What I’m Watching: Veep

Veep: Season 5, Episode 4 “Mother” (B-)

This was one of the weaker episodes this show has produced, and it’s a disappointment since it doesn’t hold a candle to some of the hilarity that it has sometimes featured. We all understand that Selina is not a good person, and therefore it’s to be expected that she would put more weight on her reelection to the presidency than on the health of her dying mother. This episode laid her awfulness on thick, and it was a bit much to take. The breakdown that it led to when Selina got very bad news about her reelection as she was about to deliver her mother’s eulogy worked, but I don’t know that we needed a whole episode to deal with this. This show has also been making a few Holocaust jokes recently that I haven’t found too funny – I think it can do better. I did like that Andrew showed up to the funeral and tried to get Charlie to invest in his company and that Mike fell prey to it without even being directly asked. Tom and Charlie’s mutual disdain for each was fun too. The Nevada crew having to flip-flop their position as soon as they realized that all of the recounted votes were going to go to O’Brien was entertaining, particularly when it came to the hapless duo of Jonah and Richard, who were not able to comprehend what they were supposed to do in the slightest. At least they were better aware than Bob, whose congratulatory remark to a devastated Selina couldn’t have been more demonstrative of his incoherence.