TL;DR – Arnold Schwarzenegger’s charisma goes a long way with this spy series, but odd structural choices and a middling narrative hold it back from reaching its potential.

Disclosure – I paid for the Netflix service that viewed this series.

FUBAR Review –

Between The Diplomat, The Night Agent, The Recruit, and more, it feels like we are going through a renaissance of Spy shows on TV. This has been a nice turn of events as someone who grew up on Spy shows like Get Smart, Chuck, and Alias. So, When I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger was jumping back into this genre, well, you know, I had to check that out.

So to set the scene, Luke Brunner (Arnold Schwarzenegger) has worked at the CIA all his life. Because of that, he has become divorced from his wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) and has a bit of a fractious relationship with his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) and son Oscar (Devon Bostick). But after a long career, Luke is finally retiring and can focus on his family and maybe winning the love of his life back now that she has started dating Donnie (Andy Buckley). But before he can officially spend his years doing up his boat, he is called back to active duty because Boro Polonia (Gabriel Luna), the son of an old arms dealer that Luke secretly killed, has started building pocket nuclear weapons. The CIA puts a spy in his organisation, but they are about to get outed, and Luke has to go in because Boro still remembers Luke fondly. All Luke has to do, is go to their compound in Guyana and get the undercover agent out … the only problem is that the secret agent turns out to be Emma. Now from here, we will be looking at the season as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Overall, looking at the series, it did feel like it was a bit of a mixed bag, but these aspects made it shine. First, Arnold Schwarzenegger still has the level of charisma that you need to pull off a role like this. He spends a lot of the series drinking scotch, smoking cigars, and doling out words of wisdom and even though his character does not grow, it still all works. Also, the CIA team that they surround him with, including Roo (Fortune Feimster), Aldon (Travis Van Winkle), Tina (Aparna Brielle), and Barry (Milan Carter), are all interesting and have competing and complementary quirks that make for some great banter.    

Add to all this, the show hits a lot of the points that you want when exploring a dynamic like this. There are some thoughtful discussions on how you approach honey potting and what that means vis-à-vis being faithful to your partners back home. How choices you make in the past can haunt you and how you try to make up for the damage you have done, but also that you cannot be the only person blamed for someone’s poor life choices. All while posing at high-stakes poker tournaments, sneaking prisoners out of high-security Turkish prisons, and infiltrating Moldovan intelligence facilities.

Where the mash-up of the normal home life and the extraordinary CIA missions works best is in Here Today, Gone To-Marrow, where we get the capture of their key villain being intercut with the need to find Luke’s granddaughter Romi’s (Rachel Lynch) deadbeat sperm donor of a father to see if he is a match for bone marrow because Romi’s leukaemia has started to spiral. We have discussions about torture interspersed with the team using CIA methods to get this deadbeat arse to do his basic human decency. This concludes with an action scene where everything falls apart while they use an agency ‘interrogation expert’ Norm Carlson (Tom Arnold) to obtain the marrow forcibly.   

However, while there are moments when the two worlds collide that are a bunch of fun, see an action scene scored to a rock rendition of Teddy’s Bears Picnic, it is also the show’s weakest link. While the conflict between Emma and Luke provides for some fun psychology sessions with Dr Pfeffer (Scott Thompson), it is so conflictual that you feel that even in the contrived scenario that the show is working in, the CIA would have removed at least one of them from the case. It gets so bad at some points that you struggle to find if any of the leading heroes are even likeable.  

Part of this problem, I think, stems from some odd structural choices that the show made. For one, every episode ends ¾ of the way through, with the interesting resolution happening in the next episode. This structural choice and the feeling that each episode runs about 10-15 minutes longer than needed makes it a slog to get through at times. Also, you do feel that at some point, this was officially or unofficially pitched as a True Lies follow up and the pivot away from that left gaps in the narrative that they didn’t properly cover over. Indeed, the direction they send the show for a potential second season feels far more interesting than anything we got this season.

In the end, do we recommend FUBAR? Even with all its issues, there is a core of a good idea here. It may fall flat at times, but the charisma of Arnold Schwarzenegger and the cast shines through. If you are looking for something to put on where you don’t have to engage much and have the odd chuckle, then this is the one for you. However, if I can make one recommendation for Season Two, please, for the love of that is holy, get someone who understands nuclear weapons on your writing staff because detonating a nuclear weapon under a former nuclear reactor that had a meltdown is not something people walk away from.

https://youtu.be/f6A56zcGeWE

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen FUBAR yet?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.
    
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of FUBAR
Directed by – Phil Abraham, Holy Dale, Steven A. Adelson & Stephen Surjik  
Written by – Nick Santora, Scott Sullivan, Adam Higgs, Penny Cox, Cait Duffy, Lillian Wang & Michael J. Gutierrez
Created by – Nick Santora
Production/Distribution Companies – Blackjack Films, Skydance Television & Netflix
Starring – Arnold Schwarzenegger, Monica Barbaro, Milan Carter, Gabriel Luna, Fortune Feimster, Travis Van Winkle, Fabiana Udenio, Barbara Eve Harris, Aparna Brielle, Andy Buckley & Jay Baruchel with Scott Thompson, Tom Arnold, Adam Pally, Dustin Milligan, Devon Bostick, David Chinchilla, Stephanie Sy, Zachary Bennett & Rachel Lynch  
Episodes Covered – Take Your Daughter to Work Day, Stole Train, Honeyplot, Armed & Dane-gerous, Here Today, Gone To-Marrow, Royally Flushed, Urine Luck & That’s It and That’s All.