“Going Dutch” is supposed to be a comedy. I think. The major clue is that the episodes are 22 minutes long. There certainly aren’t a lot of jokes—nothing that made me so much as smile in its first two installments.
The sitcom follows Denis Leary as Colonel Patrick Quinn, forced into career purgatory by an ever-righteous Joe Morton as General Davidson. Colonel Quinn’s punishment is to take over U.S. Army Garrison Stroopsdorf, a diplomatic base where the soldiers are soft, the mission is making cheese (doing laundry and maintaining a bowling alley), and the Colonel’s daughter Captain Maggie Quinn (Taylor Misiak) has been in charge.
Part of why the show feels like walking through a cardboard museum is that Misiak and Leary have absolutely no chemistry. They seem more like strangers making chit-chat in the grocery aisle than a father-daughter pair. It’s not that there’s no love lost; it’s that there’s nothing between them.
Leary, known for his delightfully crotchety characters, should be in his sweet spot here. His Colonel Quinn is in trouble for bad-mouthing his superiors. Exiled, he misses the old days when whatever came out of his white-guy mouth was inherently valuable. His daughter nudges him to stop using offensive terms and it appears like being out of the war theater may help him learn some Life Lessons.™
But the material here doesn’t give Leary much to play with and he seems to be mostly phoning it in any way, relying more on his reputation as a funny grump than actually delivering a performance.
Captain Quinn doesn’t do much better. We learn early on that she’s ambitious (she has dreams of the White House) but have no sense of why. What causes would she champion in elected office? There’s no clue. Instead, we see her trying to prove herself to her dad, but with no real understanding of why she’d bother or why she’d make so many mistakes along the way.
Danny Pudi as the Colonel’s XO offers a bit of humanity as the competent, good soldier who’s perhaps attached himself to the wrong star. Hal Cumpston as the out-of-regulation IT whiz seems at least to be having fun with it (although why the show needs a body-shaming subplot is unclear). And Laci Mosley as Sergeant Dana Conway, the base’s de facto fixer and smuggler, yucks it up.
I did see some promise in episode five, where the Captain’s boyfriend, CIA operative Rick (Parker Young), comes to the base. Finally, there are actual jokes, mostly at the CIA’s expense. Keeping to its light generational (and therefore political) conflict, here, “Going Dutch” exhibits a bit of an edge, leaning all the way into its critique of American imperialism. Colonel Quinn abhors the CIA’s shadowy methods, reducing them down to “bugging and drugging,” which the plot of the episode then reinforces. It’s actually a good gag and the only one that delivers in the three episodes given to critics to screen.
The best I can say of “Going Dutch” is that it might get better. Perhaps more time together will help the actors develop some chemistry. Maybe XO Major Abraham Shah will get more of an arc. Maybe the show will lean into its ability to tease the American military and its various wings, finding its footing in said jokes.
Maybe not though. And if not, “Going Dutch” will remain a cardboard cutout of a show. About as interesting as the laundry its characters do.
Three episodes screened for review. Premieres tonight on FOX.