Andrea and I caught up to the season (now series) finale of FUBAR. The action comedy series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger brought to an end the season long battle against Dante Cress, a super rich, single minded terrorist with the long term goal of saving Earth from humans by crashing the United States power grid or unleashing nuclear war, whatever gets the job done.
FUBAR went to some extraordinary extremes in season 2. IT guy Barry got shot into SPACE!
Super spy guy Aldon got into a shoot out with the Swedish mafia at Penny Possum's Pizza, Place a Chuck-E-Cheese type restaurant but with a possum instead of a mouse.
Also Aldon adopted a pet pig. Named him "Hamsteak". Got way too emotionally invested in the pig.
Any minute with Fortune Feimster as CIA operative Roo is usually funny as hell. Here is a montage of some of Roo's lines from season 2.
Roo, like Fortune herself, is gay as fuck and is from Charlotte,NC.
Whenever FUBAR is engaged in either pressure cooker tangled messes, high octane action or just plain goofy humor, the show is a fun ride.
What undermines FUBAR is the clunky dialogue used to advance the plot.
"If we don't stop that missile, Dante Cress will destroy America's power grid!"
"If we don't stop that satellite, Dante Cress will destroy the world economy!"
"If we don't stop that pizza delivery, Dante Cress will get our free order of Buffalo wings!"
Shit like that.
And the person called upon to deliver this clunky dialogue? The worst actor on the show, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Bruce Willis did the retired CIA operative schtick so much better in RED and RED2. Arnold Schwarzenegger can kick ass but Bruce Willis could kick ass AND do a decent line reading.*
*Alas not so much these days. Willis was diagnosed a few years ago with dementia and has been reported recently to be on a serious decline. Which totally sucks and blows.
Despite not having fore knowledge of Netflix cancelling the show, FUBAR does wrap things up pretty neatly for our cast with only a single dangling plot line for us to speculate about.
FUBAR could be a fun show and deserved better but was done in by some bad scripting, bad acting (looking at you, Arnold), bad scheduling (2 years between seasons) and virtually no publicity.
One common refrain I saw online when it was announced that Netflix had cancelled FUBAR was "What's FUBAR?"
Meanwhile, elsewhere on Netflix.
Wednesday returned for season 2.
After saving Nevermore Academy from Tyler the Hyde beast and the resurrected outcast killer Joseph Crackstone, Wednesday Addams does something unusual: she returns to a school for a 2nd time. Her usual pattern at a school is one year or less when she is expelled.
Also unusual is her status at Nevermore: Wednesday Addams has gone from an outcast among outcasts to a celebrity among the student body and by the new principal Barry Dort. Dort is a skeevy slimeball who is up to some shit. Dort is played by Steve Buscemi so yeah, of course Dort is creepy and off putting.
And there are the murders. Two men have been pecked to death by a swarn of crows. Yes, it is murder by a murder of crows and yes, Wednesday makes that oberservation because someone had to say it.
And she has a psychic vision of Enid's death by the crows and as much as her blonde perky roommate completely annoys her, Wednesday is determined not to let that happen.
The rest of the Addams Family are regulars this season with Morticia (the always alluring Catherine Zeta-Jones) finagled by Dort to stick around and head up the fund raising gala committee.
We also get the return of Fred Armisen as Uncle Fester. I'm not always a fan of Fred's off kilter comedy but Uncle Fester is a perfect role for him.
Doctor Who fans: we have Billie Piper on board as a music teacher/werewolf at Nevermore.
Wednesday features Jenna Ortega in the title role and her deadpan delivery of insults and threats is on point.
My main concern with this series is that despite her cold statements of menace and proclamations of independence, Wednesday Addams is too often reactive to the various threats that surround Nevermore Academy.
Netflix will be dropping the 2nd half of season 2 tomorrow.
That is that for this week's Touchbase.
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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