Veep is one of my favorite shows on TV when it's airing and a show I often forget exists when it's not airing. I find it to be an incredibly funny show with some of best crafted insults in the history of the English language, but it's a show that often doesn't really stick with me, for some reason. I think it's because - at least in the first two seasons - Veep made a point to paint everything in its world as inconsequential because the people who inhabit its universe are just so hopelessly shallow. Saying that Veep's characters are shallow isn't really a knock on them, though - they're drawn that way. They're mocking a certain kind of political mindset that's more focused on self-gain and image than anything that's even remotely meaningful, and while that makes it one of the sharpest political satires on TV, it also makes it a show where it's hard to get too invested in anything.
However, Veep has gradually been trying to insert some stakes into its world recently. This was most evident at the end of the second season, when Selena learned the president would not be seeking re-election, thus allowing her to start a presidential campaign. That sense of purpose has tricked into the shows' current third season, which is shaping up to be its best yet. There's a sense that everything matters this time around - not just on a plot level, but on an emotional level. This is best exemplified in the shows' lead character, who started off as an empty shell of a politician who stands for nothing but her own success but is gradually becoming someone who seems to want to use her power to do something. It's an avenue I didn't expect the show to go down based on its sardonic first season, where just about every episode went out of its way to point out how much of a failure Selena was. All of that came to head in Sunday night's "Alicia", a terrific episode of television and easily the shows' best episode yet. "Alicia" is fascinating for many reasons - including how it's the first episode to take an outsiders' perspective on these ridiculous characters - but what fascinates me the most is how successfully it gets us to root for these people in a way we never even thought we should. The premise of "Alicia" centers around Selena's announcement of her presidential campaign, which her team has designed to be a way for her to take "real life" people to demonstrate how much she cares about the issues that most concern them. The episodes' titular character, Alicia, is brought in to help advocate for Selena's universal child care platform, but is cut after some old ass congressman or something (I'm the worst, aren't I?) threatens that if she doesn't replace the child care platform with a seniors-centric platform, he will pull out of her campaign. This is sort of a brilliant plotline, because we get both Alicia's perspective - which finds a citizen genuinely trying to make a difference being shut out for nothing that she did wrong - and Selena's perspective, which finds her political future being dominated just like her entire political past has been. When Selena manages to sneak in an aspect of the child care platform by bringing Alicia's daughter with her on stage, it's perhaps the most victorious moment in the entire series thus far - because it's satisfying both points of view it sets up.
The episodes' level of care even stretched down to Mike, who is strangely becoming the moral center of the show in some ways. Mike is the one brought in to guide Alicia through the process, and he seems truly kind of hurt when Selena is forced to eliminate her. And then....he calls her a cow. But he actually seems truly sorry! The show actually wanted us to empathize with him! And it succeeded! It's not that I don't appreciate a comedy like Season 1/2 Veep that centered around a bunch of people we're supposed to hate all of the time. It was funny! It made me laugh! But a show that actually welcomes us into its characters' world and asks us to sympathize with them even as they're showing us some of the horrible shit they do - that's a much more powerful show that can make a much more interesting statement. And if that's the show Veep is planning on becoming, I'm totally in for the ride.
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