LogFAQs > #979853361

My only real criticism thus far is that a lot of the editing in the first ep was really awkward, especially from what I perceive to be a newcomer's standpoint. Why did they just casually brush past the shot of the Mr. Handy in the opening pre-war scene when they could've done a more establishing shot, thus making it clear to the viewer "oh okay, this retro 50's society clearly has space-age tech too, that's cool;" instead, new viewers who actually notice it will be like "wait, what the hell was that thing just now?" Cutting straight from the day of the apocalypse right into daily Vault life was pretty jarring as well in terms of onboarding; even something as simple as starting the opening scene with a Vault-Tec commercial playing on TV at the kid's birthday would've better established what Vault-Tec is (I know they did some of this in the promos, but you can't expect everyone, especially newcomers, to watch those). And I know they were going for a sort of dual-protag story between Lucy and Maximus, but it undercuts the whole 'stepping out of the Vault for the first time' moment when the viewer has already seen several shots of the wastes from the BoS's standpoint; ideally it would've been better to reveal the BoS in the 2nd ep at the earliest. Finally, it couldn't hurt to take a couple seconds to explain to the viewer what exactly a Junk Jet is after the viewer witnesses a waster being shot in the chest with a severed baby doll arm (incidentally it's really starting to irk me how far Bethesda is insisting to push the 'ghouls = zombies who live in graveyards' schtick, but eh, whatever).

I get the desire to gear a show like this for the existing fans, but the whole point of an adaptation is that you're trying to gain new fans in at least equal measure. And a good chunk of the existing fanbase like me are nigh-unpleasable assholes, so you might as well gear more strongly to newcomers anyway.

But again, the 2nd ep is much better, even in the little details. Viewers might initially scoff at the ridiculousness of Cooper (I refuse to call him 'The Ghoul') blowing limbs clean off with what looks to be a short-barreled rifle, but then they took the time to visually indicate the little micro-bomb rounds he was using (even the slo-mo shot with 'boom' written on one of them). Little touches like that make all the difference imo.