Awesome / Veep

Much like its Transatlantic Equivalent, The Thick of It, Veep has its moments in spite of how cynical a show it is.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

• The successful rescue operation in "Hostages."
• In the episode "Helsinki," as Selina and her team are about to depart Finland, she tells Finnish Prime Minister's husband, Osmo, who had groped her earlier in the trip, that it's not okay and that there will be repercussions.
  Where I come from, we kill people for looking at us funny. We waterboard folks who haven't even done anything. And you raped my tit. Oh, yeah, you did. So I'm coming for you. 'Cause I'm an Angry Bird right now... and you're a pig.
• In the episode "Andrew", Ed gives a brief but harsh "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Jonah:
  Jonah, you're not even a man. You're like an early draft of a man, where they just sketched out a giant mangled skeleton, but they didn't have time to add details, like pigment or self-respect. You're Frankenstein's monster, if his monster was made entirely of dead dicks.
• Catherine gives her mom a pep talk after Selina goes through a Heroic BSoD in "Alicia."
  Catherine: Okay. Your big day is a travesty. I get it. It's like my 21st birthday. Or my 18th birthday. Or every other birthday, okay? Your entire life has been leading up to this moment. As a result of that, my entire life has been awful. Posing for Christmas cards, watching C-SPAN instead of "Sesame Street," going to memorials of old Israeli men that I've never even heard of. I have had a hard, lonely, miserable life. The only thing that is going to make it worthwhile is if I become the daughter of the next President of the United States. So you need to go out there. And you need to stop behaving like a little bitch.
• Amy leaking to Jonah to get Ray and Dan fired and land herself the campaign manager job.
• Selina being sworn in as the first female President in the third season finale.
• When Selina's teleprompter fails during the State of the Union in "Joint Session", she successfully improvises part of the speech. The improvised bit manages to achieve a standing ovation.
  Kent: I detest jazz, but this is impressive.
• After Gary makes some serious mistakes in "East Wing," Selina chews him out and tells him that he's unimportant to her. Gary reacts with uncharacteristic anger, reminding Selina that he's more than just her bagman.
  I've broken my body for you. I've let myself to be laughed at, I've let myself to be humiliated and I'm happy to do it! Most of the time, you don't even know that I exist, but I'm fucking everything to you!
• In "Convention", Amy finally snaps from Selina consistently ignoring her sensible advice, and quits, but not before giving Selina a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how ineffective she is as a politician, and how her only accomplishment will be ensuring no one ever wants a female president again.
  I have bitten my tongue so long, it looks like a dog's cushion. But no more. You have made it impossible to do this job. You have two settings: no decision and bad decision. I wouldn't let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and the fire department standing by, but yet here you are running America. You are the worst thing that has happened to this country since food in buckets and maybe slavery. I've had enough. I'm gone...You have achieved nothing. Apart from one thing. The fact that you are a woman means we will have no more women presidents because we tried one and she fucking sucked. Good-bye, ma'am.
  • It's made more awesome that, immediately after, Selina realizes that Amy was right and goes with her suggestion of Tom James, and fires Karen.
  • Tom James' entrance. He's shown to be very friendly, charismatic, and very politically aware.
• In "B/ill", while Selina is laid up sick in bed, her inner circle scramble to contain a growing scandal around the Families First bill, all while deflecting blame onto each other. Tom James finally has enough of this when they're arguing right next to Selina's bed, and chews them out.
  "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR FUCKING HOLES! The President is not sick. You guys are. You're parasites; a fucking infestation of mediocracy. I don't care if you're a 1950s radio host (Bill), a Fozzie Bear who's been ripped open to smuggle drugs (Mike), a Nazi doctor (Kent)... I don't even know what the fuck you are (Gary). This is not about serving yourselves. This is about serving the President. So let's do that."
• Selina entrapping Tom James into becoming her economy czar (read: fall guy) by telling the press he's accepted the job out of his selfless nature, making for some very bad press if he tried to deny it. When James confronts her, she just says "Suck it."
• Richard showing off his Hidden Depths with a masterful analysis of the situation with the electoral votes. It instantly gets him promoted over Jonah.
• Jonah finally coming into his own by going on a vicious anti-Selina rant as he starts his Congress run.
• Selina pulling Tom onto the dance floor to confront him over his scheme to stall out the electoral vote.
  Selina: Don't look around. Nobody's gonna help you.
  • And then blackmailing and outright threatening Representatives that Tom had previously convinced to abstain in order to get them back into the fold. It's the most triumphantly vicious we've ever seen Selina, in a performance worthy of Malcolm Tucker.
  Selina: You're playing a very dangerous game of chicken with the head fucking hen, 'cause if I don't win the White House, O'Brien is gonna sink your stupid boats and you're gonna look like a hair-sprayed asshole in your 1980s mother-of-the-bride dress. And if I do win, I will have my administration come to your shitty little district and shake it to death like a Guatemalan nanny. And then I'm gonna have the IRS crawl so far up your husband's colon, he's gonna wish the only thing they find is more cancer.
  Nickerson: (quietly) Good God.
  Selina: So can I count on your vote? Or do I need to shove a box of White House M&Ms up your stretched-out six-baby vag?
  (beat)
  Nickerson: Yes you can count on my vote.
  Selina: I think I want to hear an 'Okey-dokey, Annie Oakley.^note an expression Nickerson used earlier to Selina's annoyance
  Nickerson: Okey-dokey, Annie Oakley
  Selina: Super-duper, trooper! Now get the fuck out of here, congresswoman.
• After Selina's been having trouble pulling off the advised move of slamming the table and storming off to get the Chinese in line, she spots Andrew trying to rope Catherine into his new scam and channels that rage into a completely convincing performance. The Chinese President is so unnerved that he opens up discussion about liberating Tibet.
• After Jonah has tremendous trouble splitting a log for his campaign ad and says the ax must be bad, Richard splits it perfectly and casually says it seems okay.
• The Season 5 finale reveals the true greatest chessmaster of the series to be VP Doyle, who finally gets back at Selina by screwing both her and Tom James out of the presidency, while earning a cushy job as Secretary of State for the new president.
  • The reaction is terrific from Tom who earlier had mockingly offered Selina the VP slot again. as he just stares in utter shock, Selina can only choke out "now you know what it feels like."
  • After Selina learns that she'll be neither President or Vice-President, Gary chews out the rest of the staff for only caring about how it affects them, with no concern for Selina's feelings. It's so stunning that everyone in the room is either too impressed, too amused, or too taken aback to snark back at Gary when he's done.
  Dan: (on phone) I have to call you back, something amazing is happening.
  Ben: ...Well, that makes the whole last year worth it.
• The revelation that Sue is the one member of the staff asked to stay on for President Montez.
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus making Emmy history by winning the Lead Actress in a Comedy award five years in a row.
  • Her sixth victory also ends up being the record for any actor winning consecutive awards for playing the same role.
• In "Library", when it comes out that Andrew is cheating on Selina, there's a tense moment of silence, then Gary goes berserk and tries to throttle him. Later, when a moving crew is removing Andrew's stuff from the Meyer residence, Gary is shown casually tossing some of it out like trash.
• In "Georgia", after previously going through the indignity of having to play the "supportive wife" to her scandal-ridden fiancé, Amy ruins her fiancé's attempt to gracefully leave the gubernatorial race by refusing to stand by his side at his announcement.
  • In the same episode, after Selina is pretty much press-ganged into acting as an international observer for Georgia's first free election, she manages to walk away from the situation with several wins — a sizable donation to her Presidential library (albeit not nearly as large as she was expecting), credit for the election even happening, and a bit of payback at Doyle by claiming the spread of democracy as the "Meyer Doctrine", rather than his self-named "Doyle Doctrine".
• In "Quatar", Jonah first takes advantage of Furlong's need for his vote to get invited to one of his "couples-only dinners", then uses the presence of Furlong's straight-laced Christian wife to strong-arm him into giving Jonah a new office on a better floor.
• While it's incredibly petty, Jonah gets another moment in "Blurb", when he and his bloc of followers in Congress cause a government shutdown in order to stand up to and spite Furlong and the other leadership members who have been looking down on them.
  • In the same episode, Selina chews out Tom for how he's managed to keep screwing her over, by publishing the details of their fling before she could and presenting them in a negative light, after having fed her a sob story about his new wife to shame her into keeping quiet about it. She ends her tirade against him with this gem:
  "You can have your trophy wife, and your trophy office, and your trophy baby who you won’t even live to see go to college. But I still got to be president, and you never will."
• The climax of "Judge" has Gary chewing out his emotionally abusive father.
• At the end of Season 6, Mike losing his diary of Selina's time in office ends up revealing to the public that she was the true mastermind behind the freeing of Tibet that Montez has been taking credit for. This actually gives her such a big popularity boost that she can genuinely run for president again.
• In "Discovery Weekend", Tom throws Selina off her game by claiming to have realized that he's always been in love with her. She's genuinely touched by this, until she learns that he's having an affair with his deputy chief of staff. Incensed at having been used, Selina proceeds to not-quite call them out on the affair in public, and putting the other woman in her place, sending her to get her a drink.
• In "Pledge", Amy goes to have an abortion and gets heckled by anti-abortion protestors. Amy being Amy, she doesn't let that slide:
  Amy: "You want me to think about the children, you hog-fingering fucks? I did think about this. I considered it and I cried and yeah, suck my cock, I even prayed a little. And here I am. So you can back the fuck off, you hypocrtical cunts, before I show up to the piss-puddle that is your house and protest your husband wacking it to your daughter's seventh grade yearbook."
  • Selina spends the whole episode losing ground to Senator Talbot. However, during a break in the candidates' debate, she flies into a rant in response to Catherine's suggestion that she concede and support Talbot, from which she takes inspiration. Back on stage, she counters one of Talbot's feminist comments by going into detail about all the crap women like her went through so that women like Talbot could be where they are now, instantly getting most of the crowd on her side.
  Selina: Why don't you show some respect for the women like me who built the ladder you use to get up on your soapbox!
• In "South Carolina", Richard is video chatting with Catherine when a crop duster suddenly crashes nearby. Shortly after, a panicked Catherine tells Marjorie that something happenned to Richard. We then see on the news that Richard singlehandedly prevented any fatalities from the crash.
• In "Super Tuesday", Richard inadvertently exposes that a number of Iowa state legislators are in the pocket of long-time scumbag Sydney Percelle, leading to them all being arrested. As one of them is the lieutenant governor, the governor asks Richard to take his place.
• From the Grand Finale:
  • Selina giving Tom's chief of staff Michelle a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how little she means to him, convincing the younger woman to go public about their affair and tanking Tom's chance of coming from behind and stealing the nomination.
  • The revelation Sue is once more working for Selina where her main job is to prevent Jonah from ever seeing her.
  Jonah: When I am President...
  Sue: You won't be.
  Jonah: ...if you want to work for me...
  Sue: I don't.
  Jonah: ...then I would start treating me with the respect that I deserve.
  Sue: I am.
  • A minor moment, but all the better considering who it's coming from — Mike zinging Dan for his fashion choices. And in the Distant Finale has become CBS' main anchor.
  • Richard eventually becomes President years after Selina's single term, and wins the Nobel Peace Prize for a three-state Middle East peace solution.
  • While she may not have gotten a Nobel, Kemi was also a highly popular two term president who completely eclipsed Selina's reputation, while she was still alive to watch.