As we approach the final hurdle in FUBAR’s eight episode run, it’s time for the show to double down on the emotional pressure these bickering and feuding secret agents are currently dragging themselves through and regardless of the fact that every installment has remained fairly average thus far, I can’t help but admit I’m actually kind of invested.
I mean, you can’t stick to a show from beginning to end and not feel something for the trials and tribulations these poor schmoes are putting each other through. I guess, then, that FUBAR’s true strong point wasn’t another action role for 80s god Arnold Schwarzenegger, or even the glib heroics of its wisecracking gang of spies, but the personal dynamics that’s built up as the show has gone on. How do I know this? Because after six episodes, I finally have an urge to know what happens next.
With the emotional aftermath of the previous mission still yielding some mightily fresh wounds, the team each ponders and re-analyses their lives and personal relationships. Luke is still seeing his ex-wife, Tally, behind her boyfriend’s back, but she’s promising to put the poor guy out of his misery soon. Meanwhile Luke and Tally’s daughter, Emma, weathers quite the body blow when her fiance dumps her after hearing about her kiss with fellow secret agent Aldon who, in turn, is on the outs with his best friend and colleague, Roo, who dislikes Emma on a general basis.
In fact, the only members of the team not wracked with guilt and turmoil is Barry and Tina, who, after some seriously off advice from his work mates, consummates the relationship on the third date with the aid of a Robin costume. However, relationship angst even manages to find them like some sort of happiness-seeking missile as Barry finds out that Tina is due to be transferred back to her previous posting and starts making attempts to block it.
However, as always, world terrorism interrupts the various out parties as a kill order on WMD owner Boro is finally sanctioned, but this leaves Luke feeling torn as he helped raise Boro while in his undercover identity after assassinating the kid’s father. Still, an order is an order, so off goes the disfuntional team to take out this threat once and for all, but once again, shit goes pear shaped almost immediately.
Roo, uncomfortable with the part of the plan where they’re shipped to the location in coffin-sized crates, takes a lot of pills to counter her anxiety, leaving her more stoned than a Snoop Dogg groupie while Aldon takes a stray bullet in a vital place. While one of the team trips the light fantastic while the other struggles not to kick the bucket, Emma and Luke forge on to finish the job once and for all – but this seems to be a day where nothing is due to go right…
It’s taken us a while to get here, but, like I hinted at in my opening, the show is now at a point where, regardless of how good or bad its the other issues may be (overall, it’s still mid-level television at best), I’m now in it for the ensemble. It’s a good thing too, because, at its core, Urine Luck may not add anything new to FUBAR in general, it plays all the old, familiar notes the best they’ve been played up until now.
It helps that actual (although probably temporary) ramifications occur with Carter sadly breaking up with Emma much to her shock and Luke, finally understanding what his life has done to his marriage, breaks off his fling with Tally despite the fact that he’d all but won her back like he had planned. On top of that, Emma, wounded after her dumping, attempts to hitch her wagon to an injured Aldon who, despite losing blood atva worrying rate, also rejects her, citing that he has no interest being her second choice.
It all sounds like pretty heavy stuff and compared to the rather trite thread of Barry doing a string of deals and favours in order to desperately keep Tina working with him. While it’s nice not to see him quietly panicking and complaining about cake fillings and instead seeing him spend some romantic time with someone who surprises him by dressing up as Robin (Carrie Kelly, not Dick Grayson in case you were wondering), if feels weirdly like filler in the face of such emotional rumblings.
Step forward Fortune Feimster and take a bow, whose character, Roo, has been a steady fountain of brutal put-downs and weirdly outdated nerd hatred, but here scores some of the seasons strongest laughs thanks to being blasted off of her nut due to way too many pills taken to offset claustrophobia. Her misfiring rocket launcher gag is timed to excellence (as is her bemused response) and things get even more far out when a fading Aldon needs water for an impromptu operation on his gunshot wound. In true, crude-humour style, the only water Roo can source is the H²O located in her bladder but is suffering from pee shyness that only singing can release – thus we get a spirited rendition of Gordon Lightfoot’s If You Could Read My Mind by a squatting Roo, a dying Aldon and Dr. Pfeffer accompanying on the radio.
It really is the humour that’s carrying the show at this point because as funny as FUBAR can be, its action has been extraordinarily weak thus far, which is weird considering that plugging goons and slugging loons is how he conquered Hollywood in the first place. Be it horribly stilted fight scenes that are clearly edited around Arnold’s advancing years and which plainly disprove the first episode’s claim that Luke is the fastest 65 year old white guy on the planet, or lifeless car chases that aren’t even enlivened by a spot of unfriendly rocket fire, the most boring moments of the show are ironically the moments that are supposed to be the most bracing.
Also in dire need of a revitalising shot of give-a-shit is the villainous aspects of the show, with Gabriel Luna’s terrorist, Boro, having less and less effect with every passing episode. How neglected have the bad guys become? Not only had I plainly forgotten about Boro’s henchman having an established beef with Luke, but I honestly can’t remember for the life of me hiw far exactly into his nefarious plans the terrorist has gotten – something that is made extra awkward when it’s actually been explained on-screen in a team briefing!
Yet here we are; the penultimate episode and while my socks have stubbonly refused to have been blown off, the show has hardly been a slog, either. Still, one episode to go and plenty of family strife still to mine with explosions, cave ins and radiation poisoning adding to the Brunner’s increasing headaches, FUBAR has it all to play for.
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