Nothing needs saving, no entertainment needs to be good, but arguably, we want entertainment to be good, therefore it should be good. That is the line of conversation. Of course Maslow’s hierarchy of needs exists, but let’s take that as read.
I want to dig into the “cliche” and “agency” part: Fallout (the games) are themselves pastiches of south-west Americana - westerns and cowboy dramas with a retro scifi flare (like how most cyberpunk dramas are pastiches of film noir). With that premise in mind, of course you need A Man With No Name as anti-hero.
It’s also an homage to a video game - a genre defined by everything being a go-fetch quests as a simplified version of Aristotles Poetics.
So I don’t think you can adapt fallout and ignore these influences - that’s part of the fun. If you don’t like westerns and quests you’re not only going to hate fallout tv show, but the fallout games too. But also red dead redemption, elder scrolls, mass effect…
We disagee that it was Disney-esque (there were heads exploding in every episode, a guy gets shot in the gooch, children are frequently murdered, there is on-screen sex, rape via deception, slavery, impalement, desecration of corpses, mutilation, maiming and vivisection, cannibalism, frequent visible kill shots to the head, nudity and tier-1 swearing).
What are the important beats we don’t see? >!the explosion of the city caused by the important guy, causing a main character to hate him!< - we certainly see the aftermath and consequences frequently and a significant part of the final episode discusses it. I can’t think of anything else.