Veep - Seasons 1-6

“Veep can be a bit of a grab bag. It’s both feminist and women-hating; racially progressive and racist; offensive and hilarious by turns. But somehow it all comes together.”

Title: Veep
Episodes Reviewed: Seasons 1-6
Creator: Armando Iannucci 👨🏼🇬🇧
Writers: Armando Iannucci 👨🏼🇬🇧 (58 eps), Simon Blackwell 👨🏼🇬🇧 (13 eps), Tony Roche 👨🏼🇬🇧 (11 eps), Sean Gray 👨🏼🇬🇧 (9 eps), and various (21 ♂, 5 ♀)

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 4.5/5

Veep is the coarsest sitcom you’ll find on TV right now, but damn if they don’t own it. Its rat-a-tat vitriol proudly spits lines like “That guy is a weapons-grade r-t-rd,” or “Are we seriously gonna let the guy with the police-sketch-face of a rapist tell us what to do?” This dexterity of language is by far my favorite part of the show, Shakesperean in its bawdiness and wordplay. (“She's middle of the road. She's mediocre, really. Of all the -ocres, she's the mediest.”)

Unfortunately, this full-throttle approach can eventually get tiresome. At six seasons long (and one left to go), Veep stays solid, but the same pacing, jokes, and characters all start to blend together around Seasons 3 or 4. Luckily, Season 5 employs some subtle character development and reshuffling of the cast. By Season 6, we’re back in business.

Gender: 4/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES

Women are a force to be reckoned with in Veep. They cuss, belittle, interrupt, and abuse with the best of the degenerates that populate this show. Unfortunately, the misogynistic humor gets wearying, even if it is women slinging slurs alongside the men.

A perfect example of Veep’s halfway feminism is a scene in Season 6. In a gender role reversal—something Veep does execute very well—main character Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tries to talk business while her Communications director Mike (Matt Walsh) juggles screaming kids, frazzled and covered in food stains. Unfortunately, this scene makes child-rearing the punchline, portraying it as something that has no place in the working world.

This scene is just one of countless asides that make up the bracing “alpha dog” humor of Veep. To be fair, men and penises are derided too, but the majority of jokes still skew towards activities traditionally considered feminine. Showrunner David Mandel, who took over for creator Iannucci at the start of Season 4, says himself that “one of the fascinating things about Selina is how much she hates women.” While I’m glad the creators and writers of Veep are going into this fully aware, it still leaves the show less than empowering for women overall.

Race: 3.5/5

The characters in Veep are mostly white. But so is our current 115th Congress. While 37% of Democrats in Congress are people of color—similar to the national share of 39%—95% of Republican congresspeople are white. This ultimately leads to Veep looking pretty accurate to real life.

Earlier seasons put in more of an effort to reflect diversity, casting Korean American Randall Park in the stereotype-defying role of former governor of Minnesota. The amazing Sue Wilson (who is Black, played by Sufe Bradshaw) enjoys a snarky, well-rounded role in the first five seasons of the show. But the most recent season is iffier, where the only main character of color is the lovable, but infinitely subordinate assistant, Richard (played by Sam Richardson, who is Black). And while Selina’s 6-episode romance with Qatari ambassador Jaffar (Usman Ally, who describes himself as African-American-Asian) is perfectly written, the character of Latina President Montez is white and played by Jewish/Greek actress Andrea Savage.

As for how race is discussed on the show, it mostly stays in line with the take-no-prisoners style of writing. But Veep needs to be careful about keeping enough characters of color onscreen in order to disarm its more outrageous lines. For example, in “Justice” (Season 6, Episode 4), Dan complains to his makeup artist, “Can we go easy on the bronzer, please? I’m starting to look like a diversity hire.” Is this funny? Yes—but only so long as the cast is actually diverse. Otherwise, the racist jokes get harder to swallow.

LGBTQ: 4.25/5

Catherine (Sarah Sutherland), Selina’s daughter, goes through multiple romances with men in the first four seasons of Veep but reveals that she is in love with a woman in “C**Tgate” (Season 5, Episode 6). Her girlfriend Marjorie (Clea DuVall) is a ridiculous, robotic woman whose funniness recalls the catatonically dry humor of Captain Ray Holt from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She, like Captain Holt, both provide endless humor.

In addition, Veep does a great job of integrating LGBTQ storylines without ever making them seemed forced. They touch upon bisexuality, the process of coming out, same-sex marriage, and having children without ever missing a foul-mouthed beat. The only thing the series needed to score full points in this category was more of Catherine and Marjorie. As it stands, their relationship sees fairly minor screen time across the full 58 episodes being considered in this review.

Deduction for Disability: -0.50

As discussed above, racist line deliveries by easy-to-hate characters only land so long as the cast is diverse. By similar logic, jokes about “r-t-rds” or calling someone “autismo” only lands if disabled characters are present, and in non-stereotypical roles. None exist.

Bonus for Age: +0.50

Women over 40 are irritatingly desexualized in Hollywood. Louis-Dreyfus herself has mined this double standard for laughs in hilarious sketch on Inside Amy Schumer that centers around Louis-Dreyfus’ “last fuckable day in Hollywood.” On Veep, women over 50 are depicted as sexually active and—well, “fuckable.”

Mediaversity Grade: B 4.06/5

Veep can be a bit of a grab bag. It’s both feminist and women-hating; racially progressive and racist; offensive and hilarious by turns. But somehow it all comes together.

I can’t say how the show will hold up against the test of time, however. As I discuss in my reviews for GLOW and Silicon Valley, satire is feeling less effective these days in a cultural environment that, broadly speaking, has no concept of irony nor appetite for mental legwork. But unlike Selina Meyer’s desperate grabs for power, the show knows when to bow out gracefully: Next season will be the series’ last.

Like Veep? Try these other swill-mouthed titles.

Grade: BLiAugust 28, 2017Great for: Age