Tag Archives: Veep

Television

Support Selina Meyer

Veep happens to be one of my favorite shows.  Not just because it has a spectacular cast and excellent writing, but because they always seem to have smart promotional strategies.  In fact, the team that launches their seasonal promotions have won awards for their cross-promotional strategies (who knew there were such award shows).

A copy of Some New Beginnings

A copy of Some New Beginnings

In season three, when Selina Meyer (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus)  was launching her presidential run, HBO literally started a presidential campaign to promote the show.  They sent copies of Selina’s biography Some New Beginnings: Our Next American Journey to bloggers and critics to create buzz around those outlets (my blog didn’t exist during that time…which was why I didn’t receive a press pack…probably).  This got other people besides HBO to talk and promote the show, commenting on the humor on the stunt: the books weren’t actually real, they were blank pages with the book jacket featured in the first episode.  HBO claimed that it was a representation of who Selina is: shiny and glossy on the outside but empty on the inside (insert laughing emoji).  They followed this up by doing a phone promotion where fans could call into Selina’s exclusive line and get a message from her Director of Communications, Mike McClintock (played by Matt Walsh).  It was all prerecorded but it made fans feel apart of the show.  A clever move.

For this current season, HBO has followed a similar tact.  Since Selina is running for reelection (spoiler alert), they allowed fans the opportunity to download free campaign posters.  They then encouraged Selina supporters to tweet out or share pictures of the campaign posters in fans’ offices/yards/homes.  Such stunts like these are clever because they bring a sense of reality to a fictional world.  They make us feel apart of it, like we could essentially vote for Selina.  This gets us talking about the show, which gets us excited about it and wanting to watch it.

This is all the tip of the iceberg of everything HBO has done to promote Veep, but the originality and ingenuity behind the promotions is something I marvel at.  It shows that they think outside the box, which is an application I personally espouse.  So keep on keeping on, HBO.  Selina may or may not win the presidency (I haven’t finished season 5 yet, please don’t spoil it for me), but in my book she’s won the best promotional campaign.

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Uncategorized

Perfectly Defined

selina 1One of the things I enjoy about the HBO show Veep is the fact that it has such a strong presence online.  I know there is a “Stop Selina Meyer” twitter account…I don’t know if it’s HBO who runs it, but it’s a great way of promoting the show.  They even made a campaign website for Selina Meyer and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who plays Selina) made short campaign videos for it.  There are also a lot of discussions people have about different episodes, and each time I stumble across one of them I learn more about the show and how it’s crafted.

The other day, I found this discussion people were having about an episode in season four where Selina gives her first State of the Union address (SPOILER ALERT).  Naturally, the speech is a complete disaster: the teleprompter stops working because they’re editing the speech while Selina is supposed to be reading it only for them to put in the wrong edits and Selina announces the wrong spending plan (she promises to invest $60 billion on obsolete technologies when she intended to announce she was cutting $50 billion in the budget).  selina 2Anyway, she ends up telling her staff after the speech “This speech was supposed to perfectly define my presidency.” Someone pointed out in a discussion group that the speech did in fact perfectly define Selina’s presidency because her whole administration is a complete disaster.  So, the speech in the first episode foreshadows the entire season.  Which I just thought was a great point.

So, naturally, I’m thoroughly excited for season five to start….count down to April 24th

Television

VEEP Season 5 Sneak Peak!

If you’re like me and are a fan of Veep, you’re quite pissed at HBO for that incredible cliff-hanger at the end of season four and can’t wait for season five to start.  Well, HBO finally released a sneak peak of season five.  It’s short, but looks promising.

As a refresher, season four ended on election night with President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) tying with electoral votes with her opponent (I think the character’s last name  was O’Brien…can’t remember his first name).  If that wasn’t enough, we learn that Selina’s running mate, Tom James (Hugh Laurie), could end up being chosen as president.  James then asks Selina to be his VP if this is to happen. And then the season ended!

CRAZY.

Let the countdown to April 24th (season five’s premier date) begin!

Television

Continuity With Change

So we’re heading back into that season of political debates and campaigns until the big day next November where we elect the next President of the United States.  I always get a kick out of what the candidates use as their slogans .

After the last debate, I stated thinking about the show Veep, especially seasons three and four where Selina is running for president (or re-election, depending on how you look at it), and her slogan: Continuity with Change.  I realize the show is fictional, but I think it’s funny because her slogan makes no sense.  Basically, she’s pledging to keep things the same to change them.

With tonight being the Emmys, Veep is up for a couple awards, including the acting awards for Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Chlumsky, and Tony Hale, and I think they all three have a shot for winning.  While I’d love to see Amy Schumer win, Louis-Dreyfus (who’s in the same category as Schumer) has won the Emmy the past three years for every season of Veep, so why would they break that streak?  I mean, Louis-Dreyfus had another solid year on Veep.  

Tony Hale is a definite shoo-in after his performance in  “East Wing,” the episode where Selina (Louis-Dreyfus) tells him he’s unimportant and Hale (as Gary) has this impeccable moment where he yells “I am fucking everything to you!”  I once heard a director (I think it may have been David O. Russell, but don’t quote me) say that you can tell when an actor has a great performance by their eyes.  In that scene, there was this almost electric shock from Hale’s eyes, so I’d be really surprised (and quite pissed) if he didn’t win his second Emmy (he won his first a couple years ago for that episode where Gary and Selina run the 10K).

As for Anna Chlumsky, I sure hope she wins.  I read predictions from other blogs that all say that she definitely deserves it, but that she won’t win.  I think she has a great chance.  She’s been nominated before for Veep, but this time it was for that episode (“Convention”) where she has the fantastic meltdown.

I mean, in this season of Veep, Chlumsky took her character Amy from the president’s campaign manager to having a meltdown and  falling apart to then rebuilding herself as a top lobbyist.

Anyway, I don’t really put that much stock in the Emmys because I just think they, like all others, are slightly political.  Perhaps they just want to keep things continuous…with change.

Television

Where Are My Veeple People?

I took a Buzzfeed quiz that was like “Which TV show should you watch next?”  And funnily enough, the response was the show that I’ve currently been watching: Veep.  When I watch a show, I really get into it.  I tend to watch episodes multiple times, especially if the show is really well crafted, like Veep, where you pick up extra jokes and lines the second or third time watching.

Anyway, there’s an episode in the second season where she goes to Helsinki to make some trade deal, and she has major miscommunications with the Prime Minister of Finland throughout the episode (I wanted to provide an example, but the only clip I could find on YouTube wouldn’t embed, but you can view by clicking here).

The first time I saw the episode, I didn’t find it particularly funny, mostly because the miscommunications between the Veep and the Prime Minister went over my head.  In particular, the Prime Minister made a joke to one of the Veep’s staffers (Dan, for those of you who know the show) where she kept saying “Danteeksi,” and I had no idea what the joke was, and they didn’t explain it.

So I did some googling, and I found a Finnish fan on Reddit who literally translated all the jokes that went over my head.  I took a screen grab of it to share:

Danteeksi

This elevated my intrigue of the show because it highlights how much depth and attention to detail the writers put in.  Like, they could’ve literally made up nonsense and called it Finnish and most of us would’ve probably believed it.  I mean, I know I would, I don’t speak Finnish nor have I been to Finland.  But they went through the time to research the Finnish language to make jokes that kind of work.  It’s kind of crazy that if you leave one letter out of a sentence in Finnish, it translates from “Finland is a lovely country” to “Finland is a heavy country.”

Anyway, I just wanted to share if any of you are watching Veep and/or have seen this episode and missed some of the jokes like I did.

Television

All Hail Tony Hale

The main reason I’ve been watching Veep is because I find Tony Hale’s character, Gary Walsh, hysterical.  While the other actors do have great performances, Hale as Gary is what makes the show.  I think it’s because the other characters tend to be more aggressive and assertive and active in the politics, whereas Gary is more focused on Selina’s (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) needs.  Here’s a little clip of different “Gary” scenes I found, it doesn’t really do justice of what he’s really like on the show, but it’ll give you a taste:

Anyway, the reason I bring any of this is up is because I found this interview with Tony Hale that I thought was equally hysterical.  He tells Conan O’Brien about his first acting jobs and some mishaps he had. It got me laughing, so I figured I’d share so you can start this week off laughing as well.

Television

You’re a Meme, Ma’am

Recently I’ve been watching the show Veep, and while I think it’s a poor depiction of what it would be like if we had a female vice president, I do think the actors do a great job and the show becomes funny once you understand the dynamics of their office.  I’ve been watching it mainly because I find Tony Hale, who plays the vice president’s bag man Gary, hysterical.  Anyway, there’s an episode where Vice President Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) has a PR disaster because a picture taken during a hostage rescue was released and it shows her looking at her phone while everyone else is taking the mission seriously.

Naturally, she wasn’t “tweeting” while the mission was happening, but the picture was taken at the wrong time for her.  This then causes people to photoshop her into significant historical events like the signing of the Declaration of Independence (if the video clip below doesn’t work, clip here to see the scene I’m talking about).

The funny part is that people (in real life) have continued on this “meme Ma’am” thing and photoshopped Julia-Louis Dreyfus as Selina Meyer into other scenarios, and I think it’s hysterical.  There’s one of her taken during the final battle between Harry Potter and Voldemort, one of an asteroid hitting Earth, and one while Marty and Doc from Back to the Future are time traveling.  If you want to see more of these memes because you’re a fan of the show or because you think it’s funny like me, google “Selina Meyer meme,” that’s how I found these.