Netflix's New Series Obliterated Is Getting Critics' Attention (And Not In A Good Way)
There's no doubt that Netflix is the biggest name in streaming. Though it lost some subscribers in 2022, the company has come out the other side and now boasts around 247 million paid subscribers — almost 50 million more than its closest rival, Prime Video. But the rise of Netflix has come at a cost to us all. That is to say we've been fed a seemingly never ending stream of middling "content," most of which seems to come and go without making any significant impact.
While this cultural nightmare continues unabated, Netflix has been gleefully raising prices, mainly because they signed up everyone they possibly could and now need to squeeze 'em for everything they've got. All of which would be fine — or at least, par for the course in our free market reality — except the streamer insists on taking our subscription fees and funding stuff like "Obliterated."
What's "Obliterated?" It's an action series where the heroes are all wasted, of course. Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald, the guys behind "Cobra Kai," have now brought us this eight-episode series with the tagline, "Even heroes get hangovers." The show asks the question, "What would happen if you mixed an '80s actioner with 'The Hangover'?," the answer of course being something truly egregious even by streaming standards.
Surely a series so unabashedly ridiculous in both its premise and execution would also have some sense of self-awareness, right? Well, apparently not. As Variety's Aramide Tinubu wrote in her review, "Instead of an uproarious commentary on the culture of drugs and drinking and the various factions of the U.S. Intelligence Community, 'Obliterated' is a baffling, nearly unwatchable hodgepodge of nonsense littered with penises and explosives." And Tinubu isn't the only critic who seems personally affronted by Netflix's latest effort.
A new low?
At one point in "Obliterated," Nick Zano's character, Chad McKnight, proclaims, "I don't care how f****d up we are, we're still the best in the game." That's pretty much the whole idea propelling the show: An elite squad from various military backgrounds thwart a plot to blow up Las Vegas before partying the night away, only to be told mid-rager that the bomb they diffused was a decoy and the threat of a nuclear explosion still looms. The crew are then forced to jump back into action, having imbibed a smorgasbord of illegal substances. Showrunner Josh Heald explained the idea to TUDUM thusly: "Even if you're the so-called best of the best, you're gonna be way up against it if called back into action with a system full of liquor and drugs."
Such a premise sounds undeniably silly, but perhaps it's all designed to make some sort of comment on drinking/party culture, or subtly undermine American jingoism with a satirical take on the US military? Or maybe this is the return of the unabashedly silly yet beloved comedy movies of the early 2000s that just leaned into the absurdity and gave us all a good laugh, à la "Step Brothers." Well ... no, it's none of those things, and the critics aren't too impressed.
While "Obliterated" might have simply added to the perennial noxious gas cloud of streaming fare that hangs over our media landscape, it at least has yielded some of the best sentences yet penned by critics this year. Take this gem from The Guardian:
"The pace is so excruciating and the show 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."
Things didn't get much better from there either...
The Hangover meets Steven Seagal
The Telegraph was no less damning in its appraisal, with Anita Singh writing, "['Obliterated'] is so avowedly dumb that you spend the first episode thinking that the writers are spoofing 1980s action movies and any minute now they'll cleverly up-end it. Nope." The outlet dubbed the show "brainless teenage-boy's fantasy nonsense" and "the worst show of 2023," with Singh rounding out her review by marveling at how "Obliterated" managed to cross "'The Hangover' with the combined oeuvre of Steven Seagal."
We've had a lot of dross from Netflix over the years. There was "Sexy Beasts," the nightmare-inducing dating show that had contestants meet while in elaborate makeup and prosthetics. There's also this phenomenon of aggressively mediocre action movies like "The Gray Man" and "Extraction," which we all swear we've seen but can't quite remember what the heck happened in any of them. Even worse, a lot of these shows and films seem to command our attention – the terrible thriller "Muted," which hit the streamer's top 10 back in May 2023, being one example.
While all this Netflix bashing might seem unfair, you've got to keep in mind that this company is basically dictating a large chunk of our cultural experience, and is doing absolutely fine for itself with those 247 million subscribers. Meanwhile, the streamer has at least promised to focus on quality over quantity going forward (via Variety), which sounds great but somehow rings hollow when it comes alongside the release of something like "Obliterated." That said, CNN, was much more forgiving about the show, dubbing it "just plain fun," and praising how it "juggl[ed] comedy and spy conventions with a lot of knowing winks and a clear appreciation for the genre."
Oh god, there's going to be a second season, isn't there...