Armando Iannucci’s “Veep” arrived on HBO on April 22, 2012, with a title that doubles as a job description and a punchline. Selina Meyer, a former U.S. senator from Maryland, has become Vice President of the United States. The show’s own synopsis says the role is “nothing like she expected and everything everyone ever warned her about.” That gap — between the office and its actual power — is the engine of all seven seasons.
Trailer, via HBO.
Selina Meyer and the Office That Does Nothing
Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina as a woman who has traded real influence for a title and a motorcade. The President, Stuart Hughes, is never shown on-screen at the outset. He ignores her. He sidelines her. She is left to chase a legacy the office cannot deliver.
Her party affiliation is never discussed, though an electoral map colors it blue. That omission is deliberate and it holds. “Veep” is not about red or blue. It is about the day-to-day grind of people who want credit and cannot get it.
The show follows Selina and her staff as they try to make their mark and instead get mired in political games. That is the whole arc, repeated and sharpened across 65 episodes.
Amy Brookheimer, Gary Walsh and the Staff Who Carry Her
The Vice President’s office runs on people Selina is almost totally reliant on. Anna Chlumsky plays Amy Brookheimer, the chief of staff, who calls herself the vice president’s “trouble-shooter, problem-solver, issue-mediator, doubt-remover, conscience-examiner, thought-thinker and all-round everything-doer.” Amy sacrifices her own reputation to protect Selina’s.
Tony Hale plays Gary Walsh, the body man. Hale received six Emmy nominations and two wins for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the role. That is the show’s quietest performance and its most reliable one.
Matt Walsh is director of communications Mike McLintock. Reid Scott is deputy director Dan Egan. Sufe Bradshaw is personal secretary Sue Wilson. Later, Kevin Dunn joins as White House Chief of Staff Ben Cafferty and Gary Cole as political strategist Kent Davison. Timothy Simons plays Jonah Ryan, first a White House liaison, later a New Hampshire congressman.
Seven Seasons, 65 Episodes, One Long Campaign
The series ran from April 22, 2012, to May 12, 2019. Here is how the seasons line up against the awards that followed.
| Season | First aired | Emmy result for Outstanding Comedy Series |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2012 | Nominated |
| 2 | 2013 | Nominated |
| 3 | 2014 | Nominated |
| 4 | 2015 | Won |
| 5 | 2016 | Won |
| 6 | 2017 | Won |
| 7 | 2019 | Nominated |
Seven consecutive nominations. Wins for seasons four, five and six. The second, fourth and sixth seasons took the Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Comedy Series. The third season earned the Television Critics Association’s comedy prize.
Louis-Dreyfus took home six Primetime Emmys for the part, plus three Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Critics’ Choice Television Awards, a Television Critics Association Award, and five straight Golden Globe nominations.
A Plot That Keeps Moving the Goalposts
Season one makes Selina a front-runner for her party’s 2012 nomination. She loses it to Stuart Hughes. She joins his ticket as running mate and is elected vice president. Then she is ignored.
By the end of season two she has accrued some power and is considering challenging Hughes for the 2016 nomination. That becomes moot when Hughes abruptly resigns over his wife’s poor mental health and Selina becomes president.
She begins her presidential campaign at the end of season three. Season four finds her adjusting to the role. Season five ends with her losing the race through a complex manipulation of constitutional law. Season six is about what her post-presidential legacy should be. Season seven is another run.
The Best Television Satire of Its Decade
“Veep” is widely regarded as a landmark in political satire and is often cited among the best television comedies. The Guardian, BBC, Rolling Stone and Variety have all ranked it among the greatest TV shows of all time.
That reputation is earned, but it is worth being precise about where it comes from. The show’s genius is not in its plot. The plot is often a convoluted machine of constitutional technicalities and staff betrayals. The genius is in the language and in the way the show treats ambition as a physical condition.
Selina has a strained relationship with her daughter Catherine, played by Sarah Sutherland. She seems to display little or no maternal instinct. She is divorced but remains romantically entangled with her ex-husband during the first two seasons and the sixth. Clea DuVall plays Marjorie Palmiotti. Emily Pendergast plays Beth Ryan.
These are not subplots that resolve. They are character facts that pile up.
Where the Show Slips
The middle seasons get tangled in their own mechanics. The constitutional manipulation that costs Selina the presidency in season five is clever on paper and exhausting on screen. The show asks you to track procedural rules it has not made you care about.
The satire also has a ceiling. Because the party is never named, the show cannot say anything specific about either coalition. It aims at the machinery of politics and hits it hard. It aims at ideology and misses. That is a choice, and it costs the show a layer that a more pointed satire would not have to give up.
The final season has to do something the earlier ones did not: end. It runs Selina through another campaign and lands on a conclusion that is bleak and, in retrospect, correct. But the road there is bumpier than the show’s reputation suggests.
Louis-Dreyfus Is the Whole Case
Six Emmys for one performance is not a fluke. Louis-Dreyfus plays Selina as a person who has confused visibility with power and cannot tell the difference anymore. She is funny because she is precise. She is sad because she is precise.
The supporting cast holds the floor when she leaves it. Chlumsky’s Amy is the show’s conscience, and the show punishes her for it. Hale’s Gary is devotion without dignity. Simons’s Jonah is the show’s id, and the show lets him rise, which is the darkest joke it tells.
The Verdict on Veep
“Veep” is a great comedy with a real flaw, and the flaw is structural rather than incidental. It is at its best when it is about people failing in small rooms. It is at its weakest when it asks you to follow the legal machinery of a presidency it has already told you is hollow.
The awards record is not noise. Seven consecutive Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series, with wins for seasons four, five and six, is a statement about consistency. The Writers Guild wins for seasons two, four and six say the same thing about the writing. The show earned its place.
But a 7.2 out of 10 is the honest number. That is the published critical score, and it fits. “Veep” is not a perfect show. It is a very good show that occasionally mistakes complexity for depth and cynicism for insight. When it works, it is the best political satire American television has produced. When it does not, it is a room full of smart people yelling procedure at each other.
The case for watching it is still overwhelming. Selina Meyer’s arc from ignored vice president to president to loser to candidate again is one of the great long-form character studies on television. Louis-Dreyfus built it. The staff carried it. The show’s final answer — that the machinery wins and the people inside it are ground down — is the right answer.
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