A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

right, that's what i meant

lol, i thought it was saturday already

Thanks. Monday torrent viewings looking very nice for the next few months then; this, GoT and Mad Men.

there's a pretty bustling thread about another HBO sitcom happening on sundays

The recently completed Eastbound? Or am I missing something?

GIRLS

the infection spreads

Never heard of it, but damn that's a long thread.

THick Of It>>>>In The Loop, right?

Yes, but I thought the americans had the funniest parts of In The Loop, so I'm optimistic.

i saw the first three episodes of this, it's very good

it's not as good as the thick of it, mostly because there's no hilarious sweary malcolm tucker character, but i loled several times

I'm looking forward to this, especially if it doesn't prove another example of a gifted satirist who sets his eyes on America but quickly reveals he knows little about this country.

Yeah now that you mention it, I'm glad there was a thread for this before one for The Dictator.

I didn't realize the Thick of it Connection. I just liked the look of a trailer but now I realize that I probably should watch that movie. I'd forgotten about it after the comedy poll.

Not quite In The Loop funny, but it was pretty good. I don't know if it would be possible to have two characters as funny as Malcolm Tucker and the eff-star-star-cunt American from ITL.

Some thudding moments here and there, but this was pretty funny overall.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is great, as are Anna Chlumsky and the slimeball. The press secretary and her body man could wear thin.

this seemed sort of ... off. it's an interesting decision to have the passive-aggressive dweeb kid instead of a malcolm tucker figure but ... i dunno

maybe in three or four episodes i will stop automatically comparing it to the thick of it, and then i will also stop automatically trying to make the differences be emblematic of differences in national character

max

i. do they keep up the 'did the president call?' 'no' 'no' and the 'did you know i have my own flag' bits
ii. do they get funny and how many repetitions does it take for them to get funny

would honestly stick w/ this just for tony hale & matt walsh but i was ok w/ those 'jokes'

yeah, i laughed. i'll watch until they cancel it.

no i mean i honestly believe, given time, those 'jokes' will become funny

this is fine, it's not remotely as good as the early thick of it but it's doubtful anything else is going to be, certainly within the pro forma confines of the american sitcom

felt very "ooh, handheld cameras, gratuitous cursing, big fuckin deal" to me, but still pretty funny and a good cast, will watch again

lol well in 2k12 those things are pretty commonplace no?

feel like american sitcom is a more expansive genre than british sitcom -- one of the weird things about the thick of it is that it is an absolutely classical version of standard british sitcom setup, only it somehow escapes being awful

xpost ha yeah i don't really notice those things at this point?

well yeah that's what i meant, the look/feel of it is kind of played imo

that's an unplayable aesthetic

I think it needs time to develop side characters. People like Blinky Ben, etc...

There's also a different dynamic from The Thick of It. Everyone listened to/was scared of Malcolm, and the politicians tended to need to be shepherded around. JLD seems to have all the agency in Veep, where everyone else is just scrambling to fix her mistakes or get her what she wants.

Also the US doesn't have an equivalent of the civil servant, so we don't get a Terri.

you guys realize this isn't an adaptation, right, it's a different show by the same creator

original title was "The Veep of It" iirc

the thick of eep

In the Veep

ah, british humour.

some dude is british?

lol no, i don't think so

oi mates some dude is

these political shows that Iannucci has done, do they have any of the same absurdity of the 'Armando Iannucci Show'? I saw the first episode of 'Veep' and it didn't, though it was funny enough in its own right.

no. at least not the surrealism.

though his next show for HBO, Armando Iannucci's Veep Trumpet, probably will

the early thick of it is blackly absurd in the best sense, some of his more freeform stuff is a bit winsome

blimey blood sausage, i've been outed

too right guv'nor

Some of the lines felt quite British or straight out of TTOI like 'massive and total shit' and 'Tom Hanks might die'. This is not nec a bad thing but slightly jarring?

American innovation on stale British sitcom formula = something nice occasionally happens to the lead character, instead of being dangled in front of them and snatched away.

Obviously I'm against it.

http://www.webtvwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/my-hero-logo.jpg

^ six series

what i mean about classical british sitcom in re: the thick of it would be something like:

- enclosed environment
- all conflict is created by strict pecking order amongst characters
- each episode follows a rising action plot ending with someone making a tit of themselves

you guys realize this isn't an adaptation, right, it's a different show by the same creator

― Poor Turrican (some dude), Tuesday, 24 April 2012 03:14 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

iirc ianucci was 'developing' an american version of 'the thick of it' for ages and then it wasn't being mentioned and then his name was attached to this? i mean ... c'mon. it's the same show. sort of.

no, as far as I know there actually was a pilot for the American version of The Thick Of It directed by Christopher Guest

In October, 2006, ABC announced that it was developing a U.S. version of “The Thick of It.” Mitchell Hurwitz, whose show “Arrested Development” had just been cancelled, was named executive producer and co-writer. In a recent e-mail, Hurwitz said that he saw similarities between “Arrested Development” and “The Thick of It,” which, in his reading, was about “people whose big outward and ‘important’ lives are run on a very small and impaired set of inner resources.” He went on, “That just really appeals to me comedically. . . . Big people with small hearts. Stupid people with high I.Q.s.”
Christopher Guest directed the pilot. Iannucci barely had a role. Peter Bennett-Jones, Iannucci’s agent in the U.K., told me, “It seemed to be in good hands, but they just didn’t listen to Armando.” The pilot, which never aired, starred Oliver Platt as an almost avuncular (and non-swearing) envoy from the office of his party’s Whip, and John Michael Higgins as a peppy congressman who has never heard of “The Daily Show.” Seen today, the pilot seems flat. And there is no hint of melancholy, as there was in the British version, no sense of ideals eroded over time. Iannucci said, “It’s not awful, it’s just dull—which, you know, is a good trick to pull off.” Hurwitz defended the pilot, but admitted that it had “lost the sense of mania of the original.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/26/120326fa_fact_parker?currentPage=all

he has some skills, but he also is kinda incapable of processing things happening directly in front of his face.

isn't it established he has two Yale doctorates?

I always thought that was part of the joke, the same way Ed Helms on The Office is always held up as a business wiz because he went to Cornell.

Yeah I’m not sure he’s done anything that required skills throughout the series !

he can chop wood!

Eheh the campaign tv spot with jonah chopping wood (with some editing).

it's an established plot point that splett wrote his doctorate on election recount procedures in the west: he demonstrates the knowledge in an episode. it's also not meant to be a joke that he has a veterinary science doctorate. the interesting thing with the splett character is that he is that qualified but is very happy to be the underling fetching things, but then also is comfortable with the mantle of power when it arrives

A favorite Splett line is: “I feel like that classic scene in Heat with Robert De Niro and Amy Brenneman.”

*like I’m in

it's an established plot point that splett wrote his doctorate on election recount procedures in the west: he demonstrates the knowledge in an episode. it's also not meant to be a joke that he has a veterinary science doctorate. the interesting thing with the splett character is that he is that qualified but is very happy to be the underling fetching things, but then also is comfortable with the mantle of power when it arrives

― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Friday, June 14, 2019 11:09 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the joke is that those are two wildly different and wildly specific doctorates that seem useless, but because fortune favors the splett, they both came in handy

fortune favors the splett

Hah, yeah.

the thing about splett isn't that he's dumb or even incapable of processing things imo, it's that he's extremely straight-forward and guileless. that can sometimes mean that he doesn't notice (or does and chooses to ignore) devious underhanded behavior from the other characters which could be read as naive.

Although sometimes it becomes clear that he was clocking that behavior all along, but is still just happy to be there.

like he didn't rat out the entire bribery machinery bc he "forest gumped" his way into it i don't think - like dan tries to smooth it over when the reporter asks him but splett says "no this is a fair question" (or something like that). i think he's just really honest + a good person and in DC that scans as stupid but it shouldn't.

Him supporting Jonah was as odd a development as Amy's sudden heel turn, but I just went with it.

jonah is an old friend of his it didn't seem out of character to me at all

splett is a candide character; his intelligence/guile is mostly beside the point

Splett's intelligent but hilariously naive in a way that makes him more open-minded than every other character

it's referenced a few times about how his family was religious and somewhat controlling but it doesn't seem to have stuck. the entire artificial insemination subplot starts with him saying something about masturbation being a horrible sin and how his mother (maybe grandmother?) told him there'd be terrible consequences but when he's told it's actually fine he's on board as a sperm donor

then when the pregnancy actually happens he says something like "well, I guess I don't have to do that ever again"

"self-husbandry"

oh god, I forgot the moment where he has the epiphany that his aunt is actually his mother and has almost no reaction, in his trademark "oh, that makes sense" way

Jonah is an old friend, but to be naive even to the point of looking past his old friend's extreme racism, islamophobia, etc. etc, just because he is an old friend, transcends naive. Admittedly, in the service of comedy!

splett is a candide character

yes otm

then when the pregnancy actually happens he says something like "well, I guess I don't have to do that ever again"

goddammit I am NOT going to go back and watch the season and a half of American episodes that I dipped out on, and there is no Splettnet supercut for that year

someone should make a splett reel for the good of humanity

I watched season 1 when it came out but wasn't really into it, though now I've been catching up -- just started season 5, and whoo boy DOCTOR Splett is a thing!

The studious lack of partisanship is weird, though, for what I'd assume would be satire; instead the underlying message is more in line with "everyone is bad and/or self-serving."

which, in a way, is a much more honest take than a certain Sorkin show

Ok a Jonah/ Splett ticket would be one that I’d commit voter fraud for, I’m not even kidding.

Jonah immediately going off script to be belligerent and the entire wife/sister thing is so good

I'm still waiting for that one intern who was fired for the data breach to exact her pound of flesh.

Finished the sixth season. It's weird that as awful as Selina is, I still find myself rooting for her.

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

thinking about the final moments of this series in re: tom hanks

Lots of talk about Armando's second HBO sitcom, Avenue 5, over in the Silicon Valley thread.

Ave 5 definitely got funnier and more apparent in its satire as it went along - the first couple were dire - but never really took off, and absolutely never found a tone that supported what it's doing. The building of multiple incompetencies and frustration of the less-incompetent characters has a Thick Of It feel, but the vibe never escalates within the scenes. It's like they're letting the jokes breathe for audience laughter, but without a laugh track in the show, it just means they never get momentum.

idk i really liked it? it doesn't hold up to his previous shows (i'm watching thick of it again right now in fact) but i like that the setitng allows him to create some of the most absolutely fantastically horrifying moments he ever has, in a way that veep and thick of it can't. the extended airlock sequence had me rolling. josh gad is SO GOOD in this, which shocked me as i've never really given him a second look in anything else. laurie's rapidfire code switching is remarkable. and of course zach woods' weirdo nihilism. i could definitely do with fewer important passenger characters (the two husbands don't really accomplish much as characters, nor does jessica st clair's character, as much as she is a delight), but if this show kept descending further and further into absolute existential dread i'd be satisfied.

it's like standard ianucci + sex house + space

i really liked it. the airlock scene had me howling

also, is the pope's face in the shit actually trump? i think it is

https://www.reddit.com/r/Avenue5/comments/ff0u42/the_turd_face_is_trump_right/

It was obviously JP2 for me, but without watching it again I'm not sure I could find the reference pic.