In the Age of DOGE, Denis Leary and ‘Going Dutch’ Boldly Support Government Spending

Last week, employees at the Defense Department learned that newly installed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth expects them to find $50 billion worth of programs to cut in order to spend that much, instead, on “Trump’s priorities.” It shouldn’t surprise anyone that programs that involve responding to climate change were among the very first cuts in this initiative. Most of the budget items slashed by Trump, his vizier Elon Musk and the lost boys at the Department of Government Efficiency (at least one of whom is directly descended from a Russian spy who died by execution) do, after all, appear to have been selected for extremely petty ideological reasons. Although we in the non-fictional world may not fathom the full effect of all this cutting for years, the characters in the latest Going Dutch immediately see the consequences of using spiteful pretexts to cut budgets you can’t begin to understand.

Colonel Patrick Quinn (Denis Leary) has been sent to command the U.S. military base at Stroopsdorf, in the Netherlands, after insulting General Davidson (Joe Morton) on video. What makes this assignment punitive is that Stroopsdorf is a service base, so it has no combat function, and troops stationed there mainly make cheese and do laundry; additionally, the next highest-ranking officer is Captain Maggie Quinn (Taylor Misiak), the Colonel’s long-estranged daughter. Since his banishment to the Netherlands, Col. Quinn has been inflamed by such aspects of Dutch culture as korfball, a sport that is played with a ball and a hoop but is definitely not basketball; and by “Twice Christmas,” a Stroopsdorf tradition that tries to mitigate the dark holidays of the German occupation by celebrating a second Christmas in March. It’s expected that someone who chose to spend his life defending his country would feel intensely patriotic about it. Col. Quinn takes that a step further by being openly contemptuous of everything the Netherlands does differently from the U.S.

The action in “Trial of Jan” kicks off with Col. Quinn being introduced to the Dutch concept of niksen. No surprise, Col. Quinn is generally disgusted by the idea of intentionally doing nothing. It goes against his belief that nothing is more important than work, and he insists that if he can make the base 100-percent American in spirit, “Dutch laziness” will be eradicated. He’s specifically offended when he sees his translator Jan (Arnmundur Ernst Björnsson) hula hooping shirtless on the lawn at the base because he got high at a rave the night before and is trying to “hoop it all out.” Col. Quinn delightedly fires him.

But it’s not that simple: By Dutch law, a substandard employee has to have three strikes against them before the termination process can even start, and the hula hooping was Jan’s second. Before long, however, Jan has run over Private Anthony “BA” Chapman (Dempsey Bryk) on a bike, injuring BA’s arm. That’s when Col. Quinn hires a mediator, turns the dining hall into a courtroom, and makes attendance at Jan’s mediation session mandatory for all Dutch employees on the base, so that Col. Quinn can make an example of Jan and scare everyone else into compliance with his vision. 

Mostly, this story is an excuse to spoof A Few Good Men, a reference Col. Quinn makes in so many words to Hendrik the mediator (Rune Temte), who happens to be a fan. (“It’s peak Sorkin!”) There’s cocky Tom Cruise-style showboating from Col. Quinn. There’s surprising testimony for the audience to murmur at. Maggie, who agrees to represent Jan, even questions the very hostile base commander, but instead of getting Col. Quinn to yell “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH” at her, she sneakily leads him into admitting, “I’M VERY PROUD OF YOU.” That’s not actually part of the Trial of Jan, though. Maggie’s just killing time before getting a key piece of evidence: the base’s two most recent budgets.

Eyewitness testimony presented earlier in the case has seemed very damning, since Sgt. Dana Conway (Laci Mosley) had been shooting BA in character as Leather Pants Man, a character he plays on TikTok for legions of fans in Malaysia, and the bike collision was captured on video. Jan testifies in his own defense that he tried to stop when he saw BA in his path but couldn’t, and Maggie’s smoking gun implicates Col. Quinn.

The previous year, €20,000 had been allocated in the budget for bike share repairs, which Col. Quinn gleefully admits he cut to zero. “Jan’s brakes were faulty due to your very American budget cuts on this Dutch base!” accuses Maggie. Col. Quinn stands by his decision until Maggie gets everyone outside to watch Col. Quinn test the brakes on the bike Jan was riding. The brakes fail, and he ends up in a bush. There is gross negligence at issue in this case, but the culpable party is Col. Quinn. Slashing a line item that looked “un-American” by one man’s narrow definition leads directly to the injury of an American soldier bravely serving his country. What feels like a win in the moment turns out to be a humiliating loss.

Col. Quinn has to face the people he’s harmed and experience public shame over his shortsighted decisions — something no one at (sigh) DOGE probably ever will unless some kind of post-Trump Nuremberg Trials are convened. Speaking of which: Going Dutch has also taken a strong position in “Nazi Hunters,” in which Col. Quinn gets obsessed with the idea of rooting out Nazis around the base. Maggie stumbles upon a Nazi who stayed in the Netherlands after the war and still has a secret room full of Nazi memorabilia, and amateur World War II historian Col. Quinn puts on his formal uniform to enter the store and punch a Nazi, the way he’s always dreamed of doing. This Nazi turns out to be as old as you would expect someone who’d fought in World War II to be, and dies of a heart attack before Col. Quinn can punch him — which he’d still intended to do, regardless of the man’s age, because Nazis never age out of punchability.

This storyline situates Going Dutch in opposition to the current U.S. regime, the two noisiest members of which are, if not outright fascist, at least Nazi-curious; though this episode must have been produced months before (ugh) DOGE started cutting budgets, it cements Going Dutch as part of the resistance. I didn’t expect a Fox sitcom set at a U.S. military base to be making stronger anti-Trump statements than most elected Democrats. At least someone is.