Category: reviews

I have won the week

TV

My 85+ year old dad, who has been staying with me while his apartment gets asbestos remediation, watches a lot of TV. In the nearly three months he’s been here (insurance has been dragging their feet, don’t ask) he’s probably watched more TV and movies than I have in the prior five years I’ve lived here alone.

His tastes tend to run to action thrillers, spies and snipers and bounty hunters and cops and firefighters, although sometimes he branches out to simple comedies or family drama. He absolutely does not like sci-fi, fantasy, or superheroes, though, despite them being action-y spectacles. He’ll watch them if I put one on, but it’s not his favorite.

Because our tastes don’t always align, I don’t often make recommendations for him. Probably my biggest win in that area was putting him on to Hacks, on HBO Max, with Jean Smart. He loved it and is now recommending it to other people, too. If you like old cranky people and young smart-asses, you’ll love it, too. And that’s the biggest reason I thought my dad would love it, which he did.

Tonight, I went downstairs and he was doing the scroll-to-find-something-new and he had stopped on a comedy.

“Are you looking for a comedy to watch, dad?”

“Yeah, I thought I was in the mood for something funny.”

He was on Hulu. I laughed. “What do you think about… vampires?”

“Oh, I don’t like those horror things, blood and guts don’t do anything for me.”

I laughed again, leaned in close, put my hand on his shoulder. “What do you think about… funny vampires?”

He arched his eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Funny, sexy vampires, in fact.” I motioned for the remote, and scrolled through to the search, typed in “what we do…” and clicked the top result. “Oh, and it’s kinda-sorta British humor. Well, New Zealand, which is close.”

“What We Do In The Shadows?” dad asked.

“Yes. Just give it one episode. Watch the pilot, and if it’s not your cup of tea, you can go looking for something else, no strings attached.” I hit Play. “One episode, that’s all I ask.” I watched as Guillermo introduced himself to the camera and chuckled, then went back upstairs.

It is very much not like what dad normally watches. It’s weird. But it’s raunchy, and funny, and it’s one of the most amazing TV shows out there. It’s a Top 10 show for me, clearly.

Upstairs I texted my sister to give her the update. She loves this show, too. Her immediate response: “Keep me in this loop please!”

Just about a half hour later, i went back downstairs. On screen, Nandor, Laszlo, and Nadja were floating in the air outside a window, where inside some cosplayers were arguing. Guillermo said something, and Nandor hissed at him. “Please, Guillermo, you’ll frighten the virgins!”

Dad chuckled.

“Well you made it to episode two!” I said.

“Yeah, it’s OK,” dad said.

He was hooked. Nothing could have made me happier.

The Acolyte E1 “Revenge/Justice” and E2 “Lost/Found”

reviews, TV

The Acolyte is a new Star War, and based on the first two episodes, I like what I’m seeing so far. Here are some non-spoiler thoughts about the setting, characters, and story. The show is set in the time period called The High Republic: 100 years before the prequel movies, during a golden age of peace for the Old Republic. Jedi have established themselves as galactic diplomats and protectors but there are rumblings among the underclass that the peace is built on a lie. In the opening crawl, we learn that there are emerging Force-users that are not Jedi, something we’ve seen a lot already but is presented here as a new idea.

I like this setting. It’s one I’m not that familiar with, not having read any of the novels or comics that have been released to date, so this show is my first exposure to it. The reason that’s built in to the lore as to why Galactic citizens would think only Jedi can use The Force is the ethically-dubious practice of Jedi taking anyone who shows Force sensitivity in to their temple, taking them away from their families and friends. Legalized kidnapping has got to produce a lot of resentment, boiling out there in the billion-billion stars of that Galaxy Far, Far Away (GFFA).

We get to see a mix of Jedi and a handful of regular citizens. The Jedi are space cops, and they’re being led by a politician: Master Venestra, played by Rebecca Henderson, spends a lot of her time on screen shutting down discussion, diverting investigation, and shielding the Jedi from political scrutiny for their role in a crime spree. Luckily for the plot, a rough and clearly emotionally-compromised Jedi by the name of Master Sol (played by international star Jung-Jae Lee) feels motivated to dig deeper, out of guilt and a remorse that is only hinted at in these two episodes.

Backing up Master Sol is Knight Yond (Charlie Barnett) who’s a stiff, by the rules type, but somehow likeable for it, at least to me. His strictness is a weakness but his honesty is a strength. And Yord steams his robes, an act that TikToker Written In The Star Wars has pointed out just leads to a new question about every Jedi: do they steam their robes, or not? Master Venestra would definitely order an underling to steam her robes; Master Sol could not even bring himself to care.

Rounding out the investigative team is Padawan Jecki (Daphne Keen) is curious, competent, and eager; she’s a great help to Sol, Yond, and, eventually, Osha. Jecki might steam her robes for specific purposes.

Sol’s remorse concerns Osha (Amandla Stenberg), a former Jedi student who now takes on dangerous repair work as a meknek for the Trade Federation out in the Corporate Sector. If it’s unusual for anyone with Force sensitivity to escape being taken to the Temple on Coruscant, how more unusual is it for someone to leave the Temple untrained? And did it involve steaming or not steaming her robes? She definitely doesn’t steam her work outfits now.

Her departure from the Jedi Order is where the central mystery lies and I am intrigued. My own thoughts about the Jedi and their place in the history of that GFFA have certainly evolved over time; when I was a kid they were kick-ass religious fighters, but eventually, seeing how the Jedi actual acted in the prequels and main stories, I’ve seen that they were arrogant, stubborn, and duplicitous, preferring to run away and hide than deal with the consequences of their decisions. The Acolyte, so far, looks ready to peel back those layers and show how that Jedi arrogance got its start.

The show looks great, especially the action sequences. As should be expected, the fights and escapes are well-shot, easy to follow, and high-energy. These are trained Jedi at the height of their powers so they fight like the professionals we expect.

I’m looking forward to more, and if you have an interest in a story that’s equal parts action and politics set in a well-developed fantasy setting, you should give it a try, too. It’s streaming on Disney+; new episodes drop every Wednesday in the US.

Let’s Go There

Music

I’ve had a song stuck in my head for the past couple of days. And I think when you know what the song is, and I tell you the parts that are lingering in my mind, it will probably explain a lot about how my life is going now.

The song is grunge, 90s, rock, with a cruncy guitar and a deep-voiced male vocalist and the hook catches my attention right away. I am the kind of person who absolutely listens to, and tries to contextualize, the lyrics, and the opening stanzas are about not wanting to wake up from a beautiful dream. Hiding from the painful, hate-filled, stressful, disconnected real world; that is a yearning I share, more and more every day. I’m dragging my ass through the day-to-day, trying to make sure that every day I’m doing everything I can to try to get the income and resources that will let me keep a roof over my head. It’s bad, and feels like it’s getting worse.

The ones we have elected to lead us are absolutely not on the same page as the majority of us. They diminish and dismiss — or worse, oppose — our protests. We stand together and say “not in our name” and they claim we’re on the side of the enemy, an enemy they’ve demonized and dehumanized. The people our leaders listen to just want to collect as much profit as possible, stockpiling away billions that are generated by the labor we are all forced, under pain of death, to generate.

It’s obscene. I know no other way to describe it.

My dreams can be so much better than the real world. In part because sometimes, rarely, I can dream lucidly. If you’re not aware of what lucid dreaming is, it’s the ability to regain control and consiciousness while still in a dreaming state. When that happens, it feels like I can actually do magic; anything I can imagine becomes possible, at least as long as I stay asleep.

I’m not sure the vocalist for this song is singing about lucid dreaming but it’s clear that when they are sleeping, they see a perfect, love-filled, beautiful world. In the second verse, they even admit that the dreams help them see how imperfect the world, the real world, is. And finally they sing about making their dreams and the world the same.

“Let’s ask; can we stay?” is the line that nearly brings me to tears. Who’s permission do I need to stay in a perfect world? What sacrifice do I need to make in order to make the earth and my dreams the same? My aching heart, my tired soul, my punished mind and aging body, would give almost anything for a real world that is even slightly better for us, all of us, the ones whose blood make things work but do not get to retain the rewards of our efforts.

The final refrains of the song are where my hope does not feel able to meet the vocalists’ hope. The music swells, the vocalists’ voice lifts and roars, the guitars crunch… and my own spirits fall. I replay the song, hoping this time my shriveled heart will be able to keep going.

With him up up, I’m not strong enough to take these dreams and make them mine.

But maybe you are. Can you take me higher?

The Devil and Bean Dad

Music

In the car with dad, me driving, him riding shotgun. I was driving carefully through busy freeway traffic, navigating west on the Banfield on our way to a doctor’s appointment for him.

My Happy playlist was on shuffle, volume low, but I caught the opening chords of a driving buzzing guitar riff, and John Roderick’s warm, dynamic, resonant voice sang

“American schools called you Starlight
in fourteen point type
Ten times ten, and then
your most brutal-ful smile”

and I couldn’t help but turn the volume up and try to sing along. My voice, ravaged by a persistent cough and allergies, couldn’t keep up even at my best, but I did nod my head along to the beat.

Dad, his neck artificially stiffened with the metal rods the surgeons used to repair his broken spine, looked over at me from the corner of his eye, his head turning like Batman, from the shoulders. Dad’s mouth turned into a little smile.

“I,” I said, “have such… complicated feelings about this song.”

Dad’s eyebrow crooked a question at me that I could feel even though my eyes were fixed forward out the windshield. The wipers intermittently wiped away droplets of rain, squeaking just over the music.

“I don’t imagine you’ve ever heard of The Long Winters, but they are basically John Roderick. I’m pretty sure this whole album was written and performed by him, maybe with some session players from Seattle. I first heard him play as an opening act for another band I love.”

Long pause as the memories of standing at the edge of the stage of the Aladdin Theater, next to the speakers, listening to John Roderick and Sean Nelson from Harvey Danger, performing together. And at my side, she leaned into me, softly singing along. I felt her tiny but strong body fit perfectly against mine, my arm around her lower back.

“It was an early date with… Deb.” Or as my friends at the time called her, Devil. I scoured my memory. I don’t think Deb ever met any of my family. That had actually been a red flag. “You never met her, but Deb and I had one of those hot-and-cold relationships. We were either madly in love, or hated each others’ guts. And since we discovered The Long Winters together, when he sings about the New Girl, I can only think of Deb.”

“You erased so many mistakes
By sitting up and smiling
Your solo show
I hope it never closes
It was the ride of my life
Twice, you burned your life’s work
Once to start a new life
And once just to start a fire”

I laughed, loudly, suddenly, in the car. I gestured with a free hand, palm down, showing one level, then moving my hand up to cut a higher level. “And then, on top of all of that, there’s the whole Bean Dad thing.” I laughed again, feeling dad’s confusion at the reference.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, finally.

“I know, I know! Sorry. So several years ago, John Roderick got canceled on Twitter for making a dumb joke about making his daughter cook some beans. He was trying to be funny, to play a character, the mean dad who makes his child do something hard to teach her a lesson, and it did not go over well. He got pushback, and instead of just saying he was exagerating, he doubled down and pushed back even harder. Eventually he deleted his Twitter account, stopped making his podcasts, and the Kids Online called him Bean Dad. It was silly and stupid.”

“If my nephew or neice were in the car right now and this song came on, they would have their own reaction to this, probably a very negative reaction. But damn, if I don’t love their music.”

So many complicated feelings in one song. And despite my attempt at explanation, I was quite certain dad had not even the slightest idea what I was talking about.

We drove over the ramp from the Banfield onto I-205 South, in the gray Friday rain.

A Celebration Based on a Pun

Movies

I’ve objected before to the now common celebration of Star Wars Day on the fourth day of May. It’s a silly pun based on a mispronounciation. We should be celebrating it three weeks later, on the 25th day of May, which is the anniversary of the first theatrical release of Star Wars (1977), but language and society is based on majority behavior, so, here we are. I surrender. May the Fourth be with you all.

And, yes, that first movie that came out will always and forever be “Star Wars” in my mind. I know that at some point after the sequel came out in 1980, the first movie got retconned into Episode IV, A New Hope, but I was there when the deep lore was written, child. It lives on, unnumbered, in my head.

I might have copies of the Original Trilogy that have been painstakingly restored by fans to their original theatrical versions on a hard drive somewhere, so that I can watch them as I remember them from my childhood. I won’t get into whether or not George Lucas is right or wrong to updating and revising them over the years. My understanding is that that started in earnest as a way to cheat his ex-wife Marcia out of royalties during a nasty divorce, which does sound very petty. But, as mentioned above, the revisionism started very very early on by tweaking the name of the original film. Mr. Lucas always had that urge in him, from the start.

So for this Star Wars Day, I wanted to go back through past posts and find the time I talked about the first time I ever saw Star Wars. I was certain I had written it all out at some point. If so, however, I can’t find it except in passing.

Here is a roundup of selected past posts from me about Star Wars and the impact it’s had on my life.

Lost in Space

A tale that mentions the summer of 1977 in passing, on its way to a scene from the summer of 1981, and the crush I had that was squashed in a movie theater one night.

Old Jedis never die, they just fade away

Reminiscence that links Memorial Day, military service, war, and movies.

Adrift in time

Junior High friendships and Star Wars.

A long time ago, and might as well be in a galaxy far, far away

The very first time I met Boba Fett — or at least a guy cosplaying as him — the summer of 1980.

…They Just Fade Away

Preparing to cosplay as my hero for the last Skywalker Saga movie premiere.

A few new View Askew reviews: Clerks (1994)

Movies, reviews

A friend posted this scene to their Insta stories and it made me smile:

I remember that movie! Their caption, though, was: “Anyone else see this and cry thinking about Clerks III?” I realized that I have not seen Clerks III, and I got nostalgic for Kevin Smith movies. I have always lumped them into “stoner humor” but I have never said that disparagingly. Stoner humor is kind but rude, raw, silly about serious things. I adore stoner humor. A mix of sincere and gross that a lot of other flavors of humor just can’t touch.

I resolved then and there to rewatch at least the Clerks trilogy, and include as many other Kevin Smith films I could find online. So it was written, so mote it be, y’all.

First up: Clerks.

Wow did that not really age well. It was rough going back to 1994, for sure. Dante is such a tight-ass and Randall is a huge jerk. Veronica and Caitlyn are definitely women written by (young) men. And the movie feels like it drags when it should be fast. It’s 94 minutes long! Why does it feel slow?

The setup for the plot, though, rings true. Dante (Brian O’Halloran) is called in to his shitty job at a local convenience store to fill in for a missing co-worker. Anyone who’s had a retail or customer service job can relate, and just that plot point is enough to get me reminiscing about working fast food, or shopping mall, or call center jobs and the sheer hostility me and my co-workers had for the customers and the bonds of friendship formed with fellow wage slaves. The stories I could tell…

And that means the best parts, for me, are the side discussions. The things workers would talk about to get our minds away from the servitude we had to enact on behalf of our bosses and at the hands of our customers. Particularly in tech support, we would recognize conversations like the famous “Death Star II contractors” scene in Clerks where Randall (Jeff Anderson) tries to make the case that the leftist rebels killed innocent plumbers and roofers. Less well-known (or at least, less well-remembered by me) is the response where a random customer interjects that roofers do, in fact, have personal politics and that they are making a political and moral choice to work for known bad actors. Glad to see Kevin Smith undercutting one of his characters’ apolitical stances.

The shenanigans involving Dante disregarding his current girlfriend, Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti) and pining over his ex-girlfriend Caitlin (Lisa Spoonauer), I did not find charming now and I vaguely recall being put off by it in 1994, as well, although back in the day I was more inclined to think I was the one out of step with the times; Dante’s prudishness about what his girlfriend did matched the attitudes my other male friends displayed back then. It was a different time, y’all, for sure.

It was a rough start for a filmmaker but there is still a core identity here: the working-class humor and frustration of working bad low-paying jobs. That’s what I connected with back then, and that’s the part I still resonate with today. In retrospect, I would give this a solid 3 out of 5 stars.

Next: Mallrats.

Big Iron on our hips

Daily Story Project, Gaming, Tech, TV

With the release of Fallout on Prime, the new TV show set in the Fallout universe, interest in the post-post-apocalypse wasteland has never been higher. I mean me, my interest, mostly. I want to reinstall and play all the games, now. And I have at least reinstalled several of them (Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, and Fallout 76) but haven’t yet found the time to start a new journey in that wild far future.

It’s been fun going through the process of getting a nice clean install, patching the older games to run on modern hardware and software, and picking out a few good mods to make it more stable, improve the graphics and gameplay, and fix the more egregious bugs. OK, again, that’s probably just my own quirky tech-focused kind of fun; your mileage may vary. For Fallout 3, it took maybe an hour’s worth of googling, downloading, and a scosche of trial-and-error. But I got it all running.

Stay tuned to this channel for the possiblity of me streaming a playthrough of Fallout 3, playing as myself… I’m working up the nerve to try it.

Screenshot from the game Fallout 3, opening credits: an old TV test pattern in black and green saying "Please Stand By" in retro-futuristic text and graphics.
Coming soon: me making a fool of myself in the Capital Wasteland

That being said, my nephew also wants to play some Fallout, excited by the new show and especially for it being set in the game’s continuity, being a true follow-on to the game chronology. Max and I have been texting each other questions, theories, and memes about Fallout since the show dropped. This is actually fun for lots of people, not just computer geeks like me! Surely anyone reading this has one or several friends they share memes with, right? Not just me? It’s a universal thing these days?

The other day, though, he sent me a link to a Steam Community guide about how to install and run Fallout: New Vegas and asked me if it was a good how-to. I took a look and it seemed pretty comprehensive, and offered to help him out if he ran into any troubless. I felt a bit of a duty; I had helped him build his current computer a couple of years ago. Mostly though I’m excited to see him play and happy to help him get the most out of his rig. He’s been mainly a console player; mods aren’t a normal part of his gaming experience; whereas I’ve been modding games since Skyrim. I may not be an expert but I would consider myself a competent modder.

He started to get it going the other day but I didn’t hear anything more. When I pinged him to ask how it went, he said he got distracted, totally understandable. Today, though, he had the energy to get it going, and I was able to screenshare with him and walk him through the trickier parts, like making sure to back up the default files and folders before messing with them, which saved us in at least one instance. The instructions for the mod that enables scripting support, NVSE, said to copy the entire contents of its mod to the main game folder, it wanted to overwrite the Data folder already there. I backed him out of that, had him rename the old folder, and then copy everything.

Once we got the mods installed, though, the game crashed to desktop on launch, throwing the error “missing masters.” When I had Max launch the game normally, it didn’t appear any of the DLC was available; turns out they all lived in the old, renamed Data folder. Copying them to the new modded Data folder fixed the issue.

Then I spent over an hour watching him start a new playthrough, MST3K-ing and joking and googling things for him (like what is a hot plate used for, anyway? And did the Brotherhood try to take over Hoover Dam (they got distracted by Father Elijah’s fixation on HELIOS-1)). Fun times!

I’ve spent so much time in these worlds, playing, learning the characters, maps, and lore. Even making up my own wasteland lore (which has yet to be contradicted by the official material, yay!) Fun times, indeed. And I’m so glad that non-gamers are learning how rich and weird the Fallout universe is. I welcome new fans with open arms.

Feel free to ask me any questions. Love to help.

Star Trek Discovery S5E04 “Face The Strange”

Daily Story Project, reviews, TV

This week’s Star Trek Discovery Season 5 Episode 04, “Face The Strange” was SO MUCH FUN. The show has finally found its footing. The writers know the characters well, they put them together in interesting ways, and they play to their strengths, which is emotional connections amid bonkers Star Trek science. Minor plot spoilers ahead for this episode.

This week, the ship gets sabotaged by the crime couple that are the big bads for the season in the form of time bugs, literaly spiders that somehow tap into EPS conduits and force the ship to jump backward and forward in time. For Reasons(tm) Captain Burnham (played by the delightful Sonequa Martin-Green) and grumpy new First Officer Rayner (played to perfection by Callum Keith Rennie) are immune to the time loops so they keep getting reset and have to figure out a solution. They do get some help from Chief Engineer Stamets (Anthony Rapp) because, of course, he’s got mushroom in his DNA. If you aren’t following this show you will probably think I am making this up but I assure you, I am not.

By having the leads jumping through time, but being tied to the ship, the writers get to have them interact with the history of the ship, and all the crazy shenanigans that have happened over five seasons of off-the-wall Star Trek nonsense (I say nonsense with love; I love this show, flaws and all) and even get to finally tie up a loose end that was introduced in a Short Trek a few years ago (“Calypso” if you’re curious) to my satisfaction, at least. Even Captain Burnham gets to see just how far she’s come from her origin as Star Fleet’s first and only mutineer, to sitting in the center seat.

Just really well done, y’all. I am sad that this is the final season because it feels like the show runners, cast, and crew are firing on all warp cores. Just this episode has so much payoff, it was a joy to watch.

The thing about Star Trek, for me at least, is it was my first fandom. I was too young to see it when it originally aired, or at least too young to remember that (I was born in late 1964, the first episode aired in September 1966) but I was old enough to watch it when it ran every afternoon on KPTV-12, Monday through Friday. I watched it and I loved it; it showed a bright (literally colorful) and hopeful utopian future, a future of adventure and science.

It remains the one major science-fiction franchise that says we can be better, that life can be more than war and hate and strife. Everyone gets second chances in Star Trek. Everyone tries to know themselves, and improve the universe they live in. Everyone tries to find solutions to problems by talking it through and appealing to our better selves. Even steadfast enemies become allies, in time. I love it so much, and am happy that for all my life, I’ve had stories that point the way to the good world I know is possible.

Interloper

Gaming, reviews

Been playing a lot of The Long Dark lately. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a computer game that’s a survival challenge that I’ve written about before. Your character is lost in the eerily abandoned Canadian winter on an island in the vague northwest. You have to struggle to stay warm, find food and water, and manage your strength. Meanwhile you have to watch out for predators that are far more agressive than found in nature, like wolves and bears. Infrastructure like running water and electricity is down, although sometimes there is an aurora that causes electrical devices to be temporarily usable; unfortunately this also increases the agression of predators making it very dangerous to be out and about under the glowing lights in the sky.

There’s a story mode, too, where you can play as Will MacKenzie or Dr. Astrid Greenwood (voiced by the incredibly talented Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, respectively), estranged spouses who are trying to find each other and get to a town on the island with a mysterious briefcase. Four of the five chapters have been released for story mode and at least one more is coming. It’s interesting and goes into the weird Quiet Apocalypse that’s befallen Great Bear Island.

That’s not the mode I’m playing right now.

For as long as I’ve had the game I’ve enjoyed the lower levels of difficulty; in those modes the game is much less tense, you start with basic gear like decent clothing and matches (important for getting and staying warm, as well as boiling water and cooking food), and you have better loot scattered around to help you survive, like knives, hatchets, pistols and guns.

But I always admired the streamers and let’s players who played on the highest difficulty level: Interloper. Streamers like Tomasina, Zaknafein, Archimedes, among others. On Interloper, there are no guns, and you start with no matches at all. In that mode, knowing where you are and where to find matches and other good loot is paramount. The maps themselves don’t change, but the possible locations of gear is somewhat randomized. And you have to craft your own knife, hatchet, and bow — there are no guns in this mode. And without a knife or hatchet, you can’t harvest animals well, you can’t craft the best clothing in the game, and you can’t make a bow and arrows. You can’t even defend yourself from hungry wolves when they attack.

To give you a little idea of how the developers see this mode, there is a Steam achievement for surviving a single day in Interloper. It took me several tries, after doing my best to learn the maps on lower levels, before I achieved even this. When I wrote my earlier post I hadn’t even attempted Interloper. It felt too brutal.

I forgot to mention: this is permadeath. Dying in the game means your current save is deleted. Go back to Day 1, you have to start over. Make a single mistake and it can cost your whole run. And nearly every death in this game can be traced back to a mistake the player made. Get overconfident, go out into the cold without proper precautions, or just misjudge how much food and water you’ll need, and it’s over. You’ve faded into the long dark.

But I have finally strung together enough luck and skill that I am past Day 200 on a single run. Other players I’ve talked to have said the game gets boring at this point but not for me. I’m enjoying having a better chance (not a guarantee by any means) of surviving after the brutal first 20-30 days getting set up.

It’s far more than a walking simulator. It’s beautiful, meditative, and challenging. I love it.

Fallout is not a cartoon

Gaming, TV

A squad of Brotherhood of Steel knights in T-60 power armor approaches the camera.

Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video

This isn’t a spoiler but a funny story I wanted to share. My dad has been staying with me since his apartment got flooded and they found asbestos. His normal TV viewing is procedurals like NCIS or The Rookie, or westerns.

When Fallout on Amazon Prime came out earlier this week, I showed him the trailer to see if it’s something he’d like to watch and his response was “I’m not a big fan of cartoons.” He is entirely unfamiliar with the games.

So I started watching it anyway and now, three episodes in, he’s just as hooked as I am. I think he likes the dark humor and ultraviolence.

That being said, I, too, like the tone of the show as well as the fact that they’ve spared no expense in making the digital world of recent Fallout games into real actual props. Seeing T-60 power armor in action is amazing. There’s a scene near the end of the first episode where someone is being interrogated and they just have the power armor pacing back and forth menacingly. You don’t even see the whole thing, just what passes behind the person being questioned, and the sound effects. Just amazing. Yeah, I imagine that would be intimidating as fuck.

I’ll write a fuller review when I’ve finished it but so far it’s great. I hear the people who whine about things whining about this and The Lore but fuck ’em. I’m not a slave to the lore and neither is Bethesda. Just tell a fun story, that’s all I ask.