Review by Andrew Bloom

Veep: Season 4

4x06 Storms and Pancakes

[7.4/10] Not as strong as the last one, but still good. I love the premise that Tom James is everything that Selina isn't -- sharp, capable, and good with people in a sincere (or at least sincere-seeming) way, which not only makes Selina jealous and worried about Tom outshining her, but leads to her trying to imitate him, with predictably disastrous results. Her attempts to be a "lone wolf" and offer fun facts about honeybees were amusing, and her garish attempts to get fawned over for picking Tom rather than the media fawning of Tom himself were funny too. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays the jealous and attempts to divert adulation well, and Hugh Laurie is a pro who plays off of her nicely.

The rest of the episode is more of a mixed bag. Again, the consulting agency continues to feel like the place Veep goes to spin its wheels, even with the addition of Amy. Her scream session in the parking lot was an interesting but kind of odd moment, and her frenemy relationship with Dan still doesn't quite click with me.

In the same way, I kind of like the bizarre comic idea that Teddy was attempting to fondle everyone who even looked like Jonah, which meant all his other victims were women, which upsets Jonah. It is, if you'll pardon the expression, a ballsy and bold vein of humor. But it's also kind of a weird angle to take with this whole thing. That said, Richard's cheerful obliviousness to all of this is still endlessly amusing.

And there's also humor to be wrung from Ben feeling so lonely wandering the halls of the White House by himself that he pesters Sue and overblows a storm to get everyone back. It's a nice plot impetus for the Meyer campaign to, as usual, make the wrong call and have things go terribly wrong.

Overall, it's the main Selina-Tom story that really drives this one, but there's other good, albeit mixed, stuff in the episode as well.

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