How ‘Obliterated’ Pulled Off Wild Action Stunts on the Vegas Strip
Las Vegas is one hell of a city. There’s quite literally nowhere else in the world quite like it: the Vegas Strip is one of the most outrageous streets in America, providing a seamless blend of wildly over-the-top, ridiculously tacky ultra-decadence, and rousing nightlife. The street is overflowing with hotels, all seeking to be more spectacular than the next, offering dozens of restaurants and even full shopping malls inside. They all have unique features too, like a rooftop roller coaster at the STRAT hotel, a lavish shopping center with spiral escalators at Caesar’s Palace, or an indoor canal with gondola rides at the Venetian. If you can dream it—and afford it—in Vegas, it can happen.
That kind of madcap, unpredictable energy fuels Netflix’s Obliterated, the latest series from Cobra Kai creators Hayden Schlossberg, Josh Heald, and Jon Hurwitz. Obliterated, which premiered Nov. 30, is quite a departure from that nostalgia-fueled karate series and is perhaps a more boisterous sibling of the Harold & Kumar movies written by Schlossberg and Hurwitz—only with military-caliber action set pieces taking place on the Vegas strip in lieu of White Castles.
The show follows an elite team made up of the very best of the U.S. military. They’ve traveled to Vegas for one hell of a mission: They’ve got to stop a vicious terrorist group from destroying Sin City with a nuclear bomb. It doesn’t take long for this group of highly skilled individuals to succeed, effortlessly dismantling the nuke with time to spare. The success leads to the kind of partying and debauchery that only Vegas can offer: drugs, booze, sex, and camels(!?). It’s like the creators of Obliterated took the mantra of “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” literally, and ran gleefully with it.