Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “Cuckold” Bit in ‘FUBAR’ is the Joke of 2023

Arnold Schwarzenegger is turning the heat up in the new Netflix series FUBAR. The actor says “cuckold” not once, not twice, but five times in the action comedy as part of a bit that involves his character not knowing the slang definition of the word. Despite being urged multiple times by a younger colleague to stop repeating it, his character doesn’t learn until it’s too late. But, thankfully for us, that isn’t the last of the NSFW humor in the show.

The Netflix series follows a father and daughter, Luke (Schwarzenegger) and Emma Brunner (Monica Barbaro), who discover that they’re both secret agents for the CIA after being placed on an assignment together. The two butt heads throughout the series as their complicated family dynamics follow them into the workplace.

One particular issue that continuously pops up is Luke’s divorce from Emma’s mom, Tally (Fabiana Udenio), and his attempts to win her back. With the help of his close colleague, Barry (Milan Carter), Luke decides to spy on Tally and her new boyfriend, Donnie (Andy Buckley), by planting cameras around his home and tapping into his internet history.

In Episode 2, the two characters test the camera feed and go through his mail, discovering that the boyfriend “pays for Skinemax,” jams out to classic Blues music, and still eats food after it’s been dropped on the ground. Luke proclaims, “How could a woman who was married to a guy like me date such a schmuck?”

They also discover that he’s investing money in Luke and Tally’s son’s latest entrepreneur scheme, which frustrates the secret agent. “This guy is dumber than I thought,” ponders Luke aloud, to which Barry responds, “He’s not dumb, he’s scoring brownie points from Ms. B.” Schwarzenegger’s character fights back, saying, “He’s trying to cuckold me! He’s trying to use my son to cuckold me.”

Uhhh, what? Say that again?

Barry questions Luke’s usage of the term, which is clearly new to his vocabulary. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” he says. Luke responds, “It comes from the cuckoo bird. When one bird takes over another bird’s family.” Barry says back, “There are a thousand online videos that would disagree with you.” The two become distracted by the livestream video and drop the topic after Donnie reveals that the Brunner family is having a dinner that Luke isn’t invited to attend.

Now, Luke is a well-traveled, experienced CIA agent. He surely knows the formal definition of the word, which is “the husband of an adulterous wife,” also referred to in biology as a man who helps raise a child who isn’t his genetic offspring. And the word does historically derive from cuckoo birds as they have a habit of laying eggs in other birds’ nests. But, over time definitions change, and per Urban Dictionary, another common definition of the term is “a man who finds arousal in watching his wife have sex with another man.” And as Barry insinuated with his “a thousands online videos” comments, it’s a major trend among adult entertainment sites. 

The joke comes up again towards the end of the episode when Luke and Barry crash the family dinner and are met with overwhelming kindness from the Tally’s partner. “The son-of-a-bitch is cuckolding my entire family, now he’s using his cupcakes to cuckold you too,” Luke complains to Barry as they leave. Frustrated, the tech guru says, “When you look that up online, you’re going to be really upset with yourself.”

Eventually, the subject gets forgotten and the CIA team gets assigned a mission, and the show falls back into the traditional action-comedy formula as the rest of the episode plays on. However, in a delightful surprise, Luke acknowledges his mishap in the following episode after Emma tells him that she knows about his secret cameras. Luke calls Barry and tells him to shut the “operation” down and adds, “I Googled cuckolding, I owe you an apology.” Is this a weird joke to include given Schwarzenegger’s very public cheating scandal? Maybe! But it’s still funny in the context of the show and we’re happy to see that the action star can poke fun at himself.

That’s not the end of the raunchy humor as the episode awkwardly sees Luke overseeing Emma undercover on a honeypot mission to seduce a villain, Nik. When things go wrong, Luke is stuck holding a heavy antenna that’s connected to a heavy power line that the team is using to communicate with Emma. While she devises a plan to distract the bad guy, her father is holding onto the equipment, which is heating up. The team taps into Nik’s internet history and finds that he has “an assortment of spanking videos,” after the sound of a video plays onto the feed, and unrelated, Luke proclaims, “It’s getting hot!” in relation to the antenna he’s holding. His team says “eww” as he rushes to explain. Later, Luke watches in horror as his daughter strips her clothing to distract Nik… gross!

This sense of humor is carried throughout the series and makes for a shockingly risqué watch, but remains in the living-room-appropriate genre — a term I like to use to describe shows that could probably be watched in a family setting, such as while eating dinner in the living room. It is reminiscent of Shrinking, which saw Harrison Ford inappropriately using the term “raw dog” while chatting with his friends and family. Both shows are tame in nature but sprinkle in the occasional innuendo. Perhaps seasoned, older men incorrectly using vulgar, sexual slang is the trend for 2023 – and if so, FUBAR certainly cuckolded it.