Let's Talk About The Body Count Of FUBAR Season 1

This post contains spoilers for "FUBAR." 

In the season finale of Arnold Schwarzenegger's "FUBAR," it's unclear if it's the CIA mission gone wrong or the Brenner family's personal lives that wind up totally F.U.B.A.R. by the end of the episode. In episode 8, "That's It and That's All," Luke (Schwarzenegger) and his daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) are forced to reveal that they are secretly CIA operatives when the main villain, Boro (Gabriel Luna), gives new meaning to the term wedding crasher. Luke certainly doesn't want to see his ex-wife Tally (Fabiana Udenio) get married to another man, but shooting up the entire ceremony isn't exactly the best way to raise an objection.

For a spy thriller starring one of our most recognized action icons, "FUBAR" is actually not as bloody as you might expect. After taking out the entire L.A.P.D. police station in "The Terminator," blowing up an army base in "Commando," and tag-teaming faceless bad guys in the "Expendables" films, maybe the Austrian Oak has gotten a little soft now that he's well passed retirement age. There's a body count in "FUBAR," for sure, but the violence isn't the main selling point here.

Most deaths take place off screen and aren't given much weight, especially early on in the season when Luke and Emma's cover is completely blown on Boro's estate. Numerous henchman come in for the attack but are largely dispersed of in relatively quick fashion. There should be an accepted level of death and destruction when Schwarzenegger dives back into the action genre, but for a show called "FUBAR," there's a lot less carnage than people might expect. That said, the mission and the show is primarily focused on killing one man who winds up being extremely hard to put down.

Whenever there is explicit violence in "FUBAR," it's done with a wink instead of a blunt force strike to the head. The kills are mostly setups for Arnie one-liners that reference past films. In episode 2, "Slow Train," Luke shouting "He's attacking the plane by Choppa!" is an obvious nod to "Predator" that comes around once again in "That's It and That's All." There are spats of blood and plenty of sporadic gunfire in "FUBAR," and some deaths are only seen on screen monitors that have all the emotional connection of a drone strike. There's a dead cow that pops up at one point and a couple of sliced throats but it's all shown after the fact.

There's no emotional connection to most of the deaths taking place, save for when special ops agent Aldon (Travis Van Winkle) is shot in the gut trapped inside the tunnel of a nuclear power plant. Luckily, he's saved by his colleague Roo (Fortune Feimster), who performs a crude surgery to save his life. So, another potential victim is scratched off of the body count list.

"FUBAR" is only concerned with Boro's death, and the entire series rests on the cat-and-mouse chase between the CIA and the world's most dangerous arms dealer. The CIA already thinks they've killed Boro, until he suddenly shows up at Tally's wedding, takes her hostage, and threatens to blow them all up (having survived an explosion that left him with heavy scarring). Luke and Emma finally manage to shoot him several times. Then, Roo shoots him again, right in the head to finish the job.

If I were to guess, Roo has definitely seen the ending of "Scream" before. There are countless offscreen deaths throughout the first season, but when it's all said and done, "FUBAR" really just has a body count of one.

"FUBAR" is now streaming on Netflix.