Anyone who remotely likes movies has likely fallen in love with Arnold Schwarzenegger. His mere presence on screen usually meant we were about to watch an explosive action showcase that would be worth watching a dozen times. Unfortunately, FUBAR continues to be a warning sign for other action stars to stay away from their former glory. Using as much nostalgia as possible and attempting to infuse the traditional action set pieces with half-hearted comedy, the Netflix series remains a tonal mess. Even its Oscar-nominated actress, Monica Barbaro, and the inclusion of Carrie-Anne Moss cannot resuscitate this show.
FUBAR Season 2 Plot
Luke Brunner (Schwarzenegger) and his team remain in hiding under the same roof after they were burned last season. While he reconnects with his ex-wife, Tally (Fabiana Udenio), the rest of the team is forced to listen to their intimate moments. Emma (Barbaro) grows stir crazy while former love interests Aldon (Travis Van Winkle) and Carter (Jay Baruchel) try to win her affection. Meanwhile, the support agents Roo (Fortune Feimster), Barry (Milan Carter), and Tina (Aparna Brielle) are stuck in neutral.
After a check-in with their boss goes wrong, the team wants to get back in the field to stop an emerging terrorist threat. Chasing down the leads puts them directly against one of Luke’s former lovers, Greta (Moss), a woman he long believed dead. She also uses the dumbest assassin alive, Theodore Chips (Guy Burnet), who quickly falls in love with Emma. As the Brunners team faces down with Greta, the stakes grow higher with the world’s electrical grid at stake.
Fubar cannot handle its tonal swings.
The idea of quippy action movies started long before superhero movies, but the genre certainly exploited the idea for cheap laughs. However, making undercutting jokes to the action and stakes made audiences numb to the humor, while the movies also subbed in more CGI messiness to stand in for its action stars. That is FUBAR in a nutshell, a series that somehow looks worse than Argylle or Free Guy, but has even less humor than either of those projects.
Perhaps the most damning aspect is its inability to give us moments that make us feel for characters at all. Early in Season 2, a potential suspect tells our agents that he was forced to choose which of his kids to kill to help our villain. The moment is preceded by dumb jokes, followed by worse jokes, making a scene that should inspire real fear of our villain feel like weightless exposition.
Additionally, the comedy does not work. Netflix instead populates the show with actors who can be funny, but are not comedians. It’s a subtle distinction, but one that has caused voices like James Corden to fall off the map when they cannot deliver on either front. Most of FUBAR becomes Feimster trying her hardest to imbue any comedy into the show, but because she’s the only comedian on the team, it doesn’t work. Carter tries his best, but the material he’s left with is stereotypical “guy in the chair is also a massive nerd” humor that does him no favors.
This is a consistent problem throughout FUBAR, with character beats consistently underwhelming or getting undermined by middling jokes. Humor and action can go together, but if we can’t buy into a single moment as serious, even for our characters, we’re left with nothing to hold onto. The stakes disappear, the comedy falls flat, and FUBAR struggles to keep your attention.
The performances are also bad, which is made worse by bad exposition.
We love Arnold, but in FUBAR, it’s clear that he’s well past his prime. It’s time for him to hang it up, because his bag is seemingly gone. The comedy doesn’t work. The action for him is lame. FUBAR might get compared to the MJ Wizards, but at least MJ was scoring 20 points most nights. Arnold does not have chemistry with either romantic interest, and the show spirals.
Additionally, Barbaro is left with poor writing on her end. The love triangle is entirely self-imposed, and frankly, neither feels interesting as a choice for her character besides their proximity to her in the safe house. Adding another love interest is not helpful, but it is also a boring choice for the show. We know that Barbaro is the star-in-waiting, but her story is whittled down to worrying about her love life and her dad’s love life, with almost nothing in between.
Finally, the exposition is horrendous. Everything is overexplained or explained away without any logic behind it. At one point in the first episode, we’re told that a hit squad followed Arnold’s boss to a park bench, and so when Arnold’s team killed the bad dudes, they were free to return to a safe house in the same town. That is not only illogical, but downright pathetic for a spy show. This is a situation where the budgetary constraints of a show directly affect the end product. These moments are obvious throughout the season and only worsen as the season progresses.
Is FUBAR Season 2 worth watching?
No, this is a bad show for Netflix and a bad beat for Arnold. FUBAR is shockingly boring for an action show, shockingly unfunny for a comedy, and equates to a shrug at the best of times. We want to like this kind of swing, but perhaps most egregious of all is that there are talented performers on this show.
If your series cannot work with this group of actors, it’s a death nail. It makes sense that Netflix is dumping this in the summer, hoping you’ll watch one of their Emmy shows instead.
FUBAR releases Thursday, June 12, 2025. Netflix releases all eight episodes at once. Eight episodes of Season 2 were provided for this review.
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