Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Q-Force’ On Netflix, An Animated Comedy About A Crack LGBTQ Spy Team

Archer has spent the past 12 years showing how a spy comedy should be made, at least for people not familiar with Get Smart. You don’t only make fun of the agency, its rivalries and bureaucracy, but the fact that the agents themselves are either inept or they have messy personal lives. Q-Force is an animated spy comedy whose twist is that the team is (mostly) part of the LGBTQIA+ community. But is it funny?

Q-FORCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “2011. Middle of Nowhere.” Soldiers patrolling a mountainous area are shot by a sniper, who then manages to neutralize the entire force.

The Gist: It’s actually a training exercise at the academy for the American Intelligence Agency (AIA), and cadet Steve Maryweather (Sean Hayes) is setting a course record, something that puts him at the top of his graduating class. V (Laurie Metcalf), who trained Steve, is understandably pumped. But at his graduation ceremony, Steve comes out as gay.

Director Dick Chunley (Gary Cole), for whom the label “homophobic” seems mild, immediately revokes Steve’s valedictorian status and gives it to lunkish cadet Rick Buck (David Harbour). He then assigns Steve to start a new division — in the terrorist hotbed of West Hollywood.

Ten years later, Steve is still waiting to be assigned a case. Aside from being tortured by Rick, who calls him “Agent Mary,” he runs an Airbnb in his house, which currently has two German tourists who don’t mind wandering around naked.

Steve has managed to do is put together a crack team, which is headquartered in his garage: Deb (Wanda Sykes), a tech specialist who created a super spy car out of a Subaru Outback; Twink (Matt Rogers), a master of drag disguise; and Stat (Patti Harrison), an expert hacker. When V calls in, Steve asks for a case; V, who struggles as the only woman with any power in the AIA (the second-most powerful woman in the agency is the pasta chef), says he needs to keep waiting.

Steve decides they should go rogue and crack a case themselves. Twink ran into who he thought was a terrorist during one of his drag shows, and they go through the “Grindo” app to find him. At the same time, Chunley sends V out to stop the group he calls “Q-Force”, who he thinks are too soft simply because they’re LGBTQ, from executing a mission.

When they do crack that case open, V puts her neck on the line with Chunley to make Q-Force official. But there’s one condition: Rick is added to the team to “keep an eye” on them.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Q-Force gives us strong Archer vibes, only it’s much less funny.

Our Take: Q-Force was created by Gabe Liedman, with Hayes and Mike Schur among the executive producers, and we really get the idea that Liedman and his writers are trying to convey. It’s the first spy comedy where the entire team consists of members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and their instincts help them solve cases. What disappointed us was that the first episode leans so heavily on stereotypes and cheap sexual jokes instead of real character development.

It feels like if this show appeared on, say, FX circa 2003, it would have felt fresh and revolutionary. But shows with LGBTQIA+ characters have evolved past some of the stereotypes seen in this first episode. Do we need Steve saying “Bye, bitch!” as he shoots enemies during his training exercise? Do we need Twink saying he now doesn’t have to sleep with the coroner so he can get free hair for his wigs? Even the jokes about Deb retrofitting a Subaru feel old (though the name she gives for it — Subaru McClanahan — was one of the funnier lines in the episode).

Metcalf does her usual fine job as V, who’s about as unhinged as comedy spy bosses go. But while Cole’s performance as Chunley is fantastic, the words coming out of his mouth are so over-the-top homophobic that it crosses over from parody into something more damaging. Again, if this show came out in the early 2000s, it may have been a way to point out just how him keeping Steve and his team down is just a way from allaying fears about himself, but in 2021 Chunley just looks like an asshole who should have been sued for harassment ages ago.

We hope to see the characters go beyond what we saw in the first episode, and with Schur as part of the producing team, we’re confident that these characters will be given some depth.

Sex and Skin: Besides the nude Airbnb guests, there is some repartee when Steve flirts with the terrorist, and other suggestive and not-so-suggestive language.

Parting Shot: Rick calls the team “Spice Girls,” and Deb goes to hit him. When Steve takes a convoluted route to telling Rick that he just complimented them, Twink says “You should have just let Deb hit him.”

Sleeper Star: We’re looking forward to hearing Harbour’s voice playing the assholish Rick. We’re also always happy to hear Wanda Sykes on an animated series, even though every character she plays sounds like Wanda Sykes.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Stat hacks the terrorist’s Grindo account, they see a pic that looks at first to be a dick pic, but it’s just a street sign. Those kinds of jokes pervaded the entire episode.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Q-Force feels like a missed opportunity to present LGBTQ characters in a light that doesn’t necessarily point to their queerness with such a big, 1990’s-style arrow. But we’re holding out hope that the show gets better during the first season.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Q-Force On Netflix