In which DCist and the City Paper discuss Veep, HBO’s new comedy about the vice presidency

Bill Gray/HBO

Jon, I doubt any of these characters will ever match Malcolm Tucker’s capacity for salty loquaciousness, but it was nice to see them come close. I can only imagine that this morning, Capitol Hill and White House staffers alike woke up thinking of which subordinate or office rival to whom they’d like to say “redact your fucking face.” In a perfect world, some intern is already in tears over receiving the phrase.

As for being “hoisted by your own retard,” it was only 2010 that real-life Washington was dealing with an inopportune invocation of the so-called “R-word,” when then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called some of his fellow Democrats “fucking retarded” for being sour on a health care overhaul that did not include a publicly financed option. (Then again, if anyone in American politics—real or fictional—matches Malcolm Tucker, it’s Emanuel.)

Of course, Veep dealt not only with its own version of “retard-gate,” but a host of other random foul-ups created by lousy staff work, which appears to be this show’s go-to device. That’s not really different from any other workplace comedy. And for as talky as Armando Iannucci’s screenwriting can be, with the chatter continuing Altmanesque over the closing credits, it relies on some very broad comedy. Perhaps my favorite scene with the excellent Tony Hale as Gary, Selina Meyer’s bumbling lackey, is when he’s ordered to set down a steaming cup of coffee only to be delayed by his mistress’ extended brain fart and left to wince and suffer without any audible complaint. Likewise, as Ken Tucker pointed out in Entertainment Weekly, the gag in which Selina repeatedly asks “Did the president call?” is a great throwback to The Dick Van Dyke Show, in which the host of the show-within-the-show almost never appeared, or to Maris, Niles Crane’s long-suffering but invisible wife on Frasier.

But there’s more to Veep than ordinary sitcom machinations. As you mentioned, Selina Meyer isn’t stupid, but her aimlessness is what powers this show. Yeah, I noticed the frequent walk-and-talks, but they were decidedly un-Sorkin-like. On The West Wing, any scene of two or three characters walking down a corridor would almost always involve some eighth-grade civics lesson; here, we get anecdotes about the late Sen. “Rapey” Reeves and the sartorial effectiveness of eyeglasses. That never would have happened in Jed Bartlet’s administration.

However, after viewing the pilot again last night, I really think Iannucci’s decision not to identify which party Selina Meyer belongs to might be Veep‘s master stroke. The characters we met last night are countless, and even if they are exaggerations, it’s not by that much. I think that’s especially true in the case of the younger male staffers around Selina—guys like Jonah, the horny West Wing goon, and Dan, the much-discussed “shit” are probably easy to spot any night of the week at any Capitol Hill bar. That might not be the D.C. circle in which we travel, but I’m sure plenty a White House staffer is counting the days until intern season, when they hope to flash their White House hard passes in exchange for some young flesh.

You also ask what I think of Selina. Upon the repeat viewing, I’m sitting with what I wrote last week: It’s not that she’s not capable of doing the job, it’s that there’s just no job to be done, which turns out to be an endless source of frustration. But I agree that at some point she will have to make a legitimate attempt to escape that hamster wheel.

Oh, and as for that faux Style section? I’ll bet you one of Gary’s awful European coffee sweeteners that some folks at 15th and L have been talking about it all day.

Header by Brooke Hatfield/Washington City Paper