Matt Smith reviews the fourth episode of Veep season three…
If there’s one thing Veep’s good at, it’s the constant underpinning that, as much as things change, they still stay the same. It’s in that respect episode four plays out.
This week, Selina Meyer visits Silicon Valley in a bid to connect with the tech wizards and supporters in California. Of course, the company she visits has their own agenda to push in lieu of supporting Meyer, and the VP must negotiate her way around a world she barely knows while ensuring she brings across her messages, both public statements and private deals, across.
In the tour of Clovis, the company Meyer visits, Veep manages to simultaneously find a hilariously terrifying place to work and provide characters even more unlovable than the VP’s staff. Filled with new ideas such as sleeping pods and ping-pong tables near the meeting tables, Clovis represents all that is new, all that a President would have to connect with in order to, strangely enough, get the votes from those that spend most of their time online. Strangely troubling at times, Clovis also provides someone to dislike in place of our main characters. While most episodes show Meyer and her staff to be as stupid and selfish as the rest, we’re slightly more on side with Selina this week as she gives a speech or is being corrected in how to pronounce the Clovis CEO’s name.
In a similar way, as much as things change in Veep, the more they stay the same. The show mostly succeeds throughout it’s two and a bit seasons to show a funny, if at times uncomfortable, view of US politics. It’s methods, quickly delivered jokes that are easy flowing and usually put downs, don’t change no matter who’s saying them in what situation. It’s merely stepping up the position of each character.
And in terms of stepping up, Jonah is back once again to torment the veep and her staff, particularly clashing with the career-building Dan. Some of the best interchanges are between Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) and Dan Egan (Reid Scott) as each tries to use the other to further their own career. Barbs back and forth, along with the feeling that they do have a small amount of respect for each other, however begrudging, provides the show with its best moments. Amid all this is some glorious professional torture of Jonah, with a wonderfully nasty ending for the man who, thankfully, will keep bouncing back. Otherwise it’d just be depressing.
So while Dan Egan is becoming a mini-version of Malcolm Tucker, in a strangely pleasing way, the rest of the office and beyond try their best to further their own agendas and selves. In a perfect ending to this episode, Selina Meyer stands in front of a group of young enterprising tech heads and, in the way most fitting politics in this world of selfishness and back stabbing, uses them profusely before leaving them and their space age toilets behind. It sums Veep up. Horribly hilarious and taking pot shots at the political powerhouses, its aim is to do nothing more than mock the people in suits who try to run the country while putting more energy into making sure they stay in charge of running the country.
Matt Smith – follow me on Twitter.
Originally published August 10, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
