I'm enjoying the Veep a lot. It's not a main event show like GoT or the Borgias but it serves it place in my DVR besides Louie.

Blasted through all the episodes the other day and I'm diggin it. Jonah is funny. That **** he said on Sunday "It's like being operated on by a monkey with a hard on and a hacksaw", I lol'd.

i'd be surprised if we ever saw the president.

I'd love to see them do a TWW tribute and have Martin Sheen pop out at the end of the finale. He says "I am the lord our god..." and then CUT.

Surprised no mention of last nights episode. Interested to see where they go with the pregnancy.

I doubt we ever see the president, it's almost a running joke that he is never calling.

LOL @ the photoshop at the end.

Did you mean pregnancy?

yes. whoops.

Goddamn Anna Chlumsky does it for me.

Dan is going to make widespread collars go out of style real fast.

Almost?

Jonah one of my favorite new comedy characters.

Yup.

I thought this was another strong episode, eventhough I generally dislike art that revolve around broken telephone. I would watch 30 minutes of Matt Walsh busting balls with the other reporters.

No one felt that episode 5 seemed completely forced? Amazing...

That was also the first episode where I felt the cussing was way too much. Jonah had mostly been staying away from the cussing, and all of a sudden he's saying the f word every other word? That director did not dial anything back, and I have no idea how strictly they typically go with the script. It was the only episode that didn't really work for me, even though Sue still killed it, as usual. I also don't remember the Veep asking Sue if the prez. called. Oops.

The directing seemed way different (might have been more due to the editing), timing was off, ensemble was awkward, and the editing was weird. Editing is a huge part of this show, and it's been incredibly well done in most episodes, but this particular one felt a lot different to me, way too cutty.

I was glad to see episode 6 get mostly back on track, and I loved some of the puns Selina used at the school, especially the one about shaking the douchebag reporter's hand right after she had spilled her piss on it.

I'm in love with Anna Chlumsky

That scene was also great because I think it's the first indication we've seen that he's good at his job and is worth having around in some capacity.

Yeah, loved that.

I thought they went a bit too full-Buster with Gary. They might as well have cut to Jeffrey Tambor on the other side of his phone calls. I have no idea if Tony Hale has any range though.

I am feeling like they went too overboard on the incompetence this episode. On the one hand they're trying to keep things under wraps, on the other hand she's carting her piss around in front of reporters.

Last episode was cheesy. The way the pregnancy story developed was corny as hell. The whole story line with the sports Dad wasn't good. But the piss handshake was lol.

obv highlight of the ep for me as well

not sure how much i liked any of the other stuff, except maybe how much everyone hated all the healthy food (even though a lot of it looked pretty good to me)

and i guess the piss stuff, bc i'm immature...

stuff with the camera guy was just ok, could have done a lot more with the baseball stuff. almost felt like the writers were as clueless about the subject as Selina and didn't know how/where to go with it. pregnancy stuff was pretty meh too, which is not great when it's the core of the story in the ep (and maybe for the rest of the season).

oh, and the a-hole reporter is a good character i think

I really love this show, enjoyed every episode this season.

Is the a-hole reporter a genuine character? I find it hard to believe someone could get access when acting like that, in real life, and I thought most of those people consider access to be a pretty big deal. Haven't there been lots of stories of reporters who were somewhat like that constantly being passed over for questions in press conferences?

It's fun how he digs at them, but he acts like he has a lot more power than he appears to have (we get very little backstory on him, either, other than that he works for The Washington Post, for why he acts this way), and it's kind of unbelievable, to me. His scene in the yoghurt shop was equally over the top, when he loudly cussed out Dan in front of a bunch of regular people. It doesn't seem like it would take very many phone calls to have him out of a job, if he continued having that lack of respect politically/diplomatically. He makes it worse, because he actually tapes every a-holeish comment he makes, too.

I'm sure the president's press secretary would be treated differently.

Honest question, does the real life VPOTUS have a press secretary? It seems like Dan and Mike are tag teaming what would essentially be those duties (the reporter likes Mike, but hates Dan, obviously), but I don't know if we've ever been told their actual titles, and if they did tell us, I don't remember them.

I just remembered a really nice touch from episode 6. I loved when Gary started talking about the pregnancy stuff to the cashier, and didn't realize his badge was out. His realization, and putting it away was great. The "Did you see that?" part really wasn't, though.

In the Meet the Press episode, they kind of did something that lacked realism in that, as well, that wondered about the potential of a screw up in a similar vein to the drug store scene. When the interview was over, Selina said something offensive about Chung. They then spent several minutes trying to figure out if the mic was live and whether the offensive bite was recorded. In real life, the minute something is over, you close the mic, and the tape is shut off (I can't remember if Meet the Press is live, in real life). It's highly unlikely the sound mixer would have heard her say that, because it would be a f-up on the mixer's part for that mic to still be live (the producer/director is who is generally communicating with the Mixer in those situations). In live to tape shows, during the "commercial breaks" there is stopping, and the mics are opened again so the talent can communicate with both the producer/director and mixer. Once all stuff has been figured out for the next segment, you close the mics and go again like it's a live show. Generally, at the end, the mics just remain closed, and everyone heads to where the talent is, or the talent heads to where the producer/director is. So, to me, really the only way something like that could have happened is if they opened everything up, again, after the show was done. However, it still never would have been recorded...ever.

They also kind of garbled the idea of a live mic at an event (which is always open and recorded, even if it's not live to the P.A.), with how a live or live to tape TV show works. Also, the fact that they acted like the show would be mixed on a film type production sound package was really inaccurate. In news studios, they have huge high quality consoles that all that stuff is going through. However, for the sake of dramatic tension, someone with one of those packages would not stop rolling until told to, I'm pretty sure, so that part wouldn't have been inaccurate, had it actually been an accurate way of doing things. I just found it hard to believe that the news would engage in gotcha stuff like that, and attempt to record someone saying something that is clearly off the record. It still made for a fun scene, so I mostly gave it a pass.

There was a well known incident in the UK where the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown referred to someone he'd just met as a bigot unaware his mic was still on and the papers had a field day. I imagine thats where the idea came from.

There was also a big one where G.W. Bush called someone an a-hole on a live mic. That one was at some event where he had either finished his speech and not unhooked his mic, or was waiting to go up.

All of those mics are always live (because something's always recording), and if you ever have a chance to wear a mic in a situation like that, assume you're being recorded (you can have A LOT of fun with that if you're not prominent, by the way, and The Naked Gun had a very famous scene along the lines of what we're talking about). Prominent people make that mistake far more often than they should, and what's often so bad about it is that they are frequently mic'd and should know better.

The reason mistakes like that so rarely happen in live events (think watching live sporting events on TV) is because the engineer/mixer is trying very hard to make sure the people don't have their mics open when they're not supposed to, and the talent is always aware that just about anything they say can be going out on the air. A far more frequent mistake is the mic not being open when it's supposed to be.

yes they do. And chief of staff, deputy chiefs, a somewhat full entourage including full secret service detail. I like the West Wing quote about the office,

RUSSELL
Spare tire on the automobile of government. Heartbeat away from having
a heartbeat. The story of the two brothers.

WILL
The two brothers?

RUSSELL
One went to sea; one became vice president--neither was heard from again.