Episode Report Card M. Giant: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Veep Is A Creep
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 15 | Aired on 03.25.2007
Over at the Battle Bridge, the Veep is receiving a briefing from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that's all about how totally awesome it's going to be in forty minutes when the U.S. finally gets to nuke another country for the first time in sixty years. They're all but Beavising "Fire! Fire! Fire!" The Veep wallows briefly in his gloriousness, and then asks Tom for damage and casualty estimates. Tom's busy feeling sorry for himself, so he has to be nudged out of a mini-coma of his own before he can start reading from a binder. He's barely begun his desultory recitation when Lisa enters to hand the Veep a note. Whatever the note says, the Veep reacts strongly and excuses himself from the room, leaving poor Tom to continue giving his briefing to the Veep's empty seat: "Should the enemy mount a response, the potential does exist for the U.S. to be drawn into a conflict in which its troops..."
But the Veep has no time to think about U.S. troops right now, because he and Lisa have gone into the anteroom so he can bitch about how outrageous it is that the doctors are planning to wake Wayne up. Wow, word travels fast in the White House Bunker. Unless it's about a couple of guys building a bomb six inches away from a tied-up Chief of Staff, of course. The Veep suspects that Karen is behind this. Lisa says she only heard about it from her source at the operating room. Which has, like, four people in it, if you count Wayne. I don't think he's Lisa's source. The Veep picks up the phone and demands to speak to Wayne's doctor.
Karen and Sandra are now inside the operating room, where the doctor is making ready to start waking Wayne up. He medibabbles at them for a while about how unpredictable this all is, until the intercom bleeps that he's got a call from the Veep. "What are you going to tell him?" Karen asks. "The truth," the doctor lies.
The doctor picks up the phone on the wall and is actually rather weaselly at first. But the Veep soon accuses him of trying to wake up Wayne so that Sandra can "subvert [the Veep's] policy agenda." The doctor tries to not-my-problem the policy issue, but the Veep accuses him of agreeing with Sandra's politics and risking Wayne's life in the process, and threatens, "So if you don't stop, I will compel you to stop." As politely as possible, the doctor invites the Veep to get bent: "I am required to follow the wishes of Sandra Palmer. You're free to take up your concerns with her." And while the Veep may be fully prepared to trigger a global conflict, he knows better than to wade into a verbal scrap with Sandra Palmer. He simply makes dark threats with regard to what he'll do to the doctor if anything happens to Wayne. The doctor says he understands, and hangs up. And gets back to work.