The 25 best episodes of 'Veep', ranked

There’s another “Veep” episode involving what people call Selina behind her back that is quite good but, well, let’s just say it would have been hard for us to write about on a site intended for a wide audience. So instead, we’ll begin with this first-season episode where Selina gets obsessed with what bloggers have nicknamed her.

Gary gave so much for Selina, but she asked for more and more. Take, for example, when Selina turned Gary’s birthday party into a publicity stunt. It’s one of those awkward, awful moments between those two characters, which is perhaps the most important dynamic to the whole show.

“Veep” didn’t always try to reflect political reality, which was particularly true after a certain election in 2016, but they would sometimes tackle topics that came up in the real world. Take, for example, this episode about a government shutdown. Selina may not care about government, but any government crunch would seemingly get her to be her worst.

The third episode of the show is the one that introduced Selina’s put-upon daughter Catherine. While Catherine would become more and more interwoven into the storylines of “Veep,” early on she mostly serves as a nice college girl who has to deal with having a vicious and uncaring mother, but Catherine still gets to drop a vulgar line or two of her own.

The seventh and final season of “Veep” was delayed a bit and only consisted of seven episodes, but a couple of them still made this list. We’ll get to the second one of those later, but first, we have “Pledge,” which helps set the stage for the final episodes of the show. Selina, running for President again, is getting ready for her first debate. However, a lot of the comedy comes from Jonah – the least politically-correct man alive – trying to reel in his awfulness.

“Veep” did season premieres and season finales quite well. There are a few of both on this list. “Midterms” opens up the second season of “Veep,” and introduced a couple of key characters going forward: Gary Cole’s Kent and Kevin Dunn’s Ben. Both were welcome assets to the ensemble.

Selina is pretty awful a lot of the time, but somehow her ex-husband Andrew is even worse. Andrew popped up here and there throughout the show, but in this eponymous episode he makes his debut and shows his odiousness off right out of the gate. Not surprising for a man who would eventually fake his death to avoid taking any responsibility for his criminal actions.

In the third season finale, the stakes have never been higher for Selina. She has become President after the prior President resigned, but she still has to deal with the upcoming Presidential election. The New Hampshire primary is near and Selina definitely does not want to end up with the biggest footnote Presidency this side of Gerald Ford.

Amy and Dan are often vying for favor with Selina, and they are both willing to be quite awful about it. Anna Chlumsky really changed her perception in “Veep” to anybody who only remembered her as the kid from “My Girl.” These two careerists are at each other’s throats in “Fishing,” and then both almost lose out in the quest to become Selina’s campaign manager anyway until Bill Ericsson takes a different job. Amy had people over her house for this! People she hates!

Selina decides to use the Thanksgiving holiday to have cosmetic surgery on her eyes. This leaves her needing to recuperate, and of course, she has not let the general public know about this. That causes a huge issue when Selina can’t really do her job since he doesn’t want to make public appearances until she recovers. The political maneuvering sometimes was secondary to the vulgar jokes and name-calling on “Veep,” but it got a good amount of run in this episode.

“Morning After” begins the fifth season after the chaos at the end of the fourth season. We won’t get too much into what happens, because that episode is definitely on this list. However, as “Veep” liked to do, they set the table for the events to come in the season premiere, and few shows were as good at that as this HBO comedy.

“Veep” never shied away from hot-button issues. “The Choice” involves Selina dealing with the touchy issue of abortion, and balancing her personal beliefs with what would be the most politically beneficial thing for her to say. Of course, the show is not afraid to make jokes related to abortion, because dark comedy and “Veep” when hand in hand.

Gary’s adventures at Madame Tussauds handing a crisis there related to Selina’s wax figure are fun, but Selina and Mike working on Selina’s memoir is the heart of this episode. While Selina is awful, the show sometimes still managed to mind pathos out of her plight. “Chicklet” definitely does that, as Selina’s journey into her past digs some things up.

Sam Richardson’s Richard Splett was a great addition to the cast of “Veep.” He was an extremely funny character, but he’s also so valuable because he’s the rare person in the show’s world who is genuinely nice and even a little naïve. “Some New Beginnings” is the start of Richard’s journey in the world of “Veep.” He accompanies Selina as she goes on a book tour in Iowa which is also her surreptitiously planning for a Presidential run.

The sixth season of “Veep” threw its characters to the wind in the wake of Selina being out of office. Not everything worked, and all the main characters would come together again naturally, but it was fun for a bit, and “Library” is the best episode from that time.

Anytime Selina needs to make a big speech the stakes are high and her staff seem like they are at their worst. That became even more true once she became President. In particular, poor Gary is now distanced from Selina, which means his life pretty much doesn’t have a purpose.

“Veep” doesn’t have the most faith in American politics, shockingly. It does not exactly do the whole “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” thing. After all, in an episode like “B/ill” Selina and her staff are trying to coerce people into voting against her bill to keep it from passing. Even worse, Selina is sick and still has to work. And that’s all before Gary, the usually-innocent Gary, accidentally doing something illegal, making things worse for Selina.

Characters saying things that cause a problem while on medication is a well-worn sitcom trope, but with good reason. Of course, “Veep” can add a level of vulgarity and crudeness that most sitcoms can’t. As such, when Selina gets loopy on meds after a freak accident, things go to a different level than usual. This also begins the process of Selina considering a run for the Presidency in the midterms.

At the end of the fifth season, Selina and Tom James have been vying for the Presidency in their party. James has basically won out, and Selina even gets shut down as Secretary of State by her former lover. However, things get even bleaker in this episode. Neither of them becomes President, as a last-minute power grab gets Laura Montez the votes needed, and she even gets credit for the one big thing Selina managed in her Presidency: freeing Tibet.

The series finale of “Veep” truly sees Selina at her worst. In an attempt to become President again, she alienates everybody, even Gary. In fact, she sells out Gary to the FBI just to save herself. The episode ends many years in the future with Selina’s funeral, a noteworthy way to end the show’s run. Fitting for the comedic sensibilities of “Veep,” Meyer’s funeral falls out of the news cycle because of the death of Tom Hanks.

One of the overarching themes of the early seasons of “Veep” is how useless Selina feels as Vice President. It plays up the whole idea that being the Veep is the most-irrelevant job in American politics. Suddenly, the show threw a complete shocker at us out of left field. Keeping with the show’s dark tones, Selina is able to step into the job of President after her predecessor has to step down after his wife’s suıcide attempt. The President Meyer Era begins out of nowhere.

Selina’s party’s convention (the show pointedly never said what party she belonged to) is looming, and Selina loses her running mate because of your typing political maneuvering. Meyer settles on Tom James, which is good for us because it gave Hugh Laurie a big role in the show. In the end, it doesn’t work out for her. Speaking of not working out, Dan inexplicably thinks it makes sense to have Jonah and Richard pose as Washington insiders.

Selina is not a great mother, but “Mother” explores where that might come from. A lot of the emotional pointedness of “Veep” comes in the political realm. This time, it’s in the personal realm, as Selina deals with the death of her mother. A mother that leaves her riches and belongings to her granddaughter Catherine and not her own daughter, of course. Watching Selina speak at her mom’s funeral is one of the most gripping moments in the show’s history.

Out of nowhere, “Veep” decided to try a different stylistic choice. This entire episode, which is longer than most, is a Congressional testimony by Selina’s staff. Congress is looking into multiple unethical – and illegal – things that have happened under her Presidency. The change of pace really worked, and also this episode is just super funny. After all, part of the episode is just a reading of insulting nicknames for Jonah.

“Testimony” is the second-to-last episode of the fourth season. This is the season finale, and the best episode “Veep” ever did. As you can probably tell, this episode takes place on Election Night when Selina is running for President. The stakes are incredibly high. The tension is palpable. You truly are riveted by everything happening in the election and all the wheeling and dealing. Then you throw in some great jokes and a wonderful performance from Louis-Dreyfus. We didn’t discuss just how amazing she was on this show enough in these rankings. She was truly fantastic, and her Emmys were all deserved.