em Fallout /em Is the Biggest Hit in Months. The Secret to Its Success? It Started With a Lousy Story.

There's a moment in the new hit Amazon Prime Video series Fallout where the sunny protagonist, having emerged from her underground commune into a postapocalyptic hellscape, tries to convince a bloodthirsty mutant to follow the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I expected the mutant--or Ghoul, to be more precise--to shoot back some nihilistic platitude in return, maybe a slang-ified version of a Thomas Hobbes quote. Instead, we get a perfect line: "Yeah, well, the wasteland's got its own golden rule," he replies. "'Thou shalt get sidetracked by bullshit every goddamn time.'" That rejoinder distills what makes Fallout, both the video game series and its television adaptation, so great. After all, getting sidetracked by bullshit is what Fallout has always been about.