Blog: Fallout And Mrs Maisel

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This week I have been watching Fallout on Amazon Prime and it has been GRATE.

Having all the episodes available at once means I've been able to LUXURIATE in it, knowing there's more to come, and generally feel PAMPERED by the immense QUALITY on show. For the first few nights I had the nagging feeling that it reminded me of something and couldn't quite work out what. I mean, OBVIOUSLY the gore and humour (and starring appearance by The Dead Man) reminded me of 2000AD but that wasn't quite it.

And then yesterday it hit me: it's basically The Marvelous Mrs Maisel! There's an obvious comparison with the super-stylish 50s DESIGN of the whole thing and especially the MUSIC but there's a whole heck of a lot more to it than that. Part of it is the aforesaid feeling of QUALITY, in that every single scene screams "We are Amazon and we spent ALL the money on this!" and the ACTORS ACTORING is all glorious. There's also a feeling of SAFETY, like you know each episode is going to be a special TREAT, so you can relax into it and WALLOW.

There's also something about the STORYWORLD. As I type this I can hear hundreds of Popular Culture Academics all around the world wondering how they can get a presentaion out of "Fallout", as its TRANSMEDIALITY is a thing of joy and wonder to behold. I have only played one game in the series - Fallout Shelter - so although there are plenty of references and design choices that I recognise there's also loads of other stuff that CLEARLY means something from other games. Often I can tell by the way the camera lingers over a road sign or a supermarket item, and when that happens it fills me with a desire to get onto a WIKI and find out what it all MEANS. I haven't yet for fear of SPOILERS, but I WILL!

This deep storyworld is a HUGE attraction for people who like This Sort Of Thing, but also a MASSIVE TURN-OFF for traditional critics who don't seem to be able to cope with the idea that a film or TV series can have stuff in it that is only explained fully in another show or indeed entirely different MEDIUM. They moan on about it all the time with the MCU, for instance, not seeming to know or realise that that's part of the POINT.

Anyway, the attention to detail on the storyworld is a DELIGHT, and that's also something it shares with Mrs Maisel, where I was forever having to get to GOOGLE to see a) if a specific character is based on a real person and if so b) who they were and what they did. It may not necessarily have always been historically accurate (I mean, it wasn't Lenny Bruce-wise) but it always LOOKED as if the people who made it cared enough to make sure it was consistent. There wasn't a whole other transmedia universe to dip into, but HEY! Ultimate Play The Game! If you want to make a Mrs Maisel platform game I am THERE for it!

What I'm saying is that I very much liked Fallout in the same way that I very much liked Mrs Maisel, and would HIGHLY recommend the latter to anyone who liked the former, and also vice versa. They are GRATE!

posted 18/4/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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