Space Force
netflix
The new Netflix show, Space Force, co-created by The Office alums, Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, demonstrates a serious case of identity crisis. The first episode is a drama, the second is a comedy, and the rest simply cannot decide what to be. The dramedy can be a potent genre; but here, both comedy and drama are half-baked, while the show would have benefited immensely from leaning heavily in one direction or the other.
The idea for Space Force was taken from the real-life announcement of an anticipated Space Force by President Donald Trump’s administration. Unfortunately, Daniels and Carell seemed unable to think of something more creative to build on this idea, and the butt of most of the show’s jokes is the President’s actions. That’s all fine and good, but Trump and his administration have already been skewered to death on practically every late-night comedy show, and it’s probably fair to say that at this point Space Force is beating a dead horse.
It’s a further disappointment because of the tremendous comedic talent involved. Carell, one of his generation’s most gifted comic actors, plays General Mark Naird, who is in charge of the Force. John Malkovich is the Force’s chief scientist, Lisa Kudrow is Naird’s imprisoned wife, Diana Silvers – of Booksmart fame – is Naird’s homesick daughter, and Ben Schwartz plays the PR guy. It’s no exaggeration to say that the entire cast is wasted. While some, like Schwartz, are hit and miss, most are just miss. The only consistently amusing part of the show are the recurring meetings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Diedrich Bader, Jane Lynch, and Patrick Warburton are among the members of the Joint Chiefs, and their squabbles are responsible for the majority of the show’s laughs.
For the most part, those laughs are few and far between. The Office credentials of Daniels and Carell were heavily touted in the show’s advertisement, and suffice to say it would have been better if the Space Force had been a straight copy of that far superior creation. In most – one could say normal – situations, trying something new is always preferable, but Space Force is not a normal show. It’s a once-in-a-blue-moon type of show that constantly provokes wonderment at how it could possibly have been greenlit.
Space Force does not so much straddle the line between comedy and drama, but awkwardly stumbles between the two genres. Tonal inconsistency, however, is but one of the show’s myriad issues. There is such a lack of care about detail that it often feels like the cast and crew realised it was a deficient mid-production, and simply finished the job up only to get it done, like busywork. For instance, the reason for Kudrow’s character’s imprisonment is never explained, and while that was most likely intended as a running joke, it is never treated as such; It feels like a mistake, the writers simply forgot to account for.
Despite the unlikeliness of viewers making it past the first half of the 10-episode season, the show does somewhat pick itself up during the back half. There are kernels of a good show in-between the moments of chaos, and the China-related Moon kerfuffles sometimes make one think this could have been a modern cold-war thriller, similar to Dr. Strangelove and Fail-Safe. Alas, it is not, as the poorly written jokes are quick to remind.
Perhaps it isn’t so surprising that the show is a disappointment, due to Daniels and Carell not exactly having the most promising starting point: the Space Force isn’t a good idea in the real world, and is an even worse idea on television.
