Netflix’s Q-Force is as soulless as a Drag Race acting challenge
The new adult animated series has nothing to offer but lazy cultural references and dated observations about queer people
TV Reviews Q-Force
To watch Q-Force, Netflix’s latest adult animated series, is to sit through 10 episodes of scripted material at the same level of quality as RuPaul’s Drag Race’s acting challenges, where talented performers try to bring to life a script with no actual jokes, just cultural references. It’s like scrolling through the drafted tweets of Gay Twitter Comedians or sifting through the outtakes for a gay podcast, where every other sentence in a conversation involves a name-drop of a pop star or actress and a catty observation about them.
The series follows a group of gay spies who work for the fictional American Intelligence Agency (AIA). The leader of the group is Steve Maryweather (Sean Hayes)—referred to primarily as “Mary,” because Mary is a name used to ridicule gay men, get it?—who spends his days trying to prove his worth and that of his team. This merry band of queer misfits includes Stat (Patti Harrison), the hacker; Deb (Wanda Sykes), the mechanic; Twink (Matt Rogers), the master of disguise and drag queen; and the token straight agent Rick Buck (David Harbour). They dive into adventures under the supervision of V (Laurie Metcalf) and in spite of the overwhelming contempt and hatred that AIA Director Dick Chunley (Gary Cole) has for queer people.
It seems unfair to call Q-Force dated, when it was likely put together quickly to have its finger on the pulse of the queer zeitgeist, but it’s hard to find any jokes that don’t rely on observations about queer people that have been around for ages. The show’s brand of humor involves reminding you that lesbians love doing things like book a U-Haul, watch Carol, wear Birkenstocks, and listen to Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car.” The writing staff recreates scenes wholesale from movies and try to pass them off as witty, much like the worst Family Guy episodes. In two of the most egregious examples, Laurie Metcalf recites an extended bit of dialogue from My Cousin Vinny for lesbian trivia, and the always reliable Stephanie Beatriz voices a character who is literally just Mia from The Princess Diaries, except she says “fuck” a lot. Every line that doesn’t serve as exposition is another reference, be it something relatively fresh and niche like turning Natalie Portman’s Vox Lux character into a Eurovision singer named Vox Tux, or something as irrelevant as a straight man farting and talking about how they should put up a poster of Carmen Electra in the year 2021.
Any time the series wants to make a statement about how queer people are treated within the contemporary cultural landscape, it undercuts itself by reinforcing whatever stereotype it was quick to joke about. There simply isn’t anything intelligent or funny in the observations being made, but creator Gabe Liedman and executive producers Michael Schur and Sean Hayes want to have their cake and eat it too. They want Q-Force to be a progressive series, one that proves that anyone can be a spy and that all sorts of queer people can show their use. But, much like Brooklyn Nine-Nine (which Schur co-created and Liedman worked on), the series has difficulty being critical of anything it depicts; Q-Force makes jokes about brands like Citibank pandering to gay people at Pride and how the American government hates gay people, while also casually reinforcing homonationalism at every beat.
Despite its stated intent to explore these characters who were rejected by the spy community for being queer, the series barely gives them any personalities of their own. The talented voice cast is wasted; performers like Sykes and Harrison have gotten better material on other shows (The Good Fight, Shrill, The Other Two, and I Think You Should Leave just to name a few). What few genuinely compelling story arcs exist (Stat’s brief relationship with an AI named Jacqueline, and V’s background at the AIA) are sidelined for the sake of more quips about how gays and lesbians act. The character designs are as uninspired as most adult animated shows these days (with some actors literally just appearing as animated versions of themselves)—not so much ugly, but not exactly appealing to look at or even the slightest bit visually ambitious. Netflix’s work with the animation studio Titmouse, Inc. has offered varying degrees of quality, from the purposely grotesque puberty exploration of Big Mouth to the beautiful surreal realms of The Midnight Gospel, but everything about Q-Force’s style feels lifeless. Outside of Twink’s various costume changes to perform in drag, there isn’t anything unique to any single figure.
Nothing about Q-Force really stands out, especially in a world where a number of genuinely good animated series for adults exist. It doesn’t have the joke-writing, world-building, or character development that comes with shows like The Venture Bros. or Harley Quinn, or the irreverent spirit and willingness to go for broke, even when it fails, of Rick And Morty. A show like Drawn Together, which was chock full of offensive humor, feels more subversive and progressive despite having premiered nearly 20 years ago. Even Q-Force’s centering of gay spies (according to the series’ creators, the intelligence community represents one of the last bastions of masculinity unexplored by queers) fails to ring original, six years after the premiere of Tom Rob Smith’s brilliant limited series London Spy.
One could deride Q-Force by calling it a show made for people who beg for more mediocre gay mainstream movies without actually looking for good queer art, but even those viewers will see through its woke façade. In spite of being created by a number of queer individuals, the series’ much-touted representation is mostly lazy stereotypes and dialogue, less designed for incisive storytelling than promoting a brand’s purported inclusivity.
66 Comments
They just gave Q-Anon a new alias.
Aw this is kind of disappointing.
Yeah, I feel disappointed too. Having a sincere, unapologetically queer spy show sounded nice, but execution is probably twice as important as having a good idea in the first place.
That show will just have to be Totally Spies for now. Which has no queer characters, but is campy as hell and kinda fun. The movie trailer, which I just learned existed, gives you the gist of it.
Speaking of queer spies, that looks a lot like an anime D.E.B.S.
Never seen Totally Spies? It’s basically Fetish Fuel: The Animated Series. Almost every episode has the girls bound, gagged, captured, in compromising situations, or hypnotized, with some having more or all of the above. It’s the horniest cartoon on television without actually being horny.
I recall an episode where they were attacked by guys guys wielding skrink-rays.. that only affected fabric. It’s exactly what you’re thinking.
Okay but now I’m mad I didn’t mention D.E.B.S in the review despite it being a favorite and clearly the best queer spy art.
I watched that when I was a kid! Loved it. And while the show never hinted at it, I had a feeling Mandy and Clover were going to eventually hook up. All that arch-enemy passion has to go somewhere.
Truly still thrown by the fact that so many people who have made so many shows I have enjoyed came together to make this thing I could not stand.
It’s the opposite of The Orville, in which a creative team I hate came together and made a show that does Trek better than Trek is doing Trek and I am still SO MAD ABOUT IT.
I’d rather just re-watch She-Ra.
Kipo is good too.
Owl House!
At least Gary Cole is getting work…
I need to send Robert and Michelle King an email and ask them if they’re not paying Cole and Sykes enough money on The Good Fight that they had to sit through this. Some of the stuff Cole delivers here (“did you hurt your pronoun?”) is cringe af.
Yikes!
Well, an easy paycheck is an easy paycheck. GC is great.
That line is one big
This isn’t 100% accurate, but a funny comparison might be that this is the “Undercover Brother” for the queer community.
Thats a shame with such a stacked team. I’ll probably still check it out for Patti Harrison
Speaking about queer characters and Venture Brothers, Shoreleave was easily one of my favorite characters.
Shore Leave 1000% better representation than anything on this show.
Dude was campy and badass as fuck, neither one ever overtaking the other.
Shore Leave is absolute proof Q Force is a missed opportunity. Just give him his own show with is own squad who similarly love being secret agents and love being who they are.
Shore Leave can do a spin-off squad of Sphinx (Sphinx!) that manage the jobs that require firearms because Longshot sucks and Brock has an aversion to them. Shore Leave can drag Gary along, if the latter feels like being a hero again.
BOOM, Yummy!
I came here to say the same thing. Shore Leave, and to a lesser extent, Ray from Archer, pull off Queer people in espionage way better than this show appears to do. Hell, even “D.E.B.S.” seems better and that movie is practically ancient. I love Shore Leave because unlike this show which seems to hide behind a “woke facade” as the author put it yet also reinforces tired stereotypes out of laziness, SL conforms to some stereotypes while also being an entirely unique character who is a hell of a lot of fun and also scary at times. He has some of the best lines on the show, but my favorite is still Hunter Gathers.
Shore Leave is so iconic that he’s made me forget the name of the G.I. Joe character he’s a parody of. I wound up having to Google it during a recent chat conversation, because every time I tried to think of his name (it’s Shipwreck, to save you the trouble) the name “Shore Leave” kept popping in there instead. A towering achievement!
(Although I wish his team-up with Sky Pilot and Holy Diver had been funnier; those other two characters didn’t really pull their weight.)
SPHINX!
Just did a rewatch of the whole series and thought a lot about the queer representation in it. It’s pretty bad especially the transphobia and just general mockery around the idea of men becoming woman-like. There’s a lot to cringe at.But I think the reason queer people tend to love it despite that is homosexuality was used as a grounding element, something real that stood in contrast with the absurd costumed heroes world. There was a lot of lol-homo, but then there was also Shoreleave, and the Alchemist, and to a lesser extent Hunter Gathers just being spies and magicians while not being straight/cis.
“It seems unfair to call Q-Force dated, when it was likely put together quickly to have its finger on the pulse of the queer zeitgeist, but it’s hard to find any jokes that don’t rely on observations about queer people that have been around for ages.”
So…you don’t understand what “dated” means?
If your dad calls a gay person a “poof”, his opinions are dated even though he said it in 2021.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m above “twinks/lesbians/etc. be like” humor, both because I’m a basic bitch and because twinks/lesbians/etc. really do be like that at times. But what works in a bitchy tweet from Bowen Yang or whoever doesn’t work in a whole-ass animated series that’s asking for a time investment.
Renewed.
I saw a promo for this and heard “Mike Schur” and thought, “oh this might be good.” Then I heard “Steve Maryweather” and thought, “there’s NO WAY this is good.”
I remember when the trailer came out and it looked godawful and all the cast/creators came out tweeting how it didn’t represent the show’s actual quality. So I guess the fact that it’s a D rather than an F was the real step up we were promised.
One could deride Q-Force by calling it a show made for people who beg for more mediocre gay mainstream movies without actually looking for good queer art
Oooh, pick me, I’ll deride it that way!
Can honestly say I laughed out loud at that step up line. Great job.
Hooray stupid content for stupid gay people equality!
i’m stupid and gay and i didn’t ask for this!!!
big mood. also: thank u for giving me the best comment possible
this show sounds insufferable. and thank goodness that in the year 2021 i don’t have to pretend to like it solely because it’s the only gay thing around.
“Contempt for the audience” was my first impression when I saw the trailer for this. Which is weird, because Michael Schur doesn’t usually go that route with the shows he produces. This feels like something that would’ve aired for half a season on Spike TV and be forgotten, next to re-runs of Gary the Rat or some tediously edgy animated show.
They should have just given Ray Gillette his own series.
Ray Gillette and Shore Leave from Venture Bros. team up and hilarity ensues.
I didn’t know I needed that show, but I need that show.
A show about a crippled gay hillbilly spy? There’s a niche.
Intermittently crippled openly gay closeted hillbilly… spy?
I still can’t believe that joke they went for in the trailer about how gays can tell when they’re being pandered to. Yeah! Turns out we can!
Saw this on netflix yesterday and the designs and art style aren’t… great. Was thinking I would give it a shot but oof, this review is… not great.
I don’t know. If Sean Hayes imported any of the tired queer humor from Will & Grace to this show, then I have to say I’m not surprised. I’ll watch the first episode to see, but I expect to cringe about as much as I did at W&G.
Just happy patty harrison gets that schmoney
Crikes. Looking at the cast list, and then reading this review, is a wild disappointment.
It sounds about as insufferable as The New Normal was, only less preaching-to-the-choir didactic and more BOTTOMS KEYSMASH AHAHAHA
Hopefully this lasts as long as The New Normal did.
It sounds like its jokes are far too dated to be aware of a word like ‘keysmash’.
Is the true message of this show that just because the creators are queer doesn’t mean it’s actually artistic worthwhile? There’s gotta be cheaper ways of making that point!
But seriously, this looked like a turd from the start.
(according to the series’ creators, the intelligence community represents one of the last bastions of masculinity unexplored by queers)Well someone is very unfamiliar with British Intelligence in the latter half of the 20th century.
This show seems to be unfamiliar with intelligence.
And the first half.
Okay but it also has Matt Rogers playing someone named Twink so at least it has that.Seriously, hearing Matt talk this up on his podcast a year ago and then to get this is a shame.
This sounds like something which would have been a filler cartoon on SNL in 2003.
Suddenly had flashbacks to Ambiguously Gay Duo thanks to this.
So it sounds like time watching this could be better spent listening to White Hot Heist, which is actually funny at times.
I can’t help but feel like a decent amount of the criticism being waged against this show stems from both femme phobia (see also: the utter extremity of backlash against the Twink-heavy first trailer) and the “every x (insert marginalized minority) focused show must be the most complex, interrogating, fully original spectacle ever seen” syndrome that plagued early reviews of Fresh Off the Boat, The L-Word, and Looking. The continued focus on “stereotypes” and the pejorative implication that by embodying some of these “stereotypes” (being femme, liking Ariana Grande, watching Carol, referencing The Princess Diaries) the show is in some way doing harm to the queer community only reinforces the notion that queer people should act certain ways, or that the queer people who do act this way are somehow basic/losers. The show is written by queer people for, principally, a queer audience that wants an animated comedy about them getting to use their queer identity and culture as superpowers. At its core, that is what this show is doing. Could the show be doing more? Sure? Does it need to? Not really.
Well I’m gay and I have been cackling so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh good! I’m not the only person who was put in mind of the acting challenges on Drag Race. I don’t think the show is *that* bad, but that it evokes the comparison at all is pretty damning.
What really kills me is that I’d love to watch the show Q-Force wants to be, and it contains elements that *could* work if the writing was stronger. I like about 50% of the character design, the storyboarding is great, and the animation is way better than I’d expected. There are spoken gags that *should* land, but it’s like the show has no voice direction. There are some genuinely funny actors among the cast, and most are wasted.
And what the hell was Twink? How is a character who’s constantly spouting gags so aggressively unfunny? It feels like femme queer men, drag queens, and twinks all got slandered to almost no comedic effect.
I’m pretty sure the showrunners didn’t intend “Mary” as a slur, but rather a reference to what some gay men of a certain generation would call jokingly call one another. It’s likely to sail right over the heads of younger queer folk, and totally in-line with a lot of the show’s super-dated pop culture references. (I’m in my mid-40’s and still felt a lot of the references were a reach. An extended, not especially funny Debra Winger gag? Really?)
As disappointing as the show was overall, I’d be happy to see it return with much better writing and voice direction. A queerer, slightly kinder “Archer” could be delightful.
To be a bit fair to this show, at least giving a gay man a chance to helm a show is putting their money where there mouth is.
That said (spoilers), the fact that they built up Stat and Jacqueline’s relationship – which was genuinely sweet, and great to see as a lesbian, since Stat was the one character I actually felt like I could relate to – and then *killed Jacqueline off immediately* was just disappointing. Not to mention, needless: She’s an AI; not even a token “backup copy” or similar Macguffin? It could have potential if it digs into the few beats that work (Stat and Jacqueline’s relationship, being willing to address things like conversion therapy), but right now it’s way too shallow. (And reminds me of how much I hated the similarly needless end to Root and Shaw in Person of Interest.)