Tuesday TV Touchbase: Fallout

This Saturday, Andrea and I watched the White House Correspondents Dinner. 

And it is what it says on the packaging: dinner.  

For about 90 minutes, cameras roam around the ballroom of the Washington Hilton to watch reporters, editors, news anchors, pundits, politicians and celebrities....  eat dinner. 

CNN had people on air to chat to us while we all sat and watched people...  eat dinner. 

The presentations started at 9:30 PM with awards to journalists and scholarships to young people who want to be journalists. 

President Joe Biden took the stage at 10 with some pointed barbs aimed right at Donald Trump. "Age is an issue in this campaign. I am a grown man and my opponent is 6 years old!"

Colin Jost of Saturday Night Life took over at 10:30 PM.  "Isn't it great to be at an event with a President that doesn't start with a bailiff saying 'All rise'." 

Andrea and I agreed that Biden and Jost did great in their remarks.    

Not all the reviews were kind.  One critic wrote “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner was really bad. Colin Jost BOMBED, and Crooked Joe was an absolute disaster! Doesn’t get much worse than this!”

Can you guess which former President with multiple indictments and guilty verdicts for fraud, sexual assault and defamation offered that cogent critique? 

On with the Touchbase! 

Today's Tuesday TV Touchbase welcomes Fallout to my TV viewing itinerary.   

Based on the long running video game series, Fallout depicts the aftermath of the Great War of 1959 2077, an apocalyptic nuclear exchange on an Earth with an alternate history than the one we know.  Science runs amuck which leads to advances in nuclear technology after WWII.   This causes the development of a retro-futuristic society and a subsequent resource war. 

Flashbacks to the events of 2077 look like life in the 1950's. 

In the aftermath of the Great War, certain survivors take refuge in bunkers called Vaults.  Vault-Tec took their money but didn't necessarily have the best interests of the the Vault Dwellers in mind as we find out over the course of the series. 

There are survivors above ground, grasping at a subsistence wherever the radiation is low enough to withstand and wherever they can defend themselves against irradiated mutated monsters.   

200 years after the Great War, Lucy leaves behind her home in Vault 33 to venture out into the dangerously unforgiving wasteland of a devastated Los Angeles to look for her father, who had been kidnapped by raiders from the surface. Lucy is a literal wide eyed innocent (do her eyes inflate?) whose dialogue is peppered with "gosh", "heck", "darn" and "okey-dokey".  

Lucy meets the Ghoul who wants fuck all to do with her shit. 

The Ghoul is over 200 years old and used to be Cooper Howard, a famous Hollywood actor who specialized in wholesome Western cowboy characters.  Cooper also had a gig as pitch man for Vault-Tec.

The radiation from the bomb mutated Cooper Howard into the Ghoul. His skin is like crinkled old leather and he has no nose.  The Ghoul is a gunslinger and bounty hunter.   

Well, okey-dokey.  

Lucy also meets Maximus, a former squire of the Brotherhood of Steel, a group of knights with high tech armor that gives the wearer super strength, the ability to fly and other powers. Maximus assumes the armor of a fallen knight who was attacked by a radiation bear.  

Fallout is not just some sci-fi tale of a dystopian future. There is a layer of dark comedy present. What caught my attention to want to watch this show were clips of Lucy, all innocent and positive and perky as heck juxtaposed with a hellscape of a world that is out to kill her. 

There's an amusing undercurrent to Lucy's continued survival as one darn thing after another keeps happening to her that should've driven her screaming back to her vault but darn it all to heck, she's going to save her father no matter what. 

She does give in to utter a well timed "motherfucker"!

And there is the Ghoul. Walton Goggins ("Boyd Crowder" from Justified) is on hand as the actor turned mutated gunslinger and there is nothing I think that Goggins mere presence can't help but make better. Goggins' delivery makes the most mundane utterance seem like a threat layered with a sardonic wit.  

Also on hand in this series is  Matt Berry from What We Do In the Shadows in three roles:  

• "Mr. Handy", a General Atomics helper bot in 2077
• "Snip Snip", one of the organ harvesters
• Sebastian Leslie, an English actor before the apocalypse

I also appreciate the complexity and level of detail that goes into the world building of Fallout. We think we know of vault life from what we see of Vault 33 but the network of vaults is complicated and at the mercy of a mystery about Vault-Tec's agenda. 

Life above ground is also a chaotic mess with dark secrets and dangerous conspiracies at work.   

Knowing nothing of the game, I may be missing out on some nuances in the TV series, Easter Eggs and whatnot that game players will recognize.  But I think I'm keeping up pretty well with the TV series world of Fallout and I am very interested to see what happens with season 2.   

Next week's Touchbase, it's the season 3 finale of  Ghosts. 

Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.