from the vailtues, leaving the power armor unpowered. With no other quests left in the quest log, Lucy and Maximus start going after Squire Dude, who is limping towards a transmitter to call the Brotherhood. Squire Dude runs into the chicken rapist from episode two who tries to sell him snake oil that turns out to actually work for healing, but chicken rapist make cryptic comments about the side effect. Speculation – the serum triggered ghoulification.

Back in Vault 33, Lucy’s brother has poisoned the raiders, and they begin the repopulation initiative for Vault 32. I’m not sure how that is expected to work. At the start of the series 33 has a population that is dangerously close to inbred, that was then later reduced by the raider attack. There doesn’t sound like there’s enough genetic stock to even maintain one vault, let alone split it up and resume to arms-reach relationship from before.

So, Lucy and Maximus catch up with Squire Dude at the transmitter where he called the Brotherhood. Turns out my surmise about the serum is correct. The arrival of the Brotherhood after the realization causes Squire Dude to flee and Maximus to concoct a plan to try to fool the Brotherhood. But remember, Maximus is a dumbass. He told the Brotherhood he was dead, Squire Dude made the call, and he’s planning to give them a head without the macguffin inside – meaning he doesn’t even have a “but I finished the mission” to fall back on.

Back in vault 33, Lucy’s brother bluffs his way into vault 31 without much of a plan on what to do when he got there. He sees something malfunctioning, but the video is too poor to tell what before credits roll.

To be honest, I’m getting kinda sick of this show. I’m only still watching because it’s one episode left to complete the review. My investment has been pretty low and I’d have dropped it if watching casually. Anyway, the Brotherhood brings Maximus and the fake head back to their base where the elders are waiting. They scan the fake head and discover the truth. Maximus begs to not be executed for multiple deceptions of the brotherhood and immediately offers to sell out Lucy and her destination in exchange for not being shot one the spot. Dane lies to get Maximus spared. The elders don’t believe the lie but refrain from shooting Maximus. Corrupt Elder lays out his plan to usurp the current brotherhood structure to try to get Maximus to spill.

Lucy finds the Raider Queen’s encampment where I want to rant about their agricultural practices. But I only see plowing next to fully mature corn stalks, so I don’t know for sure they’re planning to plant more corn. I’ll be charitable and say they’re prepping for a winter crop. These appear to be the body positivity raiders, as a lot of them are overfed for wastelanders, being chunky to obese. We get no dialog as it has to stop for a flashback before Lucy gets admitted to see the Raider queen who has her dad in a cage and a ghoul chained to a chair.

The showrunners decide they want to try to be clever by cutting between Lucy and the undying Raider Queen, Lucy’s Brother poking around Vault 31, and the Cowboy in the past eavesdropping on a meeting between bigwigs from memberberry organizations from the games. While these caricatures play straw capitalist in the past, Lucy’s Brother finds that vault 31 is full of cryotubes where all of their people are on ice. The overseer is a miniature robobrain with none of the mobility or manipulation abilities of the real thing. A Robobrain is a brain in a jar driving a heavily armored tracked robot. The subtitles call the 31 overseer “brain on a roomba”. That’s a bit too cruel.

Then comes the stupidest line so far in the series “There’s a lot of earning potential in the end of the world”. How? You have just deleted the infrastructure required to do anything. This is followed by the supposed bombshell that the big plan for Vault-tek is to start the nuclear exchange so that the vault experiments kick off. We also have Lucy’s father show up in the past before having been frozen. The uncanny valley deaging CGI doesn’t work quite right. Given the number of special effects wins so far, it stands out for being so off.

This episode is dragging having become an exposition fest. A better storyteller would have pushed more of the content to earlier installments so that you get revelations that lead to new questions that can be answered in later revelations. No, they just expodump in the last episode, taking up more than half of it. I did get one really good laugh at 28:28 when the wide shot shows the whole Raider Queen compound. The cultivated patches are smaller than the rest of the settlement, making up about a quarter of the total space. I get that raiders get their food by stealing it, but if you’re going to quarter-ass your farm, why bother?

During more infodump, we finally find that the Enclave Scientist had smuggled out the completed cold fusion something or other – they don’t seem to be clear on what exactly this object actually does being the size of a pet’s RFID tag. Somehow it is also code-locked and Lucy’s Father has the code. Why he would have the code is unclear, since he was just an executive assistant pre-war. Unless the executive was so lax that she gave him all her passwords. Also, Raider Queen accuses Lucy’s Father of having nuked Shady Sands. The way the show is show we’re expected to believe the Raider Queen, but I see no reason to.

Even as the Brotherhood finally arrives, Lucy’s Father keeps speechifying. I have many derogatory things to say about the content of the speech, as it demonstrates a lack of understanding of human nature. But that’s par for a villain speech in mediocre media. So I’m not going to rant.

The Ghoul teleports in and solos the Brotherhood in the dark so as to save on the effects budget.

When Lucy tells Maximus that her dad nuked Shady Sands, we get another flashback to little Maximus emerging from his hiding spot. It was a fridge. He supposedly survived a nuclear blast in a fridge. No, Hollywood! Bad! Stop that!

Lucy’s Dad takes a suit of Brotherhood armor from among the many lying around no longer needed and slaps Maximus around before the Ghoul drives him off.

The Ghoul gives a conspiracy speech to continue expositing as a second Brotherhood wave appears on the horizon. For whatever reason, he invites Lucy to go with him into Season 2. Mind you this two have been antagonistic the whole time. They leave the wounded and unconscious Maxiumus for the Brotherhood.

Frustratingly, the Raider Queen still isn’t dead. Raider Queen turns on the cold fusion device and a bunch of lights in the ruins of Los Angeles turn on. Nevermind the damage to the transmission wires from a nuclear blast and centuries of scavenging, corrosion, and non-maintenance. Raider Queen doesn’t have enough time to speechify and finally dies.

In the fade out from Season one, we get a Deathclaw skull for memberberries since they didn’t make an appearance yet, then the final shot of New Vegas in the distance.

So, after eight episodes, I’ve spilled most of my praise, dislike, and disappointment. The biggest problems are the inconsistant writing quality, the extreme backloading of reveals, and the lack of any reason to care about the characters. The biggest pluses are due to the effects teams and the set dressers. They captured the visuals very well. I’m not going to tell you to avoid the show, but I can’t recommend it.

The more I think on the plot inconsistancies and unexplained plotholes, the worse it gets. With such a small population all on ice, how did Vault 31 clean up Vault 32 in under a day? How was Raider Queen still alive? Why did they never even drop a one-line explainer as to who the Enclave was? How do people keep moving between Los Angeles and Shady Sands so fast?

Lastly, the contrast in acting ability between different cast members only highlights the studio’s flaws. Maximus’ actor can barely outperform a wooden board. Lucy’s performance makes me wonder if her head would sound hollow when knocked. Raider Queen lacks the gravitas that the role requires given the lack of screen time.

So, this marks the 23rd Episode of the Unwatched, and I’m going to call that Season 1. I know the title says Episode 22, but the pilot counts as Episode 0. Season 2 will pick up probably next week. I’m adding a new category of media – found ain a thrift shop. After the disappointment some of you showed that my “western” movie wasn’t in the Western genre, I realized I didn’t have any unwatched westerns in my collection. I bought some at Goodwill. They’re not next week, but are in the queue.