TV Tuesdays Free Talk

I watched FUBAR from Netflix, which is Arnold Schwarzenegger's new TV series. It is rife with fan service and nods to Arnie's career, like the Tom Arnold cameo, Arnie talking about how he love Danny DeVito, jokes about "Choppah Parenting", etc. The writing is formulaic; it's like they had meetings where they talked about popular articles from TVTropes, and figured out how to put them in, because only one single unexpected thing happened in the entire series. It's currently rated a quite fair 6.5 out of 10 on IMDB.

I loved it, and I hope they get greenlit for season 2.

Arnie is, well, Arnie, and he obviously knows that the show is silly and fun, but every other cast member is also in on how silly and fun everything is, and they're all well cast.

Gabriel Luna (Ghost Rider in Agents of SHIELD, and also from The Last of Us) is The Bad Guy, who all Arnie's fault, and he just chews the scenery delightfully. I can hear the director saying, "Can you be raspier and more melodramatic? No, no, even more melodramatic? Can you just say it's-all-your-fault-that-I-am-evil?" Fortune Feimster (Mindy Project, Office Christmas Party) and Travis Van Winkle (You, Friday the 13th) are both great as sassy spies. Fabiana Udenio (Alotta Fagina from Austin Powers) as Arnie's ex-wife is great and sexy, and it's great to see a woman who is almost 60 allowed to be sexy, but she's also sweet and conflicted (in a straight-forward way - everything about this is straight-forward). Aparna Brielle (AP Bio), Milan Carter (? new to me) are both allowed to shine in a few scenes, and they do the "can the geek get the sexy girl, oh the girl is a geek too!" trope pretty well. Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick) is great as the daughter; she's super believable as Arnie's kid, and one of my favourite parts is Arnie and her doing impressions of each other.

I realize that I'm not basically just listing people that I like, but there's no shortage of them in this, like Andy Buckley who just plays the same character as he is in the Office, and Jay Baruchel who is basically playing Jay Baruchel, Barbara Eve Harris who always plays competent doctors or cops, and Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall. Dustin Milligan, who I recall being quite fond of in Schitt's Creek, is completely different and deplorable in this, and is another example of a character whose story had not a single surprise in it, but was still enjoyable.

Actually that does remind me of the one single story that I did not really expect to see, which might be something that I related to quite a bit. Arnie's son (Devon Bostick from The 100) is married with a kid, and about halfway through it is revealed that his wife was pregnant when he met her, and the child was not biologically his. Arnie and family all absolutely dote on the grandchild, though, and are unquestionably and fiercely devoted to her. This reminds me a lot of my own family - my eldest daughter is genetically distinct from me, as my wife was slightly pregnant when we started dating, and like the character in the show, she is 100% part of the family. Actually, this led to probably the only situation in which I could say this; in several parts of the series, Arnold Schwartzenegger reminded me quite a bit of my mom, in that she would also kill or maim someone who threatened her grandkid.

Overall, the show was a ton of fun. It doesn't really push any boundaries, it's not particularly smart, and I learned absolutely nothing. If you wanted to see a limited run series that was a mashup of 70s spy flicks, 80s action movies, 90s comedies, and 00's romcoms, then this is it.

Watched the last episode of season 3 for Ted Laso. Everything felt fairly well tied up, but I still feel like there’s a little left. Like I folded all my laundry but am missing a sock.

I’ll be interested to see what kind of spin off they come up with, especially with the hint on Trent’s book!