Luke Brunner (Schwarzenegger) and his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) have lied to each other for years, both of them not knowing the other is a CIA operative. Once they both learn the truth, they realize they don't actually know anything about each other.
The series premiered on May 25, 2023 on Netflix. A second season has been ordered.
FUBAR contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name: Roo's full name is Ruth Russell.
- An Arm and a Leg: One of Boro's former associates is threatened with dismemberment if he doesn't tell Boro everything he knows about Luke and Emma. Even after figuratively spilling his guts, Boro still orders the man's leg cut off.
- And the Adventure Continues: Boro is finally dead, but now the whole world is after Luke, Emma, and their family and friends with terrorists, drug smugglers, and Human Traffickers on their tail. When asks what they must do, Luke simply replies, "I don't know. It's totally FUBAR."
- Agony of the Feet: Roo hates the Great Dane since his Reckless Gun Usage resulted in having one of her toes being shot off, and now it looks disgusting enough that it's blocked from view with Scenery Censor whenever she wants to disgust other people by showing it off.
- Asshole Victim:
- Jacomo, one of Boro's lieutenants, gets accused of skimming money off Boro's operation and quickly executed for it. Turns out Emma was the one who took the money. While Luke is initially upset, Emma has to remind him that as one of Boro's top guys, Jacomo was a career criminal and deserved what he got.
- Kyle, Romi Brunner's biological father, gets abducted and tied to a chair and has bone marrow forcibly extracted from him by CIA torturer Norm Carlson. But he's also an absolute jackass who ghosted Sandy after she got pregnant, extorted the family for money when the bone marrow was needed to treat Romi's leukemia and even after being paid off, still backed out at the last second.
- Travis and Shawn, twin owners of the Twinning Formula Fitness Supply store, who are professional rivals with Luke Brunner's cover business and suspect he's fudging numbers to win regional sales awards. They're right, but they harass Luke's ex-wife Tally for a look at their books, and later plot to break in to Luke's office, stopped only by the fact that Emma and Aldon are using the location as a makeshift bone marrow extraction ward. They film Emma and Aldon dragging Kyle in the store, use it to try and get information out of Tally again. They get framed for smuggling as payback, and decide to escalate by planting bugs on Luke's car and keying it... when a car bomb planted by Boro goes off and blows them to smithereens.
- Betty and Veronica: Both Tally and Emma have to choose between a handsome CIA agent and a more boring but dependable man. Luke and Donnie for Tally, Aldon and Carter for Emma.
- Black and Nerdy: Barry, Luke's guy in the chair, makes references to Thunder Cats and wears Voltron and Transformers apparel. His apartment is covered in geek memorabilia including a life-sized cardboard cutout of an Ultramarine from Warhammer 40,000 and the gigantic Autobot Ark toy.
- Bloodstained Glass Windows: A Not Quite Dead Boro ambushes Luke and Emma with a car bomb at Tally and Donnie's wedding, and a massive shootout takes place.
- Bullying a Dragon: Donnie, Tally's new boyfriend, is constantly "warning" Luke to stay away from them, not knowing this guy can kill him a hundred ways and make it look like an accident.
- Catchphrase: Luke likes to reinforce statements with "That's it and That's all!".
- The Cavalry Arrives Late: Roo and Aldon rush to help during the wedding massacre, and burst dramatically into the church only to find the bad guys are already all dead.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The electromagnetic vests that Dr. Pfeiffer gives to Luke and Emma for therapy. They prove instrumental in retrieving the outdoor nuclear sludge hose to heat up the bullet train magnets and slow the vehicle down.
- Oscar's barcode scanner app helps Luke identify the computer processor inside the Cold-War era bunker his team are trapped in, so that Roo can find a way to overclock it.
- The National Distinguished Service Award medal that Luke shows Tally to prove he's a CIA agent. It becomes important when Tally uses it to stab Boro in the leg, freeing herself from Boro's grip and giving Luke and Emma an opening to shoot Boro dead.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: In the trailer, Emma lets out a number of swear words in rapid succession that are all bleeped out when she finds out her father is a CIA agent as well.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Emma's rapid-fire Cluster Bleep-Bomb is not censored in the series proper.
- Cool Aunt: Emma is one to Romi.
- Cover Identity Anomaly: Luke was able to keep up his cover as a sales rep for a fitness company for a long time, but when Tally joins the actual company, she's able to see something off. For example, Luke claims their sales are about to improve because he's on his way to negociate with Planet Fitness...right after their rivals told Tally they had an exclusive contract with Planet Fitness. She also realizes the place appears rather quiet for a company that supposedly has Luke flying around the world all the time on "business trips."
- Creepy Good: In A Lighter Shade of Grey sense, Norm Carlson is an oddly chipper, unassuming fella with an "Aw, shucks" manner of speaking... but he's also an efficient CIA torturer who genuinely enjoys his work. Most of Luke's team admits it ends up giving them the creeps.
- Did You Actually Believe...?:
- In a talk, Luke tries to tell Emma to wait until marrying Carter for her "first time." An astounded Emma asks if her dad honestly believes she's a 28-year-old virgin.
- When Luke says he's happy that "I'm the only man your mother has been with," Emma scoffs they've been divorced for fifteen years and if Luke really thinks her mom hasn't been with anyone else in that time.
- Luke reveals to Boro he murdered his father and mocks him on buying the story that a firm trail he'd walked over a thousand times just happened to pick that moment to give way.
- Emma constantly tells Luke his belief that all he has to do is retire and he can get back with his ex-wife is a pipe dream.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Aldon is one for James Bond, a cool, suave, handsome guy in expensive suits who has a lot of casual sex. He admits that he would prefer to have a meaningful relationship but is hopeless at making things work and the reason he takes care of his appearance and buys expensive clothes now that he can afford to is that he grew up poor and never had anything nice as a kid.
- Exact Words: Luke claims he never had an affair during the job but admits he has slept with women on assignment yet doesn't consider it cheating.Luke: An affair is a connection of the heart. Your mother always owned my heart.
- Failed a Spot Check: After killing some guards, Emma dumps the bodies in a nearby rice paddy, noting how almost no one visits the area at this time of year. When the bodies wash up in front of the local village, Luke dryly notes the reason for that is because the rice paddies are flooded at this time of year.
- Family of Choice: Sandy, Oscar Brunner's wife, was 8 months pregnant with her child from a one-night stand when she met Oscar. She and her daughter Romi are fully accepted in the Brunner family. Luke even tells Romi's biological father Kyle that Oscar is her true father and he's just the sperm donor.
- Follow in My Footsteps:
- Despite Luke's attempts to find him a new life, Boro ended up becoming a ruthless terrorist leader like his father.
- An accidental version. Emma had long prided herself on embarking on a life so much different than her father's...only to realize she was copying him in everything from joining the CIA to her maverick attitude.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Luke once used "fluffing" instead of the f-word in front of his granddaughter Romi when he stubbed his toe. She begins using it, and eventually other family members start using it too.
- Hidden Depths: Aldon initially comes off like a casanova jock who enjoys doing the "honeypot" (ie using seduction to infiltrate a location or gather information) but he later confides to Emma that sometimes it just sucks and he plays into the "Pooh Bear" theme as a coping mechanism. Later on when he falls for Emma, he openly admits it makes him feel like crap because he actually likes Carter, Emma's fiancé. He even reveals the reason he grooms so well and buys such expensive suits is because he grew up poor with nothing but hand-me-downs.
- Roo, apparently just a silly comedy character, also gets some when she admits she's scared of losing the people she loves ever since her father died in prison when she accidentally exposed him as a drug dealer as a child.
- Honorary Uncle: Despite not being that much older than Emma, Barry (Luke's CIA Mission Control and business partner at their cover job) is considered "Uncle Barry" by both Brunner children and lone granddaughter.
- Hurricane of Puns: Realizing their therapist's name originally translates as Dr. Pepper, Luke and Emma use every soda-themed pun they can, ignoring the doctor telling them Never Heard That One Before.
- Hypocritical Humour: A Running Gag between Luke and Emma is one of them calling the other out for a certain action (lying to a loved one for example) only for the accused to point out that the accuser engages in exactly the same type of behaviour. It helps reinforce the fact that they aren't so different.
- I Lied: Boro promised he'd set the nuclear scientist he kidnapped free after he turned the toxic waste he acquired into a proper nuclear agent. Since Boro doesn't want anyone else replicating his suitcase bomb, he ends up shooting the scientist dead upon completion.
- Initialism Title: "FUBAR" stands for "Fucked Up Beyond All Repair/Recognition".note
- Insistent Terminology: Luke insistst the sailing yacht he received as a retirement gift is not a boat, it's a ship.
- Jerkass: Kyle, Romi's biological father, extorts the family for money when he's a match for a bone marrow transplant for Romi, then backs out at the last minute.
- Knight of Cerebus: Boro is a serious villain in what, for the most part, is a fairly lighthearted action comedy show. Most notably when he orders a minion to cut a man's leg off with a chainsaw for betraying him.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Emma cites Luke as this in a therapy session, pointing out that he ruined his own marriage over his secret life but has no problem dictating to anyone else how their relationships should work.
- Locked in a Room: Episode 6 has a subplot where Luke, Emma, Roo and Aldon get trapped in a Cold War-era bunker, with the ventilation system also failing so they only have a few hours to escape before they suffocate. Tensions rise high while they are trapped when Luke and Emma get into another argument about Luke trying to control Emma's life, while Luke also gets into an argument with Aldon about him getting into a relationship with Emma, who is already engaged. They eventually escape by exploiting the fact that the bunker's computer hasn't been booted up since 1989 and thus was never fixed to deal with the Millennium Bug, causing it to crash once they set the computer's calendar to December 31, 1999 and have it count down to midnight, with them further speeding up the countdown by overclocking it.
- Locked Out of the Loop: The CIA made sure neither Luke or Emma had any idea the other was working for the CIA. The pair also do their best to keep Emma's mom out of this.
- Love Triangle: Two of them:
- Luke, his ex-wife Tally and her new beau Don.
- Emma, her boyfriend Carter, and her new co-worker Aldon.
- The Mole: A russian SVR agent claims he has one in the CIA code-named Songbird. Tina's behavior and her speaking Russian towards the end of the final episode suggests it's her.
- Never My Fault: Both Emma and Boro have a habit of blaming Luke for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Although he does bear some responsibility as their father and Parental Substitute respectively, they seem unable to grasp that he is not to blame for the consequences of all of their personal bad decisions. Part of Emma's character development is a Heel Realisation in the later part of the first season when she comes to terms with this fact.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After killing a terrorist leader, Luke tried to make sure the man's son was taken care of, set up in a nice education. Boro went ahead and embraced it, becoming a financial genius, graduating Oxford at 20 and an MBA from Wharton at 22... all of which he's used to build his father's organization up and become more dangerous than his dad could ever dream.
- Nothing Is the Same Anymore: The final episode. Luke and Emma are faced with the fact that someone released their true identities to at least Boro's closest associates, forcing the Brunners and their CIA handlers to go off the grid entirely.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Luke and Emma, despite all their arguments, exhibit many of the same mannerisms as each other
- One Last Job: Luke finds himself dealing with a massive loose end from his career when an operative goes dark while investigating the heir of an arms dealer he terminated. Unfortunately, that 'one last job' ends up taking much longer than expected.
- Parent-Child Team: Luke and Emma are father and daughter, and they team up during several action sequences.
- Properly Paranoid: Aldon is convinced a Greek spy he had a fling with set up their safehouse. He's proven right when she saves him from one of Boro's goons.
- Punctuated Pounding: After some mooks shoot Emma in the shoulder during a pursuit, Luke takes the driver down and punches his head repeatedly while saying "That. Was. Her. Vio-lin. Arm!".
- Punny Name: Luke names his boat the "Tally Ho" in honour of Tally, the ex wife he's hoping to win back. Until it's pointed out to him that the "Ho" part isn't exactly flattering.
- Retired Badass: In the trailer, Luke is mentioned to be 66, mopping up the floor with mooks and then, later, mentioning he's retired upon being required for another mission. (In the series proper, he's mentioned to be 65.
- Say My Name: Boro has an utterly epic one in the first episode after seeing the corpses of his men wash up in front of the local village and realizing that Luke (AKA Finn Hoss) is responsible.Boro: FFFFFFFIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN!!!!!!
- Saying Too Much: A common trait for the entire team from Barry blurting how he knew about Emma being CIA to Emma revealing she helped Donnie get together with Tally in the first place.
- So Proud of You: Luke Brunner delivers this speech to both his children.
- The Swear Jar: When Emma drops a Cluster F-Bomb upon finding out her dad is also in the CIA, Roo snarks at her to put money in the swear jar.
- Take That!: The whole premise is a thinly-veiled adaptation of the plot of the movie True Lies, effectively being everything that the TV series True Lies wasn't, including using the original star and having a cameo by Tom Arnold.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Luke is literally in the middle of his retirement party, having begun winding down his secret identities and other trappings of his 40-year career when everything goes... well, FUBAR.
- Tagline: "Heroes don't retire. They reload."
- Those Two Guys: CIA agents Roo and Aldon, who always work together and are best friends.
- Title Drop: Luke says "It's totally FUBAR." at the end of the trailer and in the final scene of the series proper.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to Luke, Boro used to be a good kid decades ago when Luke was spying on his family, and Luke went out of his way to help and support him behind the scenes as he grew up on the hopes he would become the complete opposite of his terrorist father. However, the death of his father became such a point of obsession with him that he became even worse as an adult. It's also hinted that Luke was letting his feelings for a young boy influence him and Boro was likely to always follow in his dad's footsteps.
- White Shirt of Death: In the finale, Boro wears a white suit when he is gunned down by Luke and Emma.
- You Keep Using That Word: Luke with the word "cuckolding" until he's persuaded to Google it. After finding out what it actually means, he pointedly uses the "My wife's boyfriend" joke to refer to his ex's new man.
