by John Tillyard, Contributing Writer
Obliterated is brought to you by a writing team with a trio best known for Cobra Kai: Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg. Here, they bring us another Netflix series that attempts to balance comedy, character drama, and action. An elite team must stop a group of terrorists from blowing up Las Vegas. After believing they’ve succeeded, they party only to discover, now intoxicated, that the bomb the team disarmed was a fake. They must now work through the night to find the real bomb while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
The first thing to make clear here is that while these are the same writers as Cobra Kai, the writing is certainly in a different style. There is far more of a focus on comedy, and its style evocative of satire, with many surreal and absurd moments. It saves its drama almost exclusively for short instances of emotion. The comedy reminded me far more of Team America or Archerthan the Karate Kid sequel series. There’s also a far more R-rated vibe to everything, with a decent amount of nudity, blood, and cursing. In terms of story, the premise is in the style of 24,with most events occurring in real-time, but as a comedy.
Cleverly, the story opens with the team on a mission to find and disarm the fake bomb, thereby giving us a condensed version of what will be to come in the following seven episodes. A party scene follows the bomb disarming, establishing certain character traits and relationships, and setting up plot threads. It’s an exciting way to draw you into the story and establish the main cast of characters. If you are into the story after the first episode, you’ll like the rest of it. But the real meat of the story begins in the second episode. Only then does the plot start resembling something slightly more original and take a few more unexpected twists. What’s weird is that a flashback shows how the mission began, having already done a decent job introducing the characters, their background, the nature of their relationship with each other, and what they do on the team. The flashback gives us very little new information, and even that isn’t anything we couldn’t have guessed. Thankfully, it’s only a few minutes long. As the intensity of the situation increases, Heald and co.’s writing starts to shine through, as they balance the drama of the team’s position with the comedy of how the characters play off each other. On top of the main plot with the bomb, many side plots and character arcs are woven into this eight-episode adventure which help the audience sympathize with the characters much more.
Speaking of the characters, let’s briefly go over what their deal is. Ava (Shelley Hennig), CIA agent and team leader, is the most professional member of the team, and she tries to encourage the rest of them to act professionally, even in several pretty absurd situations. Chad (Nick Zeno) is the typical off-the-rails soldier who doesn’t care about following the rules. He is kind of a dick and a scoundrel towards other members of the team, but as an experienced marine, he also doesn’t think twice about putting his life on the line. Chad also has a romance with Ava, which goes precisely where you’d expect in an R-rated comedy. Trunk (Terrence Terrell) is a longtime marine friend of Chad’s, who is mainly a comic relief and acts like Chad’s wingman in many scenes. He also has a running gag over the story that causes him to become increasingly frustrated as the story progresses. However, it’s a gag that overstays its welcome, making for somewhat predictable jokes towards the end and a fairly obvious payoff. Helicopter pilot Paul (Eugene Kim) is the most down-to-earth of the main cast. He goes through the most distinct bit of character growth, as he juggles his job with finding out where his daughter is, which works well with the show’s style of comedy. However, a sequence with him partway through the story puts his character’s arc on hold for the sake of a rather clichéd joke that annoyed me so much I had to shut the episode off for a bit. But by the end of his arc, it felt like the most original thing in the narrative. Angela (Paola Lazaro), the sniper, is the least developed of the main cast, acting mainly to motivate other characters to grow. Maya (Kimi Rutledge) is the technology expert and geek of the group — she also lacks self-confidence, admitting many times that she is worthless without a computer to work with. There was potential for some real growth, with her becoming a more critical part of the team later, but she never gets a precise moment to shine or be the one to save the day. Haggerty (C. Thomas Howell) only serves one purpose in the story: He’s the only one who can disarm the bomb. Outside of that, his character is dispensable; he’s unconscious for large parts of the story and partakes in much filler the rest of the time.
There are many other characters the group crosses paths with, along with the central team. The story structure is similar to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,with a large cast of characters splitting off into smaller groups and crossing over occasionally. With this kind of ensemble cast, and multiple storylines going on simultaneously, there is often the danger of the plot becoming overly convoluted and challenging to keep track of. However, it always feels clear where any character is, why they are there, and their relationship with the people they are with.
These performances are solid as well. Since the main cast all play fairly standard archetypes for this kind of story, the show needed some compelling performances to give the whole experience more of a kick. I particularly enjoyed Terrell, as he switches between acting intimidating and acting frustrated by his situation. Kim is another fun performance, because his character may be the straightest of the group, but he has to react to some of the most bizarre circumstances. He sells it with his reactions being precisely the same as the audience’s. Alyson Gorske as the civilian, Lana, is the standout performance for me; something about her presence adds a bit of extra comedy. The main turn-offs in terms of acting are the villains, and I can’t begin to describe how boring and wooden they feel. But the good news is, they only get a little screen time.
The narrative is paper thin, though, as the basic plot is very straightforward: There’s a bomb, and they must stop it from going off. We get a bit of background about who the bad guys’s identities and motives, but nothing that’s required to understand the plot. The story has a few twists, but they’re the surface-level kind you see in every action-adventure story. On top of that, the bad guys are pretty forgettable. The real draw of this show doesn’t come from a deep, slowly thickening plot; it comes from enjoying the ride of the action mixed with comedy.
In particular, the comedy is very hit-or-miss, and a lot of it goes over many standard comedy tropes. To give a few examples: A character thinks they’ve found something but haven’t, characters misunderstand the situation and make things worse, and there are even a few fake-out moments. There’s also some gross-out humor, which I’ve never understood the appeal of, since the whole joke seems to be just that it’s gross. Seeing something disgusting doesn’t make me laugh. However, there is less humor in this series than I thought there would be, and many of the short one-liners or quick moments of humor work. I didn’t laugh out loud that much, mainly because the gags are so rapid-fire that I had no time to react before something else happened. The humor is about the quantity of funny stuff happening, rather than the quality of it.
I’d use the word “quantity” to describe the action in this series. It’s like every action flick rolled into one, and it plays all the hits: gun fights, hand-to-hand combat, sniper situations, car chases, and so forth. Large parts are challenging to see, since over half of the story occurs at night. But outside of that, the way the show is shot is beautifully compelling, and it does a great job utilizing the unique visuals of Las Vegas. Does any specific sequence stand out from any other action flick in the last 30 years? Not at all. But as a whole, it does stand out, since there’s so much of it, and it’s all remarkably entertaining to watch.
Overall, Obliterated isn’t going to win any awards for writing or originality, and it certainly isn’t in the same league as its writing team’s other Netflix series. It is, however, a lot of fun, and has a straightforward plot that makes it easy to follow and not take too seriously, despite the high stakes of the premise. Something new happens in every scene, and there’s a great mix of action and comedy that always feels like it is giving us the right amount of one or the other. The tone sometimes feels slightly messy, especially during significant conflict between the characters. Many of the jokes and a few plot twists are predictable and cliche. The characters are the driving force of what makes this a profoundly compelling experience, even if the villains are as dull as ditchwater. Like a night out in Las Vegas, don’t think too hard; just enjoy yourself.
Rating: Low side of liked it
Obliterated is currently streaming on Netflix
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