Dutch Notes #10: “Going Dutch” 1×10: “Born on the Third of July” (Season Finale)

On the season finale of Going Dutch¹May it be its series finale., Denis Leary once again forgets Captain Daughter’s birthday, which he tries to make up for with a grand gesture — blackmailing a superior to get himself transferred — but… at what cost? On Severance this week, a teamup, while on Animal Control, Frank thinks his dad might be dead, and they turn out not to have any dogs to put in the kennel they’ve been trying to build all season. Isn’t that always how it goes? Alright, let’s do this one more time.

Dutch Notes

• The base having a Teen Center because building a Teen Center is what money was available for is still, I think, a pretty good joke about bureaucracy. Unfortunately they really never do anything with it, except sometimes scenes that could be set anywhere happen to be set there. In this episode it’s the scene of Captain Daughter’s birthday party, which I guess makes more sense than doing it in the fromagerie, but which makes less sense than doing it in the dining facility.
• Because it’s a season finale, in this episode the show has to pretend there was any kind of sexual chemistry between Danny Pudi and Captain Daughter.
• We also have to suffer Denis Leary pretending he’s capable of character growth — for the first time in his life he feels bad about having failed Captain Daughter, this time by forgetting her birthday. There is some humour in the shot of him eating the remains of the cake on his own, but a better show would do something with it.
• Catherine Tate off-hand refers to Joe Morton as “Gerald,” Leary immediately infers he’s a client of hers, and demands to know about “his freaky-deaky sex life.” Wild American shit once again, why would using the services of a sex worker immediately mean the sex life was “freaky-deaky,” etcetera. (Leary, you’re sleeping with her, too, though??)
  • Anyway, Leary immediately decides to use this as information to blackmail Joe Morton with so he can get a transfer out of Stroopsdorf, which he also decides to spin as a birthday present for Captain Daughter. Danny Pudi pitches transferring to a base just across the border in Germany, where he’d be close enough to date Captain Daughter while not in her jurisdiction.
    • Obviously it takes him way too long to figure out that that would mean, one, moving away from his girlfriend, who, to be fair, does appear to be the only woman he’s ever been emotionally open to in any way, and two, that she’d break up with him for using confidential information to blackmail a client of hers.
      • Similarly, this is, of course, the exact moment where Danny Pudi’s separated-but-not-divorced wife comes back and wants to reconnect.
    • Is it against army rules to procure the services of a totally legal business? Or is this more an American Christian shame type of thing. …Maybe those two things are impossible to separate.
  • Helping them figure out evidence of this apparent crime is MVP Papadakis, apparently the best hacker on the base.
    • To get Joe Morton’s cellphone for hacking purposes, they declare their Fourth of July party phone-free and make him turn it in. To get his Face ID, they use a photobooth. In a better show this would be a funny heist sequence, but there’s nothing more to it than these descriptions.
      • What we learn from the phone is Joe Morton is a very horny man who is very good at Wordle.
      • Jan’s Springsteen cover band is not very good.
      • Morton naturally immediately catches Leary’s attempt to record a confession, but, twist, there was a second microphone on Catherine Tate, who does, naturally, not appreciate being use in that way.
        • Though to be clear, Joe Morton is being an absolute dumbfuck here, going from the attempted extraction of a confession straight to the person he’s being blackmailed about to confess straight to her instead.
          • Joe Morton concedes defeat and grants Denis Leary a transfer to anywhere he wants.
            • Over some scotch, Leary asks, “Why did you send me here?” to which Morton’s answer is not, as in the premiere, to drive him insane, but that it was an attempt to get him to retire and spend some more time being a person with a family, which is truly some late-stage retcon-ass nonsense, and utterly unearned.
              • Morton also tells Leary that he wasn’t paying anyone for sex, which, again, is legal and fine, get over your American prudishness please, but to sit on cake and other things in sexual ways, which is also legal and fine. Descriptions of this go on for some time as Joe Morton realises he finally has somebody to open up to.
                • In the end: Leary and Tate break up. Pudi and Mrs Pudi get back together, tying Leary to Stroopsdorf. Leary and Captain Daughter scheme to make Mrs Pudi’s life hell as she transfers to Stroopsdorf, which is, as always, deeply unprofessional.
                  • These bullet points have got away from me.
• No Dutch material here at all. We end of Jan singing Springsteen hit “Born in the Continental United States.”
• Wouldn’t blackmailing a superior look way worse than that superior having gone to a sex worker a few times.

I thought about doing a “here’s how I would fix this show for season two” post, but no, I think I just want to be done with this. I wish I had a bigger wrap-up here, but I don’t. To the several friends who’ve expressed that they hope this piece of shit gets renewed for a second season specifically to torture me, I would like to say only this: Meditate more. In conclusion: This was a bad show and if you know somebody who, like, loves it? They’re a bad person who you should not trust.

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  May it be its series finale.