Pop Culture Happy Hour - Fallout

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Fallout is based on a hugely successful video game series known for blending a sardonic, very dark comedic sensibility, and violence. The series is set in the game's post-apocalyptic world – an America divided into factions wrestling for control of an irradiated wasteland. When the hopeful Lucy (Ella Purnell) steps out of the comfortable life she's known in an underground vault, the world she's confronted with is harsh, brutal, merciless – and kinda funny. Fallout just returned for a second season on Prime Video, so today we’re revisiting our conversation about the show.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The show Fallout is based on a hugely successful video game series known for its sardonic and very dark comedic sensibility and its violence. It's set in the game's post-apocalyptic world in America divided into factions wrestling for control of an irradiated wasteland. When one hopeful young woman steps out of the comfortable life she's known in an underground vault, the world she's confronted with is harsh, brutal, merciless, and kind of funny. It's rare that a video game adaptation works as well as this one does. The series just returned for a second season, so we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the show. I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about Fallout on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining me today is filmmaker, Pop Culture Critic and I Heart Radio producer, Joelle Monique. Hey, Joelle.

Hi, Glenn. Hey, also with us, is Cultural Critic and journalist Soraya, Nadia MacDonald. Hello, Saria. Hello, hello. Hello. So Fallout takes place more than 200 years after bombs dropped in America, and what remains is a nuclear wasteland. But before the bombs, some lucky. few repaired to a series of vaults or retrofuture fallout shelters where they've waited for the moment to return to the surface. We follow three characters from different walks of this post-apocalyptic life. There's Lucy, an idealistic young woman born and raised in Vault 33.

She's played by Ella Pernell. My reproductive organs are intact, my hygiene well-maintained, and yet I have been unable to find a suitable marriage partner, at least one I'm not related to. And we have rules about that for a reason. When something bad happens, she doesn't decides to set out onto the surface where her naivete gradually gives way to badass array. Aaron Moten plays Maximus, who's a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, a military faction consisting of knights in atomic power armor and their humble squires. It is a knight's duty to better this fallen world. You don't deserve that armor.

And then there's The Gool, a ruthless bounty hunter who's been turned into a skeleton-like monster by radiation. We learn more about his past as the serious progresses. as he's played by Walton Guggins. But us CalPosts, we take it as a con, right? All three are looking for exactly the same artifact, and that search will cause their lives to intersect and diverge multiple times over the course of the season.

All eight episodes of Fallout are streaming now on Prime. We should note that Amazon supports NPR and pays to distribute some of our content. Joelle, let me start with you. You have not played the game, but you are familiar with it from watching others play it. So what did you think of the show? Yeah, okay.

This series was so fun. I had a really good time. The retrofuturism aspect really spoke to me. I thought it was, like, beautiful, the mix of mid-century with sort of early tech that hasn't sort of been modernized. All of tech seems like way oversized in a way that's fun and playful. Like the design team's must-win awards is really compelling just to look at. And then on top of that, you have really solid performances. Ella Pernel's like, I don't want to call her a new Emma Stone because that's very reductive, but she gives the same.

kind of energy. Like, here's very big eyes, like, hyper-intelligent, but kind of goofy and fun. I was like, I really vibe with this chick. I had so much fun on this journey. It's violent in a fun way if you're into that kind of thing. Giant explosions, lots of blood. I do have some thoughts on pacing and theoretical philosophy that was happening throughout. I wouldn't mind just a little bit of tightening up, but overall, can't recommend enough. Would watch again. Really enjoyed the series. All right. That's strong. How about you, Soraya? Yes, absolutely. So I have played more hours of Fallout 4 than I'm proud to admit,

and yet still haven't beaten the game. But that's okay. It's totally fine to it. I've wasted a lot of time doing that. But in regards to the television show, I quite enjoyed this adaptation. I was a little dubious, to be honest, because I still have not so great memories of Westworld sort of falling apart and the logic of that show just kind of collapsing on itself and being hard to follow. But I think Jonathan Nolan, who directed the first three episodes of Fallout and therefore has a large influence on the way it looks and the tone of the show, the way it's going to proceed. Certainly, I think, has learned a few lessons maybe from the mistakes of Westworld. I certainly found myself slowly developing a crush on Maximus is played by Aaron Motin.

I find him so endearing as a true believer who wants to do good, much like Lucy McLean, much like Ella's character. And the two of them, I think, have this wonderful sort of chemistry, you know, as these two rather naive people who are trying to survive in a place where strangers, will just as soon cut off your finger as shoot you. Now that right there is the closest time we've had to an honest exchange so far. But that's the thing. Even the cutting off the finger scene was kind of funny. I mean, I think the reason I dug this is it kind of nails the tone of the games because there's a knife edge it has to walk, right?

Because it's the one the games walk. So it has to be bleak. It has to be dark because consider the setting. But if it's too dark and too bleak, you don't want to come back. You need humor. And you have to want to spend time in this world. But if there's far too much humor, you lose the stakes, right? And you don't care what happens to the characters because it's all a joke.

I think Last of Us in Walking Dead lean into the bleak and dark and violent, hoping that you'll believe in the characters and that'll hook you. And a show like, which is not post-apocalyptic, but a show like the boys to me leans into the humor so hard that the violence and brutality comes off as kind of glibb and adolescent and like, look at we're getting away with. For me, this is the Goldilocks series. This is just right. It goes hard. Yeah. But the violence isn't just a joke. It has consequences.

The characters have to deal with. Someone gets injured. They stay injury. They carry that injury through the rest of the series unless they take a stim pack, which is this thing from the video games. It is magic. And it kills you magically. If they kill someone, you know, what follows them? And it doesn't look like any other apocalyptic series because, as you mentioned, Joel, the retrofuturism.

Like a lot of the humor comes from that setting, this kind of Disney Tomorrowland, Rocket Chip Finns and robots that do housework. In terms of tone, though, there is one thing that show keeps going back to, which is contrasting sweet, syrupy 50s music over dark and violent imagery. Oh, yes. That's okay. If it happens a watch or twice, it happens two or three times an episode. You do want to see that complicating and iterating a bit. Any other thoughts on the tone? You know what I missed?

And I'm not a person who, you know, I don't hunt for Easter eggs. I'm not obsessive about them. But because I quite enjoyed the way that the songs from the Fallout game are incorporated into the storylines and add so much mirth to them, I did notice the one that I was missing from the Fallout radio station was 60 Minut Man. I'm like, come on. Maybe they couldn't get the right. Maybe they'll get there. Yeah, let me just say there's a lot of old songs played throughout the series, including one in the last episode. Here's a little bit of it.

This is the InkSpots doing We3, My Echo, My Shadow, and Me. We're not even confident. My shadow and me. If you've seen any shows that highly featured between the 20s and 1950s, you've heard these songs before. They're, like, locked into your brain, and so I had a lot of fun in this jukebox musical style. I was really impressed the way they handled violence. It's so gory, but also the way they handled sex, which I think when we're watching particularly American-made violent films, like sex kind of always goes hand-in-hand, fights scenes are shot similarly. As a person from the Midwest, I was like, I really understand this level of repressed sexual energy mixed with prudishness of the society you have to maneuver around.

I thought it was really delightful and funny. Lucy, I love you. We all know that, Jen. Messing around with your cousin, it's all well and good. for kids, but it's not a sustainable long-term sexual practice, you know? Yeah, I thought they struck a really nice chord throughout balancing both of the things, the sex and violence throughout. The cousin sex feels almost inevitable.

And it's dealt with matter-of-factly in one episode where Lucy asks if they want to make love and your understanding of her understanding of what sex is and his maximus's understanding of what sex is very different, and that is played for laughs. Yes. Now, I want to go back to your point about structure, though, because this is eight episodes. It's a pretty binge-a-blade episodes, I think, but there is a style and approach, this tone we're talking about that does invite you back. I do feel some lassitude in the structure here, if only because they keep loading it up with subplots. Every vault has a secret that it is hiding.

Yes. I wasn't mad at that personally because games have sidequests and what is a side quest but an extra subplot, you know? But it also means, the structure means that we isolate our three main characters. They spent a lot of time on their own. Were you more interested in one than the other? Oh, my gosh. I thought Walton Goggins playing The Gould was so compelling to me. And with this character, you flash back in time and then back to the present.

And any time we flash back, I'm like, wow, this was really feeding our main storyline. And anytime we're in the present with him, there's such a level of intensity. And also, if you've seen Walter Gagons in any Western, he's playing this archetype where he's villainous, but for good reasons. Why are you doing this? Well, I ain't torturing you, sweetheart. I'm using you as bait. The world has forced him to be this way. He's doing his best to help protect and reach out to the people he loves,

but also he is a straight-up villain. Like, he would not want to cross paths with this guy. And it's so interesting to watch him. I really enjoyed my time with his character. I liked all of them. I think my issue is not so much the separation, but I was having difficulty with these subplots, even though they all feed back into the main narrative,

if your big question is, what kind of person do you have to be to survive the apocalypse, which I really think is the overarching thought for the series. Can you be a good person and survive? Or will the apocalypse change you? Then I kind of want to stick with our main three characters. And yeah, I guess maybe if they had spent more time together or if the overall series had been tighter

or if it had just been a movie, honestly. I really feel like Fallout the movie would have been really strong because I love everybody's arc. All characters around the arc are doing great jobs here. They're making poor decisions. You're like really struggling with them. Lucy, the main character is played by Ella. She's so goody, two shoes that I'm dying half the time. Like, girl, you are going to be killed.

Like, please move. Get out of the way. Like, what are we doing? And so all of that energy is really great. But then it kind of dissipates throughout. It just felt long to me. I just wanted it to be a movie, I think. It's kind of how I walked away feeling.

Yeah, I think, though. The weakest rate of the storylines that we're following actually is the politics of the vault. You know, you've got the Betty Pearson character who is played by Leslie Uggams, who I was absolutely delighted to see. But in terms of what's happening between Vault 31 and Vault 33 and then Vault 32, they kind of lost me. I think those scenes were the ones where I was basically. starting to lose interest a bit. And that kind of made me sad because there's another actor who I was really happy to see Zach Cherry.

You know, he always brings a sort of lightness and levity to whatever he happens to be cast in. Because I did wonder if anyone else had picked up on this, but I didn't say anything about it on social media, was the fact that the actor who plays Lucy's father is Kyle McLaughlin. We're going back to that sort of folksy Midwestern affect that Ella does so well. You know, one of her catchphrases is, okay-dokey. Of course, me being the aged millennial that I am, my brain immediately went back to Sex in the City. And Kyle McLaughlin's character in that series, he's this very sort of waspy, upper-e cider, rich doctor. That's an interesting connection because I went straight to Agent Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks because there is that sort of wholesome quality.

Oh, of course, yes. We should mention there's a lot of really great actors who turn up in small parts. Kyle McLaughlin, Sarita Chowdry, Michael Emerson, Zach Cherry mentioned, Leslie Freak and Uggams. And there's some outright cameos like one episodes like Matt Berry and Michael Rappaport and Chris Parnell. At one point, the great character actor Dale Dickie shows up as a shopkeeper. And you're just like, well, we're in good hands now because even if this part isn't well written, she's going to make it better. Now, the creators of the show have said that the three main characters kind of represent different ways of playing the game, right? So Lucy represents those people who go into the game and they play as just making every right decision, noble, noble, noble.

The ghoul obviously represents people who just go in and want to burn everything and destroy everything. And Maximus is the way most of us play these games, right? Case by case decision making. So we're kind of caught in the middle. And I just want to give a shout out to what Aaron Moten is bringing. His commitment to making Maximus kind of dumb is so smart. I mean, the British have a term gormless. This guy got no gorm.

He is dull, kind of a mouth breather. He gets plenty of moments of extreme close-up where any other actor would invite you to see the thoughts and the emotions roiling under the surface. And every time he just gives you blessed, he just gives you nothing happening. And then there's his brotherhood of steel colleague, Thaddeus, who's played by Johnny Pemberton, a really great comedian with a very punchable face and extremely punchable, a mustache. I kind of hated that character so much in the beginning, but I grew to really love their dynamic.

Girl, same, yes. His head is what's valuable. We need to find it. Oh, yeah, smart. Who do you think is the girl or the ghoul? The ghoul? Definitely. You slowly get the sense that life on the surface has made life harder, but also stupid or two.

This is like, what if idiocracy was an action film whenever they were on screen together, and I really dig it. Me too. Their dynamic is really funny. I like the way, without spoiling anything, there's a reveal as to why this very punchable character is the way he is, and it's so touching without being sappy. Like, they really find a good middle there so that you who have been conditioned to really loathe this character. Like, this guy is scum.

I kind of like this, dude. He's okay. Maxis is such an interesting character, because to your point, the way that he contrasts these moments of placidity where he's just like, I don't really know what's going on or what to do. I'll just react. That's fine. There's also these very quiet moments where he's faced with the reality of the system he's joined up with, where he is giving you capital A acting.

And especially, I think, for something this genre and this action pact, you can easily get away with less great performances. You know, to that point, I think Sarita Shadry, as Lee Moldaver, is another one. One and so much more. Yes, right. I want to see her more. I also just personally would love to know who is doing her blowout. She always looks fabulous.

Same thing with Ella's winged eyeliner. I was like, in this apocalypse for y'all to keep these looks together, fascinating. But yeah, in terms of this sort of moral relativism of this, you know, poxswain. apocalyptic state that we're dealing with, Sarita's character is the one who draws me in the most, especially as we start to get in the latter half of the season. And I don't want to give too much away. So I suppose I should probably just leave it there. And we've already mentioned Ella Pernell, but she has to negotiate so much just to play that role. And for us to not get angry at her for exactly what you mentioned Joelle, are like, what are you doing? She's

helpful. She's idealistic, but she's not an idiot. and she can hold her own in a fight. And terrible, terrible things happen to her and keep happening to her. And she does get harder, but she never loses that Leslie Nope, Kimmy Schmidt, Okie Dokey vibe. And I think that's so important to the character. That's why we don't feel disillusioned with this part and with this show because she's the part, she's the through line. And she stays true to her herself, even as the world around her changes her. I may end up looking like you.

I'll never be like you. She has plenty of good reasons to not be a true believer, right? Like, that commonality, again, between Lucy and Maximus, I think, is just a really compelling character-building glue. I was just to say that her choices throughout, particularly the choices she makes around the ghoul. Like, as a performance, we kind of briefly mentioned this finger-cutting scene. which we won't spoil like what's happening. But the way she reaches a point of rage in that moment, again, very Midwestern. We must be pushed all the way to the edge before we'll react.

Again, I just, I really think that the writers of the show did such an excellent job with the pilot in setting up her character that you find all of her survival ability in the back half, completely believable because they established it so well up front. And I thought they did a really good job and bringing that character. in a way that we could believe her. All right, well, as you can tell, we dig this. Tell us what you think about Fallout. Find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash PCHH.

That brings us to the end of our show. Jewel Monique, Sarai and Nadia MacDonald. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Glenn. Thank you. This episode was produced by Hufza Fatima and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Rudy.

And hello, come in, provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.