Veep, aka, You're Not Even Your Mom's Favorite Jonah

Thanks for reading. I just love that guy’s total commitment to his character.

-xtien

Hey now, there’s plenty of blame to go around. This also season had Ian Maxtone-Graham as a consulting producer, and he was responsible for some of the worst seasons of the Simpsons.

Yup. They didn’t know what to do, so they just made everything bigger, louder, and more obnoxious … just like Maxtone-Graham did on The Simpsons.

I’m just trying to figure out what the “d-word” is.

The show is basically about who can say the most absurdly obnoxious thing possible, I guess for shock value? After a while, Selina (and most of the rest of the cast) could just march around saying variants of “SHIT FUCK CUNT” over and over, and the dialog would play out about the same - it’s people saying things that would end relationships in real life, said casually with almost no reaction in their recipient.

It’s not like there’s much humor from the plot itself, which is just a mess of “what can we do with Selina now” that they’ve painted themselves in a corner by her being outside of government.

This is listed as some of the “best” humor this season…

Furlong: Do you know what the chief agricultural product of my district is? I’ll give you a hint: It looks like Will’s wife’s clit.
Jonah: Mangoes?
Furlong: No. Tell him, Will.
Will: [sighs] Green beans.
Furlong: Thalt’s why I spent two months jamming them into that lunch bill… like what, Will?
Will: [sighs] Like me jamming anonymous trucker cock down my throat in a public restroom well known for that purpose.

Oh yeah, I hate that stuff between Furlong and Will, because I don’t understand the humor in Will’s only role being to humiliate himself. There’s nothing at all to the role beyond that (if there ever was in earlier seasons, I’ve forgotten it because there certainly isn’t any more to it now), and it makes me uncomfortable because at that point it feels indistinguishable from just humiliating Nelson Franklin, the actor playing Will. What else is there for him to work with? He just repeats vulgar things he’s told to say about himself.

I guess the answer to the problem of how you keep making this show about these people without Meyer’s political aspirations to tie them all together is the most obvious one possible.

I had no idea, so thanks for the heads up. I’ve watched, I don’t know, maybe six or seven seasons of “The Simpsons” and I just think of them existing within a pretty tight spectrum of humor, that is “very funny” to “kind of funny” with nothing being hilarious enough that I’d drop everything to watch it, and nothing being terrible enough that I’d decry it. But, overall, nothing being crazy inspiring enough to watch it religiously for all 754 seasons it has apparently been on the air.

I guess it stands to reason that there have to have been some “worst seasons” as you put it. That Ian dude was producing at the time. And now he’s doing this. Great.

How did this happen to a show that was so sharp?

Boy are you right about that, Wholly. I really liked Dan Bakkedahl for a time in this show, and back in “The Daily Show” and a couple of other things, but this season is really bringing out how one-note he is, and how discordant that is. I honestly think the show is flailing about in a desperate attempt to find its Peter Capaldi, and is failing spectacularly by spreading the duties to the whole ensemble.

-xtien

Assuming those were the first six or seven seasons, that was The Golden Age, and a couple of seasons before The Dark Times, aka Maxtone-Graham’s Reign of Terror, aka The Jerkass Homer Years. (Then Al Jean came back, and the Simpsons recovered a bit, from “actively bad” to “merely average and forgettable.”)

As to how it happens to a sharp show, I assume it happened the same way it happened on the Simpsons - namely all the behind-the-scenes people who made it sharp to begin with got better gigs with either more money or more creative control, leaving the show in the hands of second-stringers.

Like I say, Iannucci quit and went back to England after season four. In addition to being the creator and showrunner, Iannucci makes everything better.

Yeah but seasons 5 and 6 were still really good.

Oh wait, this was season 6. Uh, well season 5 was still really good.

Yeah, I enjoyed Season 5 a lot. That was the season after Iannucci left.

I haven’t seen Season 6 yet, but after the discussion above, I’m likely to skip it.

Season 5 ended on a series-ending note. So why not oblige and let that be the end of the series for me? I don’t have any desire to watch a sub-standard season.

This is the only thread title-change I will ever be grateful for, because I no longer assume everyone is talking about me in here.

Ah Okay. That explains it. I was confused. I thought, that’s not thread I used to post in, so Dingus just found a different thread. But then I noticed that it IS the thread in which I was posting about the show.

Yeah, definitely not a fan of season 6. It’s like the writers decided “hey America, you thought you hated all these people before? Well check out what we make them do this year!” and just amped all their terribleness up to 11.

I mean they had the perfect opportunity for Selena to be just a terrible person instead of the most terrible person in the world if she suddenly found a way to be caring about her grandkid. Just a scene where she realizes her mortality or sees some crazy political future for the baby or something and it would have helped to make her more human instead of a caricature.

Oh well.

Never mind, turns out this was the best comedy series.

JLD says she has breast cancer. Beat it, girl.

Wait, what happened between these posts? Did Season 6 finally bring you around? It’s worth watching after all?

No, it won an Emmy.

Woo! Great news.