Going Dutch Season 2 Episode 2 Recap: How a Breakup Sparked an International Incident
- Barbara
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Something is happening to the romantic love lives of the Stroopsdorfe Base leaders.Colonel Quinn and Katja Vanderhoff meet at the USAG Biergarten. She’s there to announce her candidacy for Burgermeister of Stroopsdorf. She publicly thanks Colonel Quinn. He’s there with all his officers dressed in military dress uniform. Captain Maggie and Major Shah look on as Colonel Quinn flirts with Katja. Captain Maggie asks her Dad why Katja chose that spot to announce her candidacy there. Colonel Quinn says it’s obvious because she’s flirting with him. Captain Maggie says that can't be right, since he and Katja haven’t spoken with each other in over three months. Colonel Quinn is not listening. Katja goes to the podium to speak to her people in their native Dutch language. Colonel Quinn has to ask Jan, the civil servant, to translate.
Captain Maggie berates her father that all this time none of the military leaders have learned the language. Jan comes over to translate because the Colonel tells him he doesn’t want to miss any compliments Katja may give him. What is heard is Katja stating that the colonel closed the base’s bowling alley, the heartbeat of Stroopsdorf Village. She wants to fight the American oppressors who introduced the sport to the villagers, then rips it away. Colonel Quinn freaks out and says this is an ambush, but Major Shah, his aid, is in denial. He says the villagers all love them so don’t worry about it. Katja gets the villagers to join her in the fight as they start shouting “USA!” Jan tells Colonel Quinn that his goose is cooked because she just asked for his head.
Colonel Quinn believes this all about his breakup with Katja. He stops her after her speech and tells her he’s willing to take her back. She doesn’t want him anymore and walks away. Captain Maggie, overhears Katja telling her Dad she will not make that mistake again. He tells her that women always take him back. Colonel Quinn does have his own overbearing, knuckleheaded way of dealing with the ladies. Things are really getting blown out of hand, as the Colonel reads the social media comments about the bowling alley closure. Now it’s considered a sacred third space. He says the people are calling him the devil, and he’s liking it. Captain Maggie asks her Dad to try to de-escalate the situation. Colonel Quinn says it’s all about Katja still wanting him. His tactics involve him escalating things before Katja does. Captain Maggie sees this is already going sideways.
At that moment, Colonel Quinn is obsessed with Katja and believes she sent a child to torment him, after their breakup. He believes that’s Katja’s way of escalating things. The child is in the hallway outside his office as Captain Maggie explains to him he’s being ridiculous. She tries to get him to agree to go talk with Katja and tell her how he feels about her. Of course, Colonel Quinn refuses and decides to go the other route. Obsessive redirection. He suddenly jumps up from his desk and decides to follow the kid with his face painted like some animal outside his office. The kid runs away to a fenced-in area just on the other side of the base. Captain Maggie points out to her Dad that is too weird, but the Colonel won’t back down when he makes up his mind.
Meanwhile, Major Shah is having his own romance problems with his wife. Major Shah’s wife, Celeste Shah, lets it slip that she made some questionable financial decisions when they were separated. She bought a boat with a guy she dated for three months. She was using the boat for sexual recreational activities. She has a loan with a 40% interest rate. Major Shah forgives her and makes an excuse as to why. He agrees to help her pay it off. He’s always accepting it when his wife does things like this. He admits to Sergeant Conway that he’s co-dependent and allows her messiness. He asks Conway if she has a semi-legal side hustle he could get involved in. Conway says she doesn’t work with friends, and wishes him luck as she rushes off.
Corporal Papadakis stops by Major Shah’s table, and tells him he heard about his wife’s sex boat and their financial troubles. Word of Shah’s problems is spreading quickly. Papadakis suggests they work together on a money making deal without Conway’s expertise. He knows Conway's contacts and will find a way to make some money on their own scheme. They can import products free of cost and sell them underhandedly. Celeste Shah returns with multiple cups of matchas because she couldn’t make a choice. Major Shah and Corporal Papadakis look at her confused. Shah immediately asks Papadakis to set up the meeting with the contact. Shah definitely has problems. He thinks she makes things interesting, and he likes being needed. He definitely needs some help, too.
Colonel Quinn and Captain Maggie track the kid outside. It’s something Colonel Quinn seems very good at to Captain Maggie’s surprise. Colonel Quinn tells her the kid is a child soldier. Maggie’s Dad is getting weirder by the second. They see the kid step through a hole in the base fence. They get there and are surprised to find the town’s farmers market run by the Stroopsdorf people. They stop a townsperson from stepping through the fence hole to go to the base bathroom. They have a funny conversation about the townspeople’s perception of America.
Back at the base, Papadakis and Shah come up with a moneymaking scheme to sell live lobsters. Shah tells Papadakis that when lobsters die, they are worthless. Papadakis tells him to calm down, and they can sell them. Papadakis freaks out when he realizes he has no idea who to sell the lobsters to. They have no plan. Major Shah says he’s out of it, but their supplier threatens to break their legs. Major Shah says they can sell the lobsters at the town farmers market, and pays off their supplier. Suddenly, Colonel Quinn comes in the kitchen, and demands they shut down the farmers market now.
They all meet with Colonel Quinn in the meeting room to devise a plan to shut down the farmers’ market. The colonel tells them to prepare for war. They meet outside the farmers market and the colonel gets a private to lob tear gas at the marketplace. He says they are just doing a military exercise. The villagers run as the smoke spreads. He tells Captain Maggie that’s how you escalate. The market is shut down.
This causes Katja to implement an embargo on the base. They will no longer sell milk, fruit, produce, meat or eggs to the base. So, the Stroopsdorf Base’s delicious Michelin Star meals Sergeant Conway used to have served in the dining facility Colonel Quinn and Katja escalate things as a way of not really dealing with their personal love problems. Captain Maggie tells her Dad she hopes he understands how bad this has gotten. She asks her Dad to let her de-escalate. She thinks she can talk directly to Katja. Even the colonel can’t eat the MREs. He begs Captain Maggie to talk to Katja.
The enterprising Major Shah and Corporal Papadakis found a new source for their live lobsters. They just have to keep their lobsters alive until the river cruise ship arrives in Cologne for the weekend. They can sell the lobsters to them. They keep their lobsters in Papadakis’ room in the barracks. His roommate, Specialist Gideon, is not liking that idea. He says it’s against the rules. They give him a live lobster to keep him quiet, because he wants to raise one.
Captain Maggie talks to Katja to negotiate a truce. Katja confirms she sent the child to the base to aggravate the colonel. She used him as a tool to get a response out of the colonel, and escalate the situation. Katja and the colonel are perfect together, because they think alike. Katja misunderstands what Maggie tells her about the base. She believes the base is useless, which in the Dutch contract states the town can take it back. Katja says they are not just stopping with the farmers market, they are taking back the whole base.
Things get out of hand after Captain Maggie tells her Dad what happened. He says he’s the first military leader to lose a base to Europe in history. He tells Captain Maggie they are going to storm the farmers market now in the town square to get their goods back. Shah and Papadakis have to get Conway to help them unload their live lobsters. Conway says she will help Shah and Papakakis for 50% of the profit. Captain Maggie tries again to get Katja and her Dad back together. She tells them to figure out a way to talk. It worked.
The town and the base have come to a resolution. The farmers market reopens. Colonel Quinn tells his daughter, Captain Maggie she’s really good at diplomacy. Celeste’s inability to stop buying stuff is still causing Shah financial issues. Everything seems to work out for everyone, except Shah. What a confusing and hilariously complicated way to work out personal relationships. This episode had some fun moments, and showed how much the characters needed each other to work through their problems. There was a new character added, also, and confusing laughs. I found myself laughing out loud at times.
This episode leans hard into romantic dysfunction as geopolitical chaos, and it works. The escalation is absurd, the character flaws are front and center, and the humor lands more often than not. A new character adds to the confusion, but also the laughs.
I give this episode 4.1 Stars out of 5.
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