Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale in “Veep.” (Bill Gray/HBO)
One of the many pleasures of the first season of the HBO series Veep were the creative insults the show’s elected officials employed to berate their inferiors. And, from the looks of the full trailer for the second season, it seems the show’s creator, Armando Iannucci, still has plenty of nasty barbs in the tank.
To wit: “What are you laughing about, jolly green jizz-face?” Selina Meyer, the vice president played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, asks Jonah, the West Wing goon who is frequently at odds with the rest of the cast.
Another gem comes when Meyer is ordered to visit a culinary event in the deep south: “You want me to go to a pig roast to meet a bunch of men who took turns to fuck the pig before they roasted it?”
“I wouldn’t presume they took turns,” replies Meyer’s chief of staff, Amy (Anna Chlumsky).
The trailer also offers some glimpses of the upcoming season’s plots, which appear to include an intellectual feud between Meyer and her daughter, an intelligence scandal featuring a government official played by Isiah Whitlock Jr. (known to The Wire viewers as Maryland State Sen. R. Clayton “sheeeit” Davis), and—for the first time in the show’s run—an actual look at the Oval Office. Don’t count on meeting the show’s elusive president, though, in the previewed scene, Selina finds herself arguing with a presidential adviser (Gary Cole) over whether a vice president or a political strategist holds more sway.
And in the clip’s closing moments, Selina instructs an aide to “stick a thermometer up Washington’s ass.” We’ll see just how far that thermometer gets wedged when the new season begins April 14.