Today while driving for work I saw a rear windshield decal that read “Get him off me I can feel his dick in my belly button”. I thought it was either a funny or horrifying thing to put on a windshield, depending on context. It was certainly random enough to catch my attention. Searching for it led to a pirate subtitle page indicating a show called “Obliterated” on Netflix. It takes place in Las Vegas. I live in Las Vegas. Let’s see what this is all about.

Five minutes into the first episode of season one and every utterance was a cliche and the macho posturing was archetypical and boring. An evil Russian guy with a bomb and macho US special forces have to stop him so they casually slaughter about two dozen people. That alone is boring and regressive but hardly uniquely bad. But the cliches don’t stop. And the posturing escalates. People chant “U.S.A!” for no obvious reason. It seems like a scene from Team America or something except it doesn’t feel like parody.

I start texting friends telling them about the decal and how it has led me to an incredibly bad television show. I send a series of texts:

• 10min in and my god this show is terrible
• seems like something netflix picked up in the bargain bin
• wow this is impressively bad
• i could not hate this show more. wow
• you guys wouldnt believe how bad this is. it’s amazing

We soon learn the evil Russian with the bomb they stopped in the opening scene was using a fake bomb and more evil Russians are threatening to use the real bomb. But the special forces team got shickered celebrating their win and now these inebriated folks have to go back to work. Hence the double entendre title, “Obliterated” in reference to the teams state of mind and the potential destruction of Las Vegas. If this is satire of some sort, it’s really well hidden. It’s like if someone used ChatGPT to script a show with data inputs of Reagan-era Hollywood action scripts and a command to make it blander yet more graphic which, I guess, is kind of an impressive feat. It’s incredibly bad, but simultaneously not memorably bad. For the life of me I can’t imagine I’ll ever think of this show again after I hit PUBLISH. I couldn’t finish the first episode and you, dear reader, shouldn’t even start it. It could be that the first episode was the set up for a brilliant show to follow. But I’ll never know it.