30 Best Veep Episodes Ranked

A long, long time ago, politics seemed mature and stately. No matter their affiliation, many people pictured an inherent dignity and gravity behind the work — an idea sometimes fostered by the media, like best episodes of "The West Wing" or the movie "Lincoln." As the years have gone on, digital media and increasingly rapid news cycle have shattered whatever illusions we had. Politicians are as fallible as any of the rest of us and have myriad opportunities to be caught in embarrassing mistakes and unfolding scandals on a daily basis. In a roundabout way, this makes "Veep" the most realistic political show we've got.

For seven terrific seasons, "Veep" — an American adaptation of Armando Iannucci's BBC comedy "The Thick of It" — charted the rise and fall Selina Meyer, a vain, egocentric child of wealth who feels entitled to power. It's only through the performance of the legendary comedic actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus that we can stand to watch the character at all. Every single episode sees Selina and her team scrambling to deal with one crisis, only to inadvertently cause another, more serious one. It reflects the chaotic, amnesiac nature of our actual political news cycle, and is laced with viciously dark humor delivered at one of the fastest joke-per-minute speeds in comedy history. These are the best 20 episodes of "Veep," ranked.

The first season of "Veep" hammers home the central premise that the Vice Presidency, theoretically the second-most important job in the free world, is an embarrassing role full of mindless tedium. As "Nicknames" opens, Selina is drifting off to sleep during her one official duty of presiding over the Senate. When she gets one chance to actually do something meaningful and break a 50-50 tie at the episode's end, she chooses to vote against legislation she believes in to stay in favor of President Hughes (who's never actually shown onscreen).

The title comes from a fantastic sequence where staffers Amy (Anna Chlumsky), Dan (Reid Scott), and Mike (Matt Walsh) accidentally mention that there are several nicknames for Selina they track to keep abreast of online chatter. Selina demands that they list them for her. "Grizzly Madam," "Wicked Witch of the West Wing," and "Vaguely Personable" are a few that are tame enough to print.

"Veep" is one of the rare shows that changed showrunners amicably (instead of someone getting fired) and didn't lose quality. The first four seasons, from "In the Loop" director Armando Iannucci, are more grounded in the day-to-day humiliations of Selina et alia. The last three seasons from showrunner David Mandel hit the gas pedal and deal with more absurd and rapidly shifting fortunes of high-stakes presidential campaigns.

"Super Tuesday," just two episodes before the series finale, finds "Veep" in its highest madcap gear. Selina is campaigning so frequently that she doesn't know what state she's in and ducking questions about her (ex) husband's embezzlement from the Meyer Fund non-profit as well as a Washington Post story about foreign election interference. Both subplots are thinly veiled references to real-life, contemporary scandals. Meanwhile, the "dangerously unskilled" Jonah (Timothy Simons) has vaulted into third place in the polls and actually earned himself a Secret Service detail. 

Be careful what you wish for. In "Special Relationship," after finally being made campaign manager after years of scheming for the job, Dan can't handle the pressure and has a panic attack while Team Selina is in London. It's a wonderful episode for actor Reid Scott to play Dan's manic side after generally being a calm and callous operator for most of the show, and foreshadows Dan's eventual transition to the lower-stakes world of corporate lobbying and broadcasting.

"Veep" also regularly mined humor from the unintended consequences of Selina's fashion choices: here, a particularly large hat gives her away during what's supposed to be a secret meeting with the German Chancellor. "Special Relationship" also sadly sees the end of Chris Meloni's spectacularly funny guest arc as Ray, Selina's "personal trainer" and hilariously dim bulb of a boyfriend, whose blog post claiming that obese children are "possessed by Satan" embarrasses Selina during a press conference.

"B/ill" really drives home that the demands of being the president never stop: despite being bedridden with the flu, Selina has to deal with the impending passage of the Families First bill — legislation she once championed but now wants to fail so it doesn't sabotage her campaign for reelection. Through sniffles, she dispatches Gary to secretly hire Dan and Amy to lobby against the bill, although any amount of secrecy sends Gary into full-blown panic.

To be safe, Selina also sends the most incompetent members of her administration to lobby for the bill and ensure its downfall: Jonah Ryan and Richard Splett (Sam Richardson, in one of the funniest line-by-line performances in TV history). When the two teams slip up and visit the same congress members accidentally — even presenting them with the same data — it sets off a congressional investigation in the next episodes that will have far-reaching implications.

The best plot twist in "Veep" is the Electoral College cliffhanger at the end of Season 4. The entirety of Season 5 is devoted to the chaotic months afterward when obscure tie-breaking procedures (that are actually in our laws) upend politics. "The Eagle" is devoted to an effort to avoid leaving the presidency in the hands of the House of Representatives by initiating a recount in Nevada and flipping the state in Selina's favor.

It's a showcase episode for Anna Chlumsky's long-suffering Amy, who heads out to Nevada to supervise the recount but finds herself answering to Richard (who surprisingly has a master's degree in recount practices of the American West), as well as Bob "The Eagle" Bradley himself, a veteran politician who might just be losing his marbles. In another recurring theme for aging Boomer Selina, she sets off another scandal by accidentally tweeting publicly what she meant to be a DM to her boyfriend but successfully blames it on the Chinese.

After spending most of Season 6 trying to varnish her middling legacy, Selina seems on the verge of failure by the end. Its penultimate installment, "A Woman First," makes it seem like all hope is lost for Selina to come back as a public figure after her brief presidency. After Mike's diary of his entire time in the Meyer administration ends up in the hands of journalist Leon West (Brian Huskey), a damning series of exposés on every scandal of the previous several years forces Selina to cancel an appearance on "The Tonight Show" to promote her new memoir.

But the tide turns quickly on "Veep": the revelation that it was Selina, and not her successor, Laura Montez (Andrea Savage), that freed Tibet, drowns out the countless other scandals and gets everything back on track again. As Selina exclaims, "God bless the media and their fly-hitting-a-windshield attention span!" She's back on television in no time plugging her hilariously titled book, "A Woman First: First Woman."

Jonah is the highlight of "Pledge," another full-force episode in the brief final season. After yet another embarrassing gaffe at a county fair, his campaign manager Teddy (Patton Oswalt) takes Jonah to see PR consultants to help him rein in his penchant for offensive language. Of course, Jonah can't get through a single minute of sensitivity training without saying so many terrible things that it results in a lawsuit from the consultants themselves.

Selina also tries to clean up her language by locking all of her fellow candidates into a "non-negative pledge," mostly to avoid answering questions about the Meyer Fund scandal. Of course, she immediately learns a juicy bit of gossip about the past of her rival Kemi Talbot (Toks Olagundoye), so she tries to feed it to longtime nemesis Tom James (the great Hugh Laurie), and chaos ensues at the first Presidential primary debate.

After winning the New Hampshire primary, Selina heads to South Carolina to attempt the impossible task of being everything to everyone. Somehow she needs to court the Black vote — even though there's actually "race in the race" in the form of Kemi Talbot — without alienating South Carolina's white population. Her staff members have a hilarious debate about how to sound a racist dog whistle or "dog leaf blower" and express support for the police while giving a speech at a Black church.

In the end, Selina chickens out and hedges her bets entirely by sending a coded message to the Chinese for their interference in the primary. She spontaneously mentions the need to recognize that the Diaoyu Islands are under Chinese sovereignty to a supremely confused congregation. On the evening of the vote, thousands of voters are mysteriously turned away, and sudden rolling blackouts depress turnout just enough for an improbable Selina victory. As the end of the series draws closer, Selina is well on her way to super-villainy.

Season 3's "Alicia" humanizes one of the people you often see standing with politicians during important speeches while parodying the callous pragmatism of using "human props" to send political messages. Guest star Tracie Thoms plays the titular Alicia Bryce, an activist and proponent of universal child care whom Selina wants to be on the platform during the speech announcing her candidacy for President, until the moment it gets cut from the party platform by the party bigwigs. 

In a fun subplot, Selina also falls victim to "Saturday Night Live" and its long history of political impressions, getting skewered on the latest episode. Unsurprisingly, they've zeroed in on her wealth and lavish upbringing and portrayed her as a spoiled rich child. Proving their point, Selina retorts obliviously, "So what I had a horse as a kid, who didn't?" Dan spends the episode fruitlessly yelling at "SNL" writers over the phone to try and intimidate them into stopping.

"New Hampshire" might be the happiest episode of the entire run of "Veep," at least for the first half. After president Hughes resigns, Selina is elevated to the presidency and her entire team basks in the sudden glow of national attention. Amy has new zeal managing the campaign in New Hampshire, and Mike enjoys a sense of celebrity as the new White House Press Secretary. Everyone fights over who gets the closest office to the Oval, and prepares for a new, much grander chapter of their lives.

But the bloom is more or less immediately off the rose. The first acts of the Meyer administration involve Selina wearing unfortunately squeaky shoes for her first Presidential address, accidentally firing the wrong official from the State Department, and enraging the nation of Iran. Mike also bumps into a candelabra and messes up Selina's oath of office, forcing her to have to take it again. The wheel of chaos on "Veep" restores bumbling disorder rather quickly.

As Season 4 of "Veep" begins, Selina is still trying to get off on the right foot as the first woman president. "Joint Session" has a rare nonlinear structure, as it begins with Selina's teleprompter going blank during her first address to a joint session of Congress and then flashes back one day earlier to show the missteps that led to this panic-inducing fiasco.

The episode really hammers home how much busier and chaotic everyone's life has become with Selina's elevation to president: Gary is struggling to adjust to having to wait outside multiple security briefings every day, multiple new unknown staff members are running around, and Mike and an upgraded speechwriting team have no clue how to define Selina's platform as a leader. Just when they think they've gotten the military to agree to a massive budget cut, they have to reverse course on the fly to save jobs in key districts that the budget cut would eliminate.

Season 5 begins with a hangover from the presidential election that resulted in a tie in a bizarre quirk of the Electoral College, which, as Selina tells the nation, is "a somewhat arcane institution that many scholars say we should do away with." With no clear winner and the country in a strange purgatory, Selina tries to assure the nation that she stands in "bare-faced awe" at the power of democracy, but the giant stress pimple on her face says otherwise.

The pimple ends up with its own parody Twitter account and becomes partially responsible for the stock market cratering in the midst of all the uncertainty. As a hail Mary to look presidential, the team puts together a "symposium on race" that unfortunately is composed of entirely white academics. "Morning After" also sees the introduction of Selina's new body double Marjorie, played by the hilariously deadpan Clea DuVall.

"Groundbreaking" is perhaps the most unique episode of "Veep" in that it breaks up what's normally a documentary-like, real-time show with several flashbacks. For the Season 6 finale, as Selina contemplates yet another run for president (third time's the charm!), we revisit many of her key moments from past victories and failures. We see the heartbreaking moment she suspended her first attempt at becoming president, when the victory balloons accidentally dropped on her anyway mid-speech, and even visit her all the back in her first Senate campaign.

The most telling flashback reveals a glimpse of Selina's time at the "spa" (AKA mental hospital) that she went to after her second presidential loss. She was heavily medicated and barely in touch with reality, but of course still had Gary with her, who we learn has been with her since meeting her the day Catherine was born (he was working in the maternity ward as a hospital candy striper).

"Veep" often swaps characters' roles and jobs to reveal hidden and surprising depths. In Season 2's "Helsinki," Dan struggles in his new role of communications director and comes to realize that Mike's groveling, aw-shucks bumbling persona actually gave him a natural talent for ingratiating himself to the press corps. Selina points out to Dan that he's too handsome to crack jokes: "It really comes off as evil."

"Helsinki" also features the introduction of one of the show's best recurring characters in Finnish Prime Minister Minna (veteran English comedienne Sally Phillips), a deadpan and humorless foil for Selina who recurs until the end of the series. In a superb bit of physical comedy, Selina has to make remarks while holding an absurdly large clock with an "Angry Bird" on it, a gift from Minna that's so garish it plays like a veiled insult.

In its penultimate episode, "Veep" goes for broke with one absurd twist after another in "Oslo." Selina begins the episode in Norway ready to accept a Nobel Peace Award (not exactly the Nobel Peace Prize, but close enough), but accidentally reveals herself as a war criminal to her old "friend" Minna from Finland, who immediately calls Interpol. Minna offers Selina asylum at the Finnish embassy, which is apparently so threadbare that they have to share a bunk bed. By the episode's end, Selina has masterfully escaped under the cover of her daughter's wedding and even sold Tibet back to China for election interference, negating the very thing she was there to accept an award for.

Back stateside, guest star Michael McKean livens up the proceedings as the irritable governor of Iowa, who feels threatened by new Lieutenant Governor Richard Splett. He goes to visit Jonah to bargain for a role in his administration, only to contract the chicken pox virus from him and end up going blind from shingles. This ultimately causes Richard to ascend to the governorship. Fortunes rise and fall in moments as "Veep" hurdles towards the end game.

Season 2's "Running" is a series highlight for physical comedy. While surreptitiously attending a donor brunch to gauge her prospects for another presidential run in six years, Selina walks through a glass door and gets covered in several minor cuts. As Dan succinctly puts it, "the woman's become a living metaphor for her own career." Ben and Kent in POTUS' office pressure Selina to give a statement denying she's the rumored "traitor" in the party intending to run against Hughes in two years.

Unfortunately, Selina can't give a statement for several hours because Gary gave her St. John's wort, which is interacting with the antidepressants her doctor doesn't know she's on. Julia Louis-Dreyfus finally gets a chance to show an affectionate, softer side of Selina while she's totally hopped up as a result, joking around with Mike and even inviting herself to Gary's parents' wedding anniversary. She ultimately tells the press she "fully intends to run," but she means a charity 10K, not the presidency. 

The show-stopping finale of Season 5, "Inauguration" sees Selina brought to her lowest point yet. After the electoral college tie and a stalled vote in the House, the Senate is set to elect Tom James president, and she has to decide whether to accept his offer of Vice President and essentially start her last several years of embarrassment all over again. In a delightful and rare quiet moment for "Veep," she looks around her old office at the EEOB and sighs: "Okay... I can do this."

But just when Selina seems resigned to go back to the beginning, "Veep" brilliantly pulls the rug out from under everyone. A combination of personal skeletons in a closet that Tom James had forgotten about and Selina's neglect of her own VP Andrew Doyle (Phil Reeves) leads to the other party getting the presidency and everyone being out of a job entirely. "Inauguration" ends with a peaceful (but bitter) transition of power and a completely uncertain future for Selina and the show.

The more things change on "Veep," the more they stay the same. Season 7 opens with the team confusing Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and hiring the wrong Keith Quinn (Andy Daly) as campaign manager. Selina has Amy prepare a thorough "autopsy" of what went wrong with her previous campaign, but doesn't want to hear that most of the problems started with the candidate herself. An old unpaid bill sabotages the plan to announce her candidacy from Susan B. Anthony's birthplace, but a mass shooting in the news gives them an excuse to postpone. Phew.

Throughout the episode, Selina can't even articulate to new speechwriter Leon why she wants to be president in the first place. She ends up cribbing the words of a local contractor railing against out-of-touch elites who have no regard for the working class in her announcement, even though she's exactly the kind of rich person he was talking about. 

The Season 2 finale "D.C." is one of the tensest episodes of "Veep" as Selina and the POTUS team spend the entire episode crossing wires and causing mass confusion. With Hughes' administration mired in scandal and talk of impeachment, Selina thinks it's time to jump ship and announce she won't be joining him on his reelection ticket. Her entire team begins looking for new jobs; Dan even makes a call before the meeting is over.

However, Ben arrives from Hughes' office to announce that POTUS himself won't be running for a second term, clearing the path for Selina to run herself and nullifying her announcement. Everyone stops working on their resumes and rejoices — at least until Selina accidentally tips off Congressman Furlong (Dan Bakkedahl) and POTUS changes his mind. But after the party's big guns all align against him, Hughes visits Selina personally (as always, off-camera) and reaffirms his intention to resign. Despite the heart attacks, Selina is all smiles, as she'll be running for the big in 2 years instead of 6.

"Debate" is a hilarious installment of "Veep" that spotlights the way that political debates — especially the free-for-all debates during presidential primaries — are just contests to see who embarrasses themselves the least. Selina comes off decently, although she forgets the third "R" in her immigration platform and replaces "Renew" with "Repel" on the spot, winning over hard-liners but abandoning her own policy platform. In an unexpected win, her twitchy eye distracts General Maddox (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) and causes him to spiral and talk about "holes" for a full minute.

"Debate" also provides running commentary from Selina's staff and the other candidates' teams behind the scenes, wincing with every gaffe and trading barbs with one another. In a highlight of the episode, Dan has returned from his panic attack with a new Zen attitude that gets worn back into his usual aggressive and acerbic demeanor within three days.

The first episode of "Veep" hits the ground running and establishes the rhythm of screwups and coverups that would define the entire show. In her first act as Vice President, Selina alienates the powerful plastics industry by pledging to use only cornstarch utensils in government buildings, even if they melt a little too easily. POTUS sends Jonah to tell her to attend a fundraiser in his place, but she can't deliver any of her previously prepared cornstarch-related remarks, so she wings it and accidentally uses an insensitive word for the mentally challenged.

Mike's plan is to hope something else happens to distract the news cycle: "What if Tom Hanks dies?" By the time Amy accidentally signs her own name (instead of forging Selina's) on a condolence card, Selina has had and it yells the iconic line: "The level of incompetency in this office is staggering!" From the very beginning, "Veep" presented a breathless series of disasters, buoyed only by the relief of the credits rolling.

"Crate" sees the perennially out-of-touch Selina trying to appeal to the common man, this time by literally stumping from a wooden crate that Kent had specially reinforced with titanium so it doesn't collapse. Besides being so heavy that it injures Gary, the crate causes a minor crisis when a reporter discovers it cost $1,200 to make. Trying to give an in-depth interview to kill the story, Selina's whole staff badmouths their own campaign's donors while the reporter's phone is still recording. The resulting exposé seemingly kills Selina's hopes for the presidency entirely.

But, this being "Veep," the world immediately turns on its axis: Kent arrives to tell her that Hughes is resigning from office, elevating Selina to the job. Every series regular shows the stunning effect the news has on them in turn, but the scene when Selina tells Gary in a bathroom is one of the best moments of the whole show. Gary gets a nosebleed from excitement, Selina starts rummaging through his bag for tissues, and both Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tony Hale depict the waves of excitement and elation the two are feeling as they collapse in hysterics onto the floor.

There's a lot of plot in "Convention," involving a scramble to replace Doyle with another VP on Selina's ticket and the misadventures of Dan in the world of corporate lobbying. Going beyond the introduction of the great Hugh Laurie as eventual VP pick Tom James, the episode belongs to Anna Chlumsky and her portrayal of Amy's simmering rage and eventual explosion. Selina has brought in an old friend and lawyer named Karen (Lennon Parham) to consult on the campaign, who delivers maddening and ambiguous non-answers to every question while mindlessly agreeing with whatever Selina says.

After enough is enough, Amy erupts in anger at Karen, then directs it at Selina herself before finally quitting the campaign. Years of repressed resentment pour out of her all at once. She tells Selina, "I wouldn't let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and fire department standing by, but yet here you are running America." After some final remarks about how Selina has set women back with her incompetence, she leaves. It's one of the rare scenes in "Veep" when anyone tells Selina what they're really thinking.

"Congressional Ball" finds Selina at her most ruthless, as she attempts to whip representatives from the House into shape ahead of the upcoming vote to decide the presidency. She memorably threatens one congresswoman by saying, "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," more than successfully whipping her back into the fold. When she discovers Tom James is trying to sabotage the vote for his own gain, a confrontation brimming with romantic tension boils over in a rare moment of passion for "Veep."

In an unusual bit of focus, the only other location in the episode is Jonah's New Hampshire campaign headquarters, where he has trouble gaining any ground with an elderly widow in the polls. Richard nearly captures key footage that will help the "Jon H. Ryan" ticket, only to accidentally hit the record button too many times, each time.

"Veep" goes full "Three's Company"-style farce in the episode "Camp David." Selina invites the Chinese president to Camp David for a clandestine negotiation, one that she tries to hide even from her daughter Catherine, who believes they're there for a rare family Thanksgiving with her father Andrew (David Pasquesi). The episode pays off long-running gags about Selina's ineptitude at exchanging gifts with foreign heads of state (she ends up regifting a historic pen from Catherine), as well as Secret Service agent Marjorie's physical resemblance to Selina.

When the Chinese think that they see Selina making out with her own daughter, their willingness to stay and keep talking beggars belief. Elsewhere, Jonah manages to get himself elected to Congress by literally shooting himself in the foot. When his opponent releases an anti-gun ad, the NRA intervenes and delivers Jonah an improbable victory. Dan and Amy wonder ruefully just what they've done.

"Testimony" is a brilliant episode of "Veep" that cuts between either deposition footage or live congressional testimony from all the main characters, as a special committee attempts to get to the heart of the illicit lobbying in "B/ill." Kent, Sue, and Ben all toe the line; Dan and Amy play innocent; and characters like Gary, Richard, and Jonah are completely in over their heads. Before long, deep, dark secrets from months before come to light, chiefly the illegal use of child mortality data to send out mailers.

The highlight of the episode is the reading of "The Jonad Files," a list of nicknames Selina's staff maintains for Jonah that's read into the congressional record to prove they don't respect him like they claim to. Most of them are too profane to repeat, although Jonah meekly offers that his college friends called him "Tall McCartney" as an alternative. 

With Bill Ericsson (Diedrich Bader) successfully scapegoated for the Data Breach, Selina and co. head into "Election Night" with every hope of victory. The episode shows the quiet, agonizing wait that the experience would actually be for a candidate in a close election, especially early on, as it looks like Selina's headed for a loss. She resolves to concede, mumbling about how the "job sucks anyway," before a call is reversed at the last minute and the Electoral College is stuck in a tie.

The resulting confusion is drawn straight from our actual political system: with an even number of votes, a tie is possible in a presidential election in many different scenarios, and Selina's team has to google the 20th Amendment to the Constitution to even figure out what happens next. After an entire year of buildup, the season ends with no resolution and the entire country "in a kind of purgatory," as the usually rational Kent puts it.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus does some of her best acting in "Mother," as Selina deals with her mother's severe stroke and impending death as well as the failed effort to overturn the results in Nevada and win the presidency. After a lifetime of distance and coldness from her mother, Selina has to be convinced to stop campaigning in the first place to rush to her side, and basks in the glow of well-wishers (a nice change from protestors) who arrive to show their support.

The episode is a particular highlight for Selina's daughter Catherine (Sarah Sutherland), who had a much closer relationship with "Mee-maw" and openly grieves her grandmother. In a perfect bit of timing, Selina learns that she lost both Nevada and the popular vote right before delivering her mother's eulogy, and breaks down in tears that conveniently endear her back to her own daughter and any eligible voters present. "Mother" provides a fascinating glimpse into Selina's psyche, even though she never really breaks "character."

"Veep" skips its usual format in "Kissing Your Sister" and instead shows us a documentary within a mockumentary in the form of Catherine Meyer's school project. Subtitled "The Story of a Tie," "Kissing Your Sister" retells the events of Season 5 from the perspective of Catherine's camera floating around the edges. We get stolen peeks into Tom James' shady lobbyist dealings as well as glimpses of everyone's personal lives: Ben does actually have a wife (his third) and Kent unwinds by spending time in a motorcycle gang.

It also has behind-the-scenes footage of Jonah trying to chop firewood for a campaign ad, with some inspired physical comedy from Timothy Simons having trouble with the axe. Jonah ends up being key to the episode's decisive House vote: Selina selfishly decides to have him vote for O'Brien, giving the presidency to the opposing party just so she can run again in four years, but Jonah misses the message and the decision goes to the Senate.

The best episode of "Veep" is its comprehensive and action-packed finale. Unyielding and completely brutal, it at first finds Selina losing her grip on her party's nomination during a brokered convention. As delegates slip away, chaos reigns and Ben ends up in the hospital with yet another heart attack. In a surprisingly tender scene, he tells Selina he's out of the game, but that she knows exactly what she has to do. In no time, Selina sabotages Tom James, sells out gay marriage to win an endorsement, and, to everyone's eternal horror, offers Jonah the Vice Presidency to ensure the nomination for herself. 

In a final and stunning move, she sets up Gary as the fall guy for the investigation into the Meyer Fund, and eventually ascends to the presidency with an entirely new staff, looking hollow and isolated. "Veep" then flashes to the far future and Selina's funeral, giving fun looks at where everyone ended up. In a final callback to the series' first episode, live coverage of Selina's burial is interrupted when Tom Hanks dies.