MGM Amazon Prime’s Fallout: Keep a safe distance

MGM Amazon Prime’s Fallout: Keep a safe distance

PR Agency Moe’s Art warmly invited us for an exclusive screening of Prime Video’s ‘highly-anticipated global hit, Fallout Season 2’— a wild, wicked and wonderfully wasteland-chaotic journey into New Vegas.

It asked us to “Step out of the Vault and into an evening crafted for the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ones — an immersive escape into the world of Fallout, packed with its signature grit, humour, and post-apocalyptic charm. Gear up, vault dwellers. The wasteland awaits.” We waited. Exactly two hours after the scheduled time, a compere took over and indulged in then usual applause and noise squeezing. He also conducted a quiz, promising rewards to those who answered correctly. All the questions were answered by one or the other members of the audience, at PVR Icon, Infiniti Mall, Andheri. I did not have any answers as I have not seen this OTT “hit” at all. There was a video message from the lead actress, Ella Purnell, who sounded distinctly British. It was short and sweet. And then, Fallout rolled out.

A suave ‘gentleman’ gets into an argument with the customers at a bar about a Senator (or was it the President?) of the USA, who the others hate but who the Clark Gable wannabe adores. They step out. Mr. City Slicker invites the ‘heavy’ of the group to punch him in the face, saying that he would like it. The man obliges. Mr. Millionaire takes it lightly. Then he opens his car boot with a remote and shows the group stacks of dollars, “31 million dollars. And it is yours, if you let me put this little thing at the back of your neck (showing them a contraption shaped like a mini walkie-talkie. Mr. Heavy is not impressed. He decides to carry on punching. But, in the scuffle, Mr. Moustache manages to plant the device on his neck.

This turns him into a slave of Mr. Greenbacks, and he asks Mr. Burly to take a baseball bat that he offers him, and beat the daylights out of his friends. Which he does, as ordered. Then, Mr. Slave Driver pumps-up the volume on the dial he is carrying, to its limit. Boom. Mr. Baseballer explodes. End of scene.

A middle-aged man sings merrily, plays with a yo-yo, rides on a year 2225 version of a golf cart, and carries a tiny white mouse, who it pets as he drives along. He enters what appears to be a lab, puts the same device that Mr. Bar Buster had clamped on the back of a customer’s neck on the mouse’s back, drops him in something like an aquarium, and then….turns the dial. There is a minor explosion, and the remains of the mouse are splashed on to the glass of the container. You don’t see the explosion, but you are served the delightful sight of the mouse’s bloody remains. Quite happy at what he has achieved, the man moves on to another lab, with another mouse, and repeats the act, with…the same result. This calls for an encore, and there you go. Another mouse, another explosion.

After he has done it half-a-dozen times, he picks up a year 2225 phone and talks to somebody who might be his boss, and is not sure whether the man at the other end is alive or dead. He says he is happy with the cat and mouse game, but complains that the mice are too small. He then raises the issue of a raise…a promotion, and threatens the Supremo (dead or alive) that he would not he, the mouse-bomber, is indispensable. Elsewhere, the ‘father searching’ leading lady of the series is walking along with The Ghoul (a nose-less Walton Goggins), when they hear a woman’s desperate cries for help. Ghoul ignores them, but Sensitive Lady wants to go and help the woman in distress. Ghoul mutters a confession. “You know, when I was your age, I was just like you….” She half-smiles. Then comes the punch-word, “Stupid.” Nevertheless, then two head in the direction of the wailing. They find a woman in great distress, who would die, unless she is given some vital ‘medicine’, of which the Nurse Lady has only one. And then the sign of Scorpio is on the ascendant. A swarm of scorpions attacks them. They range from a few inches in size to a metre. The King Scorpion breaks open the door and chooses Ghoul as his target, but, since Ghoul is to continue in the series, he survives a gruelling duel with Mr. Ten Tacles.

Dystopia has set in. It is post apocalypse. A group of men and woman who had volunteered to be frozen for 200 years, awake to find the world in a state of a wasteland, where one man owns half of Las Vegas, now known as New Vegas. There is an actor, a Black Knight called Maximus (Aaron Moten), a fight to the finish between him and a hunk, various rival battlers settled far away from each other and itching to have a go at each other, a council of the ‘states’ and looming disaster. There are vaults, volts and bolts. Vaults like you had never imagined, volts from wired bombs and bolts from the fare on screen. You have just read the sanest parts of what we saw. What we haven’t told you is bound to make your stomachs churn. And it is not okey-dokey.

Lucy says "Okie-dokie/okey dokey" in many situations, such as when she approves something, when she does not get what she wants, or even when doing something mentally challenging, such as preparing to posthumously behead Wilzig. Funny? I did not find it funny. Would I be interested in watching an any more episodes of Fallout? Not on your life. But there are millions going gaga over it. Oh yeah? Well, after all, it is a video game that made it to the OTT platform. Video-gamers, you are welcome to your share of numbed and de-sensitised viewing. I will need to meditate to get out of this Vault.