By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 24, 2025 |
I don’t know where I saw it, but the other day, someone wrote that Going Dutch and Tim Allen’s Shifting Gears were part of a larger trend in television aimed at appealing to conservative viewers. Honestly, it pissed me off. First, I hated seeing Going Dutch lumped into the same category as Shifting Gears, which I’ve watched and found not very good, although calling Shifting Gears “conservative” still feels like a stretch. Yes, it features a conservative character, played by Tim Allen, whose politics are satirized just as much as those of the liberal daughter character, played by Kat Dennings. The show comes from Mike Scully, a former showrunner for The Simpsons and a writer for Parks and Recreation, neither of which scream “conservative television.”
Tim Allen’s involvement is probably why it gets labeled that way, but no one calls Frasier conservative just because it stars Kelsey Grammer. Similarly, Everybody Loves Raymond and The Middle weren’t labeled conservative because Patricia Heaton starred in them. What The Middle, Raymond, Shifting Gears, and even The Simpsons have in common is that they’re about blue-collar families. Some people apparently equate “blue-collar” with “conservative,” which drives me nuts. No one called Roseanne a conservative show, at least not before its lead went off the deep end and got booted.
Likewise, I suspect the person who labeled Going Dutch as “conservative” did so because it’s set on an army base. Or maybe they assume Dennis Leary is conservative because he usually plays blue-collar characters like firefighters and cops. Piss off. Those are good union jobs! Not every blue-collar job in America needs to be boxed into the “conservative” category.
Or maybe it’s because both Going Dutch and Shifting Gears feature major characters who are dicks. Dennis Leary has basically made a career out of playing assholes. He even wrote a song called “The Asshole” song back in the ’90s, which he just updated this week on Jimmy Fallon.
But here’s the thing: Liberals can be assholes, too. Working-class folks can be assholes. Asshole isn’t a political ideology. Bernie Sanders is an asshole. Hell, I aspire to be an asshole, but no one ever takes me seriously as one.
So no, Going Dutch is not a “conservative” comedy. It’s just a comedy. It’s about U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Quinn (Leary), who goes on a rant, gets reassigned to a military base in the Netherlands, the “least important Army base in the world,” and ends up supervising a unit that mostly does laundry and makes cheese. While trying to establish discipline, he butts heads with his estranged daughter Maggie (Taylor Misiak), the base’s former leader.
The supporting cast is solid, too. Danny Pudi plays Quinn’s assistant (essentially a Gary Walsh-type). Laci Mosley plays Maggie’s close friend and fellow officer. Hal Cumpston is the resident base screw-up, and Catherine Tate recurs as Dr. Katja Vanderhoff, an immigration advisor for sex workers who’s mistaken for a brothel owner (and becomes Leary’s love interest).
This show isn’t winning any Emmys or being hailed as a “great” comedy, but it’s fun. It leverages Leary’s knack for playing assholes while highlighting Misiak’s likable charm (you might remember her as Lil Dicky’s girlfriend in Dave). It’s reminiscent of Kevin Biegel’s Enlisted, a great show that was canceled too soon, and even nods to it by casting Parker Young as a guest star. It shares a similar sense of humor and isn’t afraid to try inventive new things, like this week’s episode, which featured a Dutch game called Korfball and explored Quinn’s relationship with a polyamorous woman.
It’s good. It pairs nicely with the weirdly fun Joel McHale comedy Animal Control, which I’m still surprised is on the air. I love a good half-hour sitcom, and there’s such a dearth of them right now. Going Dutch is a solid B+ sitcom — funny, irreverent, and refreshingly different from procedural dramas, prestige streamers, and Netflix’s endless gray paste. And honestly, who doesn’t love a good asshole?