C'mon, how can anyone not love this?! The second season will get weirder but this first one is as perfect as it gets. The lack of resolution must have been frustrating back in 1990 but luckily, we don't have to wait to binge watch s02.
I'm sorry but If you don't think the opening scene is funny, then you are a humorless a**hole
Jaw-droppingly intimate and sensitive. Be prepared to be wrecked - the whole theater was shaking with sobs at points.
Beautifully and specifically queer. I've never on screen seen gay sex that felt this much like gay sex. The texture of it. There's a brief, funny, inter-micro-generation terminology convo that if you are LGBTQ of a certain age, you've had. There are two coming out conversations with lines that I swear are plagiarized from my life. There's a delightful subversion, in an early scene, of cruising, that achieves a cocktail of funny and sweet and sad that returns throughout the film (most notably in a moment where a 48-year-old Adam climbs into bed with his parents wearing a 12-year-old's pajamas). The exploration of how things can be so much better than 1987 but still not fine, and the ways the not-okayness of 1987 is still with us, especially in the psyches of folks that were there… so relatable and such a rare and subtle theme.
There is a final twist that, while devastating, does some real damage to Adam's character and, in my opinion, the emotional impact of the movie. Investing incredibly deeply in a fantasy of a relationship with a neighbor that didn’t happen is creepy where imagining you can talk to your dead parents again is sweet and sad. We know early on that the interactions with Adam’s parents aren’t a part of conventional reality and that doesn’t diminish any of their emotional impact, but the romantic relationship being unreal cheapens it.
This last emotional gutting felt unnecessary and unearned to me: it makes me hesitant to recommend the movie, despite how much it affected me, despite the impeccable execution. A friend who saw the movie with me and didn’t personally relate to as many of the queer culture touchpoints felt emotionally manipulated, and I get that. But aside from the last few minutes, my experience of the movie was near-perfect.
Although the ending is odd, I enjoyed this film. There are so many brands of so-called Christianity, so no film is exactly like one's own experiences, but this presented many elements authentically. It tackles head-on the inconsistency in modern America between sexual freedom and legal restrictions on relationships, and the thorny grey area between love and exploitation. Eliza Scanlen is an excellent actress and her performance is consistently believable in every emotion, including confusion over what she feels at times.
Fuck me. I could actually feel my brain dying watching this shite.
Nick Fury, Deadpool and Elektra fight together to take down Commissioner Gordon
This is such a weirdly sad episode, I don't know how else to describe it.
An '80s classic that not only launched Val Kilmer's career but also delivers an entertaining experience. While it features typical '80s plot elements and special effects, the movie's charm and Kilmer's performance make it worth watching. Val Kilmer's portrayal showcases his undeniable talent, hinting at the successful career that would follow. His charismatic performance adds depth to the film and elevates the overall enjoyment, making it an underrated gem.
The fact that Jerry willingly dates a hit-and-run driver tells you how similar George and Jerry really are, which isn't a compliment
i love the way jerry and keith kept acting like a gay couple. also netflix merging these two episodes into one is a BETRAYAL now every episode in this season after it is going to have the wrong episode number
I never thought that Marvel would dare to do a scene like that, where Rabona and Miss Minutes murder the former AVT agents in cold blood, woww... it was too strong a scene.
Objectively - yes, 30 min. was not enough. Izzy dying was also kinda....unnecessary. Yes, it was foreshadowed, and heartfelt but still, I think him becoming the new captain would have been a fitting ending to his arc in this season. That aside, love the ending, everyone teaming up and stuff. Lovely season, it was so much fun to watch.
We definitely need (a longer, better funded, with people getting paid well for their outstanding work) season 3.
I aspire to have as much energy at 74 as Meryl Streep does.
I think we can all agree that Ben was actually talking to like a plate of cookies off camera and not a person in his dressing room. The question is then, who put them there and were they spiked?
Anyone else get Lucille and Buster Bluth vibes from Cliff and Donna?
“I come from television so I was trained to not question a script.”
Everything is not what it seems, so, I don't think Kimber did it, it is too soon to reveal the killer. I expect next episode they'll focus on Kimber but towards the end, focus will shift to someone else.
Meryl Streep and Ashley Park's voices in that lullaby was so great. Season 3 is amazing so far.
“I can’t cry.” “Why? Are you on Xanax?”
Theory: what if the two attempts on Ben's life were committed by two different people, potentially with unrelated motives?
I really liked Jesse and Selena's chemistry.
Kramer is incredible in this episode. The look back at George when he says he's a stall man gets me every time.
Hopefully homophobes watch this episode and think "Omg, that's what I sound like?!"
i think i'm in grief ? goodbye veep :sob:
idk i hated how they hold all the meltdowns in this for selina only i wanted so bad to see catherine and gary to just FUCKING SPILL or something &¨%$¨&*() anyway goodbye veep
incredible finale! everything was so funny and smart! the scene of selina alone in the oval office was GREAT. i couldn’t stop laughing with all the meltdowns selina had in this episode, and i couldn’t stop crying watching the scene of gary being arrested! catherine celebrating her mother’s death watching the funeral coverage on TV was hilarious. amy marrying bill was random but i loved seeing everyone in the funeral. overall everything was GREAT. perfect ending to an incredible show. and the tom hanks joke had me screaming. absolutely fantastic!
[8.5/10] “What did it cost you?” “Everything.”
It’s silly to try to connect Veep with Avengers: Infinity War, but it’s also hard to disaggregate them in my mind. Selina Meyer is not Thanos. Her goal is one of direct personal ambition than Thanos’s faux-altruistic goal. But the costs, at least in a spiritual sense, are the same.
Selina has her wish. After so much striving, so much conniving, so many lines crossed, she becomes President -- not just for a few months, but for a full term. And all she has to do to get there is: make a deal with the Chinese to let them undo the diplomatic liberation that made her politically relevant again, throw her nearest advisor into a position to have another heart attack, make a ignorant and repugnant man her Vice President at the expense of her other nearest advisor who resigns in disgust, relegate her one time protege to working for him without letting her advance from where she started, ensuring that another of the younger members of her team is out of politics, outlawing gay marriage to get votes but firmly and finally estrange her from her daughter, and throw the one person who genuinely, truly loved her under the bus.
In short, Selina sold her soul. That is impressive, if only because I didn’t think Selina had a soul left to sell. This show has constantly been about Team Meyer being utterly and completely mercenary, having no scruples to get in the way of climbing the political ladder, and being happy to sharply elbow one another whenever necessary or possible. Selina in particular has been happy to throw anything and everyone to the wolves when it suits her.
And yet, there’s something about the change that erupts in her when a (maybe?) dying Ben tells her that she knows what to do, that feels like she enters a new realm of darkness. With one blistering dress down, she eviscerates Tom James’s chief of staff and orchestrates her unexpected rival’s untimely demise with a MeToo moment. She sells out to whatever interests are necessary to get her the nomination, no matter the effects on her allies and erstwhile friend. She’s even willing to make a pact with the most repugnant man, who brandishes the most repugnant ideas, if it gets her what she wants.
There’s well-placed irony in the fact that, after all of the insults, all of his ridiculous ideas, all of his dump truck of deplorables speeches and gestures, Jonah ends up in the VP slot. With all the horse-trading and compartmentalizing going on here, it’s the ultimate gesture of futility. Selina knows full well, and vents, at how useless a drawer the Vice Presidency is to be shoved into and forgotten about. Having that be the culmination of Jonah’s obsequious journey feels appropriate.
That said, the genuine stock and trade of politics has never been Veep’s specialty, and so some of the brokered convention mishegoss to get to Selina’s ascendance and Jonah’s relegation becomes tiring after a while. The delegate-whipping and backroom dealing is a good opportunity for Veep to work in some final blasts from its arsenal of insults, and give the usual rondelay from its foul-mouthed politicians one last airing. But beyond the satire of Jonah’s “terrorist math” prediction coming true, the episode doesn't really kick into gear until Selina goes over to the darkest of the dark side once and for all.
But what does it get her? Well, the presidency, for one thing. And hey, that’s not nothing! But when we see Selina sitting in the Oval Office (once again buttressed by Sue!), being the President who won’t let the veep’s staff in rather than living on the other side of that arrangement, she doesn't seem happy. She’s still reflexively asking for Gary. Her staff is now made up of strangers. And in the end, she’s utterly alone, something that, as conveyed through Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s outstanding performance in the series finale, seems to be getting to her.
All of this striving and backstabbing and cutthroat Washington D.C. politicking still doesn't seem to have made her happy, still hasn’t fulfilled her in the way it was supposed to. The opening of the season asked repeatedly why Selina wanted to be President, and the closest she could come to an answer is “because this country owes it to me.” When that’s the only reason you want something -- because you like the idea of having it, not the thing itself -- then attaining will, as the finale suggests, only leave you alone and empty.
It’s a surprisingly powerful statement from a show that had seemed to adopt a Seinfeld-esque, “no learning, no hugging” policy. The true chutzpah comes in the show’s final segment, which jumps twenty-four years in the future, and you see that these years and years of naked political ambition left Selina’s hangers-on without much either.
Ben is dead. Kent looks like a shaggy wildman who raises livestock. Amy married Bill Ericson and chose never to have kids (an interesting echo given where things started for her this season). Dan is out of politics, never grew up, and is now selling real estate. Jonah was impeached, but is still married to his half-sister, apparently. And poor Gary is still devoted to the object of his courtly affection, despite all she’s done to him, laying the special lipstick on her coffin in a moment that has more emotional resonance than any comedy this foul should be able to muster.
Meanwhile, Richard, the only person in Selina’s coterie with any ethics or morality whatsoever, is the current President, having been reelected in a landslide. All of the shameless political backstabbers ended up discarded, depressed, or somewhere far short of their goals, and the one of their number who was too decent to be real, who shared none of their ambition, is the one who ended up succeeding better than any of them. In some ways, Veep’s finale is a fairytale. In others, it’s the final chapter of a tragedy.
(The one exception to all of this is Mike who, in a hilarious running gag that reaches its apex here, manages to consistently fail upward in the media world, with his boneheaded schtick being seen as endearing and a part of his charm. There’s a lesson, and an implicit critique, in that too.)
What did all of that selling out and betrayal and darkening of the soul net Selina? A one-term presidency that seems to have left her overshadowed by her successors, discarded by history, and bumped from the evening news by the death of Tom Hanks. Selina thought that all of this scratching and clawing would not only bring her happiness and fulfilment, but also a legacy. Veep declares, with her yonic Presidential Library full of disdainful rivals and allies and shoddy stumbles, that she ended up with none of the above.
Veep is a deeply cynical show, about government, about politicians, and about people. And yet, in the end, it delivered one of the most remarkably optimistic, and even moralistic messages imaginable: that the calculated climbers lose, even when they win, and that the good will ultimately prevail. The series was always one measure of caricature beyond the real world and one measure of hitting too close to home. But in its final hour, it buries its protagonist, and with her earthly remains, buries everything she aspired to and represented in the process.
You just gotta love Val
A very touching, if not a bit sobering look at life and how fleeting time can be for everyone. There may be some things that are a bit glossed over in terms of drama but it isn’t really suppose to be about that. I did come out on the other side with a lot of respect for Kilmer but it still shows a lot of limitations of his art versus his perception of his own talent. I don’t mean that as a knock we all do this in one form or another.
Such a quiet and emotional episode, shot so beautifully.
Isn't it too early for people to be mad at gay stuff?
Who's gonna tell them...
I cried, then I cried some more and then I cried again. I imagine how this episode will be attacked by people who didn't receive love from their parents (right wings) and I just want to fuck it. this episode alone made tlou win awards and more awards, what perfection.
Never commented on Trakt before, but wow what an episode! Felt compelled. One of the best bits of television I have seen in recent memory.
This singular episode, which I initially didn’t think I would like in the beginning, became more incredible than entire movies. It was beautiful, poetic and entirely self encapsulated in a tiny little world where people can still pick out their little slice of happiness.
To all those who hated the episode, replace bill with a female in your head if you have to, but open your eyes to why this story was so fulfilling and poetic in a world filled with meaningless death and endless suffering.
I just LOVE how so many people are butthurt by this episode. Just goes to show how much this is still needed in our world. This was a masterpiece in storytelling.
"i was never afraid before you showed up" yeah you can stop right there, i was already crying :sob: i wasn't ready for all the TEARS TODAY
This is it folks, this is peak television. What we have here is one of the most gut wrenching and masterfully crafted episodes ever brought to screen. Absolutely fucking phenomenal with career best performances from Murray Bartlett and Nick Oferman. Holy shit this will stick with me.
I meet Harry and Sally every few years, and I fall in love with them all over again.
[7.1/10] Good but unspectacular. My favorite storyline was probably Dan having to manage Jonah’s campaign. The notion of Jonah trying to make himself likable and presentable for the public has so much comic mileage to it, and throwing Dan into the mix plays on the Jim-Dwight vibe the two have. Whether it’s Jonah getting angry at people in a focus group or his hilariously awful campaign ad, it’s an interesting albatross to saddle Dan with. And the idea of Jonah gaining traction by turning on the Meyer administration has a lot of juice in it too. (It’s also nice to get Bill Erickson back and have poor Candi learn “the position has been filled once more.”)
I wasn’t over the moon about Selina having to choose which bank to bail out and vacillating about it. There’s something amusing enough about her being swayed by personal expediency on the one side, but political expediency on the other (and hey, there’s the whole “for the good of the country” thing too, which never really seems to factor in). It’s fine, but the show doesn’t wring much comedy out of it.
On the other hand, I admire this show’s commitment to making Selina an awful person without a hint of redemption and only the barest sense of humanity. It occurred to me that HBO hasn’t had a show this devoted to exposing the terribleness of its protagonist since The Sopranos.
Amy investigating the titular “c**tgate” was amusing, particularly when everyone she “interviewed” had said it. The fact that Selina is getting Nixonian levels of paranoid is an interesting direction to take things. Mike inadvertently finding out about Tom James’s corruption with Sydney Purcell is intriguing. Oh, and Catherine’s reveal that she’s in a relationship with Marjorie is kind of a neat sign of Selina’s obliviousness, and the button with them being “giddy” is a nice note to end on.
Overall, a perfectly solid meat and potatoes episode.
