A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

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

/ what else has julis louise dreyfus been doing for the past decade

"There were two incarnations of Watching Ellie, neither of which met with any success. Both focused on the character of cabaret singer Ellie Riggs (Louis-Dreyfus), with markedly different approaches.
The first was directed by Ken Kwapis, known for his innovative work in single-camera sitcoms such as The Larry Sanders Show, Malcolm in the Middle and The Bernie Mac Show. Each 22-minute episode was meant to portray a 22-minute slice of Ellie's life, in real time. In the earliest episodes, a clock was even shown in the corner of the screen. Thirteen episodes were filmed but only ten aired before the series was put on indefinite hiatus (the remaining first-season episodes have never aired). During its use, the clock had the unfortunate effect of reminding the audience that a half-hour situation comedy only contained twenty-two minutes of content."

nobody in this show knows how to use email

but I guess if the White House used email instead of Jonah the show would be less funny, email isn't funny

hey theres this extreme metal band playing over at labyrinths tonight just real fucked up noise they dont even have a name you wanna check it out

The show's come together nicely, I think.

has gotten better & better 4 real

jonah at the show!!!

"That's like using a croissant as a fucking dildo."

"You've just turned this office into a salad spinner of Fuck!"

full of ttoi rehashes at this point

enjoyed purcell the oil guy, nice to have some invective amid the repartee

gig was an itl rehash, not a ttoi, but who cares bcz it was lol

there were like half a dozen refashioned ttoi lines this week alone, inc one quoted itt

except for first three-ep series, I've only seen TTOI eps once each so don't feel burnt out on small lines. (they're generally less effective here though, to be sure.)

has gotten better & better 4 real

― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 22 May 2012 00:59 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. the croissant line & follow up was amazing.
i still think it's a slightly weird assemblage - like the kinda breathy assistant guy. but it's good. i hope the tall guy with the imaginary dog drifts in a sorta glenn-in-the-thick-of-it direction, all pitifully obsolete.

i like the extensive explanation jokes like the croissant, the anti-viagra, etc

get some nuts. i'm sweating all my minerals into my shorts here.

hundreds of pictures of herons catching fish

^

this show is good but i wish it were not quite so sitcommy. looking at you, anna chlumsky and guy that plays gary

Total POTAL meltdown

^

this show is good but i wish it were not quite so sitcommy. looking at you, anna chlumsky and guy that plays gary

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Monday, 4 June 2012 22:49 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah. i like anna chlumsky a lot though. i wish selena was sketched out a little more; like she's so good in certain moods - like being mad, or being conniving, that it feels kinda weak to just have her always on the back foot, as like a default mode.

"guy that plays Gary" is Tony Hale, better known as Buster Bluth. Jonah is my favorite character. His housemates in this ep were amazing. Six guys in white shirts on their phones at once.

this is impressive

good finale

Where have I seen the congressman's (very funny) aide before?

IT guy on The Office?

last ep was tremendous!! everything i didn't like about earlier episodes suddenly seemed to work

The Twitter exchange between Ianucci and Alasdair Campbell about his OBE brought the lols.

all the deleted scenes

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7F30C892CF01C672&feature=plcp

this gets better yeah? that first one was poo

it's hard at first because of the natural comparisons w/the thick of it, but after i'd say ep 3 or 4 i was looking forward to the next episodes. and the finale was thumping

I liked the first one more than many in the middle, but there are several better ones

are you likely to enjoy the characters more with the accretion of detail and establishment of running gags, or hate them now and will hate seeing more of them?

the first one is one of the weaker ones, so stick with it, but don't expect the thick of it

that's what i was expecting :(

amazing series, more watchable that TTOI because of JLD. just feels slicker and better-written too. first one or two eps not amazing but by e5 i was in awe

it's slicker partly because it's not as well written, but it's still very good by the end of the season

i am open to there being cultural differences in how satire translates on each side of the ocean, but that the writing of TTOI is superior seems beyond doubt, to me - veep, which is good!, still pretty regularly incorporated sitcommish zings and ad-homs, a bunch of which fell flat. its successes were more-good-original-swearing, &c. but the thick of it's so multi-layered & plays with conversational & power dynamics so powerfully. it fabricates all of these benign policy nooses that hang the characters, & some of the conclusions - like i am remembering malcolm promising to come up with an appropriate expert to corroborate the new argument of a flip-flop - seem so poignant & OTM wrt how things are now. malcolm's slow turn in the first scene of the first ep still kills me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSRN8O4ULQs

gonna have to rewatch ttoi to see how it compares but as a *comedy series* (not a political satire) i felt veep was a few steps beyond ttoi. just had so much swagger and confidence, seems to be a product of a proper writing team rather than one or two minds (not sure if the creation of either worked in this way but it definitely felt like that. plus julia ld far more charismatic and watchable and inherently funny than any of the ttoi blokes

full disclosure: the pompous unfunny shite chris addison spews on twitter has marred ttoi for me bigtime