“She’s got all her fingers,” says the old crone in the corner store. “Must be nice.”

　　The fortunate ten-digited person is Lucy MacLean, heroine of Jonathan Nolan’s new television series, set in the universe of the popular video game, Fallout. Lucy (played by Ella Purnell) is one of three major characters whose paths intersect and crisscross through this zany, whimsical, blood-and-destruction-soaked story. For those unfamiliar, the game (and show) takes place in an anarchic, post-nuclear-apocalypse world where various powers fight and scrabble for control. In the crumbling remains of L.A. and Las Vegas, we encounter a range of colorful figures: zombie-like “ghouls” who somehow survived the blast as super-strong-and-long-lived mutants, sheltered “vault-dwellers” who managed to retreat to self-sufficient underground communities, and the “knights” of the quasi-medieval “Brotherhood of Steel,” sauntering around in Ironman-like super-suits with their “squires” trailing slavishly behind. 

　　Don’t get too attached to those pristine hands. Lucy’s manual integrity won’t survive the first season, and she’ll see things much worse than severed fingers. There’s no shortage of death and disfigurement in Fallout, but it’s all in good fun and serves as a wonderful distraction from the gloom of the real news. My husband and I tore through the show in a week, leaving me musing on a perplexing question: What makes this apocalyptic world so appealing?

　　Its the End of the World as We Know It …

　　For some, the answer might seem obvious. Violence is thrilling! Historically, this time-honored truth has produced such crowd-pleasing entertainments as jousting, gladiatorial contests, and public executions. The makers of modern entertainment have shown time and again that they are happy to cater to this taste. 

　　I myself, though, do not have a particular appetite for visual violence. I can tolerate a fair amount in service of a great plot, but it’s not something I seek out. For me, this is the test: Does the violence help tell a good story, or does the story feel like a delivery device for giving graphic-violence addicts their fix? I loved Justified and The Wire, but I abandoned Game of Thrones after a few seasons, weary of all the gratuitous sex and gore. (I did cave to peer pressure and watch the final season.) 

　　By juxtaposing obvious and recognizable symbols against a hyperbolically horrifying backdrop, the show brings the reality of human need into sharp focus.

　　Nor do adapted video games often make my must-watch list. I have distinct memories of an evening many years ago when a romantic interest planned a date and opened the evening with, “We’re going to watch a great movie, truly the best I’ve ever seen, based on a video game.” I’ve forgotten the title, but as lasers and alien corpses proliferated, I stopped looking for a plot and spent the time musing on the possibility that, just perhaps, this wasn’t a love for the ages.

　　Fallout has a plot. The three main characters complement one another well, and it clearly wasn’t a mistake to cast Walter Goggins as Cooper Howard, the fiendishly fascinating character whose back story supplies the basic narrative of the Fallout world. The story is well-paced, not too predictable, and full of dark humor that keeps it from becoming excessively grim. 

　　The real pleasure of Fallout’s world, though, can be found in the creative, often twisted but not too bracing, venue it offers for reflecting on what endures through cataclysmic change. What survives beyond the end of the world? What things do we want to see survive? For all its wacky and weird elements, this universe basically testifies to the fundamental stability of human nature. Dropped into a broken world, the characters quest after goods whose value modern viewers will readily understand: family, home, ordered liberty. In short, they want what we want. This makes it easy to root for them, and even though their world is broken in some dramatic ways, it is also blissfully free of certain forms of brokenness that often feel, in our time, like serious obstacles to attaining those goods. (More on this below.) It’s harsh soil for civilization, but fertile ground for imaginative heroism.

　　The show’s creators lean into that sense of epic adventure by filling Fallout with arresting visuals that readily evoke those deeper yearnings for fundamental goods. It’s a bit on-the-nose sometimes, but I found that I didn’t really mind. By juxtaposing obvious and recognizable symbols against a hyperbolically horrifying backdrop, the show brings the reality of human need into sharp focus.

　　In the first episode, for instance, Lucy shows up to her (arranged) wedding in a white wedding dress with a classic bouquet of red roses. Things go awry, and she ends up running around performing heroic feats with a dagger protruding from her body and a bloodstain spreading across the dress. It’s not subtle, but it’s effective. We understand that nothing can stay good and pure for long in this so-very-fallen world, and that the good of family is especially fragile and elusive. Lucy’s ruined wedding won’t be the last abortive attempt at establishing or maintaining lasting human ties.

　　Peace and security are, if anything, even more scarce. The Fallout world is saturated with sharp visuals representing those coveted goods. Flags, representing various competing powers, seem to pop up all over the place. Familiar features of our own world (billboards, famous public monuments, houses with wrap-around porches) can regularly be discerned amidst the ruins, like ghosts from a half-remembered past. When people do manage to create a semi-functional community, the first thing they do is plant corn. Particularly for the vault-dwellers (trying to support fifty or more people in underground silos), this is not really credible. Corn is not at all space-efficient; hydroponic labs would be far more effective at keeping people fed. But this is beside the point. Corn is beautiful and literally upright. Its stalks stand in tall, neat rows, like sentries of civilization. Corn is ordered liberty in a form that you can taste. Of course, people start planting it whenever they have a fleeting opportunity to put down roots.

　　Against the backdrop of ruined cities and radiation-soaked wastelands, it’s clear that these goods are fragile and fleeting. But that only underscores their desirability, which resonates with modern anxieties in a very affecting way. Though I would not describe Fallout as philosophically deep, it does very successfully evoke certain desires that all human beings share, which can transcend the political and cultural particularities of a given moment, and even (perhaps) survive a nuclear bomb.

　　… And I Feel Fine

　　The show has a few irritating political notes. One ludicrous subplot effectively blames the apocalypse on corporate greed (because capitalists find it immensely profitable to kill most of their potential customers), while another points an accusing finger at overzealous anti-communists. These are minor features, and relatively easy to ignore. Far more noticeable are the many retrofuturist elements that simultaneously evoke nostalgia, and a can-do American spirit. 

　　Those elements are freely drawn from different eras, but especially ones that Americans remember with fondness. Although this is supposed to be the twenty-third century, 50s clothing is somehow back in fashion, and the technology is reminiscent of the 80s and 90s. The soundtrack plays old-timey songs from the 40s and 50s, while Goggins’ character is essentially a cowboy. (He once starred in Hollywood Westerns, and now brings that ethos to life as a bounty hunter on the irradiated plains.) The throwbacks are weirdly comforting, and add another poignant note to the running theme of things that endure. But they also underscore the viewer’s sense of questing after something, with real confidence that success may be within reach—grim circumstances notwithstanding.

　　As mentioned, the violence is ubiquitous, and Fallout also has a twisted creativity that keeps viewers eyeballs locked on the screen. But in keeping with the “dark but in a fun way” promise, it backs away from truly heartbreaking moments. Bodies factor in all sorts of grotesque ways, as fingers are severed, heads roll, and corpses are carved up for human jerky. And yet, sexual violence is conspicuously absent. The creators playfully explain this by implying that radiation-doused humans have greatly diminished libido. In one scene, the innocent, vault-raised Lucy suggests to her new surface-dwelling friend Maximus (Aaron Moten) that it might be fun to have sex. He shamefacedly admits that alarming things have happened to him in the scenario she proposes. (He doesn’t know that sexual arousal is normal.) Fallout offers the kind of safe space where there are no rape gangs, just ghouls that will make a necklace out of your metacarpals. This is Halloween stuff.

　　There is a sense in which these hyper-American characters can devote themselves to worthwhile pursuits with a candor and zeal that may feel out of reach for us, the viewers.

　　Race is not a theme. The characters of Fallout are ethnically diverse, but nobody comments on this or makes anything of it. Children are also treated gently. Morbid medical experiments abound, with one episode featuring a woman giving birth to a school of piranha (which then eat her). It’s twisted, and yet on reflection, still demonstrates that there are lines that the show doesn’t cross. There’s an odd kind of relief in the fact that the psychotic experimenter never gets his hands on an actual baby.

　　At times the show is genuinely hilarious, repeatedly tweaking viewers with comic juxtapositions. The leader of the grotesque-medical-experiment lab is fastidious about maintaining orderly sign-ups for the community foosball table. A human head is packed in a suitcase next to an adorable container of deviled eggs. These details keep rolling along throughout the show, staving off excessive seriousness. At the same time, they also force the viewers to keep calibrating and re-calibrating their internal moral compass, constantly re-evaluating what really matters. It makes the show feel purposeful without being excessively painful, like an imaginative moral romp. It’s engaging, without making viewers work too hard on a Friday night. Most viewers will probably watch Fallout in an escapist way, but it still has the potential to open doors to deeper reflection on what human beings truly need to thrive.

　　Questing for Meaning

　　Fans of the Fallout video game assure me that the show captures the world extremely well. I probably won’t find 150 hours to play it anytime soon, but I begin to understand the appeal. It resonates emotionally without going overboard, and it gives players a chance to quest after precious things in a setting that feels fresh and free of some of the hyper-emotional cultural issues of our own age.

　　America has always understood itself as a land of opportunity. In obvious ways, the opportunities of the Fallout world are far more limited. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which these hyper-American characters can devote themselves to worthwhile pursuits with a candor and zeal that may feel out of reach for us, the viewers. Our social, cultural, and political climate has grown so tense that it’s often unclear how we can secure these most basic and fundamental goods, or even whether we’re allowed to try. Maybe we’re too “privileged” already. Maybe we don’t deserve those nice things.

　　Lucy MacLean doesn’t have that problem. Neither does Cooper Howard. They can just identify the important things and go get them, or die trying. I like having ten fingers, but maybe there are things that matter even more.