Review by Andrew Bloom

Veep: Season 1

1x07 Full Disclosure

5.7/10. I suppose I admire Veep for having the guts to make Selina such a jerk in an ugly way. The way she basically plays Survivor with her staffers, and then strongarms Amy into being the public face of her miscarriage is pretty horrible behavior without a lot of Arrested Development style "oh man, they're so bad!" humor to it.

There's some juice to the "who'll be fired?" premise of the episode, with Amy, Dan, and Mike having each done something fire-worthy, but it doesn't really go anywhere. There's also some drama with Selina and Ted over their relationship being public, and the show hasn't really earned that level of sincerity or seriousness yet, so it just feels tonally jarring.

The one saving grace of the episode is Gary's storyline. His sycophantic but good-natured, naif-like presence makes the fact that he has to break up with Ted for Selina, and his guilt at having accidentally leaked the pregnancy story more compelling than all the backroom dealing and jostling among the other staffers (and Tony Hale's quality performance doesn't hurt either).

But overall, this is the show getting mildly serious and dramatic in a way that doesn't really fit with the tone it's struck so far, and it hasn't developed the characters or made them likable or interesting enough for the audience to be invested in their personal and professional drama apart from the humor, so the core of this one buckles pretty quickly.

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