Space Force (2020) * * (showing on Netflix)

 

Starring:  Steve Carell, John Malkovich, Noah Emmerich, Jane Lynch, Lisa Kudrow, Diana Silvers, Ben Schwartz, Don Lake, Jimmy O. Yang, Fred Willard, Tawny Newsome

If the term "Space Force" lingers in the back of your mind and you can't recall where you heard the term before, it is one an idea our current administration has to spend billions on protecting...space?

Or something like that.    Space Force, the Netflix ten-part series, is a satire based on this concept.  Or is it?   Space Force hasn't figured out its identity yet.   Is is political satire?   Or slapstick?   Or poignant dramedy?  There are times the viewer can encounter whiplash caused by the show's frequent changes in tone.

Created by Greg Daniels (The Office) and Steve Carell, Space Force stars Carell as General Mark Naird, who was just made a four-star general and is put in charge of the newly created Space Force program.    Naird and his family are less than thrilled with this appointment.    They have to move to Colorado and Naird is tasked by POTUS (Trump is not named) to have Space Force put "boots on the moon" by 2024.   Soon, and it is not explained why, the general's wife Maggie (Kudrow) is serving forty years in prison, and daughter Erin (Silvers) is left to fend for herself as her father puts in long hours at his new job.

Naird's sidekick is Dr. Adrian Mallory (Malkovich), a scientist who tries in vain to be the voice of reason in this madness.    The doctor's friendship with the general is push/pull, and provides some of the better moments.    Rounding out the supporting cast are:  Angela Ali (Newsome), Naird's personal helicopter pilot who longs to be an astronaut, F. Tony (Schwartz), the squirrely public relations manager, and mission control specialist Dr. Chan Kaifang (Jimmy O. Yang, formerly of Silicon Valley), whose brilliant mind is used primarily to bail out his superiors when they try and perform one absurd mission after another.

Carell's General Naird is not a million miles removed from Michael Scott from The Office, although thank goodness he doesn't speak directly into the camera which is ostensibly being used to shoot a documentary.   Naird is more reserved in his quest to disprove that he is out of his depth.    He expected to be made Secretary of the Air Force, but thanks to his Washington enemy General Kick Grabaston (Emmerich), the poor general is relegated to running this startup branch of the armed forces.

Aside from some intermittent smiles, Space Force never propels itself into the stratosphere of television comedies.    It is too timid to decide what it really is.    It isn't scathing enough to be a satire of the government's knack for wasteful spending in the military (and just about everyplace else), and most attempts to deal with the general's topsy-turvy personal life are hardly groundbreaking. 
General Naird is a nice guy thrust into a pressure-cooker position he is ill-equipped to handle, but he is trying his best.   Space Force is a mixed bag at best, and the show slyly hopes we'll stick around for season two to find out why Maggie is suddenly serving a forty-year prison sentence.    That may be too high a price to pay to satiate what little curiosity we have left for Space Force.