Prime Video Fallout review: Wasteland of opportunity

It took roughly six hours, but I finally found the Fallout show’s voice, and all it took was watching a man eat popcorn in a bathrobe while the world burned around him. It was the first time Prime Video’s Fallout series actually did something with its dangling plot threads and faint whispers of thematic development, most of which get lost in a muddled first act. That it takes six episodes and multiple tries for the Fallout show to actually land that message is indicative of the series’ broader problems, namely, that it’s confused and spends half its time doing nothing. The Fallout show is a tale of two. The official description says it’s a story about the haves and have-nots, but that’s only partially true, as the concept barely comes up until the season’s last few episodes. The more accurate description is that it’s a tale of two stories. One is an incisive story about conflict and control that the writers tell confidently, and the other is a stretched and forced trek across the wasteland that feels perfunc