At 75, looking softer and more huggable than ever, Arnold Schwarzenegger lands his first leading TV role with Netflix’s FUBAR. It’s amiable, old-fashioned entertainment, writes Luke Buckmaster.
FUBAR: Season 1
Nobody will say that the first Arnold Schwarzenegger-led TV series, FUBAR, was intended to reinvent the wheel. In fact this True Lies-ish action-comedy about an undercover CIA agent who discovers his daughter is also an undercover CIA agent (small world!) has been machine-tooled to assure audiences that the old wheel still turns perfectly fine, thankyouverymuch. That wheel can refer to Arnie himself, who, grizzled and age-softened at 75, with a look and demeanor that suggests he prefers tea and scones these days over steroids and AK-47s, in some ways is more endearing now than in his beefcafe heyday.
The wheel also refers to the mechanisms of genre, turning a-plenty in FUBAR, the show so unashamedly unoriginal it’s almost endearing. This itself is an achievement: the helming of a series, created and co-written by Nick Santora, that’s caked in conventions but feels more like a throwback than lazy regurgitation. Santora even hands his protagonist a catchphrase: “that’s it and that’s all.” Which doesn’t read brilliantly but sounds irresistible delivered by the star. Nothing about FUBAR is great—but it’s always pretty good, tanged with uncynical old-fashioned appeal. How much more fun it could’ve been with splashier set pieces and a snappy pace.
The first episode opens with a long shot of the Belgium city of Antwerp, accompanied by Rolling Stones’ brilliant, albeit excessively over-used (in film and television) earworm Sympathy for the Devil. We’ve heard this tune for a long, long years, but never accompanying the vision of Schwarzenegger lighting a big juicy cigar. Having given us the something we’ve heard many times, setup director Phil Abraham naturally feels inclined to deliver something we’ve seen many times: the action hero walking away from a fireball blazing in the background. Arnie’s protagonist, Luke Brunner, uses the aforementioned cigar to create a fire in a dumpster, then of course doesn’t so much as glance at it as he departs the scene.
Brunner then calls emergency services, reports said fire, drives the hell away, jumps out his car, changes into a firefighter suit, and heads back to where he began. This location, in the words of his computer savvy colleague and compadre Barry (Milan Carter), who accompanies him remotely on missions, is “one of the most heavily protected square miles in the world.” The fire, costume change and doubleback is an elaborate way for Brunner to steal diamonds he can then sell to a goon. All of this allowing us to observe the man in action one last time before his retirement party.
Except the party is interrupted when Barry pulls Brunner into a meeting room. Here the protagonist’s supposed hanging up of his cape evolves into the Resignations Not Accepted trope. This is similar to the One Last Job trope and the Pulled From Your Day Off trope. With, as we discover, a strong whiff of the That One Case trope, which relates to an old situation that returns to haunt the cop/agent. In this case, it has to do with Brunner being needed to rescue a CIA agent from the clutches of a South American terrorist, Boro (Gabriel Luna), whose father he killed many years ago. The death of his old man inspired Boro (a thoroughly average, boilterplate villain) to dedicate his life to “finishing what daddy started,” which involves getting his hands on a portable WMD.
During this mission, the high concept kicks in. Brenner discovers the secret agent is his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro), who, in turn, discovers her father is a fellow CIA agent. Initial awkwardness gives way to bitching and jiving. They team up, of course, this plot contrivance allowing the writers to easily coast into comedy. A dangerous car ride for instance can be handled matter-of-factly one moment, then become a vehicle, so to speak, for Emma to complain about her lack of driving lessons. She’s badass, but also the daughter of her father, brought down to earth by lines like “is this how I raised you—alcohol? Cigarettes?”
The writers can also quickly slide into drama (mostly through mentions of Brunner’s divorce with Emma’s mother), where the show is less effective. The riffing between Emma (too tame and straight-cut to be an interesting character) and Brunner gets scaled back as the series progresses and their professional relationship matures. In the five episodes I’ve watched so far, I wanted more moments like the train-set action sequence in episode two, when the agents are tasked with foiling Boro’s plan to steal radioactive waste. But they’re sadly few and far between.
Were budget constraints an issue? That would seem odd given the amount of spondooli Netflix splashes around. Maybe most of the budget went to Schwarzenegger. FUBAR is very far from his A game, if the awkwardly ernest-sounding Austrian-American ever really had one. But it slips into his oeuvre just fine.
