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Dan Egan is one of television’s most overtly amoral, despicable, mean, vain, cowardly, nasty characters on all of television. In Veep‘s universe of morally bankrupt politicians, Dan feels simultaneously like the most likely to succeed and the worst person in the world. He’s also, as played by Reid Scott, wildly attractive, just on an objective level. And the problem is that the worse he behaves, the more attractive he gets.
This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Don Draper, an objectively bad person, spent the entire run of Mad Men being one of the most lusted-after men on TV. If fandom has proved anything, it’s that the baddest bad guys will end up getting massive fandoms anyway. But that usually has to do with the way that genre fiction will often include material to soften/humanize the bad guy. Think of all those romantic vampires or criminals with bad home lives.
That is not Dan. There are no soft edges to Dan. There’s also �� and this is crucial — no wish-fulfillment quality to Dan either. Don Draper was a bastard, but much of Mad Men‘s appeal was that even as you acknowledged his faults, you still wanted to be him on some level. Dan Egan is a mid-level political henchman, doomed to seethe up and down the halls of power in Washington until he’s disgraced or indicted, possibly both.
Which means, again, that the only appeal Dan has is when he’s being entirely awful. Veep is a show where most of the characters need to be quick with a string of insults, but few deploy them with more venom than Dan does. His defining characteristic on the show is his ability to turn from opportunistically deferential to viciously withering on a dime. He has no values, no soul. But also: this season he’s got a little salt-and-pepper thing happening with his hair? It’s honestly too much.
This isn’t a good thing. This isn’t an “In Praise of Dan Egan” post. This isn’t a “Dan Egan can re-tabulate my vote totals any day” post. I could (and he should). This is a call for understanding. I was once like you were. I was attracted to good and noble qualities in men. Or at worst I was neutral. Not now. Not anymore. Now I’m on board for every insult, epithet, put-down, and disturbing factoid from his amoral upbringing (slept with his brother’s fiancee! Killed a dog maybe!) that Dan wants to throw my way. Hell, Veep, make him worse. I don’t see how that’s possible, but give it a shot. Oh, is his hair still flecked with gray? Is he still wearing a suit? Is he — oh dear, God, no — back in his breakdown beard from last season? That one nearly did me in.
At the end of the latest episode, after a day spent trying to wrangle the Nevada recount, Amy sent Dan some booty-call texts. Or at least it seemed like she was texting Dan; turns out she was texting Ben for whatever strange reason (The joke was confusing, but I think this was just an accident.) The point is: Amy should have been trying to booty-call Dan. Even though at that moment, Dan was having sex with her sister. He’s the worst. But that’s the whole point.
