Recap: The Best Lines from 'Veep,' 'South Carolina'

By Dustin Rowles | TV | April 22, 2019 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | April 22, 2019 |

No show on television, and certainly not SNL, has come close to being able to successfully satirize the Trump presidency until now. The seventh season of Veep is terrifyingly good. The show has been able to take something as inherently absurd as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and somehow squeeze more absurdity out of it. It’s goddamn brilliant watching Selina Meyer and Jonah Ryan — both running as Democrats — divide up the Trumpian themes of 2016 between themselves, with Selina trying to appeal to white voters while also stepping ass-backwards into the illegal aid of China, while Jonah has gone pure populist while also embracing #MeToo allegations against a woman who tries to force him to sign an NDA denying that they ever went out on a date because she’s too ashamed to admit it.

This is satire with teeth, so much so that there were a few lines that so crossed the line that they only work within the context of the show (and thus, I couldn’t bring myself to reprint them even here in the context of a Veep recap.). It’s a high-wire act and a half to caricature Trump’s racism and sexism without coming off as racist or sexist, but Veep is absolutely killing it this year.

And here were the best lines from last night’s episode, “South Carolina.”

— Selina wins the New Hampshire primary, but her slogan, “Man Up!” is obscured, so all we see on our screens is “Man.”

— Selina on her successful “Man Up!” slogan: “It’s universal. Men hate women, women hate themselves.” It’s the “Geraldine Ferraro principal.”

— Selina to Gary: “Can you get me a waxing appointment in Charleston? I’m feeling very patriotic.”

Gary: “Got it. The full bald eagle.”

— Jonah: “Math is a plot invented by the Chinese to make smart Americans feel dumb.”

— Jeff Kane (Peter MacNicol) to Jonah in his triumphant, hysterical return: “Shut the f*ck up! When you’re President, I’ll jam my fist up my dickhole and pull out a 40-piece set of Danish cutlery … Selina Meyer is a legitimate candidate, not a human pool skimmer last used to de-spunk a Provincetown hot tub party.”

— Selina (awkwardly boasting) to minister Dr. Jordan (Michael Keegan) in an effort to gain his endorsement in South Carolina over the Black candidate: “Can I tell you something? Your Daddy used to say to me that you’re the blackest white woman I ever met.”

Dr. Jordan: “Can I tell you something? My Dad used to say that to a lot of white women. It was his move.”

— Selina, still trying to outflank Kemi (the Black female candidate) with Black voters, on a new mailer in which Selina (below, right) looks darker than Kemi (left): “What the tragic mulatto f*ck? Kemi looks like an albino, and I’m so black people are going to start calling me articulate.”

— Selina, after realizing that she’s not going to win the Black vote, takes a “hard swing to the white.”

“How are we doing with college-educated whites?”

Kent: “In South Carolina, that is not a significant slice of the pie.”

— Kent, on what non-educated white voters in South Carolina want: “My polling shows their main wants are ‘jobs, education, and an adequate safety net’ …

Selina: “OK, we can speak to that … “

Kent: “… I’m not finished ma’am. ’ … to be denied to African Americans.’”

— Selina: “What you need to do is get me in front of a huge white audience. Something that makes a NASCAR race look like a Jay Z concert.”

Marjorie: “Excuse me, ma’am. But Jay Z concerts are almost all white people.”

— Gary: “You just left her in there? With him?”

Marjorie: “I was following orders.”

Gary: “So was Hitler!”

— Selina, after sleeping with Tom Jane (Hugh Laurie) and seeing on TV the next morning that he didn’t endorse her: “He f**ked me right in the ass.”

Ben: “Son of a bitch wouldn’t endorse you.”

Selina: “That too!”

— Amy, who had an abortion earlier this season: “I should have aborted myself.”

— Jonah, taking a hard right turn into Trumpian territory: “You know what I just found out from my father-in-law? That math was created by Muslims. And we teach this Islamic math to children. Math teachers are terrorist! Algebra? More like Al Jazeera. Under a Ryan presidency, I will ban this Sharia math from being taught to American children. There will be no more math (starts “No more math!” chant).”

— Selina: “How’s the [voter] turnout?”

Ben: “Like my prostate. Mostly black and much larger than we’d like.”

— Amy, slipping into pure Kellyanne Conway: “Frankly, Jonah Ryan is the only candidate who is honest about his dishonesty.”