I had no prior knowledge of Fallout going into this series. That’s a lie. I played the mobile game, the one where you build your own little Vault, and all it really does is lead you to the point where it says go continue the adventure in a normal game. I liked a lot of what that game looked like. That’s everything I walked in with.

So right out of the gate, I felt like everything in Vault 33 was way too syrupy to be real.

What’s up, my know-it-alls. Welcome to a brand new episode of Mr. Know-It-All Reviews, where we’re going to talk about the entire series of Fallout. It’s a post-apocalyptic drama created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, based on the video game franchise created by Tim Cain, and it stars Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Kyle MacLachlan and Walton Goggins. Mrs. Know-It-All and I have seen the whole thing. It’s funny, she actually jumped in at Episode 3 and had to backtrack, and we talked about a lot of this stuff along the way. So sit back, grab your Nuka-Cola, because we’re about to get down and dirty with it.

I’m giving one Know-It-All Index for the entire series instead of grading each episode on its own, and it’s coming at the very end. By the way, they’re all brilliant. The whole series is brilliant.

Episode 1, “The End”: Too Syrupy to Be Real

In 2077, actor Cooper Howard and his daughter Janey are caught in the middle of a nuclear attack on Los Angeles. 219 years later, Vault 33 dweller Lucy MacLean volunteers for an arranged marriage with a dweller from Vault 32, and after the wedding the visitors turn out to be raiders led by Lee Moldaver.

That was an amazing episode. The very first time you see Moldaver is when everything turns, and I remember thinking to myself, oh, okay. So clearly it’s a raiding party. There’s something going on with the three vaults. You don’t really know all the things happening, but you do know something’s up.

I was really surprised by how candid everyone was. Yes, the Vault dwellers are very naive, but at the same time they’re very open about things like sex and marriage and relationships and how all of that works. Lucy, our main character, is waiting for someone to marry, and the alternative is what they call cousin stuff. Which I was like, okay, that’s odd. But anyway.

This is also where we finally see the Brotherhood of Steel, and I find that whole group and that whole situation fascinating. I was a little confused at this point, though. You see Maximus as a child, and his memories show him coming out of a refrigerator. Clearly he has somehow survived a fallout of some kind. But it’s supposed to be 200 years in the future. It’s a very confusing point in that moment, and at the same time I was sucked into the story.

And then of course there’s the birth of our boy the Ghoul, who has one of the most memorable lines in the world. “I do this for the love of the game.”

Episode 2, “The Target”: What Is That in His Neck

On the heels of the last episode, the knights and a lot of other folks are all looking for one dude. He’s an interesting character, and he looks like he’s from corporate America. Suit, tie, the whole nine yards. That’s Dr. Siggi Wilzig. He steals something, he leaves, and he takes his dog, CX404, with him. The scientists up there are clearly living in their own bubble, so when he takes off, one, now we clearly know who everybody’s searching for. But what’s that in his neck? Legitimately, what is it that he put there?

Everything leads our characters to the town of Filly, which I thought was adorable. It’s been 200 years, and to my ear the name Philadelphia has been shortened and lost to time until it’s just Filly. I’m still trying to understand how bottle caps are a thing, and maybe that’s something from the games. You have to remember, I know nothing about the games other than the mobile game. So seeing that whole exchange rate thing going on, not to mention how people react to Lucy as she’s walking around, is a very interesting setup.

The whole thing culminates in what we would call a Mexican standoff, where everybody’s pointing guns at everybody, and all of a sudden the Ghoul shows up. By the way, I think we can all say we know it’s Coop at this point. Aside from the fact that they’re both being played by Walton Goggins, this is a guy who was a cowboy at birthday parties, who apparently had some sort of falling out with everyone, and he’s still here 200 years later. There’s a whole lot of questions. But I love the fact that you’re so invested in the story overall that you’re not getting lost in the minutia of each individual piece. That really makes me happy.

And what is that gun? Is that a thing from the games? Because his gun was amazing. It’s like a sawed-off, or a short snub-nosed shotgun, but it’s got these bullets, and there’s a slow motion shot where it goes boom on the bottom of the thing and they just blow stuff up. Then he confronts Maximus, tells him he’s got to learn how to read the manual, and cuts the little power line on the armor. It’s basically his giant fuse. So Maximus is stuck, and Lucy’s stuck too. Who else is going to help her? Legitimately, who?

The Ghoul shoots Wilzig’s foot off, so they have to use this meat grinder thing to give him a new foot. He’s bleeding out, they go a distance, and they figure out he’s not going to make it. Come to find out, the person he’s going to is Moldaver. Everybody in this show knows a lot of stuff. We already saw it earlier in this same episode, when Wilzig shows up at Lucy’s camp at night and tells her she should know better. He knows about her. He knows about her Vault. He knows her name. That’s where I’m like, what is going on here?

And then he dies, all because he had to go and take Plan D. But it tastes like bananas, so hey, whatever. Now everybody’s on the hunt for the dude’s head, and it’s one of those things where you go, okay, what is happening, where are we going with this?

Episode 3, “The Head”: He’s Not Torturing Her, He’s Fishing

You could call this one filler, but it’s a bridge episode, and only because it has to get us from A to B. Everyone’s on the move and everyone’s got things to do. It also starts to give us more of the minutia.

It starts with Lucy carrying the head, and it gets taken by what they call a gulper, which is just a really screwed up mutant fishy thing with human fingers for teeth. It’s disgusting. Then Coop shows up with CX404. I’m sorry, forgive me, the Ghoul. Okay, we know it’s Coop.

He does that whole speech about not torturing her, and Mrs. Know-It-All says, why is he torturing her? I said it before he said it. I looked at her and I go, he’s not torturing her. He’s fishing. She was like, what? I said yes, he’s fishing, clearly. And sure enough, he confirms that’s exactly what’s going on. The chems that keep him going get destroyed in the attempt, and he leaves with Lucy as his prisoner. If he can’t get what he needs, he’s taking her with him.

Meanwhile Maximus has to get his armor fixed. He sells some teeth, which, you sell your teeth, bro? Then some toughs try to break into his armor and he has to fight them. Earlier he got a call from the Brotherhood looking for Knight Titus, so he assumed Titus’s persona, told them his squire was killed, and they send him a new squire. It’s Thaddeus. The bully. The guy who was busting his chops.

Then we get a flashback, and you find out Cooper Howard becomes the celebrity spokesman for Vault-Tec, which back in the day was a big company buying up a lot of stuff. It’s so funny. I knew immediately. I said to Mrs. Know-It-All, oh, that outfit, it’s going to be one of the Vault outfits. All day. The blue and the yellow he was wearing as a cowboy was way too conspicuous. And you find out his wife is a top company executive. It doesn’t matter until later, but that’s definitely a thing.

Episode 4, “The Ghouls”: Golden Rule

The Ghoul sells Lucy to a gang of organ harvesters for more chems, because his got broken in all that fighting with the gulper. Those chems are what keep him effectively immortal.

Her and him had been having an argument about the Golden Rule, do unto others. He was trying to teach her something about what it takes to survive out here, and about not being naive. So she ends up having to defend herself, and she kills to do it. Then she walks out, leaves a big old handful of chems, and says Golden Rule. Take that. She’s so mad. But what she’s telling him is, yeah, I could leave you to die, but I’m not going to let you become one of them. And she goes off.

I knew right then. I said, he’s going to owe her. Something’s going to happen and they’re going to end up working together. Not going to get ahead of myself.

Back in Vault 33, Norm gets suspicious after an exchange with a captive raider. He and Chet sneak over to Vault 32 and find out the residents died two years before the raid, and that somebody used his mother Rose’s Pip-Boy to let the raiders in.

Episode 5, “The Past”: Shady Sands and Vault 4

I love this next one. Maximus confesses who he really is to Thaddeus, and Thaddeus, disgusted, disables his power armor and leaves with the head and the dog. Lucy finds Maximus and they agree to work together to get it back.

This is when they stumble on the remains of Shady Sands. Shady Sands was a city, and it was Maximus’s home. Remember that kid coming out of the refrigerator in Episode 1? This is where you find out the difference. The bombs he lived through as a child fell here, and Lucy begins to start putting things together. They go looking for medical supplies in what looks like a medical facility, and the place actually drops them into Vault 4. It’s an interesting bit of adventure that’s about to happen.

Meanwhile, back at Vault 33, there’s an election, and Betty Pearson gets elected overseer. At this point Norm has found out there’s a very strange thing happening. Conspiracy theories abound. It just so happens that over the last hundred or more years, every leader they’ve had was from Vault 31. Why is that? He starts asking those questions.

So Norm is kind of shocked, especially because she orders that they’re going to retake Vault 32. They’re going to split the community, some people are going to go over there, and they’re going to build it back up again. And when they go there, it is all clean. Who cleaned it? Did she clean it all by herself? Who knows. But it’s all cleaned up, and all he can do is notice and go, oh yeah, it’s nice. While she’s in there, he runs back and does some checking.

Episode 6, “The Trap”: Do Not Go to Level 12

This episode is mostly Vault 4, and I love the actor who plays the Vault 4 overseer, Benjamin. He’s a cyclops. He’s got one eye and he’s a fun guy. But they mainly meet Birdie, who’s a Shady Sands survivor, and this is where you find out the real truth of things, which is that the world tried to rebuild.

Her Vault, Vault 33, is all United States, we’re going to rebuild America. Here in Vault 4 it’s all about the New California Republic. Lucy gets to find out the real history of things.

Meanwhile Maximus gets his first taste of Vault life, and bro is so happy. He’s wearing a robe. He’s got slippers. He is so happy. Only one rule: do not, under any circumstance, go to level 12. Oh yeah. Don’t do it.

We shift back to pre-war, and we find out the fire lady, the one the refugees worship, is Moldaver. Moldaver was in the past. So she’s also an immortal, or she was cryogenically frozen, because that’s a big thing in this whole series too. She’s the one who brings Cooper into this secret meeting about Vault-Tec, and you find out some lowdown.

Episode 7, “The Radio”: A Really Fast Romance

Last episode Lucy went to level 12 like she wasn’t supposed to, and she found what looked like mutant experimentation. When she’s about to be expelled, she finds out the full breadth and width of the story, which is that the people in that Vault were the ones being experimented on.

Maximus sees her being carted off and thinks the worst. He steals their fusion core, puts it in the armor and saves her. They get kicked out, she guilts him, and he basically says okay, fine, and gives the fusion core back. The armor is junk. And she says to him, why don’t you come live with me? Come with me to Vault 33. We can be safe. Help me, we’ll find my father together, and we’ll finish this whole thing.

Then they find Thaddeus. Thaddeus, like a dingus, got himself turned into a ghoul. His foot was crushed, you remember, so what does he do? He goes to the shady snake oil salesman guy, the guy gives him the stuff, and his foot heals. I said to Mrs. Know-It-All, oh, I think dude’s a ghoul now. She was like, really? I said yeah. Confirmed later in the episode. The Brotherhood will kill him the minute they find out. He’s done.

So they see the choppers coming, and they agree Lucy’s going to continue on her way. She says come and find me at Vault 33, and Maximus says okay, I will. They’re together. A really fast romance has developed, which probably has to do with her very liberal views on sexuality and all that stuff. I’m okay with that, but it felt a little abrupt for me. Overall, though, I’m impressed by the clip at which this show moves.

Meanwhile, while the people selected for Vault 32 are getting shifted around and there’s this whole ceremony happening, Norm rushes back to Betty’s office and contacts Vault 31. They ask, have you been compromised? And he answers as Betty: I have to come back. He goes to Vault 31, opens it up, and he sees something. We don’t know what, because they cut away.

Back in the past, Moldaver, who’s going by Miss Williams, is definitely the leader of this group. They call it a communist group, but that’s just a thing they say. What she believes, firmly, is that all of these companies are investing in the end of the world, and the only way that’s lucrative is if the end of the world actually happens. She’s trying to convince Cooper that it’s coming and that they’re going to cause it. So she gives him a listening device and tells him to put it next to his wife’s, it’ll sync up, and he can listen to what’s going on. He’s real skeptical at first. He totally takes it.

Episode 8, “The Beginning”: Overlooking New Vegas

Pre-war, Cooper eavesdrops on Barb and learns Vault-Tec plans to start the nuclear war itself, so it can rebuild the world in its own image. How can you guarantee results? By dropping the bomb ourselves.

Norm discovers Vault 31 holds the cryogenically stored executives of Vault-Tec, and he’s trapped there. Lucy turns the head over to Moldaver, who pulls the cold fusion device out of it. And Moldaver tells her the truth: Rose left the Vault with Lucy and Norm when they were small, Hank took the kids back, and Hank had Shady Sands destroyed to protect Vault-Tec’s plans. Rose became a ghoul.

The Brotherhood attacks. Maximus makes his way to Lucy and frees her father, Hank steals a suit of power armor, and the Ghoul forces him to run. Maximus ends up celebrated as the slayer of Moldaver, which is not what happened.

This whole thing is unbelievably intricate and dirty. I can’t even get into it all. All Cooper Howard is looking for is his family. He knows they’re somewhere in one of these vaults. So we have tons of story left to go. And the button at the very end is Lucy’s dad, Hank, standing on a hill overlooking New Vegas.

Come on, man.

The Verdict

Fallout Season 1 lands at a 9.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

There you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle you’re halfway to being a know-it-all yourself.

I tell you what, this thing did wonderful. It illustrated things. It laid everything out very clearly and plainly. I walked in with a mobile game and nothing else, and I know what’s going on based on what’s happened in the series. I’m excited to see the long-term goal of this whole thing.

I was pleasantly surprised by it. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and I know you will too. Mrs. Know-It-All and I both talked about it, and I’m going with a 9.5. I’ve really been enjoying the things Prime Video has been putting out.

Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.

What did you think of the series? Did you enjoy it as much as I did? And if you came in from the games, tell me what a guy who only played the mobile game missed. If you’re keeping up with what Prime Video is putting out, I’ve reviewed Invincible and The Wheel of Time on the channel too. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.