Episode Report Card M. Giant: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Chip And Dip
By M. Giant | Season 6 | Episode 22 | Aired on 05.13.2007
Poor, poor, Tom, sitting in a surveillance van with a bunch of Secret service guys, looking bored while listening to Lisa and her boyfriend's heavy breathing. Which they've been at for a half hour or so. Hilariously, it's not until they stop that Tom starts paying attention.
Inside the apartment, Boyfriend is still wondering what's up with Lisa. "It felt like you were somewhere else," he comments. Uh, maybe he got the wrong hole? Lisa claims just to be tired, and gets up to go to the bathroom, throwing on her boyfriend's terry-cloth robe this time instead of her own slinky, silky one that she wore earlier. Yeah, the honeymoon is definitely over.
Back in the van, one of the Secret Service guys wonders if Boyfriend is really concerned, or actively suspicious. Tom doesn't care, because now that Lisa's in the biffy, Boyfriend can get to Lisa's PDA. As they watch on the video camera, Boyfriend gets up, pulls on some clothes, goes to the living room, and starts to do just that. Now that the dirty nasty icky sexy is over, Tom is leaning forward all excitedly, waiting for the money shot as Boyfriend fishes out his PDA-hacking device and digs Lisa's PDA out of her purse. And then Boyfriend pauses, seeming to look right into the camera. And then he leaves the PDA unhacked, much to the disappointment of Tom and his fellow watchers. Boyfriend hides his hacking device as well, and calls into the bathroom that he's going to have a glass of wine, offering Lisa one as well. "Sure, I'll have what you're having," Lisa calls back, as convincingly as she's done anything since she got back here. Which is to say that she looks like she's already choking on it. When she emerges into the living room and back into the surveillance camera's frame, he hands her a glass, smiles, and says he can tell that something's wrong. "Okay, we have a problem here," Tom declares in the van. You don't become White House Chief of Staff without being a keen observer. Lisa tries to keep up the pretense, but it's not working; Boyfriend grabs her by the arms and angrily orders her to stop lying and tell him what's going on. Lisa agrees to tell him, and Tom hopes she's about to come up with a cover story. It's not like an accomplished liar like Lisa Miller, who has been pulling the metaphorical wool over the Veep's piggy little eyes for a year, is going to be fazed by some punk lobbyist, right?
So Lisa smashes the wine bottle over Boyfriend's head. Way to think fast. Tom orders the van into motion, and it screeches down the street to the building's entrance. Seems a little tardy to me, but then I'm not the White House Chief of Staff. Lisa keeps smacking her boyfriend with her hands, ranting accusations at him the whole time. Eventually, he gets tired of this and backhands her one, sending her to the floor. But instead of staying down, she goes after him with a lamp. Her advantage is short-lived, as he rolls on top of her and demands to know who else is aware of his relationship with the Russians. Even if Lisa wanted to answer, she couldn't, because Boyfriend's got his hands around her neck and is making it hard for her to breathe, let alone inform him that nobody who doesn't have access to the Oval Office is in this particular loop, so it's really not so bad. Finally, three Secret Service guys bust in with their weapons leveled and Tom right behind them. If Tom's weapon is also leveled, I can't tell because he's wearing a long coat.