Veep – Episode 3 Review
Rumours around Washington are doing Selina Meyer no favours in this week’s episode of Veep. Those rumours suggest that she and the first lady don’t get along, and that she is also a diva, something she’s keen to disprove.
She’s still working on her Clean Jobs Commission, and is hoping to be able to announce that a former ‘oil guy’, Chuck Fernam, is joining it, in order to placate the oil industry. But Senator Doyle, who she met with last week, is less than pleased by Fernam being the man she wants, telling Mike that he is going ‘ape shit crossed with bat shit’ over the idea. This leaves the veep and her team scrambling to find a replacement, and stop Fernam from telling anyone that he’s been promised the position.
Selina is set to hold a party to celebrate 20 years in politics, and she also wants to get a dog. With Selina’s daughter Catherine in town, this may be problematic, as she never allowed Catherine to have a dog when she was younger, making this a ‘parental ground zero’.
It’s another episode with a lot of things happening at the same time, but Veep is so well written and produced that the structure of the episode doesn’t becomes confusing, and each strand of the plot gets enough time dedicated to it that you’re never left wondering why certain things were mentioned at all.
Jonah (Timothy Simons) gets a lot of screen time in this episode too, and his way with the ladies is exposed throughout. At a wake for Senator ‘Rapey’ Reeves, he complains about being cockblocked by his weeping widow, and he also tries to flirt with Catherine, who is less than impressed, later saying that he has a face like a ‘police sketch of a rapist’.
Another problem for Selina is her discovery that a hurricane with her name is set to hit America next year, and although Amy reassured her that people wouldn’t blame her for the hurricane, she tells Amy that she’s met people, and some of them are idiots. She wants Amy to get the hurricane re-named, something which also causes friction between her and Catherine.
The episode also highlights just how important Gary (Tony Hale) is to Selina. He’s particularly useful when Selina is meeting people she doesn’t know, throwing out facts as she greets them which allows her to interact with them in a friendly, personable way. That contrasts strongly with Mike’s role, as he constantly lets Selina down, despite being her director of communications.
Although Selina has to deal with a lot of crap in each episode of Veep, she’s never completely out of control, and usually ends up in a position where everything has, more or less, worked out in her favour. It’s a key difference from The Thick Of It, where the politicians are usually out of the loop and left reeling by the events that are happening around them.
Veep is very much its own show, and continues to enjoy a very good first series.
David Dougan
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