How Veep Changed the Way I Think about Comedy
As much as Disney Hotstar has an annoying interface, it more than makes up for it with the amazing amount of content that it has on display. With a partnership with HBO, Disney and National Geographic there’s an endless amount of content out there. There are times I just look at my watchlist and feel overwhelmed, because of the backlog of content on there.
One show I knocked off recently off my watchlist was Veep. Each season had 10 episodes and a run time of 30 minutes. To me, that was perfect as it gave me a chance to watch one or two episodes everyday. The show is about Selina Meyer, the former Presidential candidate turned Vice President of the United States. Created by Armando Iannucci, a Scottish satirist turned director, the show went on a dream Emmy run, with Dreyfus walking away with 6 Emmys out of the 7 seasons the show has been on air. The show as a whole went on to win 17 Emmys.
Even though she’s supposed to be the Vice President, the simple fact is that she’s not involved in any of the decisions the President takes. She’s always awaiting for his call, and for the first couple of seasons, the recurring joke of Selina Meyer asking her secretary Sue(Sufe Bradshaw), if the president called and her secretary responding with a flat no, throws light at her sorry situation. Even though she’s not actually involved in a lot of decisions, it’s important that she keeps the image going to the general public that she’s working on something big. That’s when her dysfunctional staff comes in
The Vice President’s Office is lead by the Chief of Staff, Amy Brookheimer played by the brilliant Anna Chlumsky. She’s followed by Press Secretary Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh), Director of Communications, Dan Egan(Reid Scott) and Gary Walsh(Tony Scott), who’s the Vice Presidents bagman and closest aide for all the information the Veep needs. While Mike has been in politics for a long time and lost his energy to keep going, Dan and Amy the newer kids on the block are looking to make a mark.
The show really delves into the absurdity of how the government works, with personal agendas taking the lead, rather than general consensus. Each decision that Selina takes, is more among the lines of how she’ll look in front of the public rather than the impact of the same decisions. There’s an instance in Season 1, where she decides to go to a Yogurt Shop run by a black family for the last 50 years. There’s a chance of it being covered by photo journalists, so her team takes her there because they feel it would help with the African American vote. Selina has a lot of shortcomings as a politician and her team covers up for her throughout. She’s not familiar with a lot of people and what they do, so it’s up to Gary Walsh to whisper into her ear whenever she meets someone. She’s so concerned about her image and her own self that she does not know a lot about her daughter herself. Selina’s daughter Catherine (Sarah Sutherland), is someone who likes to keep away from the public eye and the absolute ridiculouness of Selina trying to show to the public that both she and her have a very close relationship.
It’s made pretty clear to the audience how the staff behind a senator or a representative is the real working mind behind their decisions and thoughts. As much as Selina starts out with strong views and motivation to bring about a real change, she realises being in politics is nothing like she ever thought, and everything what people warned her about. And Veep makes a real statement on the current political scenario that way.
When it comes to comedy, I’ve always been exposed to shows that have a different feel to them. Some of my favourite comedies, Modern Family, Arrested Development, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Seinfeld, were always shows I watched to get my mind off the real world. It’s only quite recently I’ve started to watch the heavier comedies, the dark comedies as people describe it. Some of them are very good, but none of them got as hauntingly real as Veep.
It really felt like watching our country’s politicians come alive in a show. A couple of weeks ago, I read a post about BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, who put up a story of how he paid for his own breakfast in a restaurant when they would not accept any payment as he was a member of the parliament. He said and I quote “I’m a member of BJP, not DMK". Now the story works on two levels. It boosts Tejasvi Surya’s image as the humble politician and brings down the other party’s image. You know who else did this? Every other politician on Veep, and every other politician you see promising the big things.
The show was was made over the last 7 years, the time when social media has created an unprecedented invasion into the privacy of people. When a 24 year old cis male won’t know which party he’s going to vote for, any of the political parties out there know how to appeal to him by just going through one simple glance of his Facebook feed or his Instagram stories. What social media has literally done is allowed politicians and parties access to data about their voters in a nice and easy manner. Now all a political party has to see the data on how many people support what and what polarizes people and run with those issues in their manifesto.
That’s what good content does I guess. Holds up a mirror to the society and makes people notices the bizarreness of how things work. Veep manages to find the comical aspect in absurdity and continues to show that while we can laugh at this, the fact that these clowns are running the city/state/country will cause long time repercussions. Politics is a dirty game, and it’s up to us to look through the bullshit and notice things.
