Veep Season 5 Episode Guide
5.01 "The Morning After" - Review
5.02 "Nev-AD-a" - Review
5.03 "The Eagle" - Review
5.04 "Mother" - Review
5.05 "Thanksgiving" - Review
5.06. "C**tgate" - Review!
5.07. "Congressional Ball" - Review!
5.08. "Camp David" - Airs June 12 2016
5.09. "Kissing Your Sister" - Airs June 19 2016
5.10. "Inauguration" - Airs June 26 2016
Veep 5.06 "C**tgate" - Review
Directed by Brad Hall, Written by Georgia Pritchett & Will Smith
Well, with an episode title like that, you know you're going to be in for an interesting half-hour, don't you? Of course, Veep once again proved to make the most of that half-hour, giving us a spectacular evening's entertainment. At this time of the year it's clear that HBO has the best line-up of all of the networks right now, even if it is only one night a week. The combination of Game of Thrones followed by Silicon Valley and Veep is just too good and now that we're over the halfway mark of the season, Veep might just be the best.
Dan has now joined Jonah, and is acting as his campaign manager. This allows the Dan/Jonah back and forth banter to continue between the two, even if they're now in different jobs with Jonah running for Congress proving to be one of the more amusing story arcs of Season 5, and we're shown just how ill-equipped Jonah is to this position, which is probably what you would have expected him to be. He's not changed his personality simply because he's got a career upgrade, Jonah's still Jonah, and that focus group was only going to ever go sideways. It's interesting to also see that this arc brings back Bill Ericsson as Dan's opposite number, and it'll interesting to see what will happen between the two going forward. On paper Bill has the more experience and is better equipped, but things could change in the future, especially as Jonah has come out with a position that's not exactly Pro-Selina.
The White House is dealing with a crisis as things have taken a darker turn pretty quickly following the events of Thankgsiving, which was essentially the calm before the storm. Selina's staff have to plan a bailout of two major banks and it's interesting to see how the group go about doing this, whilst Amy deals with an insult directed towards the President when it's revealed that someone on their staff didn't exactly call Selina the nicest thing ever. And it turns out that even if Selina ends up winning the election, she could do so by having a negative effect on the American economy.
This episode used its title well to provide a great exploration of the characters, and looks at the shocking language that is commonplace in the White House according to Amy, using it as great comedy fodder. There were some great minor moments in this episode that also saw amusement in particular with Jonah's excellent ad campaign, and Richard's rejection from several celebrities including Sting, Bruce Springsteen and Enya.
Amy ends up firing three people and eventually Mike ends up having to deal with the media regarding the insult. It isn't helping that the media were trying to put a spin on it and turn it into another "-Gate" situation, and with all the other problems that Selina faced in this episode made it a very enjoyable one indeed. It turned out that Charlie has dumped Selina for not bailing out his bank, and to make things even more interesting, Catherine's revelation that she was dating Marjorie, her mother's body double, was actually a pretty great revelation made all the more hilarious by Gary's excellent reaction.
On the whole, Veep delivered us another excellent half-hour of television that really worked, mixing up the various problems that Selina faced with yet another scandal-focused episode working really well to great effect indeed, exploring Selina's reaction to being insulted which makes a change, because it's usually her that's doing the insulting.
Overall Episode Verdict:: A
+Jonah's campaign ad!
+Bank bailout dilemma
+Catherine's new relationship
Veep 5.07. "Congressional Ball"
Directed by Maurice Marable & Written by Billy Kimball
This episode focused on the annual holiday for Congressional members and families. Selina is desperately trying to win over as many local politicians as she can to help make sure that they support her, and the episode as a result gives us plenty of backstabbing and political betrayal. It's something that you'd expect from House of Cards but Veep pulled it off just as well, and with some excellent comedy to boot.
The episode also saw the release of the "Fifty Hottest DC Staffers" and thankfully for Amy at least she's not on it, but it turns out that Gary is (at 21). Even if his placement was accidental as he had been confused with another Gary, we got to see some great stuff with him this episode, especially when he walked in on both Selina and Tom, which was one of this week's strongest scenes, but as usual, there are so many great moments going on in a Veep episode that it's always hard to pick a favourite, and Congressional Ball was no exception.
Selina is trying to figure out what Tom James is plotting, telling Mike that O'Brien could offer "Literally anything" better than the vice-presidency position. For now though Tom keeps getting in Selina's way as she tries to keep making promises that she knows she won't be able to keep, especially when plenty of them are increasingly hilarious. Tom manages to convince everyone at Congress to abstain in the vote, and by doing this he'll wind up with the presidency because if nobody gets a majority in the House and if it goes to the Senate, this means that the Senate will put Tom in power. It's a definite upgrade on becoming vice-president.
We then soon learn that Tom however admits that he actually has a crush on Selina and then this leads to the scene that I mentioned above where Gary walked in on them both, in an hilariously awkward way. This helps boost Selina's confidence and she eventually starts winning back the support of the people of Congress, letting her backstabbers know what the consequences could be of going against her.
On the Jonah front, we see him at a campaign stop in New Hampshire which doesn't go well for him, where his temper gets the better of him when he confronts his former bully Teddy Sykes. To make matters worse he doesn't realise that his opponents have positioned the cameras to make it look like he's insulting a bowling alley employee with Down Syndrome, which could potentially end his political career.
Congressional Ball then was another excellent episode of Veep, which allowed Selina to embrace her more political side this week as she got a victory over Tom James, hooking up with him in the process.
Overall Episode Verdict:: A
Positives:
+Selina/Tom.
+Gary accidentally put on the "Fifty Hottest DC Staffers" List.
+Political infighting.
What did you think of these two episodes of Veep? Let me know in the comments section below and be sure to check out this Sunday's episode, Camp David, which airs at 10:30pm on HBO.
