Insulting well is an art. To achieve this category you not only have to offend and humiliate your opponent ruthlessly, but also intelligently, vitriolic and creatively. And Selina Mayer is the best insulter in the world. Better, even, than an Argentine fan angry with the referee.
At Meyer’s level is only Malcolm Tucker, the prime minister’s advisor in ‘The Thick of It’. It is no coincidence: ‘Veep’, the female and American version of the British series, is also a creation of Armando Iannucci. And if Wilder’s brain was full of razor blades, Iannucci’s is full of onion knives: brutal, stark and tremendously funny, ‘Veep’ is the best political satire ever seen on television, it is the dark and hilarious reverse from ‘The West Wing of the White House’.
In the case of ‘Veep’, we also have the leading role of the ambitious Selina Meyer: just as the vizier Iznogud wanted to be caliph instead of the caliph, vice president Meyer wants to be president instead of the president, and she will not give up on the I strive until I get it. And that is one of Iannucci’s great discoveries: that she is a woman who stars in the series. Thus, and instead of focusing on telling the difficulties that someone who becomes the first vice president of the United States has had on her path (she will also be the first president), the series revels in showing her as inept, selfish, dominant, Machiavellian and narcissistic like the rest of the men who previously occupied his position. Not even the fact of being a woman makes Meyer empathize with her gender, since, to make a career, she has had to be approved and accepted by men, assume their rules and laugh at her sexist jokes.
Curiously, the foul-mouthed Meyer is not without charm: endowed with an attractiveness that is enhanced through stiletto heels and tight, colorful dresses that move away from the boring suits that swarm around Washington, she also has charisma. She is like a rich, cute and capricious girl who, every time she commits a mistake, she pouts to be forgiven. And she succeeds, despite the fact that her volcanic character falls on anyone who is at her side: except for her secretary Sue, the only competent one in the middle of a microcosm of useless people, the rest of the team around her is as ineffective as she is. That is why they repeat their patterns: not only do they make decisions as absurd as Meyer herself, but if she vents her anger on one of her closest collaborators, he, in turn, vents his anger on his immediate inferior, thus establishing a scale. command of humiliations, crazy situations, devilish dialogues and fabulous insults that satirize a political system behind which there is the most absolute nothing, only a popularity race.
Seven glorious seasons of ‘Veep’
‘Veep’ gave us seven glorious seasons with a formidable cast of actors who played a gallery of superb characters, starting with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won six consecutive Emmys for her role as Selina Meyer, and continuing with Gary Walsh (Tony Hale). , his submissive to the point of degradation personal assistant, the desperate and lost press spokesman Mike McClintock (Matt Walsh), the lanky and slimy climber Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons), or the advisor Amy Brookheimer, played by Anna Chlumsky, the remembered and here recovered girl from ‘My girl’. Furthermore, to continue enlivening the show, old acquaintances such as Hugh Laurie, John Slattery and Peter MacNicol appear. All of them supported Iannucci’s writing, until there came a time when reality began to surpass fiction, and situations that in ‘Veep’ made us laugh because of their absurdity and implausibility became painfully real. “When we started we thought it was a satire, and now it turns out that we are making a documentary,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus even said at the presentation of the fifth season.
‘Veep’ ended without Meyer winning the Nobel Peace Prize for liberating Tibet. However, he could have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: «Has Lafontaine won? “How many abortions does a pro-lifer have to force his lover to have people turn their backs on him?” Pure poetry.
#Selina #Meyer #Oval #Office