This week, I'm going to talk about the new Netflix series starring none other than Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, it's been a while since the series premiered, but although I was dying of curiosity to watch it, I only managed to do so now. In the story, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Luke, a CIA spy who is about to retire but is forced to return to action when he discovers that his daughter, Emma Brunner (Monica Barbaro), is also a CIA agent and is in danger, as someone is about to expose her disguise to Boro (Gabriel Luna), a dangerous arms dealer whom Luke has a personal connection with since, after killing Boro's father when he was a child, he personally took care of the boy's upbringing and education from a distance. Divided between the love for his daughter and the affection he has for Boro, Luke sets out with his team to save Emma.
When Luke arrives at Boro's Cartel, he and Emma confront each other, as Emma is furious after finding out her father is a CIA agent and that he lied to the family all his life, saying he was a sports goods salesman. Thus, the confusion in the series is set. Today, I will give a general assessment of the series, not focusing on individual episodes but providing an overall overview of what happened and highlighting the points that caught my attention the most. In the end, I will share my overall thoughts on the series, its strengths, and its weaknesses.
The series begins with a great action sequence, pleasing those who expected to see something with an action star like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Next, we see a family gathering and Luke Brunner's retirement party, all calm up to that point. Until Luke is called to a meeting where he is recruited for a mission that he obviously refuses, as he is retiring and his priority now is to win back his ex-wife, but when he finally learns that his daughter Emma is also a CIA agent and is in danger, he is shocked and angry that they recruited her. Ultimately, he embarks on the mission, as any good father would want to save his daughter.
When he arrives in Guyana, he meets Boro, whom he has known since childhood and for whom he has been providing financial support for his studies after killing his father, another drug dealer, by throwing him off a cliff. Boro knows Luke by his undercover name, Finn Hoss, and sees him as a great friend and benefactor. Therefore, he welcomes him with open arms, proud of everything he has achieved in his life of crime, and takes Luke (Finn) to see his property, and the two stop to watch a fight. When Luke sees that his daughter is involved in the fight, he is scandalized. Boro introduces the two, whom he thinks do not know each other, and as soon as he leaves, they start arguing about who deceived whom about being a secret agent.
They then call Barry (Milan Carter), who reveals to Luke that Emma was only recruited by the CIA because she is his daughter, and she has a totally childish attitude, accusing her father of a thousand things and offending him in a thousand ways, as if she herself were not lying to the family as well. But, finding herself on the verge of being exposed, she decides to cooperate with her father.
When everything seems to have worked out they are about to leave, Boro arrives with his group, and Finn reveals to him that he killed his father. For me, this made no sense, as what sensible secret agent would tell a bloodthirsty psychopath that he killed his father? The excuse here is that it was to buy time, but frankly, that was not the smartest way, especially when you clearly don't want to kill the villain because you have affection for him. This is a recipe for disaster, and all this affection or guilt that Luke feels for Boro makes no sense to me when he knows who he is and what he is capable of.
They return to the CIA headquarters, the director decides that the two have to work together to capture Boro. Both are reluctant at first but end up accepting the mission. From then on, it's one childish behavior after another within this series, from all the characters, I would say, but mostly from Emma, who blames her father for lying to the family when she does the same with Carter (Jay Baruchel), with whom she has a serious relationship outside of work.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg of Emma's totally absurd behavior, and here we have everything from arguing with her father over a chair (which I believe the series wanted to imply passing the seat to the next generation, but it didn't work, as it only made Emma seem annoying and spoiled), to spending almost the entire series blaming her father for everything, even accepting a marriage proposal from someone she was thinking of leaving minutes before and then immediately cheating on her fiancé and still blaming her father when her relationship comes to an end. Seriously, Emma is, for me, by far the most irritating character in the whole series.
Throughout the series, we have countless contradictions that don't make much sense, such as the therapy sessions. How is it that the CIA, in the middle of an important mission, has time for family therapy? Just the fact that the CIA puts the two to work together already makes no sense, and worse, after it's clearly causing problems, like Emma not being able to leave the adolescent bickering with her father outside of work, often stopping to argue with him at critical moments, and Luke, who at times forgets the main focus of the mission because he's worried about Emma, when all this behavior causes various confusions and often compromises the mission entirely, the CIA doesn't suspend or separate them. That makes no sense at all.
Boro's speech to his people, saying that Finn is a dangerous person who needs to be stopped before he hurts others, goes totally against the character's essence, as he clearly sells bombs and weapons to dangerous people who want to kill others. I can't believe that, at this point, everyone working for him doesn't know exactly what kind of person he is. I refuse to believe that everyone still thinks Boro is some kind of pacifist savior. Come on, he killed a man in cold blood at a party. This speech made no sense at all.
The flirtation game between Emma and Aldo (Travis Van Winkle) is forced and laughable, and when she goes to him while he's changing clothes to give him a moral lesson about a comment he made about women, it's ridiculous. My God, let go, girl! That's his problem and the problem of the women who hang out with him, not yours. Frankly, where's Schwarzenegger, who said there wouldn't be anything "Queer" in his series? But the militant feminism in this scene is impossible to ignore.
When they break the Great Dane (Adam Pally) out of a prison in Turkey, he can negotiate with Boro and then escape. He comes back, and Barry kills a guard with him and hides the body in the wall. Barry casually walks out of prison, which is purely a script convenience, and this convenience leaves me with the feeling that in this series, everything is resolved with almost magical ease.
As another example of these magical solutions, we have the situation where they kidnap Romi's biological father and have the whole sequence where they take him to the sports store, and the guys from the competition film everything, and, believe it or not, unbelievably, they don't call the police. Instead, they send the video to Tally (Fabiana Udenio), and she confronts Luke. How come? What does Luke have to do with this? Since it's Emma and Aldo who appear in the video, there's a plot hole to make the story work. What's even more unbelievable is that after Luke's heroic gesture, Tally finally decides to give him a second chance, only for him to reject her a little later, without any ceremony, via cell phone, just because of Emma's thousandth interference in a matter that is absolutely none of her business.
Another very uncomfortable thing is the way Luke treats his son Oscar (Devon Bostick), constantly mistreating him while putting Emma on a pedestal. It's ridiculous. For most of the series, the impression is that he likes Boro more than his own son—the typical top-straight man who likes manly attitudes and belittles his more intellectual son. But the series corrects this in time when Luke finally comes to his senses and decides to invest in his son and his app project.
And then we have more script holes with all the super-secret CIA agents speaking their real names during an operation to intercept a Russian couple and stop them from going to a poker game that Barry and Tina can infiltrate there. They discuss their personal problems in front of the hostages without any ceremony, revealing their identities. Thank God this is just a TV series. Otherwise, the CIA would be lost with these bumbling agents. But eventually, everything works out, and they all come out of this disaster without any collateral damage, thanks to the convenience fairy.
Similarly, after raising several red flags in front of a bunch of criminals when, under the pretext of preparing drinks, they are preparing poison to kill Boro, they stay there whispering, and no one suspects anything. That makes no sense. What if they were cheating on the game or something? In the end, they get away with it by pretending that one of the players cheated. Convenience is the word here.
And how they meddle in each other's private lives all the time and still comment on everything in front of the whole team. Dude, if you think this is being a friend and part of a team, good luck with that because I would never be friends with people who meddle in my personal life and then go around gossiping about it with everyone, like when Tina and Barry finally get together, and the next day the whole team is commenting and giving looks to the two. Call me old-fashioned, but, to me, that's at least embarrassing.
When they go inside coffins for another attempt to kill Boro, it's another show of bungling, with Roo taking sleeping pills excessively and, after suffering an attack on the way, ending up blowing the car with all the weapons inside, and yet they manage to invade the space and, after some bumbling, still come out unharmed, except for Aldo, who almost dies but survives when a stoned Roo and her urine save him from certain death. This could certainly be part of an episode of "Believe It or Not." And Boro, who, after almost killing Emma, is left to die by Luke and still manages to survive with just a terrible scar on his face, in another incredible "Believe It or Not." For this to be more plausible, either Boro should have actually died or he would certainly have come out with much more than just part of his face burned. The fact that they didn't even bother to show how he escaped certain death is further proof that there is no logic here, only script convenience.
Luke had more than one opportunity to kill Boro and didn't do it, clearly because he had an affection for him. And when he finally decides to do it, it's because Boro almost killed Emma. Even then, he does it in a cowardly way, leaving him to die instead of confronting him face-to-face. In the end, Boro looked more like a victim than a real villain.
But eventually, the cowardly way Luke dealt with his problem with Boro turned out to be just another mistake. Because, in yet another "believe it or not," Boro shows up at Tally's wedding for a final showdown. And after a dramatic scene where, after provoking a shootout at the wedding, Boro holds Tally at gunpoint and forces Luke and Emma to aim the gun at each other, Luke instructs Tally, who manages to get out of the way, injuring Boro, and Luke finally does what he should have done a few episodes ago and kills Boro. The series ends with a crazy and confusing ending, with all of Luke's team and his family in a van with no specific destination after they have been exposed. And this is undoubtedly a hook for a possible second season, not yet confirmed, which, if it happens, based on this hook, will be just as crazy as the first.
In summary, "FUBAR" has good action scenes, where Arnold Schwarzenegger practically carries the series on his shoulders, but my favorite character is Roo, who brings good comedic relief to the series and is a character that makes sense, unlike all the others. Ultimately, the series is saved by its good action and comedy sequences but loses itself in a weak and confusing script, leaving us with the feeling that it was good but could have been much better.
