Just because a show shoots for the stars or features a constellation of stars doesn't guarantee the results will be stellar. Season 1 of Netflix's Space Force was a good case in point. Sadly, so is Season 2. The workplace farce, created by The Office (US) alumni Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, barely got off the ground in its first outing. At the centre of the show's orbit was Carell as General Mark R Naird, who had been handed the unenviable role of leading the eponymous branch of the US military. The goal: to put “boots on the moon by 2024.”
In-fighting and hijinks derailed the team's efforts. Broad caricatures of real-life figures like Elizabeth Holmes and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped by. Tensions between the US and China on Earth boiled over onto their respective bases on the Moon. Overall, the comedy was too weightless to inspire laughs, despite its ensemble being stacked with ever-reliables like John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy O Yang and Don Lake. A lot of the first season was spent introducing their characters and setting up each pairing's dynamics. The problem was each comedian seemed to be on different wavelengths. Their styles clashed, not in a delightful, but a dissonant way.
Just as the presidential administrations changed in the US, the show goes through one itself without naming names. The first season tapped into the free-form performance art of the previous government’s excesses, especially its interstellar designs, to tiresome results. The manic parody felt formless. If mediocrity defines the parodied and the parodist, you know you have a problem. The second season holds its focus not on the external factors, but on the internal team itself. It foregoes commenting on the politics, and turns into a more straightforward workplace comedy.
Rather than go searching for answers in the larger universe, Space Force gets more down-to-earth. Literally. Gone are the chimpanzees and other absurd outer-space theatrics. Season 2 picks up with the Space Force wrestling with a more terrestrial variety of concerns, from budget cuts to press strategies to diplomatic efforts. The team must take care of a visiting Chinese delegation to ease tensions between the countries, think up ways to deal with hostile aliens in case of close encounters on Europa, and win over potential corporate sponsors for funding by appeasing them with commercials and BattleBots competitions. Bringing Ken Kwapis, who helmed many episodes of The Office (US) including its pilot and finale, into the fold as director helps create a more bustling energy. It seems like Carell and Daniels stepped back and recalibrated the show's tone, steering it away from the void where comedies go to die.
Mark’s refusal to follow the president's orders for an aggressive response against China in the Season 1 finale doesn't come without consequences. The Season 2 premiere deals with the fallout, as he is brought in for an inquiry. The committee makes the decision to give Mark and his team four months to prove why their military branch shouldn't be made redundant. The show gets seven episodes to do likewise. The team's attempts to vindicate why the Space Force must continue to be funded becomes an inadvertent comment on the show itself trying to make a similar case to Netflix for a potential third outing.
Characters are foregrounded over plot, pushed to new places to see how they respond. Be it the helicopter pilot-turned astronaut Captain Angela Ali (Tawny Newsome) trying to deal with the lingering trauma she suffered while stuck on the Moon, Mark’s daughter Erin (Diana Silvers) trying to figure herself out as she starts to intern at Space Force, or Mark being backed into a corner with budget cuts as his own position remains under scrutiny.
Season 1 MVP John Malkovich can sell any modality with an absurd ease. And so he does again as the irritable scientist Dr. Adrian Mallory, who goes from constantly butting heads with Mark to developing a lovable odd-couple dynamic. Ben Schwartz brought an unpredictable energy as the Machiavellian media maven F. Tony Scarapiducci. Always a mouthful, but you get the reference to a certain all-too-briefly-tenured White House Director of Communications. We see a more thoughtful side to Tony second time around, and in the process, Schwartz comes out as this season's MVP. Don Lake as Mark’s glorified secretary General Brad Gregory is an endearing goofball as ever. The will-they-won't-they between Angela and Jimmy O. Yang's scientist Dr. Chan Kaifang is what continues to ground the show.
Few comedians have plumbed more depths from the empty convictions of masculine authority figures than Carell. And he does it in ways that are as droll as they are disarmingly genial. But the writing in Space Force really doesn't do his comic prowess any favours. Even the most gifted comedians are only as funny as the scripts and the situations they are dealt. Episodes have long stretches without a teehee, never mind hahas. There are lines delivered as if they were meant to be funny. But upon closer reflection, they prove to be otherwise. From time to time, individual gags and lines do rise above the episodes that contain them, giving the feeling they should have been sketches on SNL, instead of stray moments in a full-fledged series.
The new season’s attempt at course-correction after a rocky lift-off only tilts things to watchable levels. Space Force is still adrift. With no clear gameplan mapped out, we are not sure where it is going or where it wants to go. The slightest uptick in quality shouldn't merit another instalment of this. All the right pieces were there right from Season 1 but they were all in the wrong positions. Season 2 redresses a few pieces, but the overall picture still feels out of whack. Sometimes, it's better to scrap such a mission rather than keep fine-tuning till it reaches optimal performance.
All seven episodes of Space Force Season 2 are now streaming on Netflix.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.
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