‘Space Force’ Proves Steve Carell’s Comic Talents are in Deconstructing Masculinity

Despite its star power, Netflix’s new sitcom Space Force struggles to lift off. The new sitcom from The Office‘s co-creator Greg Daniels stars the likes of Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Jimmy O. Yang, and Lisa Kudrow, and yet, it fails to live up to the hype. The humor is tepid, the tone all over the place, and it’s hard to get a handle on whether or not we should even be rooting for Space Force. However, there’s one thing that Space Force thankfully does right: it reunites Steve Carell with the kind of part that made him a star. No longer is Carell floundering in cinematic melodrama or ranting about #MeToo on The Morning Show. As General Mark R. Naird, Carell gets to play another man comically flailing in his alpha male role. It’s good, it’s fun, and it’s comforting to boot.

Inspired by President Trump’s much-lampooned decision to create a new branch of the military, Space Force follows a four-star general named Mark R. Naird as he loses out on his dream of commanding the Air Force only to be made the very first leader of Space Force. This not only crushes the career military man, but means that his wife Maggie (Lisa Kudrow) and daughter Erin (Diana Silvers) are uprooted from the DC area and relegated to the Colorado boonies. (Space Force is naturally headquartered in one of the secret mountain bases made for NORAD.) The series picks up as Space Force struggles to find its footing. Naird is consistently at odds with Space Force’s head scientific officer, Dr. Mallory (John Malkovich), a relationship that not only shows off how hard it is for a military mind to transition to leading a scientific bureaucracy.

Now, I have a feeling that Steve Carell’s performance in Space Force is going to be polarizing, and not because he’s not playing another iteration of Michael Scott. It’s more because the character doesn’t start out as nice or silly; he’s a stressed out military man with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders. Decider’s own Josh Sorokach was turned off by this, writing that “Carell’s character is toxic masculinity personified as his obnoxious, grating behavior doesn’t give the audience much to grab onto” in his review. I, on the other hand, really enjoyed Carell’s character from the jump. Maybe it’s because I have career military folks in my family and Carell nailed the awkward tightrope of old school discipline and loving, caring folks these life-long officers often are. Or maybe it’s because it was fun seeing Carell once more play a man waffling under the stress of maintaining that mask of toxic masculinity.

If you think about the roles that made Steve Carell a star — his Daily Show alter-ego, Andy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Michael Scott on The Office, and even Brick Tamland in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy — they all riff on the gulf between who a man is and who he believes he’s supposed to be. The comedy often comes from either the character’s lack of self-awareness or frantic tics to hide his own ineptitude. Mark R. Naird is a return to this theme. The whole show starts with Naird believing that he is the perfect Air Force officer, on the cusp of attaining command over the whole structure. When Naird is assigned to Space Force, it’s not just a disappointment but a refutation of the person he thought he was born to be.

Carell manifests this grief, angst, and turmoil in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways. Whether it’s the way he employs physical comedy to hint at the devastation Mark feels as he clings to his early morning stretching ritual or how he barely manages to cloak his anxiety under the veneer of calm military behavior, Carell is playing a man playing the role of what he thinks masculinity is. In truth, it’s when Naird apologizes for snapping at a subordinate with a gift of a pineapple or when he commits himself to helping his teen daughter with her trig homework that he shows true leadership. Part of Space Force is Naird’s journey in realizing the idea he had of himself might not have been better than who he really is.

Space Force lets Carell play with the masks of toxic masculinity once more, and it’s a really refreshing return to form for him. His character in The Morning Show was obsessively pre-occupied with casting himself as the victim after being outed as a sexual predator, which was not only uncomfortable to watch, but a waste of Carell’s skills. What he really is good at is deconstructing masculinity from within, with hilarious tics, embarrassing Freudian slips, and a warm heart bursting to break free.

Watch Space Force on Netflix