I’m pretty sure “Veep” is a corrosive, rotting influence on the nation’s collective view of American politics — and considering how corrosive and rotting that view already is, that’s saying something.
When “Veep” premiered in 2012, many political sorts lambasted the show partly for its cruelty and profanity but mostly for its lack of realism. This was not just your run of the mill “that’s not how you pass a bill!” pedantry either. They were angry because it was so mean.
Eleanor Clift wrote, “if the aim of this show is to get viewers to disrespect everybody in elected office, mission accomplished,” and Slate’s John Dickerson (whose idealism and faith in the goodness of his fellow man I generally find appealing and refreshing) said that “a show that’s so soaked in cynicism about politics as a work of art smacks as lazy.”
“Veep,” which kicks off its fourth season Sunday on HBO, is the furthest thing from “lazy,” but otherwise, I couldn’t disagree with any of this. “Veep” focuses on only the most venal, opportunistic side of politics and those who work in it, and if all I knew about politics I learned from “Veep,” I would crawl in a hole and never vote the rest of my life. Of course, down in that hole, despairing about the state of American discourse and government, I’d still be laughing my tail off.
“Parks and Recreation” made you laugh, but it also wanted you to feel optimistic about both politics and the human condition; “Veep” has no such lofty aims. It just wants to make you laugh. It has chosen to do so by tossing as much bile at you as possible, but that’s OK, because that bile comes from Armando Iannucci, the Master Bard of Bile, the sharpest, most profane humorist of our time.
Iannucci has been known for satire, from “The Thick of It” to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for “In the Loop,” which managed to vivisect British politics and American warmongering in a way that made you feel elated by the madness of the wordplay rather than depressed by the worldview. Iannucci doesn’t try to convey the world as it is; he conveys the world as we’re terrified it might secretly be, which ironically might end up more truthful but definitely ends up a lot funnier.
“Veep” struggled early on because Iannucci didn’t quite understand the intricacies of American politics as well as he did British politics; it was impossible, at times, to suspend your disbelief that any of these people could get jobs anywhere. That was particularly true for Vice President Selina Mayer, who, as played by Julia-Louis Dreyfus, was a little too much of a buffoon to convince us she could get elected vice president of her household, let alone the country.
A show like “Veep” doesn’t need to be “real,” but it doesn’t need to be so cartoonish that it takes us out of the narrative; the first season, you wondered how if any of the Veep’s staff, including the Veep herself, could figure out how to write their name in the ground with a stick.
After the first season, Iannucci, Louis-Dreyfus and their staff (including executive producer Frank Rich) made a few tweaks, most notably playing up their star’s natural charm and increasing the competence level of everyone on the show: We had to believe they were something above a drooling moron in order to truly appreciate their inevitable failures.
And what failures there were! In many ways, “Veep” is an ode to failing upwards. No matter how badly things keep getting screwed up, Selina Meyer stays in the picture, eventually (and Season Three spoiler here) surviving a presidential-campaign- ending gaffe (bad-mouthing an influential Iowa reporter right into his iPhone) by getting bumped up to president when the current office holder resigns in scandal. The moment when Selina and her aide Gary realize that she’s about to become the leader of the free world is a wild, giddy glimpse of insanity.
That strikes me as an entirely appropriate response to learning you are about to be given the nuclear codes.
That’s not how any actual campaign would work, but who cares. It’s freaking hilarious, and as the show has matured, it has learned that as long as it ties its plot to something real, you can have free reign to be as dark and knockout uproarious as you want.Genius of ‘Veep’ is that it makes politicians look far worse than they actually are
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
