Two well-acted, super “intelligent” sitcoms with biting wit and morally-challenged characters.
Why do I love Arrested Development (particularly the first three seasons) and mostly loath Veep?
While I never watched Veep, there is something just so loathable about Julia-Louis whatever Dreyfus.
I like both of those shows, but I don’t find them especially similar. One thing I don’t love about “Veep” (and “The Thick of It”) is that I don’t find creative swearing to be inherently funny. I don’t find it offensive, but I’d rather have a real joke instead.
AD is not remotely funny. So some guy is a total grump and isn’t happy when people tell him this. I’m supposed to laugh, why? Plus the lack of preparation gives some really poor acting, awkward pauses, etc.
Veep was hilarious … until it was eclipsed by real life.
Agreed. It’s not funny anymore, too real.
I didn’t get into Veep after watching the first episode, but I’ve been meaning to give it another shot, because I do like Julia Louis Dreyfus and I’ve heard good things. And the first episode is often not enough to tell whether I like a show or not. I do love Arrested Development though, especially the original run.
To somewhat respond to my own OP…
I think it’s the degree of intense mean-spiritedness I see when I watch Veep.
[“Whyever do you bother watch Veep, OP, if you really find it so terribly unpleasant?”]
It’s often extremely hilarious and insightful, that’s why!
I like both shows, but since I have a particular fondness for clever wordplay, I tended to prefer Arrested Development.
You’re confused. Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm are different shows.
Don’t correct me, it will only make me grumpier. 
Right, so AD. Could have been something. But it was way predictable. There’s a mention at the beginning of an episode that a cabin is going to be moved. You know right that instant what’s going to happen with them and the cabin. Over and over. Okay to watch, but there’s so much other non-predictable stuff out there. Letterkenny!
I liked Arrested Development a lot (well, at least the first 3 seasons). I like Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and I like Tony Hale. I don’t find Veep enjoyable to watch at all, and I tried to get into it a couple of times. I could never understand the insane amount of press/buzz/awards it garnered; it just isn’t funny to me. -shrug-
I find them to be quite different. AD, for my money, is one of the most tightly written comedies of all time, especially the first two seasons. There are just so many levels of humor going on and every time I rewatch, I seem to catch something I missed before.
Veep is much more straightforward comedy, but I love it, as well. (Well, the last season wasn’t the greatest, but it maintained its momentum throughout most of its run.)
Arrested Development was good; I thought Veep was the funniest show I’ve ever seen.
I love both shows, but they’re rather different. In particular, Veep is much more mean-spirited and cynical. Most of the characters in Arrested Development are self-absorbed and/or naive, but they mostly care about one another at some level. Lucille is the only character who is usually gratuitously mean. In some ways Arrested Development is a sweet show. On Veep the main characters mostly loathe one another (and anyone else they have to deal with), and are habitually utterly vicious to each other.
Arrested Development is funny. Veep is painfully not funny.
Agree pretty much with this. I don’t know why they’re being compared because I really don’t think they’re comparable at all. It took me a few shows to get “into” Veep, but I loved AD from the get-go. I definitely agree that there are so many little things you miss the first time or two you watch an AD episode. The first time I watched each episode I know I missed lots of things because I was laughing so hard.
Veep is not a belly-laugh show. It’s not why it makes make me laugh. But, yeah, real life has turned that whole dynamic on its head.
Yeah, Arrested Development was the first show I’ve truly binged. I discovered it somewhere mid-second season in early 2005, found it so absolutely fucking hilarious that I managed to dig up all the other episodes until that point in the season and watched in straight in a day and a half. That’s the only time, actually, that I’ve really binged on any series. It just hit every funny bone for me. Now, I understand it’s not for everyone, but, holy shit, is it funny. Now that I think of it, I may have done something similar with Soap. Slightly more spread out, but, fuck, those first couple seasons until they hit the weird alien plot line … golden.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but in mine, Julia Louis-Dreyfus is pretty much the reason Seinfeld was watchable (Jason Alexander is talented but his character is utterly obnoxious) and her performance in VEEP is breathtakingly hilarious. I put her quasi-Amy Klobuchar impression right up there with Tracey Ullman’s Dame Judi Dench, and I could watch that all day.
I don’t know if I’d say that about Arrested Development; pretty much all of the characters except for George-Michael are on the spectrum of malignant narcissists (even Michael, who plays the nice guy and good son while passive-aggressively harboring resentment and yet never cutting the cord for the benefit of his son). But while Arrested Development has clear elements of classic comedy in the Shakespearean sense of the term (and I mean that literally; note Buster’s references to his “uncle-father” and all of the shenanigans that center around mistaken identity, and you see clear references to pretty much all of the Bard’s comedies) VEEP is pure and unforgiving satire, and it takes no prisoners, making fun of politicians, lobbyists, opportunists, and the people who vote for them.
The only remotely decent person on VEEP is Minna Häkkinen, and by the time we are introduced to her the audience is so inculcated that everybody has ulterior motives and screams profane insults at each other behind closed doors that it seems that she just has to crack and show her true colors at some point. VEEP isn’t really supposed to be funny in a set-up-and-deliver joke manner; it’s basically a torrent of insults between horrible people who, regardless of how absurd the writers try to make them, are recognized by people who actually work in government, except always as someone else. VEEP is a mirror into our current polarized, can’t-be-too-nasty politics, and if you don’t think it’s funny it is probably because you aren’t cynical enough to be resigned to the notion that it has to be like this.
Parks & Rec is basically the softball version of VEEP, and I can certainly understand why someone would prefer that show with its shallow-and-flawed-but-essentially-decent characters to the cesspool that is VEEP. But as much as I am Ron Swanson (except I drink Laphroaig instead of Lagavulin because I am a slightly more perfect example of manhood) I find VEEP to get far more deeply knowing laughs from me. It’s basically the Catch-22 of political comedy.
Stranger
Both superb shows, and among my favourites. I think the really interesting comparison is between VEEP and The Thick of It as both originate with Armando Iannucci. Veep seems to me more concerned with actual political process, or at least it provides an external realistic framework within which the characters have to work their magic. In The Thick of It the characters are political (except Terry Coverley who is above all that) but the formal processes are essentially irrelevant apart from elections ushering in changes of government and cast. The action could as easily have been set in a company executive or the military.
If you are interested in comedies about the political process but are not a fan of the language then I’d strongly recommend Australian series Utopia, set in a national infrastructure organisation. Very excellent.
And, as Malcolm Tucker would say, ‘fuckety bye’.
I could never get into AD, stupid people doing stupid things stupidly, and it took me a while to get into Veep. Viewers need to watch until they understand the dysfunctions that drive each character into the particular pit of awfulness they inhabit. It’s the difference between them and Dan Bakkedahl’s Sen. Furlong, who’s an asshole and that’s all we know about him.
*Veep *got better and better because once regular viewers knew the characters the writers could skip all the establishing steps and just run them at top speed. The series probably peaked with Season 4, showrunner Armando Iannucci’s last. It never worked as well with Selena as President. Season 6, after she lost the presidency, was unwatchable, because the characters were just as despicable but there were no stakes or consequences through their actions, Season 7, the last, worked far better because it showed the naked hunger for power that drives so many politicians and that gave meaning to all the nastiness.
Garry Trudeau’s Alpha House is very similar to *Veep *but toned down to an approximation of the way human beings speak. I’ve just started it but it was far easier to slip into than Veep.