obliterated (season 1)

It would be easy to dismiss Obliterated at first glance as the lowest of low-hanging fruit - an obvious and deliberately lowbrow spoof of Michael Bay’s particular brand of high-gloss, action junkie heroin (highly addictive, yet deleterious to your health). But anyone familiar with creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald should have the intuitive sense to check that impulse. The prolific trio is best known for their ongoing Karate Kid continuation Cobra Kai and - in spite of that show’s massive popularity - I still don’t think they get nearly enough credit for the insane tonal needle they’ve effortlessly threaded over five seasons… a complex cocktail of legacy sequel, coming-of-age teen melodrama, affectionate spoof, and genuine martial arts epic that blends together flawlessly. Leveraging nostalgia for childhood properties has become a poisonous business, but Cobra Kai remains the flagship for how to do it correctly. 

Obliterated isn’t nearly as good as Cobra Kai, but it’s given a similarly solid foundation of character from which to operate. Ava Winters (Shelley Hennig) is a CIA field agent in charge of a joint special-operations team tasked with thwarting the sale of a stolen nuke in Las Vegas. Her designated crew consists of cocksure Navy SEAL McKnight (Nick Zano) and his partner-in-crime Trunk (Terrence Terrell), sharpshooter Gomez (Paola Lázaro), NSA tech geek Maya (Kimi Rutledge), helicopter pilot Paul (Eugene Kim), and Hagerty (C. Thomas Howell), exactly the sort of eccentric nutcase you’d expect to find in the field of explosive ordnance disposal. The mission is accomplished, notorious arms dealer Ivan Koslov (Costa Ronin) is taken into custody, and an evening of narcotics-and-booze fueled debauchery ensues. Only problem is, the recovered nuke turns out to be a fake… and the team suddenly has just twelve hours to find the real one, caught in a hung-over, drugged-out malaise of dysfunctional disarray.

It’s easy to imagine the elevator pitch (“It’s The Hangover… but the Simpson/Bruckheimer version”). That being said, Hurwitz/Schlossberg/Heald are much too savvy to simply leave it at that. Various nuggets of character-based (and drug-induced) drama (Winters and McKnight’s love/hate sexual tension; Maya’s unrequited crush on McKnight; Trunk’s sexuality) flare up over the course of the post-mission interlude, leaving the team with considerable interpersonal wreckage… minus the luxury of time or headspace to actually iron any of it out (compounding matters is the fact the straight-edged Paul accidentally ingested LSD-laced guacamole and is literally seeing gremlins (the sort voiced by Jason Mantzoukas), while Hagerty is so zonked out on a special acid-and-mushrooms cocktail he remains out of commission for nearly three-quarters of the season). Obliterated is the sort of show that’s sensible enough to get its ducks in a row before shifting into full-on looney tunes mode. Hennig is an actress who’s seen a fair amount of success playing pretty girls on soaps like Days of Our Lives and teen shows like The Secret Circle and Teen Wolf, but this is the first time she’s felt like a potential star - her comedic touch is legitimate, as is her ability to carry a series. She pairs well with Zano (looking like a cross between Josh Holloway on Lost and celebrity hair stylist Chaz Dean), who slots in comfortably to the role of brash, red-blooded, all-American action hero (though characters like these operate so close to the edge of self-parody to begin with, it rarely feels as if he’s comedically subverting the archetype).​

The entire cast has an easy appeal and camaraderie… which is a good thing, because even Cobra Kai’s creative team can’t overcome the fact that Obliterated is essentially a two-hour action movie that’s been tenuously stretched over an eight episode frame. The thinness of the premise is difficult to overlook. Running gags - such as the voracious Trunk being continuously thwarted in his quest for anything even semi-edible - grow tired sooner rather than later (obvious Vegas humor - such as Elvis impersonators - is inevitably mined). The comedic formula doesn’t really have legs… at some point the series simply more or less becomes what it originally set out to satirize. Certain casting choices supply additional juice (David Costabile from Billions and Breaking Bad proves a welcome addition as a black market baddie making a play for the nuke, while Alyson Gorske is a surprise standout as a vapid party girl/social influencer who gets pulled into the adventure and proves more resourceful than you might expect). At least the show doesn’t skimp on the visual fireworks; it flaunts an authentic appreciation of its stylistic inspirations, unafraid to indulge in R-rated carnage. The humor proves overly reliant on gross-out gags and bodily fluids though… rendering the series more of a crass guilty pleasure than was likely intended. Perhaps it’s for the best that Netflix declined to move forward with a second season. As the Hangover sequels showed, the aftermath tends to be a lot less funny the second time around.