How does this show just keep getting better and better? Have they had any misses? Amazing.
I just started watching, and I just wonder what happened between this
and this
When, Why and What?
You might want to take a look at the dates on those posts. :) Or, to put it another way, what a difference four years makes.
Veep had a great first season, then a lull, and then a renaissance that keeps on giving. My guess is that something dramatic happened with the producers and/or writers. Didn’t Iannucci hand everything over to Chris Addison at some point?
-Tom
… Wait, was that really just a season finale? Cause it sure felt like a series finale.
I totally enjoyed Season 1… so it will even get better? That’s great… Yeah, I knew the posts were from different times, I just wondered what happened… It looks it got better after Iannucci let others run the show… I think the Gary character, he is a totally new and original comedy archetype. Maybe he is a cousin of Arlecchino from the Comedia dell’arte, which was usually a servant. I guess they had no Personal Assistant at those times…
Yeah, does anyone know if another season is confirmed for next year? Sure felt like the end.
Yes, it’s been picked up for a sixth season.
Here’s an interview with the showrunner about the finale, confirming that Selina and co. will be back and going into the thinking behind the events of the finale. (Spoilers, naturally.)
Another well-deserved Emmy win! Love this pic…
I signed up for PS Vue to watch the Australian Open final, but it has also given me access to HBO Now, so I’ve been binge-watching Veep Season 5. This season has been so good. Only two episodes left. My free week expires tomorrow, so I’ll try to finish up tonight or tomorrow.
My favorite recurring character on the show is the Finnish prime minister. I think that’s who that is. She’s on the show so often they don’t even bother to introduce her anymore.
I love Veep but I do worry that the next season will feel … quaint … considering how current reality outstrips fiction in its absurdity.
I just watched it. And yes, it felt like a very somber series finale.
I agree. I watched this season this week, after Trump’s inauguration, and it felt really tame compared to reality.
Holy shit. Just watched episode 4 of season 5. That was some dark shit. Even by Iannucci (legacy) standards.
They really lucked out that they had planned a departure from politics for Meyer before the election. I thought the premier was great so I don’t think Veep will struggle as a result of reality.
House of Cards on the other hand…
So it is June 23 and I’m just watching S6E9 now. Nobody has commented upon this season since April. Is there a different, more current thread? I searched, but search these days is…well…
Anyway, if there’s a more current thread, let me know and I’ll move this there.
This will be tl:dr for most. That’s okay. It’s kind of a season review. Because I feel strongly.
Please be warned…SPOILERS
As for the show…good effing lord what a pile of steaming s-word is this season. Holy cats. What the f-word happened?
Watching this episode, the ninth episode of season six…I just feel…I don’t even know what to say. Grimy. Embarrassed? I realize ‘embarrassed’ might sound too personal, but I just feel embarrassed for them. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes to so thoroughly scuttle this show, but whatever did…oh my.
In this last episode, Peter MacNicol is essentially asked to come into a hospital room and do a screaming riff on the cartoon stylings he exhibited as Dr. Janosz Poha in Ghostbusters II, only without the accent. This is all to belittle the most hated character in the show who has just had an unnecessary circumcision–ha ha–and to continue the constant jokes about this doofus character’s manhood.The writing has devolved almost entirely into a merry-go-round of jokes that revolve around female genitalia and homophobia. Maybe this is a lame attempt to show that not only is Washington, D.C. Hollywood for ugly people, but also for people without a sense of humor.
Meanwhile Mary Holland, who I really loved in the strangely endearing series “Blunt”–the Patrick Stewart TV talk-show host thing–stands in the corner and sputters before just turning out to be a total d-word as well. Which…by the way…we knew was coming. I suppose this is the point. Because…
…just about every single character in the show–or what has become a sad excuse for what was an excellent show–is either a d-word or incompetent. I was trying to stick with the show early in the season, basically saying to the friend I was watching it with (before he bailed around episode three), “At least we can always rely upon Gary Cole to be solid and funny.”
Well guess what? They pulled the rug out from under that as well. Also out from under Kevin Dunn. The show made Jonah Ryan’s Statler and Waldorf boring! Well done, show.
The only, absolutely only reliable things on this sad excuse for a show that used to be good, are Tony Hale and Sam Richardson. But you can see it wearing on Tony Hale. He does some really good work in episode eight, where everybody goes down to “the South”–haw haw–to celebrate his birthday and Selina acts like a d-word. It’s a poignant performance based on a sad joke I’ve seen before, and that really made me queasy, especially since the whole premise is abandoned at the end of the episode. Sam Richardson is a freaking soldier in the army of this show. He is totally committed to his character and I believe every single thing he says, and he has to say some of the goofiest lines in the show, I totally get what he’s going for when he is in a scene, Maybe that’s why Selina is hugging him so freaking much as the show goes on. He is one of these actors who can make the most out of the fewest words. I respect that.
Actually, you know I lied. I would have to say the other actors I can rely upon in this show are Clea DuVall and Sarah Sutherland, who play a couple on the show. I long for scenes when the two of them show up. Sadly, Sarah Sutherland gets to do only moaning and whining most of the time. Clea DuVall gets to do mostly dead-pan one-liners, but g-dang…if there’s an actor who could deliver these lines better, I don’t know who she is. She can do any line, or any reaction without a line, and I’m totally in. I love watching her.
On the other hand…Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Boy. I don’t know what to say. She has been brilliant in this show in the past, and previously in many things, and I’m a huge fan of hers. She seems adrift this season. Selina was always a character who belittled those around her, used up her staff as a vampire might, twisted the knife in enemies and friends as needed, and generally sought to suck the life out the room whenever possible. Somehow this worked in previous seasons and I loved her for it. It is, perhaps, a balancing-act I only appreciate now. The reverse of the way I hated “Curb Your Enthusiasm” at first and then was shocked when I came to love it, despite the fact that I thought the main character was despicable and the “actor” playing him could not act at all. I think the original BBC version of “The Office” understood the threshold for a thoroughly unlikable main character, and knew when it was well-enough to let go.
Regardless, this dynamic has changed in “Veep” to the negative.
Now it feels like she’s doing all of those things to the show, rather than in the show. It’s a fine difference, but it makes a huge difference. Just watch her in her scenes with Hugh Laurie’s character Tom James in episode seven (“Blurb”). Good freaking lord they are trying so hard that they have to actually do the scene twice! And they still can’t get it right! Remember when I said ‘embarrassing’ in reference to this show? Now I add ‘grief’ as well. Yeah, perhaps I’m being overdramatic, but I feel like I’m watching a show I’ve loved die a thrashing and spasmodic death.
And Anna Chlumsky, who was previously one of my favorite things on the show, has been relegated to standing around and going “Whuuuuu?” and popping her eyes out comically. Earlier in this season she was sent off to eff some congressional candidate who was from Nevada or somewh…snnnooorrrre.
Sorry. I dropped off there. Didn’t believe a moment of it. And she was more bored than I was.
The show has become a sitcom. And I mean that as an insult. You can say “Seinfeld” was that, technically. But I’d never label it in the lowercase and use it as an insult. The fact that “Veep” has now sunk to lowercase makes me want to throw up.
I am curious, albeit mildly at this point, at how it has cesspooled itself so quickly and effectively. While it first had a sharp understanding of how to use language–that is to say, words you can’t say when you’re being polite without referring to them as first-letter-words–and used such language incisively, even when it was not using such language sparingly, now the show just shovels curse words from the writers’ manure pile into the script truck. There is no sense of care or understanding of language. It’s as if the show has moved from judiciously shopping for its words from individual specialty stores to just buying its curse words in bulk from Costco.
Furthermore, the writers use them like they have expiration dates on them.
I don’t know whether to say this is sad or disgusting. I guess it’s both. I feel a little crushing of my soul when I watch the show this year. Because I remember the earlier seasons. And I remember “The Thick of It” and In the Loop. I remember times when I could hear Peter Capaldi say the word ‘cunt’ and totally get what the writer was going for, and how it was played, and respond to it from the actor. Even if the language was coming in huge heaping helpings, I always believed it was according to recipe. Measured out and exact. Not shoveled.
In the “Veep” hospital room, when Peter MacNicol’s character Jeff Kane says the line, “Who is this tranny knuckle-dragger? Somebody you hired to make sure you don’t get erections?” I didn’t get embarrassed, as I intimated above, I just wanted to punch the show in the face.
When the credits started to appear, and it turned out the episode was directed by Brad Hall, I went…“Oh. Wait. He’s her husband.” And then we get to Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Executive Producer and I’m starting to feel worse. Has the show imploded because she took it over? Is her husband showing up to direct a terribly directed episode of TV a hallmark of that? I don’t know if any of that is the case. All I know is that I associate Brad Hall with what is thought of as one of the worst seasons of “Saturday Night Live” in the history of the show, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus as also on the show.
Perhaps that is unfair. I’m sure it is. Brad Hall has gone on to do other things. Perhaps he was coming in to direct this episode as a favor, maybe to scoop water out of the boat. Again, I don’t know what has happened behind the scenes on this show I used to look forward to watching every Sunday night. Seriously. I’d finish doing my own show at around three-in-the-morning and stay up to watch this show and “Silicon Valley” as a sort of ritual. It was well-produced TV in the tradition of Armando Iannucci. That is to say clever, clear, on-point. Dark and vulgar, and always justifiably so based upon the bureaucratic culture it was painting.
Now it’s all Jackson Pollock if he suddenly had to switch from paint to shit.
-xtien
Nice TL;DR. I did read and agree wholeheartedly. Including the fact that Sam Richardson is the show’s pretty much only saving grace. Those Richard Splett lines are incredible with perfect delivery.
The short answer is Iannucci left the show. I’m not quite as down on this season but it’s definitely the worst. All the characters feel like parodies of their former selves.
I’m also not quite as down on it as everyone else, but I agree, it’s not as good as it used to be. I’ve still laughed out loud at least once in both of the last two episodes though. Actually, both times involved Jonah.
Well put. A much more succinct way of saying what I wrote about above.
-xtien