A thread for Armando Iannucci's VEEP

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

Does it improve after the first episode? Because that was a horrible opener. (i'm talking about Veep btw, TToI was gold from the start)

Thought the opener was great, feels like a lot of people who say later episodes improved a lot just found it jarring to adjust to a half hour americanized Iannuci thing but then got to know the characters and liked them. In my opinion it stays good. But sticking with it you may find it grows on you, and there are better episodes later on.

Watched the first episode last night and enjoyed it, I like Anna Chlumsky's character and the obnoxious Jonah guy, not so sure about JLD. It feels very obviously an Ianucci creation and the potential's definitely there, but it's very obviously missing a Malcolm Tucker character (although maybe it wouldn't work in the US).

Think the first episode maybe suffered for lack of a proper crisis, those were very minor fires to have to put out.

'those were very minor fires to have to put out.'

That was the problem. Were we supposed to care about the incorrectly-signed card? Jeeze.

Also, yo, just because you add an unexpected 'fuck' to words/phrases doesn't mean its suddenly hilarious.

I wasn't completely sold on it (have only seen ep 1), but comparisons to TTOI were bound to affect my perspective. I think if it had come without the baggage I might have enjoyed it more.

my problem was not ttoi, my problem was quality/frequency of lols

I wasn't that taken with the first one, but it really hits its stride around ep 4 or 5.

Yeh, stick with it, it gets a lot better. I found myself gradually feeling warmer towards it and by the last 2 or 3 episodes I was anticipating the next one.

Agreed, I wasn't completely sold to begin with but it keeps getting better, and the last two episodes are pure gold. Ep 7, directed by Chris Morris, is jaw-droppingly good - and dark.