I wasn't crazy about In the Loop, which was slightly past my caustic comfort line, but I did think the movie did an utterly phenomenal job with James Gandolfini's general, a man who wants to buck Washington's power structure and ultimately can't bring himself to do it. I hope Iannucci can achieve the same balance of intelligence, yearning for integrity, and clear-eyed sense of what the system is in the character he's creating for Julia Lewis-Dreyfus in the new HBO show they're doing together, in which she plays a Senator who becomes Vice President.
The description of the show itself, about Lewis-Dreyfus's struggles with a job that's "nothing like she expected and everything everyone ever warned about" sounds a little stupid because, duh, being Vice President is not a job anyone can adequately prepare for (much less being President). But we need someone who can do something a little caustic with a female politician character. My hope is that she won't be a moderate fantasy, like on Commander in Chief, and that the show won't need to linger excessively on the idea of a female political figure coming into her own a la Donna Moss. It's a tough balance right now: Iannucci needs to steer between Sarah Palin, Christine O'Donnell, Hillary Clinton, all the female politicians who have been unfortunately reduced to stereotypes. He can't make her dumb or people won't like her, but he sure shouldn't make her an ultra-competent saint, or an ultra-competent shrew. I genuinely don't have ideas for what should happen, I only know that I hope it will be good.