#veep thoughts

Dear Anon,

First of all, a confession: Dan Egan (not Reid Scott, but Dan Egan the character) is embarrassingly, painfully, one thousand percent my type. Tall, dark, and handsome? Check. Too smart for his own good? Check. Dangerous amounts of charisma? Check. An unrepentant asshole? Check. So, that was that.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t really get into Dan and Amy on my first Veep watch. I liked them and thought they were a cute pairing, but I also didn’t think their relationship was, like, super groundbreaking creatively. The characters are so obviously telegraphed to the audience to provide the romantic storylines within the ensemble and while I will always eat up a good love-hate bickering dynamic, it’s not exactly new.

I watched the first two seasons of Veep in the summer of 2016…those were the two seasons available on Amazon Prime and I didn’t have HBO. I would fall asleep with S1 and S2 on super low volume, because at the time I could only fall asleep with the sound of television on in the background (I was going through a *dark* period and wasn’t really paying attention to much of anything.)

Then I binge-watched S1-S6 in the spring of 2017—interestingly enough, right after Trump’s inauguration. And then I kept rewatching…and rewatching…I basically had the series on repeat for the rest of 2017, because I kept discovering new things, jokes I had missed, little bits between characters, new expressions in the actors’ face....Or I would watch and appreciate the plot in new ways. Especially in S1-S5, there really is so much going on all the time, every scene is so multi-layered, in terms of the political and the personal.

So along with that, Dan and Amy’s relationship emerged as something really complex and poignant (and later heartbreaking) to watch, and that’s when I got pulled in. I love the way that Dan was kind of running after Amy all the time. I love that they are basically married in Season Four, and I love that if you wanted, you could maybe read them as hooking up off-screen for a lot of Season Two. I also love 5.02 and 5.03 (I talked about this in another post too), and ironically probably got super sucked into their relationship as a result of those two episodes. I was like “Oh yes HERE WE GO, they’re so fucking into each other and it’s so perfectly dysfunctional, more more more.” I hadn’t written fanfiction in years and now here I am. 

Ooof, you called my bluff. Now I have to actually think about this ;-) (Just kidding obviously I love it and thank you, Anon, this is a very inspiring question for fic ideas!)

I think the simplest writing choice, and the choice that would have allowed them to maintain all the other elements of S7, would have been simply to show Amy finally, permanently rejecting the idea of Dan to his face. We get a tiny hint that she’s ready to put him behind her when she insists that he should be fired, but the moment is more played for laughs that now both Amy and Selina have been sexually involved with Dan in some way. Plus, as far as we know, Dan never finds out that Amy is partly responsible for firing him (Sex-Psychopath Dan might be too dumb to figure it out). Some kind of confrontation between Amy and Dan, post abortion and post Dan-dating-the-abortionist, would have gone a long way to show the audience why the S7 versions of Dan and Amy could not be together. 

However, if I get to completely rewrite their arc and keep some continuity between S6 Dan and S7 Dan, I think a way to honestly keep them apart would have been to actually engage with the notion that Dan doesn’t want to work in politics anymore, and make it a significant part of his arc. A lot of people who work in politics don’t stay in the field, for whatever reason. Real estate isn’t a bad fit for Dan (and in California, real estate and politics aren’t exactly separate endeavors). S6 Dan is certainly shallow enough to appreciate all the shiny, surface-level benefits of Los Angeles. Make it so Dan eventually wants a different life, and Amy does not. That is a real reason they wouldn’t end up together, a genuine, ultimately insurmountable, and realistic obstacle. And it would give their relationship a very bittersweet “if only” kind of vibe while still offering some closure. I have a fic idea slowly forming in my head that explores this notion.  

I do think it would have been really, really narratively difficult for Amy to have the baby and to not end the show with them connected in some way (and I’m sure that’s part of the reason they went with the abortion storyline.) Even with Sex-Psychopath Dan, he’d be way too interested in a baby that was half-his, even if it took him months or even years to get used to the idea. In 6.10 and 7.01, I’d argue that Reid Scott actually made it very clear in his performance that Dan did actually grasp what it would mean for Amy to have his baby, and not some other random woman…in other words, that he would not have been able to ignore her and their child the way he could with someone else. He’s rejecting the idea of being a father, not just a sperm donor with acknowledged paternity, even after Amy has told him she expects nothing from him. (Of course then we get to 7.02, which is a different incoherent mess for both characters.) 

S7 is so distinct from the rest of the show, I also think a lot about what it would have been like if Dark!Amy and Sex-Psychopath Dan had actually had a baby, if they had hooked up before the funeral and Amy had gotten pregnant again. 

Dear Anon, 

This is a really thoughtful question…thank you for asking! 

I would say, so far…mostly no.

I started rewatching the show from the beginning almost immediately after the finale (really rewatching, not just having the show on in the background while I’m doing dishes or whatever, as is often the case) (I’ve been posting about it). It has been a strange kind of therapy. Mostly it’s reminded me what I love about the show, separate from Dan and Amy, but also…it’s such a wonderful and hilarious relationship to watch unfold.

Sometimes it is like twisting the knife a bit. The smallest things resonate in strangely powerful ways. I just rewatched Episode 2.08, First Response, and noticed that Dan grabs Amy’s arm in the same way he tries to restrain her outside the abortion clinic in 7.03. That small parallel—most likely unintended—just totally made my heart squeeze, because it showed how unconsciously connected Dan and Amy are, how they fit together so naturally. Not to mention, those tiny moments underline the incredible work by Reid Scott and Anna Chlumsky, who really layered the relationship between Dan and Amy with so much depth and meaning.

In spite of those heart-squeezing moments, I still find myself loving all the banter-y build up and parent foreshadowing…mostly because I find it reassuring. Whatever David Mandel might insist upon, there was something significant and meaningful and even powerful blossoming between these two characters. And the only way to give them such an unsatisfying ending was through some very bad writing. There was absolutely a way for Dan and Amy to not end up together and make it feel genuine and earned for the audience. Even within the dark absurdist world of S7 Veep, there were so many options on the table. It could have been so bittersweet and real. But instead, we have Sex-Psychopath Dan and a bunch of incoherent emotional reactions and decisions. I don’t really watch S2 Dan and believe that he will become S7 Dan. They do not resemble each other in any way, and the show never gives the audience an explanation. So, the fact that their arc was so poorly written helps me divorce the season in my head.

Finally, the fact that the S7 Veep was so clearly driven by the absurdity and insanity of Trumpian politics also helps me enjoy the earlier seasons as a separate show (whether or not it was an effective approach is a different issue).

Well, Anon, I can’t promise you 1000 chapters, but I can promise you that there will be more than originally planned! (I should probably get off Tumblr and write…) Thank you so much for reading, and I’m happy that you are intrigued by the wider Bring Me To Light universe. And you are inspiring me, because while certain elements of the backstory have been worked out, I have not thought very much about the circumstances of Cassidy’s birth. Just that Dan is present, and he and Amy aren’t together yet. 

It was a bit weird, writing fanfiction for a show that was about to end. When I first had the idea, I always knew it would become an official AU. While I would argue this version of their future seems very feasible at the end of S4, or even S5, after S6 it was pretty clear we weren’t getting Dan and Amy with a kid and a house…which I was pretty okay with. 

Of course, I didn’t know then just how much of an AU it would become…like, literally the exact opposite of where the show took their arc 😒 I had hoped we would end with some hint that they were choosing one another, and that was as much as I allowed myself to hope for. And then while watching the final season, I was all in on Dark!Amy and Sex-Psychopath Dan together, which the show didn’t go with either.