VEEP: JOINT SESSION {FOURTH SEASON PREMIERE} (TV)
Summary
The fourth season premiere in this satirical comedy series about sharp-tongued former Vice President – now President – Selina Meyer and her staff. In this episode, Selina enters the House chamber to an enthusiastic welcome and prepares to give a speech at the joint session, only to find that the TelePromTer is blank. Twenty-four hours earlier, her staff works feverishly on the speech to make it less vague as Sue walks Selina through her extremely busy schedule. She decides to briefly touch upon former President Hughes' plans but then focus on her own "future whatever" in the speech, and then heads to several meetings, opting not to invite Doyle along. Jonah is excited when Doyle asks him to "spy" for him, and he then has a strangely passive-aggressive conversation with his new "friend forever" Teddy Sykes, Doyle's chief of staff. Selina ponders making cuts to the military budget to fund her Family First bill and decides to employ an unusual bargaining strategy to do so, though in Maryland Amy toils at the campaign office and declares that POTUS must make a definitive decision between cuts or spending. Mike tells her over the phone that Thornhill may quit the race, though Amy argues that his votes will then go to Chung and hurt Selina's campaign.
Dan and the others continue improving the speech while Gary frets that he is spending far less time with his beloved Selina now that she is President. Jonah blusters that he is now good friends with Doyle and Teddy, and Amy meets secretly with Bill Ericsson, who reveals that he has quit as the "very, very stupid" Thornhill's campaign manager and now desires Amy's job. Gary watches longingly through "the FLOTUS window" as Selina meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and she is thrilled when they suggest scrapping an obsolete $50 billion submarine project. Jonah sprints to Doyle's office to alert him about the meeting, though Doyle arrives too late. Just before the speech, Congressman Furlong barges in and informs the staff that canceling the submarine plan will put 1,900 people out of work and cost them essential votes and support for the Family First bill. The staff panics and attempts to rework the speech, and Selina is left at the podium with "literally no words" and hastily improvises. The staff finally gets the speech back on the screen, but they realize too late that it is the old version with Hughes' original spending plan, and Selina ends up announcing that she is actually increasing the submarine plan budget. Later, she furious scolds her staff for the mix-up and tries to take a moment alone to regroup, but she is repeatedly interrupted by a number of other problems.
Details
- NETWORK: HBO
- DATE: November 30, 1999 10:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:27:57
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: 121948
- GENRE: Comedy
- SUBJECT HEADING: Comedy; Political satire; Women’s Collection - Comedy
- SERIES RUN: HBO - TV series, 2012-2019
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Christopher Godsick … Executive Producer
- Frank Rich … Executive Producer
- Tony Roche … Executive Producer
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus … Executive Producer
- Stephanie Laing … Executive Producer
- Chris Addison … Executive Producer, Director
- Armando Iannucci … Executive Producer, Created by, Writer
- Simon Blackwell … Executive Producer, Writer
- Roger Drew … Supervising Producer
- Sean Gray … Supervising Producer
- Ian Martin … Supervising Producer
- Will Smith … Supervising Producer
- Kevin Cecil … Supervising Producer
- David Quantick … Supervising Producer
- Andy Riley … Supervising Producer
- Georgia Pritchett … Supervising Producer, Writer
- Bill Hill … Producer
- Dana Brancato … Associate Producer
- Callie Hersheway … Associate Producer
- Dale Stern … Associate Producer
- Charles de Bernier … Associate Producer
- Neil Gibbons … Consulting Producer
- Rob Gibbons … Consulting Producer
- Rupert Gregson-Williams … Music by
- Christopher Willis … Music by
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus … Cast, Selina Meyer
- Anna Chlumsky … Cast, Amy Brookheimer
- Tony Hale … Cast, Gary Walsh
- Reid Scott … Cast, Dan Egan
- Timothy Simons … Cast, Jonah Ryan
- Matt Walsh … Cast, Mike McLintock
- Kevin Dunn … Cast, Ben Caffrey
- Sufe Bradshaw … Cast, Sue Wilson
- Gary Cole … Cast, Kent Davison
- Sam Richardson … Cast, Richard
- Dan Bakkedahl … Cast, Roger Furlong
- Patton Oswalt … Cast, Teddy Sykes
- Diedrich Bader … Cast, Bill Ericsson
- Jessie Ennis … Cast, Allie
- Zak Orth … Cast, Jim
- Phil Reeves … Cast, Andrew Doyle
- Ross DeGraw … Cast, Joint Chief
- Jaci Jones … Cast, Maryland Staffer
- John Judy … Cast, Secret Service Guy
- Caitlynn Leary … Cast, White House Staffer
- Michael Pemberton … Cast, Dexter
- Robert Poletick … Cast, Lobbyist #1
- Joey Perillo … Cast
- Tim R. Worley … Cast