FUBAR is A Fun Daddy-Daughter Adventure Without Being Anything New

75-year-old former body-builder Arnold Schwarzenegger again flexes his ageless, heavily accented charisma in action series “Fubar,” showing on Netflix, coinciding with the release of a 3-part limited docu-series on his life, “Arnold.”

While Schwarzenegger’s physicality is predictably not the same as his Terminator and Eraser days, he still knows how to carry the role of a tough guy convincingly.

And in this case, the role of a tough father.

Like most stories about CIA operatives, Luke Brunner (Schwarzenegger) has a complicated home life. Lengthy absences from his family while in the line of duty causes his marriage to eventually deteriorate and by the time his retirement comes along, he has been divorced for 15 years.

Luke is roped into one final assignment right after his retirement party and to his complete and utter shock, discovers his talented, accomplished, wholesome-as-apple-pie daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) is on the same assignment as he was.

Equally shocked, as well as unhappy, is his daughter, whose resentment over his years of absenteeism is brought to the fore.
Anyway, going back to the show. “Take your daughter to work day” became more of, “You just discovered you work with your daughter day.”

Team meeting with guess who? Your dad!

Let’s imagine this happening in our own lives – even if we aren’t CIA operatives, it would probably be beyond awkward to have a parent in your place of work.

But however awkward it was for them, the mission had to be accomplished, for the greater good.

FUBAR is a military term for Fouled Up (/F***ed Up) Beyond All Repair / Recognition – mirroring their relationship status as father and daughter. Unsurprisingly, the father and daughter duo didn’t magically gel together on their first mission together. Luke is displeased that Emma chose such a dangerous line of work, and Emma resents him for all those years he’d been away from her entire family, and breaking her mother’s heart. So much so that she encourages her mother to date somebody else, which eventually leads to a proposal.
Your own child match-making her mother to another man in an effort to forget about you would be at least a kick in the metaphorical nuts.

The CIA convinces them to go to therapy to hash out decades’ worth of resentment and misunderstandings, using puppets that resemble each other to try to facilitate the communication.

How’s that for team-building?

Between therapy and having to work on the same mission, they begrudgingly find a way to mend their fractured bond. Emma eventually earns her father’s respect as a colleague, and admits she learned a lot from working alongside him.

Complicated family relationships, spies protecting their family by covering up their professional activities, will-they-or-won’t-they work romances, revenge-fueled villains, high-powered government weaponry, unconvincing crises… there’s nothing here that you haven’t seen before.
But the cast has sufficient chemistry, the visuals have decent quality, it’s fun enough to be worth watching, even just as white noise. 

But for me, the best part was that at the end of the day, whether she wanted to admit it or not, she was still daddy’s little girl. Reminding us that no matter how tough we look on the outside, our most important relationships will always be there to anchor us. Needless to say, we will need to work through the right ones, no matter how scary, or awkward, that could be.