Gary (Tony Hale) presents the new vice presidential look to an aghast campaign command center. Selina gets a drastic haircut three days before a televised debate. The who team freaks. This is a disaster. It is assured. The brilliance of the Veep writing team is that every set up gets the statistically least probably pay off. Every promise will be broken. Every good hope that the characters expect is not only dashed, but crushed in a way that is most devastatingly humiliating. The flip side to that is that every expected bomb can turn out to be a dud, sitting right next to the real landmine. The twitch. Veep is ever-mindful of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ Seinfeld past. Every episode has a Seinfeld reference. The references aren’t small either. They can last as running gags throughout. Yet, they are always subtle. For those who don’t remember, George Costanza got some citrus juice in his eye and it gave him an eye twitch that looked like he was winking. This led to numerous misunderstandings and of course the pursuant hilarity. Selina knows she has the twitch. She takes steps to cover it up. She takes so many steps she forgets one of the big Three Rs that so much of her debate relied on. But, she winds up inadvertently using the twitch to bring down one of her opponents. Yes, Goodbye Senator Maddox, we hardly knew you. We knew you couldn’t have taken this run all the way to the White House, though, because you were stupid enough to hire Jonah (Timothy Simons). Though he was only hired to get the mango, Jonah is a free-floating collision. Jonah and Dan exchanges are priceless. Kent Davison (Gary Cole) is the driest martini in the house. Or senate, probably. When he says “I’ve only ever used this voice. Even as a young child.” It rings true, brings less depth to already shallow waters and defines the character in an easily quotable sound bite.  So many quotable jokes fly out of these characters’ mouths and they are all deadpanned, but Kent Davison is the deadest pan of all. Except maybe Sue (Sufe Bradshaw).  A lot of the characters are jaded and faded by the beltway bullshit, but they can still muster an octave at least. Even Mike (Matt Walsh), who always looks like he’d rather be in a coma than work five minutes straight, pleads, begs, gets angry, frustrated or scared. Not Sue or Kent. The worst they can get is quietly befuddled. Except with each other. Amy (Anna Chlumsky) is always loudly befuddled, not necessarily in decibels, but in projection. In the past few episodes Amy has become authoritatively befuddled. She can deflect, or should I say repel, every misstep in a blink of an eye. Sometimes it takes a few flutters, but she consistently recovers and jumps headlong into whatever is coming. “Debate” was written by David Quantick & Tony Roche and directed by Armando Iannucci.  Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!