Sesquipedalia

I watched this episode three times before finally figuring out who Mr. Wallace on the panel is--Neelix from Star Trek Voyager! I still don't get what was going on with Ms. Bennett. Was she supposed to be helping Selina by distracting the panel? Did we already know she was Selina's friend, or was this a new idea introduced in this episode? I don't remember her. Why did she disappear at the end?

I have always liked Amy Schumer, but the first three episodes of this season have been, in my opinion, fucking brilliant. She has quickly become the genius feminist comedic voice of our time Yes! The way everyone, especially Giamatti, committed to their roles was truly outstanding. I could have watched a full 2-hour movie. The concept and execution were both excellent. Bravo.

I felt the same way. I spent a lot of the episode confused about the motivations behind the plan to kill Families First, and the lack of context was distracting. I feel like sloppy plotting has been an issue all season, though, especially the way Selina apparently winning the primary was glossed over.

You need to calm. down. Go to a spa. Go to a Pilates class. Go to a fucking church. Find someone there that has some valium, and take four of them.

For the first few seconds I thought it was Dolly Parton singing the theme song. That would have really been the icing on the cake.

I'm 43 and just starting to have that invisible feeling, so the invisibility plot line rang true. Nice touch that Grace's face is literally being erased from the company she created. But why Frankie wanted to get a job teaching art at a nursing home when she already has a job teaching art at a prison was a little confusing. It's dropped details like that that make the writing seem a bit sloppy. "That's out superpower. If they can't see us, they can't stop us" is the best line of the series so far. Wow, Coyote's rock bottom moment was . . . not that bad.

This episode seemed off to me in terms of timing and general cohesion. I was constantly confused about where the characters were and how much time has passed since the husbands made their big announcement. With so much filmed in undefined outside areas, I was never clear on the exact setting of the scenes with the children. And it was mentioned that it had a been a week (or weeks?) since episode 1, but I thought only one night had passed, two tops. Have Grace and Frankie been living in the beach house together for a week or more? That seems like an important thing to establish. Time and place orientation are the type of thing viewers shouldn't really notice, and when we do it's distracting. I also thought there needed to be a scene at the end showing Grace collecting Frankie to take her back to the beach house. It was obvious that she wasn't going to be able to leave Frankie behind, but skipping over that key interaction was jarring, especially since Grace wouldn't have been leaving Frankie alone--What about her son?! The script made a big deal about the addict son Coyote being there for his mother. So what happened with that? It felt like too much got left out. I liked the first episode pretty well, and I love seeing Jane Fonda and Lilly Tomlin together again. But something seemed amateurish about this one. Maybe it's the editing? I'm no expert, but I know some part of the production team is not living up to the quality of the acting.

Amy's blow-up was awesome, but was it accurate? Has Selina's tenure as president really been that bad? It seems like she has accomplished quite a lot in foreign policy. And the scandals that have plagued her administration have mostly been caused by her incompetent staff. Didn't the leak of private information about that girl with AIDS come from the campaign staff, headed by Amy?

I thought Selina was just really pumped because she had made such great progress on relations with Iran. I like that she is actually very competent as president, at least when it comes to foreign relations. Her "we have an hour, let's learn Italian" comment reminded me of the yogurt episode when she had a two-hour window in her schedule and wanted to take advantage of it. That's why she's an accomplished person. If I have a two-hour window in my schedule, my #1 priority is getting a nap.

I watched all of Dollhouse, so I liked it well enough, and they do have similar themes, but to me Orphan Black is way better. In addition to having a superior lead actor, OB also has more consistency with the characters. One of the big weaknesses of DH was the whole premise: the main character was an empty shell who took on a different persona and was sent out on a new mission each week. Therefore, every episode featured a new cast of characters, so it was hard to get invested in anyone except the bad guys and other peripheral characters who appeared consistently. If Whedon had had the freedom to build the mythology from the beginning, instead of creating so many stand-alone episodes, DH would have been a lot more like OB and probably a lot better.

This was my thought as well. I was with him until he brought up the food analogy. Many if not most Americans have no idea where their food comes from and will eat the cheapest crap they can find. Not to mention the untold suffering that takes place for both the workers and animals in the factory farm industry. People are just as likely to turn a blind eye on where their food comes from as their clothes, so that whole long bit really made no sense.

LOL yes, they do resemble each other. Another thing that is similar is the short-hair wig. It's a lot like the one JLD wore when Elaine got a short haircut on Seinfeld. Also, everyone on both shows seemed to hate it. I personally prefer short hair, but both wigs look really fake.

4.1--"I'm getting jiggy with it." I can't be the only one who noticed this!!

What I love about Jon Stewart is that he combines funny and smart. I watch for the incisive political satire, cathartic ranting against conservatives, and intelligent yet funny interviews. Yes, Stewart's humor can also be puerile. I roll my eyes at all the dick jokes and click over to my email when he gets off onto something too silly. But when he talks about politics and social issues, I can usually count on him to be thoughtful and insightful. What Noah's tweets say to me is that he is not smart enough to host a Daily Show I would want to see. If fat chick jokes and slanty eye Asian jokes are what his mind repeatedly turns to in moments of thoughtless tweeting, I don't think he's going to bring that much to the table. The fact that he sees no need to apologize makes it worse, emphasizing how tone-deaf he is to the portion of TDS audience that watches for the political humor, not the fart jokes. I wish Jessica Williams had gotten the job. I know she's young, but she seems way more politically aware and self-aware.

But his Amworks plan is total big government, something no Republican would ever get behind. In current real-life American politics Underwood would be untenable as either a Republican or a Democrat. I'm having trouble with it, too, but I think we have to accept HOC as an alternative political universe.

Pity fuck.

Wait, was there adultery?! I'm not sure whether y'all are reading a lot into Remy's loyalty to Jackie or talking about eps I haven't seen yet. Anyhoo, I just posted yesterday in an earlier ep thread that Rachel can't really be dead. But now that Gavin says she's alive, I'm going on record as thinking she probably is actually dead.

My 42 years of TV watching tells me that if Rachel were really dead, we would have at least gotten a scene of Gavin discovering her death. I hope she comes back. I want her reappearance to be the first nail in Underwood's coffin when he is (hopefully) taken down.

I could tell that Claire was going to jump ship as soon as she said she wanted to speak at the press conference, but I was disappointed in her. I thought she was more hardcore than that. If ever there were a time to let the ice run in her veins, this was it. Her new-found conscience would have been more believable if Corrigan had been a more sympathetic, inspiring character, but he came off as a jerk. By the way, does Claire know for sure that Frank committed murder? Or is it more of a don't-ask-don't-tell situation? When she said "we are murderers," I thought Frank got a look on his face like he was worried she was talking about something other than Corrigan.

Selina forgetting the third R seemed like a reference to Rick Perry forgetting the third agency he would eliminate in one of the 2012 Republican primaries, except Selina recovered a lot better.

I don't know how I feel about most of the episode, but I LOVED the Lil' Sebastian tribute. So heartwarming! I kind of feel like they should have saved that for the end of the series finale, though. It'll be hard to top it for sweetness and sentimentality.

I don't know. I believed her when she said she'd rather be "shot in the fucking face than serve as vice president again. . . seriously, in the fucking face." But even if the show ends with election night, I still think it could be drug out at least three more seasons. This season is about the lead-up to the primaries. Next season could be the state-to-state primaries, watching the various opponents fall. Then the actual presidential campaign, with debates and such, could take at least two seasons to cover. Both the primaries and main campaign always seem to go on FOREVER and are equally tragi-comic in real life, so hopefully Veep can milk them for all they're worth. Question: In real life would a candidate poach her campaign from her vp staff like Selina is doing? Since they're presumably on the government's payroll, it seems like she would have to hire new people for the campaign.

I agree that Kent and Sue are dating now. I didn't catch it the first time, but on second viewing it seemed quite obvious. I just started watching this show a week ago and am so obsessed with it. One of my favorite exchanges from this episode was: VP: It would please me greatly if you would do me the honor of removing your jizz box from our executive branch of government. Mike: It's actually a cooler. VP: Oh, well then, by all means, open it up. Let's have a picnic. I'll boil up my eggs. I love her when she's being sarcastic, which is pretty much all the time.

Season 3 Episode 3: Selina is condemned as elitist for having a pony as a child!

If something in Veep happens exactly like something in one of the greatest and/or most well-known, most obsessively quoted comedies of all time, with which it also shares a starring actor, I'm going to go with homage over coincidence. Seinfeld especially has become so ingrained in the American vernacular that you can reference it without even realizing it (not that there's anything wrong with that), so even if the writers aren't consciously doing it--which I suspect they are a lot of the time--the references are still in there. Anyway, back to the fun. I just remembered another one: I don't recall the episode or exact quote, but Selina mentions "afternoon delight" in reference to sex. Squee! Also, in the third episode of Season 2: Gary points out that paper covers rock.