TV Review: Girls and Veep, Continuing HBO’s Dominance of Comedy

Back in the now-distant seeming decade known as the 00’s or aughties or the Bush II years or whatever the hell history chooses to remember it as (but it probably won’t want to remember it at all) the one truly remarkable thing happening wasn’t in the gradually worsening economy or gloomy foreign policy outlook or even in the tech sector (when Facebook is your most widely used tech breakthrough, you can’t exactly call it an exciting period of innovation), it was instead in television. On any given night, pop culture enthusiasts—-the same people who had to watch helplessly as music got worse, books got downsized, and movies grew ever dumber to collect more international eyeballs—-got to watch the greatest period of television e-v-e-r. And no, I’m not shitting you when I call it that.

For decades, the “highlight” of television were stale dramas (who would voluntarily watch Magnum P.I. or Bonanza today unless they were jonesing for nostalgia?) and sitcoms that weren’t funny (you can pretend the Brady Bunch is classic TV, but it’s really just old TV). But in that 00’s sweet spot of programming, you had a heavy roster of the best shows ever created on television. The Sopranos is the greatest family drama in TV history. The Wire is the greatest urban drama in TV history. The Shield is the greatest police procedural in TV history. Deadwood is the greatest Western in TV history.

All of these shows both defined and reinvented their genres along with a high caliber roster of lesser but still stellar programs (King of the Hill is the most realistic cartoon show I’ve ever seen, Damages redefined the lawyer show, Rome broke new ground for historical dramas, Showtime’s underrated and forgotten Brotherhood is television’s finest noir show, and Lost is the single most daring broadcast network show to last six seasons without getting cancelled).

All of this is a long way of saying that the glory days of drama for all networks (but especially HBO) are over. The last two consistently excellent dramas are on AMC (Breaking Bad and Mad Men) and those shows are nearing the end of their runs with no immediate successors in sight (AMC cancelled the excellent Rubicon, and now has shit sandwich programming like The Walking Dead, Hell on Wheels, and the abysmal The Killing). HBO seemingly doesn’t even try anymore with dramas that are either too limited (Game of Thrones’s high fantasy world is well-made but deceptively shallow) or too meandering (Treme, Boardwalk Empire) or outright bad (True Blood, an English language telenovella with vampires and nudity). The thrill may be gone from their dramas, but it may have just started for their comedies.

To be fair, HBO has always done comedy equally well (Sex and the City has its diehard fangirls no less intense than Game of Thrones’s fanboys, and The Larry Sanders Show was the best comedy on TV when it was on) but now it seems to be their bread and butter. In the last year, we’ve seen another excellent season of the by-now-underrated Curb Your Enthusiasm, the promising start of the spiritual comedy Enlightenment (which mixes awkward comedy and honest emotion like Ricky Gervais still wished he could), and—-best of all—-a satisfying final season to Eastbound and Down, the only TV comedy to take viewers on a real journey.

Now HBO has rolled out the political comedy Veep (which stars the always-game Julia Louis Dreyfuss as a marginalized Vice President with an incompetent staff) and Lena Dunham’s Girls (set in the world of pampered white girls in Brooklyn but a hundred times more honest and funny than its network counterparts Two Broke Girls and New Girl). Neither show is perfect, but both get an “A-” and deserve to be seen.

Of the two, Girls is the less consistent but the more frequently excellent. It’s one of those shows that has moments you hate and moments you could watch ten times, as the title quartet of mid-twenties fuckups struggle through their careers, relationships, and identity’s. All of that makes the show sound far less funny than it really is, but the point is that it’s actually about something beneath the laughs.

Lena Dunham created, writes, directs, and stars on the show as the lead character Hannah, and I have to admit I find her struggles to land a better job while also exploring her dream more than a little realistic. The show lives in the throwaway lines and anxieties Hannah endures without ever sacrificing laughs. It’s a rare thing and more than makes up for Girl’s shortcomings (for starters, the other three, more classically attractive central characters aren’t nearly as interesting or developed as Hannah). See it and see what people are talking about, but don’t forget about the show fewer people are talking about…

Veep, the more consistently good (but less brilliant) new show about a Vice President who’s got Sarah Palin’s looks and Joe Biden’s clumsy tongue. Veep may not break much new ground as yet another workplace comedy—-even its D.C. setting doesn’t feel as lived in as the world of Girls—-but it is funny, smart, and audaciously cynical without feeling cheaply so.

The more indignities, Louis-Dreyfuss has to suffer, the more we feel for her, and it’s great fun watching these slick government spinsters working overtime to handle the latest P.R. meltdown. [In its way, this show feels far more realistic to how D.C. really is than ABC’s overblown melodrama Scandal.] You may not want to ever see this character in the White House, but you’ll be more than glad to watch her in the Veep’s chair for many years to come.