Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Last night’s Veep stood out from the rest of this season’s episodes, and not just because it showed Selina having a rare moment of genuine emotion (don’t worry, it didn’t last). It was also the first episode where Selina’s daughter Catherine (Sarah Sutherland) wasn’t creeping around the margins filming her student-film documentary. But just because Catherine was too busy making television’s most extreme cry-face this week doesn’t mean that her doc isn’t lurking down the road, ready to blow up her mother’s entire presidency.
One of the best things about season 5 thus far has been following Catherine’s movie-making from the margins of the show. The way the show will casually slide Catherine into frame during a scene we had no idea she was in? Some of the best trickiest work Veep has done. And it plays perfectly to what we’ve always known about Catherine’s relationship to her mother: Selina barely notices when she’s around. And it’s almost certainly going to lead somewhere disastrous for the Meyer administration. Even when Selina does manage to notice Catherine, it doesn’t ever really dawn on her the kinds of things Catherine is getting on film.
Here’s a quick tour through Catherine’s dailies, as we’ve seen them:
Episode 5.1, “Morning After”
After Selina kicks Catherine out of the Oval Office and expressed doubt that her daughter will ever follow through with the project (“The only thing Catherine’s ever finished was an entire ice cream cake.”), we see Catherine in the deep background filming as Ben (Kevin Dunn) offers Bill Ericsson (Diedrich Bader) quid pro quo (and a presidential pardon!) if Bill will fall on his sword for the Meyer administration.
Episode 5.2 “Nev-AD-a”
We get two Catherine sneak attacks in this one. In the first, she’s filming during a strategy session about the Nevada recount and films, among other things, Bill Bradley (Martin Mull) talking about “dry fucking” one of their political enemies. In the second, Catherine’s there when Selina meets with the U.S. bronze medalist kayaking team. They give Selina an oar as a gift, and Catherine’s camera picks up her grousing “the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” after the team leaves.
Episode 5.3 “The Eagle”
Catherine is once again chilling on the sidelines in this one, filming a strategy session that includes Selina saying, “Do we have any reason to think we’re not as ducked as a Senate page here?” As anyone who watches Veep knows, the vulgarity comes fast and furious, and I wonder if the ultimate fallout from Catherine’s film will be that the Meyer administration gets in trouble for that vulgarity. We saw a taste of it in last night’s episode when Amy so scandalizes a Nevada operative with her fabulously dirty mouth. Indeed, when Selina catches Catherine filming in “The Eagle,” she instructs her daughter “Don’t use any of the vulgar parts.” Catherine: “But that’s all of them.”
Episode 5.3 “The Eagle”
Later in this episode, Catherine’s filming when Selina makes a dismissive “Oh who cares?” when watching Bill O’Brien (Brad Leland) campaign on TV. Another insensitive moment that the public wouldn’t like too much. Though potentially even more damaging is whether Catherine was in the room when Selina and her team discussed blaming Chinese hackers for her errant tweets.
However and whenever this whole documentary business shakes out, clearly Veep is doing a slow build. Catherine’s been the put upon, neglected, slighted, ignored daughter for five seasons now. It’s only right that she’d end up becoming a huge problem for her mother simply by going unnoticed.
