FUBAR was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first streaming series, and it was a hit because neither Arnold nor the show’s creator, Nick Santora, took things at all seriously. From absurd action sequences to Arnold hitting all of his old catchphrases with a knowing tone that almost makes him look like he’s winking, FUBAR was never meant to be anything but dumb fun. With Carrie-Anne Moss in the mix for Season 2, will it remain that way?
Opening Shot: In the woods, we see CIA agent Emma Brunner (Monica Barbaro), running through the woods, holding a pistol.
The Gist: It’s actually a paintball pistol, as she decides to crash local paintball rounds to keep sharp, and because she’s bored. She’s in the CIA safe house with her father Luke (Arnold Schwarzenegger), mom Tally (Fabiana Udenio), and Luke’s team after all of their covers were blown. In addition to Barry (Milan Carter), Roo (Fortune Feimster) and Aldon (Travis Van Winkle), there are Emma’s former boyfriend Carter (Jay Baruchel) and Donnie (Andy Buckley), whom Tally was about to marry before Boro (Diego Luna) literally crashed their wedding. He’s extremely depressed because Luke and Tally have reconciled.
The entire group has been holed up in the safe house for months, while the CIA makes sure no one will come after them now that their covers are blown. Dot Okoye (Barbara Eve Harris), the regional director who is in charge of keeping them safe, meets Luke in town — he goes by himself, saying “I’ll be back… in two hours or so.” — and tells him about a terrorist named Dante Cress, who is trying to do a “radical reset” on humanity. Right as she hands him a thumb drive and a codec only Luke can access — called the “Greta Code” — they’re swarmed by gunmen; Emma, Roo and Aldon defy his orders and bail him out, but Dot doesn’t make it. The dead gunmen had a crib sheet with everyone’s pictures on it.
Back at the safe house, they’re greeted by Reed (Enrico Colantoni), the stressed-out interim regional director, who tries to take the thumb drive away from Luke, but fails. When Barry decrypts the info using the Greta code, they find out that Cress has paid a former MI6 agent named Theodore Chips (Guy Burnet) to take out the US’s power grid permanently.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said before the first season, FUBAR is True Lies mixed with a lighthearted drama like Monk or The Good Cop.
Our Take: It certainly feels like FUBAR, created by Nick Santora, is going to take a bit of a turn in its second season. Instead of Luke trying to reconcile with Emma while working alongside her, it seems that things are now pretty good between them, and Luke is sure that spycraft will never get between him and Tally again. But, Luke and Emma meet a contact in Prague, and it turns out to be a woman named Greta Nelso (Carrie-Anne Moss); as soon as she grabs Luke’s ass, Emma realizes that the Greta code was named after her for a reason.
So the season feels like it’s going to be Luke and Greta rekindling things while working together — or maybe on opposite sides at times. How that affects the group, especially Tally and the others back at the safe house, will be the thrust of the season.
There’s also the matter of Tina Mukerji (Aparna Brielle), whom we now know is at the very least a double agent. She’ll be in the field with her boyfriend Barry and Aldon, and we are curious to see what she reports back to her Russian bosses and what she won’t. She seems to be targeting a CIA accountant named Farkas (Mark Robert Edwards), but that may be a misdirect.
What we expect from the second season is a lot of the same stuff we got from the first, which is lots of implausible but fun to watch action sequences and Arnold saying catchphrases new and old. We’ve already gotten an “I’ll be back,” are we going to get “It’s not a tumor?” Maybe we get “Get to the choppa!” for a second season in a row. We’ve got our bingo card out in anticipation.
Seriously, though, FUBAR isn’t supposed to be anything but dumb fun, and everyone including Arnold plays it that way. The presence of Moss should give a nice balance to Arnold’s star power that Barbera couldn’t really match last year, despite her charms. Greta coming back into Luke’s life will likely get Emma and Tally to be pissed at Luke again, but at this point this becomes less about family disagreements and more about Luke’s past catching up with him, and we’re not sure that’s a good thing.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.
Parting Shot: When Luke and Emma are surprised by Greta’s presence and Emma sees Gretta do the hug-and-grab, she says, “Guess it’s not an acronym.”
Sleeper Star: Fortune Feimster’s Roo and Travis Van Winkle’s Aldon make the cutest non-sexual couple we’ve seen in awhile. We especially loved Roo gyrating to Olivia Newton-John’s “A Little More Love”, following the advice of the group’s therapist, Dr. Pfeffer (Scott Thompson).
Most Pilot-y Line: Listen, we love Andy Buckley going back to at least The Office. But we’re not sure what his function as Donnie is going to be this season besides moping around in a bathrobe and getting Cheetos dust in his beard.
Our Call: STREAM IT. FUBAR continues to be a stupid good time, and we love it when Arnold doesn’t take himself seriously in a role. But with the addition of Moss as Greta, we wonder if the second season story will be more about generic spycraft and less about Luke’s family strife.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.