Review: HBO's 'Veep' Is a Work-Life Conflict Comedy

There’s no work-life balance in the office of Vice President Selina Meyer, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the HBO comedy Veep, available in its entirety on HBO on Demand. There’s only work. Her chief of staff, Amy Brookheimer (Anna Chlumsky), exaggerates her father’s illness so she can visit him in the hospital without blowback. Meyer’s director of communications, Mike McLintock (Matt Walsh), invents a pet dog so he can leave work at a reasonable hour. None of Meyer’s underlings has a spouse or family, and they inevitably ruin romantic relationships because they’re so wrapped up in their job.

Veep is a satire—its creator, Armando Iannucci, a Scot who specializes in political comedy, was nominated for an Oscar for his 2009 screenplay In the Loop—and so of course it goes overboard. Many real-life politicians and chief executive officers have outside interests and fulfilling personal lives. But there’s truth in Veep’s depiction of the massive time commitment it takes to be a leader, something that, surprisingly, gets overlooked in the conversation about parents and high-level work. In Lean In, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg gripes about the leadership-and-ambition gap between men and women. She says this is, in part, because women want families and think they can’t move up the ladder after they have kids the way men do. Sandberg blithely advises other parents to do as she does—she often leaves work for a 6 p.m. dinner with her family.