User Reviews

Well this show never stops keeping you laughing and giving you so much information about how nearly things go in the white house ;)

For the first time i really understood how elections work or what happens when there's a tie .

The script is still funny ,, leaving us so anxious to see what's gonna happen next season ,, is "House M.D" gonna become the president :D and Selina back to being a Veep !! well that would make the relation between the new arrival Hugh Laurie and Julia Louis-Dreyfus appears with so much tense and stressed comedy.

so with 4 years so far i still love this show and engage a lot with the informed comedy and the pressure they feel and perform in the show where it looks so much true and believable.

This show remains a bit of an enigma to me. On one hand, I find it funny – it has consistent laughs and has quality in spades throughout the writing, production, and cast. However, on the other side, almost every season of it has left me less than thrilled by it – and this fourth season is no exception. I think that four seasons means that I should no longer invoke the memory of The Thick of It, so I will not, but rather come to Veep on its own terms. It continues to have plenty of targets for mockery and satire – in this season we have a continuation of the run for nomination as Democratic candidate as well as the Presidential race that follows; hardly an area that is short of material. With this frame though, the season appears to move very quickly through the plot – with large jumps and strides along the way.

The comedy is based on incompetence, with the dialogue and delivery making it consistently funny, but strangely without a real sense of bite and cynicism. This remains the biggest issue for me, is that while it is fairly brutal with its characters, there is less of a cynicism and acerbic edge when it comes to the bigger institutions. To me this robs it of something, and while certainly not "gentle", it is does feel overly polished and refined in its delivery, characters and writing. Of course the quality in the series still means this produces a high quality comedy, with some really great lines, sharp delivery, and plenty of talent and fame in the cast and crew.

The third season had lifted its game somewhat, and I'm not sure the fourth season managed to sustain this; the narratives seemed rushed and not particularly cohesive as a season, while the lack of real edge and grit does continue to make it feel a bit too Corporate compared to what I always hope it will do with the ample targets and ammunition it has. I will of course return to Veep for the fifth season (even if Iannucci will not), because I am confident it will be funny and slick – I just wish I was more excited about it.

My overall rating of "Veep"'s Season 4: 5/10

So, funny story, I'd actually started Season 4 by watching Episode 10 on accident, and didn't realise it until after the fact. I was surprised by how consistently they kept referring to events inside the "timeskip" (my thinking was they'd have a flashback episode or something, having skipped to the juicy bits), but otherwise it all made sense, and the show'd seen some pretty big timeskips in the past... I'm not sure it's an indictment of "Veep" being cookie-cutter "just add swearing" or whatever, but anyway, the episode works well enough. There is some cringier humour with Karen (it's incredible that this one-note character returns, come to think of it, but first time around she isn't bad) or the writers' meanspiritedness towards characters' personal lives (wow, I'm actually defending something to do with Catherine, that's a first, I think - or, like, a 2nd, after her scene with Jonah in "First Response").