This week’s Going Dutch actually engages with its setting again — the base, who are used to playing basketball, invite themselves to play a game of korfbal against the Dutch. Korfbal, we are told by the local effeminate homosexual, isn’t, as Leary and Pudi believe, “basketball without everything that makes basketball good,” but “a real man’s game.” In the B-story, Captain Daughter reconnects with her high-school sports alter ego “The Rocket.”
Meanwhile, on this week’s Animal Control, the ongoing story about them having sex for profit honestly pleasantly bisexual turn, a raccoon turns out to be a very charming squatter, and a fundraiser for Animal Control accidentally turns into a roast.
Dutch Notes
- They consistently spell it “korfball” with two L’s instead of “korfbal.” They pronounce it that way, too. Come on, man.
- The game involves a “korfboy” who blows “this big midwinter horn” after every point. And during the breaks, we’re told, he plays jazz on the horn. Look, I’m aware of korfbal, but I don’t go to sports. This isn’t a thing, right? This feels like we’re getting mixed up with far more Germanic cultures again.
- Euthanasia joke. Apparently we’re a country “so full of quitters,” and you can extrapolate the rest of the crude shit he says from there.
- Corporal Papadakis, the heavier-set soldier whose weight Leary insists on making fun of constantly, says to Catherine Tate that he believes “age is nothing but a number.” Her reply to this is “Age is a number, and that fact is not in dispute.” I get that Dutch directness comes across a certain way, we’ve been over this, but are they just writing her like she’s a Vulcan now? Mindboggling.
- Apparently “everyone in town” is talking about the korfbal game, because they’re excited to see Leary lose. I’ve never lived in a small town that has something like this nearby, and I understand that life in, say, a factory town does tend to orbit around the factory — but this really feels like an American writer incapable of understanding that life in their proximity somehow does not revolve around the Americans. There are other ways to get here.
- The Catherine Tate character continues to not make sense to me. The “head of the Chamber of Commerce” generally isn’t a thing, but I also don’t get why she’s spending so much time on the base. A lot of this would work better if she was the mayor, or on the gemeenteraad.
- Colonel Papadakis turns out to be good at the kinds of moves the Americans are struggling with, which is surprising to Captain Daughter because Colonel Papadakis is a heavier-set fellow.
- I swear he used to pronounce it correctly: Jan can’t pronounce his own name this week.
- The korfboy — korfjongen? I don’t know what they imagine we call this kid — yells “Korf!!” and then blows his Swiss horn. His pronunciation of “korf” is alright. At halftime, Captain Daughter tells the korfboy “blow that thing one more time and I’m gonna shove it down your throat.” She apparently thinks shit talking is an acceptable thing to do to a 10-year old boy who is part of the local ceremony of this game, and is then apologetic when he starts crying, which, come on, this kid would just tell the American to fuck off. His horn jazz is alright, but not a thing that exists at all.
- The audience at the game is full of people holding Dutch flags, faces covered in Dutch flag makeup. Several of them are upside down or weird in some other way. This also isn’t really a thing we do outside of, like, major sports events, and wouldn’t be happening at this extremely minor America vs the Dutch match in a local gym. I appreciate how turned off they are by Team Base’s chant of “Kill the Dutch,” though. Way too intense. Calm down. Go touch grass.
- “Hup, hup, hup, Holland!” Incorrect. It’s two hups.
- By halftime, Team Base have scored 13 times, which I don’t think is how korfbal works? There has, at this point, been a lot of talk about how they don’t have any way of learning a foreign sport in an hour, and now they’re mostly just playing basketball?
- Catherine Tate indicates that she doesn’t appreciate Team Base’s American approach to korfbal, explaining, quote, “the violence, the woman running in circles, unequal to the men on her team. This is not korfbal.” The American approach really isn’t meeting the game where it’s at — they’re treating a friendly game with the local community like it’s the fucking Super Bowl. Do you have to be this intense? What do they put in the water over there, jeezus.
- Like, this game is so casual and friendly that there’s a pregnant woman on the absolute brink of labour on the team. What are we even doing here.
- In the end they take a dive because I guess Denis Leary is dating the Catherine Tate character and they’d break up if he continued playing it American-style. They bench Papadakis, who switches teams. Even as somebody who’s not a sportso, I would find that unacceptable.
- At the same time she’s apparently dating Denis Leary, Catherine Tate is “having sex with” Bram the baker. Leary finds this out on the field. This isn’t even a Dutch note, it’s an healthy personal and sexual relationships note: People you’re having sex with should for the sake of their own health probably know you’re having sex with other people. She’s apparently having sex with eleven people. Not in the context of the brothel she runs, I don’t think, she’s just poly. Extremely bad business to not be upfront with him about that. Sus behaviour.
- “So you’re a baker.” “Puff pastries and profiteroles.” No real baker can afford to limit themselves to just two types of pastry. What are we, French?
- This article in the picture is machine translated. We don’t use phrases like “ugly American aggression” or “local heroes” that literally translated.
- Look, real, actual comedy could be derived from this premise. The Americans are really intense, and go way too far, they should face literally any kind of pushback for this, and then have to adjust to local expectations. But the only pushback is a woman threatens to withhold sex from the biggest, loudest man, and Team Base’s reaction, to half-heartedly play “poorly,” is immediately undercut by Papadakis switching teams and just beating them in the American style. The moral of the story is “yeah, America is the best.” Sucks shit, man.
- Showrunner Joel Church-Cooper, please just reach out. You need a Dutch consultant. I could be that person. I’ll work for whatever you legally have to pay me.
