NOW PLAYING: Q Force
A gay superspy and his scrappy LGBTQ squad fight to prove themselves to the agency that underestimated them.
Well Now Playing fans we finally made it to the dreaded letter Q. Now, there are very very few Q shows so I’m thinking I will just go in order down the list to be concise for the time being. That means we may be covering our first ever animated show on the newsletter! Can you believe it!? It’s called Q-Force, a show I have never heard of in my entire life.
Unsurprisingly, most of the Q named shows are, you guessed it, queer related! C’est la vie.
Seeing as the lead of Q-Force is literally named “Twink” I’m going to confidently say every Q show is a Gay Show. David Harbour, Patti Harrison, and Dan Levy are in this show, which is promising, and it’s a show that centers around a gay squad and his scrappy LGBTQ super-spy coworkers. It premiered in 2019 with ten episodes and was cancelled after one season.
This is Twink MALARKY!!!!!!!!
I'm having to do a shorter episode today seeing as I’m on the clock (oops) so let’s get right to it, besties.
This Netflix original opens on a forest in 2011 in the middle of nowhere. A white Twink shoots guys with a gun and goes “bye, bitch” when he clocks one in the eye and “hi, bitch” when he kicks one unsuspectingly in the face. This tracks, seeing as gay men are NEVER humble, and at the end of this excursion he finds a RAINBOW GRENADE (lmfao) where he throws three at four trucks, blowing them up. This is all a timed ordeal and a woman proudly tells the director next to him she’s so excited he’s about to hunt the Taliban.
She’s very proud of him.
At a ceremony, the director announces the induction of thirty new cadets about to enter the field as covert operatives. They got a record breaking two women they count for diversity, both white, and the joke absolutely does not land. Steve, the main guy, walks up to receive an award the same year Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is revealed. He comes out as gay but this does NOT go over well, as it never would, and the director knocks him off the mic saying actually, it wasn’t Maryweather who was the valedictorian, they just made a mistake and are now all bullying Steve!!!!
Yeah, dumbass!!!!! Why’d you come out!!! We keep that shit locked DOWN! I’ve gotten hate crimed enough in small town America to KNOW we gotta be hush hush.
In line at lunch, the director tells him you’re going to be running your own division and ships him off to Gay Town, USA aka West Hollywood. Steve’s pretty upset with this and ten years pass by. Working out in his LA house, he sees news about terrorists getting caught, an old message from a coworker about meeting the president, and two naked people in his kitchen asking about the Airbnb they’re staying in.
Basically, Steve’s life isn’t working out too well!
These naked people are Swedish or something and not afraid to let their meatballs hang out in Steve’s kitchen. They’re on vacation! They need more towels because they used them all. They’re pretty clearly hitting on him looking for a third but he side steps them to enter his secret little lab on the side of the house. Steve is VERY excited today because they’re talking about introducing a spy car in to the squad. The car is just like, a four door Subaru Outback but!!!! It can fly!!! It’s a super car!
It also has Tracey Chapman’s entire discography which I, for one, would die for.
G number 2, as opposed to the first person who talked, is the techie gurl. She found the Malaysian plane and that’s her update. Twink is the name of the Master in Disguise Gay who’s apart of the squad who immediately drops the word Bitch to indicate omg! He’s gay! He’s probably also a queen too, getting big RPDR vibes from him, and that’s the squad! The techie, the master of disguise, and the auto mechanic! Worse, the agency is cutting their budget by 15% which is not good news.
The Gay Squad REALLY needs to get a case.
Morale is low because gay people are working harder than their straight comrades. Auto mechanic Deb is saying they’ve been busting their balls trying to get a case and nothing’s been happening so she’s considering taking an assistant manager job. Steve needs to get his act together and find them a case because he’s losing hype with his team. He pulls out a gray hair in the mirror and is stressing because he was on top of his game ten years ago, what happened!
As he waters the backyard, the naked people are back there just hanging. They say they used all the towels and Steve goes off on how upset he is about not getting missions to these naked strangers. The woman is like oh? It sounds like there’s a lot of anti-LGBTQ-discrimination in your world and he’s like yeah! There is! He calls his squad to the room and says he’s going to demand West Coast HQ give them a case. On the phone with the Deputy, he loses traction trying to stand up to himself and instead butters her up. He’s like “it might be neat if we got a case” and she answers flippantly but he gives her a sob story about not being able to get a case. She says you think I have any agency? I’m the only woman with power blah blah blah opportunities don’t come on a schedule and she pings out leaving Steve with nothing.
He’s NOT about to take this lying down.
He says that’s it, we’re going rogue. Let’s live this dream! Deb says the Navy wasted her potential too and Twink/Tech Girl are also in for finding a case. Deb brings up that Crocs are flooding the market and she thinks foreign influence is trying to undermine their feet. This literally sounds like me in my newsroom pitch meetings and I commend her for the reach. Sometimes you gotta. For example, I just pitched that the KKH game is gender reaffirming for me but really, I need money because [INSERT IMPORTANT NEWSROOM I WORK FOR HERE] doesn’t pay shit!!!!!!!
Twink brings something to the table sussing that someone he met last night is a terrorist. At his 11 o’ clock show where he’s drag dancing he sees someone who has bruises on his face and a briefcase cuffed to his wrist. There was also a tattoo with the words “Anarchy will grow from the blood of the uninitiated” on his chest so very sus! Steve is on it and is wondering how they can find a gay guy on So Cal. Twink says Grindr obviously and scrolls through his Grindr to find he did, in fact, match with the guy.
Looks like they have a case!
Back at WeHo HQ the girl boss lady takes a call from the deputy saying he doesn’t want Q Force on the field. Boss Lady is like? I didn’t assign them a case? And the Deputy is like they’re too soft, what if someone misuses their pronouns which blah blah blah they’re always mad about this, always mad about the little pronoun thing. This is annoying, a damned if we call it out damned if we don’t. I, typically, never correct someone on my pronouns and then feel like a class traitor when I don’t. Is there any right way to approach this? I don’t want people to cite me as the lax trans person chill with it cuz I’m not, but it does get so annoying.
Woof ok rabbit hole back to show.
Boss Lady calls a helicopter down to go confront Q Force on this new mission and she climbs up the ladder in to the helicopter off she goes. She tries calling them but they ignore her call because if they solve this case, who cares. Techy has hacked his phone and finds a road and church emoji. Steve thinks it’s a meet up at this gay bar and is running the wheels in his head about a distraction when Twink walks out dressed as Ariana Grande.
They are on their way to the Abbey bar and on the mission.
They find the guy in the bar and Steve approaches him to flirt. He speaks his native language and is hitting it off with the guy. The guy inches in to say “don’t move, I will make you pregnant soon, I just have to urine” and Steve sticks a tracker on his back. Very romantic first encounter. Steve texts the group to say the tracker has been placed as everyone runs over to Twink to take a photo with fake Ariana Grande. Steve sees the bad guy give a usb to this other guy and intercepts it just as the Villain attacks. He gets the best of Steve and takes off in a red corvette and is on the move. Steve jumps in a car with Deb and it’s a high speed chase, baby. The car takes off in to Jet Mode and they fly after Bad Guys car, where Steve jumps on his car and takes control of his wheel, crashing him in to a mansion. They fight in the street and the Villain almost falls off a mountain but Steve saves him at the last minute, bringing him back to their layer to interrogate him.
This would be good if the Girl Boss Director hadn’t showed up.
She revokes their status as agents and Steve says listen, I stayed around and waited for ten years and I’m tired of waiting. I haven’t dated, make a family, etc. etc. Girl Boss says we have to wait twice as hard and long to get our shot and now you threw away your whole future for nothing but techy chimes in to say not nothing, this USB has a ton of shit regarding a black-market nuclear arms deal so fuck you V. She doubles back and is like shit, ok I’ll call the Deputy and calls him out for undermining the Q Force.
Gays win again <3
She says unless you want a nuclear bomb on your hands reinstate their credentials. If they ever fuck up again you can fire me. She’s putting her neck on the line for them so they better do as she says!!!!
Welcome back Q- Force!!!!!!!!
The next day, Steve wakes up feeling good. He does some push ups, looks at an office to rent for his squad, and meets a guy named Benji, the most cursed name in the world. Their brand new headquarters is lit as fuck in this big corporate office despite being next to a man with the worst name and if he’s the love interest, I will not finish this show. They get an assignment and the shitty guy who took Steve’s valedictorian place is their new boss begrudgingly and is mad he’s there. There’s tension between Steve and this boss man and I looked up if Steve dates Benji and he does so I refuse to finish this show.
Fuck you Benji!
Overall, this felt like very dry, outdated humor an older gay would write instead of a newer one so I’m thinking I’m going to give this a 3/10. It didn’t wow me outside of the colors, which were very nice, and I didn’t laugh at all. It’s not as progressive as it thinks it is in my opinion, punching down on the Q Force a bit too much to be centered in any sort of realistic homophobia gays may encounter which is much more subtle nowadays and I wasn’t that impressed by it. I don’t think military men would be overt in their gay phobia instead projecting said homophobia through more violent measures but who am I to know I’ll never be in the military!
Almost gave it a 2.5/10 for including my exes name as the love interest.
We’re back to the normal alphabet next week with the letter R so drop any recs of shows you want to see and I’ll cover them!
Ta ta!