Into each life a little pork fat must fall. In last night’s
Veep, Selina confronted the reality of flesh-pressing at a North Carolina hog roast. Pros:
We got to see Air Force Two. Cons: The hat she wore made her hair resemble Pennywise
the Clown in Stephen King’s
It right before a very important teleconference about foreign hostages with military
chiefs. Oh, and her daughter has a new boyfriend of Iranian origin. “That Rahim turns
out to be a nice boy,” Selina tells her staff. “Let’s run a security check on him
and his entire family and investigate their finances.” Here are the winners and losers
from “Signals.”
Winners
Jonah. Selina might have called him “long tall Sally” and told him to do something very
rude but he got to fly on Air Force Two and it was the happiest we’ve ever seen him.
“Jonah, calm down,” said Mike. “It’s a plane with a logo, not Space Mountain.” Still,
it made up for him having to bend over next to a roast suckling pig in order to keep
Selina from discussing Israel in front of rotating pork.
Pilates. The scene where Dan tried to suck up to Kent by jumping on a machine he’d never
used before was poetic in its truthiness, and only made more perfect when Dan himself
was sucked up to by a more junior staffer.
Mike Allen. Said junior staffer told Dan he’d seen a reference to him in yesterday’s Playbook
(the Google alert set up for Dan’s name alerted him to it). There was also a shout
out to Charles Krauthammer’s column in the
Post. In other words, a perfect DC moment.
National Enquirer.
We knew Gary’s new girlfriend, Dana, was bad news, but we had no idea she’d leak
the information about Selina’s “gesdictionary” to a friend, who’d pass it on to the
supermarket tabloids. Poor Gary’s face when he found out was only marginally less
sad than this.
Losers
Meema. She might get to spend Thanksgiving with Selina and her grandaughter, but only if
she can live that long.
Mike. He owes a hundred grand on his boat and he’s started drinking while on the job.
The drinking helped him forget about the hundred grand until Rahim pointed out how
long it was going to take him to pay back his student loans. And Selina won’t lend
him the cash because, as she pointed out, it might be improprietious for the veep
to throw cash at her communications director. Which means one thing: the orange, Spring
Break-esque Jeep might not be long for this world.
Sarah Palin. Selina’s impression of her at the hog roast was almost more accurate than Julianne
Moore’s Emmy-winning performance in
Game Change. “Look at this!,” she drawled. “Walkin’ the walk, talkin’ the talk. Look at you!
A grown woman with cotton candy. Pink like your cheeks.”
Roger Furlong. You come at Sue, you best not miss.
Avatar. Selina’s been so busy being veep she hasn’t even had a moment to see the “wonderful
movie with the blue people in it.”
Pigs. “They can’t raise pigs without excrement, ma’am. It just can’t be done. They defecate,
and they defecate with speed and volume.” Between that and the pig roasting going
on, it wasn’t a great day for Wilbur and friends.
Best lines
Dan: “Nice wheels, Mike. Is it new?”
Mike: “Not quite. Like your mother, it’s been previously loved and paid for by a couple
of guys.”
Amy: “Roger Furlong called. He wants some face time.”
Selina: “Well, I’d rather set fire to my vulva, so, no.”
Selina: “What if people think I have crabs in my eyebrow?”
Gary: “How do you get crabs in your eyebrow?”
Jonah: “Well, Gary, when a man and a woman love each other very much, and it’s the
man’s birthday . . . ”
Selina: “Get some towels. I may need to daughterboard her.”
Roger Furlong: “You’re about as annoying as a condom filled with fire ants. How’s
that for a metaphor?”
Sue: “Hello, what do you want, you can’t have it, goodbye.”
Catherine: “I wrote an essay about a very important film! You should be proud of me!
It’s not
Debbie Does Damascus.”
