MOVIE REVIEW – The second season of Fubar on Netflix is a living example of how even the greatest action legends can be dragged down into the quicksand of mediocrity. Schwarzenegger’s name once guaranteed guts and bravado, but now all we see is a weary star trying to breathe life into a worn-out genre inside an even more exhausted show. There’s no momentum, no humor, no real stakes—just repetition, bland characters, and a parade of increasingly cringe-worthy action scenes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s legendary status these days is more a nostalgic echo than any sort of substance. In Fubar’s second season, he returns as an aging CIA agent, but it’s clear in every scene that the old swagger, the reflexes, and that signature attitude have long faded. From the very first scenes, it’s obvious this isn’t the Schwarzenegger of old—neither the story, nor the jokes, nor the energy really land, as if the whole series exists just to showcase how badly the old formula is failing.

The story picks up in a safe house, where our hero hides out with his family and team, while another conveyor belt of world-threatening dangers roll in. Yet the series completely loses its focus: every episode brings a new “deadly” threat, another gunfight, another family dispute, but you never for a second believe any of it matters. The season meanders like an endless, repetitive TV movie, where every danger is telegraphed as harmless, and every “dramatic” twist feels like manufactured melodrama.

Action That’s Just a Sad Memory

The action scenes in Fubar’s second season aren’t just uninspired—they’ve devolved into something closer to middling parody. With every sequence, Schwarzenegger looks like he no longer buys himself as the world’s savior—he’s more a grandpa awkwardly shuffled onto the set of an old VHS tape. Fights are sluggish, shootouts dull, explosions just background noise. What once gave an adrenaline rush is now unintentionally hilarious: every performance is overacted, every joke falls flat, and all that’s missing is someone literally slipping on a banana peel for comic relief.

It doesn’t help that any “action-comedy” spirit gets buried beneath forced, brainless gags. Even the cheesiest B-grade ‘90s action-comedies had a sense of style and pacing—here, we’re left with awkward silences, pointless banter, and thoroughly average acting.

Cardboard Heroes, an Army of Clichés

Character development? Don’t make me laugh. Emma (Monica Barbaro) is your textbook daughter with daddy issues, whining in every scene but lacking any real motivation. Tally (Fabiana Udenio) is the obligatory ex-wife, existing only to drop another tired one-liner when needed. The rest of the team—Barry, Roo, Aldon, Carter, Donnie, Reed—are just there to fill out screen time. Not one of them leaves any impression; they’re mere bobbleheads, shuffled mechanically through the script like pawns on a dreary board game.

The only halfway memorable figure is Greta (Carrie-Anne Moss), the old flame and spy from the past, who now and then flashes some of the spark that once made old-school spy flicks tick. Even these moments vanish quickly into the gray fog of mediocrity. Her ironic one-liners and “spies get old, too” quips only make it clearer that even the cast seems bored by the whole thing.

Villains—Stage Props Without Threat

Fubar’s villains are more caricature than credible. Dante Cress is meant to be a fearsome terrorist mastermind, but neither his own crew nor the audience could take him seriously for a moment. The “apocalypse” plots are as flimsy as his motivations: it’s all too easy to forget who the current big bad even is, since none of them leave a mark.

Meanwhile, Theodore “Theo” Cripps (Guy Burnet) alternates between Bond-style cynicism and the awkwardness of a lost TV guest star, but he’s not enough to pull the show from the muck. All he really achieves is making viewers hope something—anything—will finally happen to break the monotony of this soporific soap opera.

No Stakes, No Drama, No Reason to Stay

The season’s greatest sin is the total lack of stakes. The “end of the world” threat is just noise—no one for a second believes any character might die or anything meaningful might change. Everyone survives, the “big threats” always fizzle out like cheap party balloons, and in the end everyone grins about what a wild ride it’s been. The father-daughter conflict, the ex-wife’s sniping, the team’s “big blowups”—it’s all empty theater, zero genuine emotion, no real empathy anywhere.

The family dynamics don’t work, either: every conversation is a cliché, every conflict feels staged, and every supposedly dramatic moment lands as more embarrassing than moving. It’s as if every character stepped straight out of a tattered daytime soap script and now has to serve out a sentence in this never-ending slog.

Nostalgia That Only Hurts

The second season of Fubar is textbook proof that not every legend can be resurrected. Schwarzenegger is still likable, but he can’t sell his own character anymore; the jokes are pitiful, the action limp, the plot in shambles, the supporting cast forgettable, and the villains made of cardboard. This show doesn’t open a new chapter—it quietly drops the curtain, offering not nostalgia but the sad realization that even heroes grow old, and there are things better left untouched.

If you’re looking for a real action-comedy, steer clear of this Netflix product; its only use is as a cautionary tale of why classics are classics and shouldn’t always be revived. Legend or not, nothing can save this show—except maybe forgetting it as fast as possible.

-Gergely Herpai “BadSector”-