If it weren’t so viciously funny and laced with f-bombs in every other sentence, HBO’s new comedy series “Veep” (premiering Sunday night) could almost serve as campaign material for all those tea party-esque candidates who are forever running against “the usual business in Washington.”
“Veep” confirms everyone’s worst suspicions about our sad and frantic little town. The innermost inner-Beltway that is skewered here is a place that takes for granted the art of self-preservation. The knives are always out, even when they’re made of eco-friendly, politically opportunistic cornstarch that will break on a pad of butter. Vice President Selina Meyer, played by the superb Julia Louis-Dreyfus, stirs her coffee with one of these enviro-spoons, and it immediately melts. There you have “Veep’s” central metaphor: Washington as the pinnacle of failure, addicted to a never-ending display of pandering and message manipulation.
Hank Stuever
Hank Stuever is The Washington Post’s TV critic and author of two books, “Tinsel” and “Off Ramp.”
Julia Louis-Dreyfus spoke with CBSNews.com on the red carpet at the D.C. premiere of her new HBO show "Veep." To prepare for her role as vice president, Dreyfus studied former vice presidents, but said the show is not a parody on Sarah Palin, or any politician.
That’s not news, except in the way “Veep” treats the corrosive muck as a given — a way of life that needs no set-up or explanation. Here we see a narcissistic and unqualified vice president of a government beyond repair, but “Veep” is not at all outraged about that. Instead, it revels in Washington’s ego-driven despicability; it wishes only to make hay.
In “Veep,” it’s as if all of Aaron Sorkin’s hyperverbal “West Wing” strivers have had every last trace of their idealism scrubbed away, leaving only their raw ambition and incessant yammering. The result is sublimely — if sadly — appropriate to the present-day vibe, the deeply cynical Washington in which we live and work.
As often as not, the worst of Selina’s public humiliations stem from her own sense of hubris and her Larry David-like tendency to stick her foot in her mouth, especially if a nearby microphone is hot. So it happens that she uses the word “retard” during a hastily edited fundraising speech at a party, a flub that lands her front and center on the next morning’s Style section (holla!) and sets off a hilarious day of attempted atonement with the mental-disability lobby. This is a vice president who schedules a “normalizing” photo-op visit to a minority-owned fro-yo shop on U Street but comes down with a flu bug on the way, and, after one bite of goopy yogurt, has an unfortunate “Bridesmaids”-style accident while trying to hustle back to her motorcade limo.
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