It’s not easy to admit how many times I laughed while watching the trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s upcoming Netflix comedy FUBAR. But I laughed a lot, starting when I received the email with the subject line that read “Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in Netflix’s FUBAR”—FUBAR, in all capital letters, like it’s screaming at you in Schwarzenegger’s accent from your inbox—and, honestly, didn’t stop throughout the entire teaser.
FUBAR is Schwarzenegger’s first TV series, and a major return to the action comedy genre that helped make him a star. True Lies? A classic. And if you’re a millennial who doesn’t stop in your tracks to watch the entirety of Jingle All the Way or Kindergarten Cop any time you encounter it playing on a television, then you are either a bold-faced liar or belong to another species.
Still, FUBAR—still lol’ing, thinking about Arnold yelling the acronym—likely marks the first time the former governor of one of the largest states in our country is seen fumbling with his daughter’s lipstick-shaped vibrator, for the sake of a streaming audience’s chuckles. That’s history.
In FUBAR (!!!), Schwarzenegger stars as a legendary CEO operative, who finally realizes it’s time to retire, despite being, as the trailer calls him, “the fastest 65-year-old white guy on the planet.” He says he’s eager to spend more time with his family, including his grown daughter, Emma (Monica Barbaro).
He’s recruited for one last assignment, to extract an endangered fellow operative and a WMD from a dangerous location. When he begrudgingly arrives, he’s shocked to learn the operative is Emma. She is shocked to learn that daddy has arrived to infiltrate her operation.
There’s lots of “he treats me like a child”-brand humor—in fact, that’s an actual line of dialogue in the trailer—but there’s something about Schwarzenegger and Barbaro’s commitment to the bit that sells the cheesiness of it. (Fortune Feimster’s frequent presence in the teaser, doling out one-liner after one-liner, certainly helps the comedy land, too.)
Who knows how good FUBAR will end up being when it premieres May 25, but sometimes it’s gratifying when a piece of entertainment knows exactly what it needs to be and executes on that. Schwarzenegger playing an aging action hero spitting out endless lines of corny dialogue? It’s the TV manifestation of Schwarzenegger saying, “I’ll be back.”
