The first episode of Stand outthe new streaming series on Amazon, felt a lot like the beginning Fallout 3 for me – and not in a good way. Swapping Liam Neeson for Kyle MacLachlan felt like a downgrade at first, but that’s probably because I’m just not a fan of his “subtle terror and friendly smile.” Just like in Bethesda’s 2008 sequel, life in the Vault felt pretty boring, but in Episode 2, when we finally arrived in the Wasteland, everything really started to open up for me.
Stand out starts to feel like Fallout once it reaches the irradiated desert and introduces the poor souls who live in it. Time and time again, the series shows these people at their worst – that is, in their home state during the post-apocalypse – and these actors absolutely understand their job.
One of my favorite appearances in the series comes just moments after Lucy’s first walk in the countryside. There she meets the farmer, played spectacularly by Michael Abbott Jr. (Flower Moon Killer
And for me, these are the characters that make Fallout what it is. Maybe you gunned down the farmer as he rushed from point A to point B, not noticing his makeshift diaper flapping in the wind. Maybe have the NPC stagger over to start some silly dialogue, revealing a strange quest line not far over the next hill. Anyway, these types of idiots are the bread and butter of Fallout’s open world – characters stuck in a seemingly random spot on the map, running in endless circles, just waiting for the player character to walk over so they can get one can deliver a deeply disturbing morsel of dialogue.
Abbott brings the farmer to life in a painfully human way, even if the character originally comes from a video game and is a disposable idiot. He wears his desperation on what’s left of his sleeve, and his interactions with Lucy feel authentic to the world of the streaming show, even if Abbott seems to be mimicking the stilted wooden animations of a now 16-year-old video game. The scene is, in a word, perfect.
Another excellent vignette comes just a few hours later in episode 4, “The Ghouls.” There we meet Huey and Squirrel, two organ collectors who are camping in an abandoned grocery store. They look like they dressed themselves with the leftover wardrobe A Christmas Story 2.
Such idiots are exactly the kind of idiots I expect to see on my wanderings through the wasteland. Played by Matty Cardarople (Stranger ThingsReservation dogs) and Elvis Valentino Lopez (21 bridges, severance pay), these are the right and correct forms of reprehensibility to post indoors next to an ammo can full of potent drugs on a sunny afternoon. Their sole purpose in the scene is to be just high enough that they are barely able to say the simplest instructions out loud to a robot – a robot that appears to be far more competent than they are. That, and you get wiped out by a pack of savage ghouls, leaving behind a few elegant corpses ripe for environmental storytelling. I don’t have any notes.
Perhaps the best performance from the Wasteland comes from Jon Daly (Masterminds, Zoolanders 2), who plays the opportunistic snake oil salesman. He quickly tags the Brotherhood of Steel’s squire, Thaddeus, and then zooms in for the score. Even with a gun to his head, he ends up making a good deal. Then he slips out of the picture faster than a ragdoll corpse can disappear.
As short as it was, Daly’s performance had real depth that goes beyond the initial Jack Sparrow-style hacking. In just a few moments on screen, he left me with more questions than answers, in a way that felt like he existed beyond his mere interactions on the show. Why did he try to kill himself in front of this old granary? How long had he been trying to get the gun to fire anyway? Why is his face covered in white dust? And where is he going with this looted fusion core? They’re the same questions I would have if I met him in a video game, and I can’t wait to learn more about his story in Season 2.