Overrated Series (Sort of) Veep

 

Normally my entries in this series deal with certain prestige dramas that I watched quite a bit of and could never understand why critics and awards shows loved so much. This entry is different and not simply because it involves a comedy.

I saw quite a bit of Veep when it was on the air, basically the first half of Season 2 and then the next five seasons. I think it reached its peak level well before Trump entered the political arena (Season 4 ended in May 2015) but there will still funny moments and great performances all the way through. That being said, even while I was watching and enjoying it I could never consider it the masterpiece that so many other critics and awards shows did. At the time there were many great comedies on the air, from Parks & Rec and The Big Bang Theory at the start of Veep’s run, masterclasses like Fleabag and Marvelous Mrs. Maisel when it ended and in between such more than super shows as Transparent, Master of None and Atlanta. In good conscience I can’t rank Veep as being as consistently funny or as revolutionary as many of them.

Around the middle of its run I was ‘officially’ beginning my career as a TV critic on this site. I’d worked on other, long since defunct ones, during this period but I don’t think I began to reach my peak level as a critic in any form until perhaps the end of the 2010s by which point Veep was gone from the arena. When I did write about the show it was almost always in connection with the Emmys where the show was fundamentally dominating. I frequently expressed my frustration at this but considering how during the 2010s I was still mostly holding the Emmys in contempt for recognizing series I didn’t like (Modern Family & Game of Thrones were the biggest offenders) it may well have come off as petty grievances. But with the benefit of hindsight and experience I now think I understand my problems with Veep were deeper than that – and oddly enough, had nothing to do with the political situation that was unfolding.

So in this entry I’m not so much going to discuss my issues with Veep but why my viewing habits both before and while it was on the air may very well have led me to wonder almost from the start why everyone was so thrilled about this series. In doing so I hope to discuss some of the greater flaws that were going on with HBO comedies in comparison to other networks (one in particular) and why I think what so many thought was revolutionary was more about a kind of classism when it came to how we viewed television at the time and in a sense still do. And to do this I need to explain my own viewing habits at the time.

At the start of the 21^st century HBO has revolutionized television, first with The Sopranos and shows like Sex and The City. FX gets credit for the next step in the revolution with The Shield and while there is much truth in this, it’s generally forgotten that while this was going HBO’s fellow pay cable network Showtime was making a concentrated effort to rival HBO when it came to original series. I had a front row seat to it and I think its telling what the different approaches were.

The Sopranos created the White Male Antihero and was a critical and ratings hit for HBO. Showtime’s approach during this period seemed to be determined to create groundbreaking drama with anything but a white male antihero. The cynical part of me wonders if that’s why Showtime took so long to break through with audiences; the fact that’s its first unconditional ratings smash was Dexter seems to argue for that narrative.

But Showtime seemed determined to win its audience through diversity and many of these experiments look radical by the standards of 2000s Drama. Here we see the series adaptation of the hit Soul Food and Resurrection Boulevard one of the first dramas of any kind to have what was fundamentally a LatinX audience at its center. More popular – and controversial – was their adaptation of Queer as Folk followed closely by The L Word, the first series of any kind to have the LGBTQ+ audience at its center. There were sci-fi dramas such as Odyssey 5 and Jeremiah. There was the often hysterical dramedy Dead to Me in which a college age girl gets killed by a airplane toilet and takes up  a career as a reaper. Even the one series that might have been close to the white male antihero Huff (which earned the first major Emmy nominations for the network and won two Supporting Actress Emmys for Blythe Danner, was basically about a psychiatrist having a mid-life crisis – hardly Tony Soprano territory.

Watching Showtime during this period was almost thrilling. So much of what they were doing seemed to be throwing anything against a wall and seeing what stuck. It would have too easy to create the kind of antihero dramas that were drawing in the masses (as they eventually did in the 2010s with series like Ray Donovan) but Showtime seemed more determined to succeed on their own terms than duplicate winning formulas. And this was just as true with their comedies – particularly the one that finally put them on the map.

I need to be clear upfront that I never liked Weeds. (And not just because my repulsion for Nancy’s pot-growing business to support her family is the main reason I never watched Breaking Bad when it was airing on AMC until the penultimate season.) It was a formula that I never liked that much and even the most devoted fans of the show will admit it stayed on the air far too long. (It’s considered that when Nancy decided to burn down Agrestic and take her family on a perennial road trip at the end of Season 3 that the show jumped the shark.) But just as Shonda Rhimes’ work helped lead to a series of strong dramas with females and minorities that I have come to love in the past decade, so can I appreciate that Weeds and its critical and popular hit led to so many superb comedies.

The watershed moment for Showtime came in 2006 when Mary Louise Parker took Best Actress in a Comedy over all four of the leads in Desperate Housewives (something that stunned even her) and Weeds itself won Best Comedy or Musical. Showtime had found its oeuvre and it was something that was notably absent on HBO: female-centric dramedies. For the next decade Showtime would produce a series of critically acclaimed and award winning successes for the network that were focused on everything HBO comedies were not: the working class with the majority of them having female leads. And in something that wasn’t noticed at the time (but really should have been) they all had female showrunners as well as leads.

United States of Tara was Diablo Cody’s first TV project. Set in Omaha, it told the story of Tara, a middle class housewife who suffers from multiple personality disorder and how her family tries there best to support her and deal with. In her first  television project Toni Collette was superb and she had an incredible cast behind her, John Corbett, Rosemarie DeWitt, Patton Oswalt and a then unknown Brie Larson. The show was nominated for four Emmys in 2009 and it what was considered a strange award but I consider one of the Emmys finest hours, Toni Collette took Best Actress in a Comedy. The series was also significant because one of Tara’s children was openly gay, something still become part of the new world in 2009.

Later in 2009 came Lix Brixius’s Nurse Jackie in what was Edie Falco’s follow-up project to The Sopranos. In the title role Falco played a drug addicted nurse working as one of the most underfinanced and understaffed hospitals in New York, keeping her marriage secret from her co-workers (including a pharmacist she’s having an affair with) and basically hiding ever part of who she is. The series became Showtime’s first nominee for Outstanding Comedy series in 2010 and was nominated for ten Emmys in its first year. Falco won Best Actress in a Comedy that year and would receive five more Emmy nominations. The series featured such veterans as Anna Deavere Smith and Paul Schulze and introduced the world to the astounding Merritt Wever who also deservedly won an Emmy. The series was also prominent in dealing with the flaws of addiction, the health care system and so many of the problems with the working class.

Then at the end of 2010 came The Big C in which Cathy Jamison, a suburban mother, faces a cancer diagnosis and tries to find humor and happiness now that she is facing death. Laura Linney was incredible in her work in this very dark comedy. Oliver Platt and John Benjamin Hickey had superb roles in support, and Gabourey Sidibe fresh of her Oscar nominee for Precious was magnificent as one of her students. The show also introduced Gabriel Basso as her son. Linney would eventually win an Emmy for the final season.

All of these series were critically acclaimed and dealt with the struggles of working class women in American. Many of these women were known for behaving as badly and unprofessionally but it was a lot harder not to feel sympathy and empathy for them (Jackie became trickier in the final seasons but addiction was part of it.) They also dealt with other issues involving homosexuality, race and trying to survive.

Now compare that with the kind of comedies that HBO was churning out during this same period (2005 when Weeds began to 2015 when Nurse Jackie ended) Curb Your Enthusiasm basically deals with the nasty and unpleasant behavior of a rich, famous white man and his rich friends. Entourage deals with the misogynistic behavior of a celebrity and his followers, including his agent. Girls, which was huge acclaimed, tells the story of the juvenile behavior of four female recent college graduates. Silicon Valley (which debuted in 2015 and falls in my parameter) deals with the toxic and horrendous behavior that we see in the tech startup community and tech people and most. The majority of the people in all of these comedies who are behaving horribly are upper-class and overwhelming white. Even the one female-centric comedy Girls basically has to do with a woman who wants her parents to support her lifestyle for much of the first two seasons. Hannah lives in New York but it’s closer to the one Carrie Bradshaw lives in rather than Jackie Peyton.

Veep wasn’t even the first female centric comedy HBO developed during this period Mike White’s Enlightened debuted in 2011 and became a critical hit though it would be cancelled after two seasons. It is closer in terms of what the Showtime dramedies are trying to do but it doesn’t change the fact that Amy comes from a life of privilege in LA that Cathy Jameson wouldn’t recognize. With all that in mind you can understand why when Veep debuted in the spring of 2012  the only thing that was unique about it was that the woman at the center was the Vice President.

I don’t deny that it can be very funny at times but there’s nothing that special about the comedy in comparison to what HBO was doing at time, save I suppose the level of the nastiness of the insults involved. I’m not entirely convinced even that was unique for an HBO cringe comedy; Extras had completed its run a full four years before Veep debut.

Part of my bias may be my fundamental dislike for all things Armando Iannucci, who seems to have made a huge amount of money creating TV series in both Britain and America in which the rich and powerful shout incredibly cruel insults all of which involve as many permutations of the F-word as possible. I suppose if you like that sort of thing, you might find it entertaining but it has a shelf life before it just gets dull and you have to have an interesting story to go with the bad behavior. That has never been Iannucci’s strong suit, whose only insight into character seems to be that the rich and powerful are as petty and vindictive behind the scenes as we all suspect them to be even to each other.

I have to say my opinion of this wasn’t helped by the fact that I spent much of this time watching the first three seasons of House of Cards. I kept thinking throughout the second and third seasons that Frank Underwood would have made mincemeat of these people in one episode and achieved his goals in two. It helps matters that he is self-aware and more politically astute to his environment than anyone we meet on Veep and honestly, more sympathetic than Selina Meyer will ever be.

I could never watch a single episode and understand how Selina Meyer had ever been able to run for anything, much less win it. It wasn’t just her unpleasant behavior; it’s that she never seemed to really have a purpose to be President rather than just to say she could. I’ll grant you most of her staff was blindingly incompetent but considering she hired them in the first place that says more about her then them. All of these people were both ambitious, moronic and had no self-awareness. And while I suspect that’s always been true in Washington (more so today then before) it’s very boring for a television show, even a comedy.

Now again, I’m not saying Veep was a bad show that it wasn’t entertaining or even enjoyable. But to put it very delicately this wasn’t a show that deserved a lot of recognition from award shows. And before I get to the Emmys I need to tell you that outside of that particular circle it got very little. Julia Louis-Dreyfus was nominated for five Golden Globes: she never won once. In chronological order she lost to Lena Dunham for Girls (no) Amy Poehler for Parks & Rec (yea!) Gina Rodriguez for Jane The Virgin, Rachel Bloom for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Tracee Ellis Ross for Black-ish. In every single one of those case (save Dunham) the Golden Globes made the right call and the Emmys (who gave her a prize everyone of those years) made the wrong call. That the Emmys didn’t even nominated Rodriguez or Bloom at any time in their careers is yet another reason it’s hard for me to take them seriously.

Veep was only nominated twice for Best Comedy in 2016 and 2017 (the Emmys gave it the grand prize both times. The show lost to Mozart in the Jungle in 2016 (a questionable choice) and Atlanta in 2017 (a better choice in 2017). The show wasn’t nominated in 2015 by the Golden Globes who gave their top prize to Transparent. Veep took its first Emmy for Best Comedy that year. In 2014 the show wasn’t nominated by the Golden Globes and Brooklyn Nine-Nine won. That year Veep was nominated for Best Comedy and Brooklyn Nine-Nine wasn’t.

While Veep was on the air the Critics Choice Awards were coming into existence. It was nominated for Best Comedy four times, from 2013 to 2016. It never won losing in chronological order to The Big Bang Theory, Orange is the New Black, Silicon Valley and Master of None. Julia Louis-Dreyfus did win two Best Actress in a Comedy awards (in 2013 and 2014) but the last two times out she lost to Amy Schumer and Kate McKinnon. Louis-Dreyfus did do somewhat better at the SAG Awards, winning three times but the show itself only won once.

Having seen a majority of so many of the comedies that were nominated during this period I can say with confidence that almost all of them were funnier, more consistently entertaining and often more joyful than Veep could ever me. And it isn’t lost on me that, with the notable exception of Silicon Valley, all of the comedies are more diverse, deal with characters in a working class environment and fundamentally deal more with more relatable goals than anyone in the Meyer Vice Presidency or Presidency. And all of the women who prevailed in the Golden Globes (including 2012 which gave its prize to Laura Dern for Enlightened) were at their core in more entertaining shows than one saw during Louis-Dreyfus’s six consecutive Emmy wins. Dern might not have been nominated but the contenders included Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy for Mike & Molly, Edie Falco and Zoey Deschanel. All of them were in shows and comedies I find funnier and more endearing than Veep.

I really do believe the recognition for Veep and Louis-Dreyfus in particular has less to do with the quality of her work than the maddening habit of the Emmys to give the same award to the same performer year after year, particularly in comedy. Helen Hunt had done so for four straight seasons of Mad About You, Jeremy Piven would do the same for three straight season of Entourage and Jim Parson would be the beneficiary of four Emmys in five years. But Louis-Dreyfus’ success is the most maddening example of the Emmys decision to keep playing on repeat and never let anyone else win. They were walking that back slightly in Drama during this period but definitely not in comedy and that is the one major issue I have with Jean Smart’s repeated wins for Hacks. I love her work, don’t get me wrong but sometimes the Emmys have to let someone else in the winner’s circle.

I don’t feel this way, I should be clear, for everyone else in the cast. Tony Hale’s work as Gary was always both humorous and sad as we saw his puppy dog affection for Selina that was never remotely reciprocated. Gary Cole and Kevin Dunn’s work as Selina’s advisers was always enjoyable and I often wished the writers would use them more. Sam Richardson’s arrival as Richard Splet was the ray of light Veep desperately needed and he was the one constant source of great fun even as the series quality deteriorated. And I like the work of the guest actors, particularly Hugh Laurie.

But by and large overall watching Veep took on the sense of an obligation when I was viewing it: something I didn’t enjoy like so many of the comedies I mentioned yet something I needed to do because I knew it would be contending for Emmys every year and that I needed to be briefed on by the time the nominations came out. I was personally relieved that by the end of the decade a new group of female led comedies were taking Selina and her crew of the Emmy stage, whether they were the sprightly Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,  the wondrous work of Fleabag and such less recognized but just as fun streaming series as Russian Doll and Dead To Me. These women were just as foul-mouthed and behaved as badly as Selina did, but it helped that unlike her they had depths and layers where everyone else had borrowed the one dimension they had.

HBO also seemed to have recognized that it couldn’t do comedies with rich and powerful white people exchanging insults. To be sure in the years to come we’ve gotten such Iannucci’s projects as Avenue 5 and The Franchise but the networks also given us the brilliant Insecure and the sublime Somebody Somewhere where community and kindness are more important then the most creative slurs. I don’t regret having watched Veep the same way I do spending time with so many of the series in the Overrated Series but I don’t want to revisit it either and I am grateful that the kind of comedy it inspired is mostly gone from TV. It almost certainly has to do with the American cultural atmosphere we live in today (which has made the world of the show very much seem like a documentary then they wanted) but I like to think that the viewer has long since grown tired of that nastiness in a comedy. For that at least, I have hope.