“Veep” has had one of the most talented casts in a comedy since it debuted in 2012. But the standout in tonight’s latest episode entitled “B/ill” wasn’t any of the regulars. It was new cast member Hugh Laurie, who excels in his role as the straight man to a cast of lunatics.
One of the things that makes his performance as President Selina Meyer’s running mate Tom James so good is that it runs counter to most of what he has done before in comedy. In “Blackadder the Third” and “Blackadder Goes Forth,” he was a jolly nitwit who had all the funny lines, as he was as Bertie Wooster in “Jeeves and Wooster.” Here, he plays a type of Jeeves character in that he is very competent and somewhat serious.
The difference between James and Jeeves, however, lies in his American sensibility. Laurie’s accurate and soothing American voice accentuates his kindness and desire to make others happy. Whereas Jeeves had an air of superiority a thousand kind acts could not dissipate, James comes off as a friendly neighbor willing to devote a whole afternoon to solving your problems.
Like any great straight man, Laurie is great at reacting to situations. The episode’s primary plot — Meyer and her staff trying to get her bill destroyed in ways that are not 100 percent legal — gains a nice portion of its humor from characters learning information which could indict them and send them to jail.
Nobody is better at saying “I don’t want to know,” somebody telling him anyway and then reacting to that person’s stupidity than Laurie.
Laurie also plays James in a very restrained manner in stark contrast to the idiots he played in “Blackadder the Third” and “Jeeves and Wooster.” Those characters were uninhibited to the extreme. In this episode of “Veep,” James, most of the time, speaks deliberately and acts as he if were going to step on an eggshell.
This heightens the unrestrained nature of his colleagues bickering. It also makes his explosive outburst against them all the more funny and unexpected. The fact that he is screaming at them to help Meyer keeps his speech grounded in his character and does not come off as a cheap gag.
Laurie shares good chemistry with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. One of her greatest strengths on this show is being rude to people. Laurie suffers every indignity she puts him through with such patience as to throw Louis-Dreyfus’s bad manners into sharper comedic light.
This episode of “Veep” wasn’t perfect. Some of its storylines were unnecessarily repetitive. But Laurie’s excellent take on the straight man — something he has barely done in his career — is reason enough to watch the entire episode.
Jessie Pasternak
