Emmy Spotlight: Veep

If at any point this essay devolves into just a running list of one-liners, I apologize. But with a show as consistently, uproariously funny as Veep, it’s nigh impossible to resist the urge to simply revel in the wonderful blue humor of Armando Ianucci’s vulgarity-ridden zingers. In the hands of the talented ensemble that fills out the cast, swearing is elevated to an art form, even if no one quite measures up to the imitable Malcom Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi on Ianucci’s The Thick of It, the BBC satire that is Veep’s precursor.

Now in its third season, Veep has thoroughly demonstrated that it only gets better with age. With its focus on Selina Meyer’s cover presidential aspirations, this season has a stronger narrative thrust than the previous two, as it displays greater comfort with the characters and setting, and more confidence in its audience, allowing stories to unfold serially over multiple episodes. There are still elements of the series’ trademark problem-of-the-week model, but even on these outings (including a trip to Silicon Valley and a stop at a gun show in Detroit), the hijinks that the Veep’s staffers get up to have repercussions beyond the individual situations.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like this is 24 or something. Beyond “Selina campaigns for president” the plot is as secondary as it ever was. But even this minor shift in the season’s structure is extremely rewarding. Now that they’ve an actual goal to work toward (as opposed to continued languishing in the uselessness of Selina’s office), we see new aspects of these by-now familiar characters.

As ever, and even more so now, it is the characters that are Veep’s greatest strength. This is an incredibly strong ensemble, gifted in their delivery of some wickedly funny dialogue, and endlessly compatible. The characters can be paired off in basically any combination, and hilarity is guaranteed to ensue, and in fact this season sees some fruitful experimentation in this regard, especially with the running gag of Sue and Kent’s maybe-flirtation, maybe-mutual hatred. Even established character traits, such as Dan and Amy’s rivalry, come into clearer focus when they have something concrete, like the campaign manager position, to compete over.

Of course, all of that means nothing without the performances to back it up, and it’s not overstating things to say that Veep has one of the best comedy ensembles to ever appear on television. Leading the cast as Vice President Selina Meyer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won two Emmys for the role and is now nominated a third time for Best Actress, and she continues to earn it a hundred times over. She is amazing with all her material, but she is best at conveying Selina’s pure, seething hatred for everything and everyone around her. Pretending to care about her staff, her constituents, even her family, is so obviously the most difficult aspect of Selina’s job, and of her personal life. Not that she pretends very often—some of the season’s biggest laughs come from Selina’s barely veiled, and sometimes not-at-all veiled, disdain for the people she is forced to interact with. (My personal favorite: Selina’s every interaction with Minna Hakkinen, whom she insists on referring to as the “ex-Prime Minister of Finland,” every time, no matter what: “In your country, people fuck snow.”)

The rest of the cast is fantastic as well. Tony Hale is perfectly cast as Selina’s simpering personal aide, Gary, who this season suffers a shoulder injury that makes him unsuited even for his ridiculously unnecessary job as, essentially, a place for Selina to hang her purse. He’s eminently pitiable, but just annoying enough that you don’t feel bad for laughing at him. Of course, Hale has experience with this type of character, having spent four years as veritable punching bag Buster Bluth, and in many ways Gary is a toned-down variation on that same attention-starved, slightly slow-on-the-uptake, tertiary team member. Dan Reid and Anna Chlumsky are reliably funny, trading off the Everyman role while the other indulges in some neurosis or other. Scott is especially effective during Dan’s epically chaotic tenure as Selina’s campaign manager. Matt Walsh’s Matt McClintock is as endearingly bumbling as ever, but he also meet his wife (played by Kathy Najimy) and see a home life that suggests he’s not quite as pathetically useless as he appears to be at work.

The ensemble continues to grow, as well, as Sufe Bradshaw’s Sue has an increasingly larger role, Kevin Dunn joins the regular cast as Ben, and Timothy Simons continues to steal the show as perennial punching bag Jonah. And there is also a strong cavalcade of guest stars: beside the aforementioned Najimy and Gary Cole’s Kent, Chris Meloni also gives a hilarious turn as Ray, Selina’s physical trainer/fuckbuddy, Zach Woods as Amy’s milquetoast boyfriend Ed, and Diedrich Bader as a shit-stirring campaign manager who manages to (further) turn Selina against her staff. Frankly, there isn’t a weak link in the bunch here—every single character, including the minor one-off characters who drop by for just a line or two, can be counted on to generate laughs.

For that, credit belongs chiefly to the twisted, vulgar genius of Armando Ianucci, who truly is a poet of swear words and insults. The epithets that fly in every episode are endlessly inventive, bringing new meaning to the phrase “colorful language,” but more than that, they are backed by a witty, acerbic sense of humor (a running joke late in the season involves the First Lady’s attempted suicide), often crass (never forget: “That would be like using a croissant as a dildo”), but with such a pitch perfect ear for the bullshit nonsense of politico-speak that it always feels like smart satire, rather than cheap laughs. In fact, “feels like” is the wrong phrase. This is straight-up satire, through and through. Veep thoroughly understands the emptiness of so much of the political cycle, of the meaningless campaign slogans and press appearances. Nowhere is this better represented than in the premier episode, where the Vice President signs copies of her book, a fake smile plastered on her face. The book is called “Some New Beginnings: Our Next American Journey,” which makes no sense; it was, naturally, ghostwritten; and when Selina finally bothers to open up a page, she finds that it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Like all great comedy, the secret of Veep’s success is that at its core, it speaks the truth. The reality might be heightened, but Washington really is this dysfunctional, and the system really is up to its eyes in bullshit. That’s what makes the characters unrepentant awfulness so entertaining. We’ll gladly watch them bumble around because they deserve every damn bad thing that happens to them. Unfailingly, Selina and company’s plans fall to utter shit (I would call them best-laid plans, but they so rarely are), and the show not only unfailingly mines humor from it, but it pays increasing dividends too. They can’t do anything right because they are incompetent idiots, but they’re also terrible people, instinctively mean and socially illiterate. Their messes are frequently, perhaps even exclusively, of their own making, and there is never any doubt that they deserve their fate.

And yet, Armando Ianucci and his team never fall from the tightrope they walk every episode—Selina and her team remain loveable underdogs, even (and perhaps especially) in their most insensitive, idiotic, blundering moments. Nothing encapsulates this idea better than the finale, where we see Selina’s staff briefly excel in their new roles, before failing spectacularly and expectedly. “Crate,” the first part of the season finale, ends with POTUS stepping down, and Selina becomes president through basically no effort of her own—and to boot she basically cheers on FLOTUS’s dubious mental health and welcomes her latest suicide attempt—and the moment somehow actually comes off as triumphant, with her Gary manically celebrating in the ladies’ room (nosebleed notwithstanding). That she’s supposed to be having a meaningful, serious conversation with two immigrants could not be less important to her, and after getting the news of her impending promotion, she has a shit-eating grin plastered to her face the entire time. That’s politics, and that’s Veep, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.