In Netflix's 'Obliterated,' the Special Ops Team Goes on a Sex-and-Drug-Fueled Bender

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 11, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 11, 2023 |

Thanks to shows like The Recruit, The Night Agent, and FUBAR, Netflix has cornered the market on generic spy thrillers. The latest adds a wrinkle: A generic spy thriller crossed with The Hangover 2 (it’s not as good as The Hangover, but it’s better than The Hangover 3. Acne scars are better than The Hangover 3).

Obliterated is about a very attractive special-ops team tasked with disarming a nuclear bomb in Las Vegas. That task is seemingly completed in the first episode, and to celebrate, the team gets completely wasted on cocaine, molly, alcohol, LSD, and other assorted drugs. Soon after that, they discover that the bomb they disarmed was a fake, and they have to go back into the field to disarm the real nuclear bomb while they are … obliterated.

Obliterated is not a particularly good show, but it is undeniably entertaining. The series comes from the team behind Cobra Kai — Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald — and they have mastered the light action comedy relatively well. The writing is mediocre, but it works all the same because the cast is attractive and has excellent chemistry, and the action sequences are better than they have any right to be.

The cast is toplined by Nick Zano (Legends of Tomorrow) and Shelley Hennig (Teen Wolf), familiar-ish television actors whose characters hate each other until they don’t (“hate fuck” is a phrase thrown around in the early episodes). They’re surrounded by an ensemble cast that includes Terrence Terrell, who plays the Terry Crews-like muscle; Kimi Rutledge, who plays a tech wizard who at one point recreates that Ali Larter scene from Varsity Blues; and Paola Lázaro, one of the only great things to have to come out of the last couple of seasons of The Walking Dead, who plays the sharpshooter. C. Thomas Howell plays the disgusting, degenerate, and occasionally very funny bomb defuser, while Eugene Kim plays the helicopter pilot being haunted by hallucinations of a gremlin voiced perfectly by Jason Mantzoukas. Recurring casts include villains played by David Costabile (Breaking Bad, Billions) and Costa Ronin (The Americans). There are even a couple of guest roles for Lori Petty and Virginia Madsen because Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald know their ’80s B-movies.

The premise cannot sustain eight episodes — these characters can’t be drunk the whole time — and it probably would’ve worked better as a movie, but it’s dumb, fun background viewing, which is Netflix’s bread and butter. It kills time and brain cells; it’s like what would happen if the characters from Chuck were R-rated, went on a bender, had a lot of sex, and sobered up about four episodes too soon.

Obliterated is currently streaming on Netflix.