In Fallout’s pilot episode, there is the coming of the nuclear apocalypse, an invasion of an underground fortress, and a woman setting out on a quest to find her missing relative. It is thrilling, prime television that sets up what should be an amazing next seven episodes. Unfortunately, the show then stumbles, falls, and throws itself off a cliff.

Based on the hit video game series that started in 1997, Fallout is one of the most recent in a string of successful video game adaptations following in the steps of series like The Last Of Us and Arcane. While it certainly exceeded expectations for many, going on to be nominated for 16 Emmys including Outstanding Drama Series, Fallout leans more towards total mess than masterpiece.

The far-too-long runtime drags down what otherwise is an intriguing, if not done numerous times before premise. The series shines in its numerous meticulously choreographed, hyper-stylized action sequences that feel straight from the big screen, but the show gives the viewer intense whiplash when it pivots back to painfully unfunny jokes and choppy dialogue.

Throughout the series, three characters and their intertwining lives are shown as they navigate the radiation-filled wasteland formerly known as the USA. Lucy (Ella Purnell), who leaves the underground vault she’s been sheltered in her whole life to find her brother, Maximus (Aaron Moten), a member of the Brotherhood of Steel, an elite military group that finds and safeguards pre-apocalypse technology, and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), a survivor from the before times who is now physically altered and immune to the harmful radiation effects.

While Lucy is always fun to watch due to a reliably intriguing narrative and a series-saving performance from Purnell, the other two characters’ plotlines drag the show down tremendously. Moten, who plays Maximus, is one of the most bland performers to come out of any television series produced in the last five years. Watching him deliver poorly written lines with the same emotionless inflection for a good portion of the show’s runtime couldn’t help but cause an involuntary eye roll. Goggins performance on the other hand feels contradictory. In the glimpses of the past shown, Goggins is a spectacle of a conflicted man who is unsure of how to navigate the impending doom of nuclear warfare. Yet, as the deformed gunslinging entity known as The Ghoul, he loses any sense of prior emotion he had in favor of acting like a trope-y, old western cowboy.

The show’s greatest crime however is that it’s simply uninteresting. Even years’ worth of source material couldn’t fuel this series as dry as the wasteland it’s set in. After an amazing pilot, the show chooses to favor visuals over plot and the next three episodes are almost entirely devoid of any impactful story moments. When the series finally shifts into full gear, too many plot beats are jammed into the remaining four episodes for it to feel like a fleshed-out narrative. Even the ending fails to wrap up the story that could’ve been told in a movie, leaving a cliffhanger that will inevitably not be expanded upon until 2026 at the earliest.