A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

yeah i know it's officially not about a party and that is annoying, but since all of the political discussions seems more-or-less based in reality, even if everyone's behaving pettily, i just read it as being about democrats.

right soooo why not just be like DEMOCRATS

i don't know, but they're going to have to be a little more specific about the politics soon or it's going to get rough. how many eps can they do about incompetently organized photo ops?

This show is in thrall to the coffee lobby

the thing that seems off is the direction overall. as glaringly obvious as it was, the gastric bug ending still had comic potential that was somehow missed or fudged through bad timing, confused performances, weird camera movements etc.

actually the actors don't seem to be entirely sure what they're supposed to be doing, alot of the time, which is a combination of the fault of writing and direction, i guess.

It started out funny in the yoghurt place but the pacing of her getting sick and hustled into the limo was too fast to let the joke really settle in.

i think the cast are still feeling out how this works (though obviously we don't know what order these were shot in ...)

the gastric bug ending still had comic potential that was somehow missed or fudged through bad timing, confused performances, weird camera movements etc

i think this is kind of the point ... the british show's schtick is that shabby fuckups never make for great comic climaxes but are always just shabby fuckups. ianucci's scripts have a slightly off relationship to sitcom cliché; i'm not convinced this works as well as the thick of it does - but, then, the first series of that show (of which there have been two series, numbered one and three) has an awkward and off feel about the early episodes too. to some degree this evaporates in rewatching -- i feel like knowing the moment of pettiness the first series 'builds' to somehow retrospectively justifies the tenor of it.

(thick of it has yet to utter the names of any of the political parties -- but has been way more tied to certain specifics of labour govt. 1997-2007 than this is tied to the american political scene, unless i'm missing all the tells)

you're right about that being the point and it's a difficult thing to pull off. it's just not working yet. early days.

I just think black during the day is a little jarring though somewhat less jarring than the closing sequence.

it wasn't until here that I realized what "lbd" was and was trying to convince myself that no matter how much my mind suggested it, it probably didn't stand for "labial buffing device"

I love that your mind suggests such fancies as 'labial buffing device'.

yeah it's obviously about the democrats! not weird to me at all that they're not referring to the parties, though, cause it's not about that aspect of politics

which aspect is that exactly

the tribalistic speeches for public consumption

watching this in a double-header with Borgen is kind of head-chafing, FYI

Labial buffing greatly to be preferred?

can't i have both?

Only if you get them in a back massage chair

have not seen this but am suspicious of the choice to make it vague what party anyone belongs to. or is it not vague, upon viewing?

― goole, Tuesday, April 24, 2012 2:56 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this annoys the hell out of me

― max, Tuesday, May 1, 2012 3:17 PM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is exactly the same as the thick of it, party affils rendered via types of deportment, wit, affect &c so u see a woman w/ a jewish name and u don't have to think 'republicans can be jewish, too'

second episode rather better, still think POTUS is even more hateful than VEEP but impressed to the degree to which iannucci and friends have cloaked themselves in another flag

i coulda sworn that ttoi used party affiliations! but i guess not

it did, very much so.

I don't think of it as naming them but that's not what I'm watching it for

the first series of that show (of which there have been two series, numbered one and three)

First series was three eps, second series was 3 eps. I promise you this is how they were made internally, and are sold separately to OS broadcasters by the Beeb.


(Ianucci was given money for one half-hour pilot and managed to turn in two episodes on the budget - they then said "blimey, if you can do a third on whatever change everyone at the table has in their pockets, we'll show them all," and he said "deal.")

Labial buffing greatly to be preferred?

i keep reading this as a cryptic crossword clue, and i don't even do cryptic crosswords

I'm kind of surprised that I like this as much as I do.
― L'ennui, cette maladie de tous les (Michael White)

loved jld's reaction when she gets a whiff of the white house

i liked ep 2 but it still feels somehow straitjacketed, not sufficiently unhinged; hoping for more appearances by washpo asshole

Best episode by far, on par with the great Thick of It episodes.

not really but still great as shown by

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/may/07/veep-episode-three-review-catherine?newsfeed=true

definitely much better!

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/us/politics/for-a-blunt-biden-an-uneasy-supporting-role.html?hp
this show is informing my understanding of biden in a weird way

i think my problem with veep is that there is no drama. if a problem arises, it gets sorted p quickly by the generic white guy or doesnt really matter? which i guess is the joke but it doesn't give me anything to care about.

"have you ever read faulkner before?"

Well the issues seem to be continuing on.

This last one was great.

i think my problem with veep is that there is no drama. if a problem arises, it gets sorted p quickly by the generic white guy or doesnt really matter? which i guess is the joke but it doesn't give me anything to care about.

― Thoughts? You must have loads. (a hoy hoy), Tuesday, 8 May 2012 16:35 (Yesterday) Permalink

yeah i thought a big sticking point between the thick of it & this might be that TTOI has such a good handle on the drudgery and texture of day to day british politics, & with this they were just going to use the correct issues as a backdrop. but now there are a couple of things competing it works a little better as a backstory.

thought this was better anyway, too, although some of it's still weirdly leaden, or just generically sit-com-ish. i liked someone saying someone had a face like a guy who'd been stabbed in the groin.

I have only just started watching this but I got some lols off the first episode and will def keep watching.

It's like a West Wing about dumb people, lol.

I think most of the government issues/storylines in TTOI were as throwaway as the ones here but Malcolm made them seem like they were of insane importance to execute properly. The gimpy White House guy turning up to go "ummm, the first lady is getting a dog, plz dont get one" just doesn't make you care. Instead I was just sitting there, kinda bored. Ok, so she doesn't get a dog. Or she can get one for her daughter and just not have a press conference about it. Woop.

I think most of the government issues/storylines in TTOI were as throwaway as the ones here but Malcolm made them seem like they were of insane importance to execute properly

but I think that the kind of throwaway they were was so well-observed - third sector pathfinder initiative, expert-buttressed slapdash policy assemblages, fetishistic plays for an idea of 'coalface' or earthy politics - & i think the veep stuff is more generic: filibuster reform, oil contracts. part of what's amazing and oppressive about the thick of it is the limiting, nihilistic view of policy as something that no-one really understands or is invested in, which is exclusively valuable as ideological bragging ground, & for which there's no correlation between handling and presumably-profound-consequence. it's what makes the office feel like a bubble floating away from everything, which maybe, in veep, the whole white house thing makes less necessary, but which i think veep would be poorer without having an analogue for.

otm

it's a show about nothing

The closing bit with greetings was excellent. Also, "you're the widow."

sterling, i would fuck the shit outta julia louis dreyfus i wold treat her like a princess
also thank you for asendin me that daily worker

forks i think schlump's post and a hoy hoy's make a very good case that this is NOT a show about nothing (despite its subjects being unmoored from the realities that are supposed to inform their work)

Chris Morris directed a couple of the later episodes - I'm interested to see if they have any kind of stamp on them. The show has such a distinctive look and flow that I can't imagine there's too much variation on the theme, but I like to see him doing stuff, no matter what it is.

oh yeah that's encouraging, i think. i thought a lot of four lions was kinda perfunctory but his tone is always interesting

tracer: seinfeld ref

right i got that

was 'the new adventures of old christine' any good