A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

I'm with you on Mike and Marjorie, but Amy undoes every bit of nice with an act of unbridled Capitol Hill desperation.

Capacity for! There wld be fun tension between her trying to restore her soul via President Splett's Agenda Of Pleasantness, and using the repulsive political skills she's been corrupted to over her career.

She's the one with the potential for a redemption arc, I'll give you that.

love the idea of splett ending up as pres at the end but starting to wonder if they'll find a way to make him pres and selina his veep now

https://www.vulture.com/2019/05/veep-timothy-simons-jonah-anti-vaxxers.html

All the people we were talking to [in politics] when the show first started up — they were in the Obama administration generally, but we met with some Republicans — it was all the same shit. As we met more and more of these people, all of their Facebook profile pictures were pictures of Obama where they happened to be in the background to show the physical proximity that they had to him, which then meant that they were important. I can’t imagine that’s an Obama-specific thing. No matter what, Jonah is going to care about that more than he cares about anything else. He’s not there for policy, or to do the right thing, or to have any moral center. He’s there to get a picture that’s in the proximity of the president.

Maybe that’s why people attach to it. Maybe it’s refreshing to them to see somebody who wasn’t lying about it, who’s just like, “That’s what I want.” If it was out here [in L.A.] it would be like, “I want to be six feet from Chuck Lorre. I don’t want to be Chuck Lorre, I just want to be six feet from him so everybody knows I’m fucking Hollywood.”

stuck the landing imo. JLD doing top level work.

Kent killed me. great ending to a great series.

yeah i thought this was an excellent conclusion, very michael corleone-esque at times. was a bit confused at the end by how old everyone is supposed to be, but that's just a nitpick. president splett!

We're still an episode behind but I was worried we weren't going to see Minna in this series and I was so overjoyed when she turned up.

selina's pawn sacrifice was as wrenching, and as pointed, as anything we've seen on Game of Thrones

the more I think about it the better this season was. Great way to go out.

They absolutely nailed the final Gary scene

What a great final episode. What great old age make-up!

WHO WANTS MARGARITAS?!

I wonder if or how they would have ended the show differently if Trump were not president?

the scene where she is yelling at amy in the skybox, where she delivers that entire monologue with her teeth bared, was incredible

i also laughed so hard at the funeral coverage being pre-empted that i completely missed the "star of philadelphia and philadelphia 2" joke that apparently happened

so what's the best show on hbo now? barry?

Gentleman Jack on HBO

i'll check it out this week! thanks for the tip

for all that this became an operatic wonder of selina in excelsis, the best line was splett about jonah's beets mystery

really one of the best finales i've seen. some absolutely magnificent scenery chewing in the skybox scene. respect that they went out on a high note of cynicism and bile.

When Gary asks her if she wants six almonds and she yells "No!" so loudly it blows him back across the room.

as tiresome as I sometimes found Congressman Furlong and Will, the “I like jizz” line in the coda was amazing

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/05/game-of-thrones-veep-selina-meyer-daenerys-targaryen

i appreciate that they let andrew live

i don't watch GoT but I did think during the Veep finale 'this must be better than whatever that other show is doing'

it was!

as tiresome as I sometimes found Congressman Furlong and Will, the “I like jizz” line in the coda was amazing

― the public eating of beans (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, May 14, 2019 9:58 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol “He just ain’t what he used to be”

This was an excellent finale. I thought that the only way this show could do the horror and absurdity of our current moment any justice would be to make Jonah president but the way it actually played out was great and true to the characters.

Tom Hanks bit at the end was the perfect capstone.

Also loved that Mike McClintock apparently ended up having an extremely long tenure at CBS

I had avoided checking this thread lately but now that I have finished watching the whole final season I must say I'm very surprised by the good reviews here.
I thought the whole season was a mess and worst of all, not very funny and very forced (until the final episode, mostly).
And I have loved this show from the start... Maybe I missed something ?

The Gary issue at the convention and final was great though.

I didn't buy Amy's turn, but I thought the rest of the season did a really good job completing Selina's transformation from desperation to by-all-means-necessary dangerous, even past the broad limits of her cynical team. This was also the first season to reflect directly current US politics, which it blazed through and past quickly, but in some ways that made the insanity resonate even more for me.

Says something that Richard and Mike fail up so impressively.

Yeah it gets very dark (and even moving eventually, who'd thought THIS show would !) but I don't know, most of the season wasn't funny for me.

“Do you think all great leaders are just sociopaths living a lie?”

this is a line from this week’s SUPERSTORE but it probably sums up VEEP

This was an excellent finale. I thought that the only way this show could do the horror and absurdity of our current moment any justice would be to make Jonah president but the way it actually played out was great and true to the characters.

i think part of the point the show was making is that selina is only marginally better than jonah--she did un-free tibet and end gay marriage, after all.

Yeah I liked that everyone was predicting either splett or Jonah as the inevitable victor, and they ended up doing both and neither with the actual outcome of this election even more depressing

The post Iannucci seasons aren’t the best but I thought this was a really strong finish with a lot of enjoyably daft fan service at the end. Kent’s “fuck the numbers” outburst, like glen’s at the end of the thick of it, shows the hollowness of soulless politicos having their deathbed network moment

I greatly enjoyed the last season but ... the show's natural ending was the end of season 5.

The only issue I really had with the season was that Jonah's character seemed suddenly a lot more puerile than the eariier seasons. But I haven't seen those in a while.

xpost she permanently banned gay marriage!

That's like double secret probation.

The only issue I really had with the season was that Jonah's character seemed suddenly a lot more puerile than the eariier seasons. But I haven't seen those in a while.

Was he that stupid in the first seasons? I always thought of him as the outsider/thirstier version of Dan.

Jonah was always stupid. He got stupider, but strategically.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6zB4VJznEU

But yeah, he (and Mike) got ridiculous, in the best way, like they were some combination of stoned (in Mike's case) or brain-damaged (in Jonah's).

I’m kinda tempted to change my iPhone text notification sound to Peter MacNicol hissing “shut the duck up!”

They definitely adapted mike’s character as they went along, I remember the iteration of him in the pilot being a loser but quite sharp-witted?

Stupid phone lol

Gary is bad tbh (character and performance) this is consistent

― blog haus aka the scene raver (wins), Sunday, 2 July 2017 18:28 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah gary this season didn't feel right. they really tried to play up the angle of him being in love with selina, where it was never really about that previously. some weird nod to his arrested development character maybe

plus i know it's always been a bombardment of gags but it felt muddled and almost exhausting at times, so much dialogue done so quickly, im sure i missed a shit ton of jokes.

― NI, Sunday, 2 July 2017 19:11 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I meant Gary was always bad - bad idea - they shouldn't have done it

― blog haus aka the scene raver (wins), Sunday, 2 July 2017 19:21 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we've all seen a Smithers before this was just terribly conceived and executed from the beginning

― blog haus aka the scene raver (wins), Sunday, 2 July 2017 19:23 (one year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I still hold this opinion tbh, found the whole approach to this character really annoying and forced pretty much start to finish and would not have minded his being written out in like s2. The betrayal was nicely done tho

Agree. I get why Gary was there, and it did give the finale its biggest payoff, but I always found him hard to watch.

They definitely adapted mike’s character as they went along, I remember the iteration of him in the pilot being a loser but quite sharp-witted?

― milkshake chuk (wins), Friday, May 17, 2019 8:50 AM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah mike's change was noticeable. he was always incompetent, but less of a buffoon in the earlier seasons. he was a lot meaner in the beginning, but his softening i think can be explained by his getting married and adopting (several) kids.

Really ? I find him and his relationship with Selina pretty fun throughout the series.
As for Jonah, yeah, he was pretty OTT stupid since the beginning... it just got worse, as impossible as that may seem.
At one point during this season, I was afraid Dan might become serious/nice regarding Amy... thankfully he didn't !

Yeah, Mike, especially with the wife/adopting kids issues might be the character I find the most annoying.