[imagesource:wonderai]

Netflix seems to have completely embraced ‘quantity over quality’ in its quest to obliterate the competition. The latest series to be viscerated by critics is the upcoming ’90s nostalgia action’ show Obliterated.

Described as a “combination of the worst elements of this nostalgia, with two-dimensional goodies and baddies plus painfully unfunny, supposedly edgy humour,” the series seems to continue a trend of giving prime time to B-rate shows.

What we perhaps don’t realise is that all those bad B-rate movies we used to avoid at Mr. Video are now mixed in with the Oscar winners on our feeds, so it’s harder to ignore than the dusty shelf with all the American Ninja films (whatever happened to Michael Dudikof?)

Obliterated features the standard team of elite US soldiers tasked with stopping a Russian arms dealer from supplying a nuclear weapon to a terrorist who wants to blow up Las Vegas. Russia is of course the ‘enemy-of-the-month’ for all recently released action films after the Middle East has now been obliterated.

The series starts off by showing the elite squad enjoying some well-deserved R&R after successfully saving democracy once again, and as reviews mention, the opening celebrations feature plenty of ‘booze, drugs and blowjobs’, because that’s how anti-heroes roll. The festivities are however disrupted when the Pentagon calls to say the group disarmed the wrong nuke, and now freedom is in peril once again.

The party ends and explosions ensue.

Obliterated was written by the same team behind the reasonably successful Netflix hit Cobra Kai. This in itself should provide clues as to the ‘old school macho’ theme Obliterated takes, with comedic elements ranging from d*ck jokes to drug jokes all the way back to d*ck jokes again.

The female characters also get the 90s treatment with pointless shower scenes and missions in string bikinis. For the most part, the female characters appear to “just need a man to give them a good seeing-to”. There’s the nerdy and horny NSA agent Maya (Kimi Rutledge), the tough and horny CIA agent Ava Winters (Shelley Hennig), and the horny and gay Marine sniper Angela Gomez (Paola Lázaro).

For some extra variety, the male team also features Navy Seal Trunk (Terrence Terrell) as the token black and gay soldier with his catchy catchphrase “Smell my d*ck, motherf*cker!”

It’s a disquieting experience to endure, and feels like being stuck in a lift with Jay from The Inbetweeners desperately trying to convince you how sexy and tough he is.

Racial stereotypes and objectification of women aside, the show seems to be bloated with pointless action scenes and a timeline that sees our heroes taking days to find and diffuse a bomb with a six-hour countdown clock. This makes the pace of Obliterated “so excruciating and so repetitive that by the third hour, nothing would seem more heroic than someone detonating the bomb and putting us all out of our misery”.

If you’re a fan of Porky’s and Chuck Norris’ Missing In Action, then this is for you. If not, the trailer should be enough to dissuade you.

[source:guardian]