Review: Our Cartoon President “Madam Vice President”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After a catastrophic first debate between Biden and Trump, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence prepare for their own turn on the debate stage. Mike Pence is scared to share any extended period with a women besides his wife and seeks help from Rudy Guiliani, which goes about as well as you might expect, while Kamala realizes she has to now defend Biden’s concerning voting record.

OUR TAKE

This week was another episode that didn’t focus nearly as much on Trump, but instead building up the characters who are also ostensibly important in this election. Much like the episode a couple weeks ago that was mainly about establishing Biden as the nominee character, this week gives the VP candidates the spotlight, with Trump only really showing up for references to the horrifying excuse of a debate that happened this past week. And because this show likes to roll with the punches of reality, next week’s naturally going to be about Trump getting coronavirus and being stuck in a hospital, right? See, this is where this show has to pick and choose what things it pulls from the real world in order to make its jokes work and now that reality is finally too insane for them to make work with their vision of the show. And we still have five episodes left, with Trump’s condition entirely up in the air. Makes you wonder what the show will do on the off-chance that he dies. Stay the course with the plot they had in mind, completely ignoring reality? Kill Trump off just as suddenly in an attempt to be somewhat respectful? Cancel the show altogether then and there? Make the show about Pence or Biden from then on and just stay the course?

Anyway, Pence as the uptight Christian who obsesses over being faithful to his wife is a joke that’s years old which this show does absolutely nothing new with, so I can’t say that was all that funny. Meanwhile, Kamala’s characterization is kinda fuzzy, as she’s certainly more lucid than Joe but she has to be in the story to support him and not be MORE lucid than Obama. Basically, it’s another moment where the caricatures of these real life people and the show’s need for a story once again clash with neither winning. Now that she can’t just be a one-note boring gag character among the other presidential candidates, we gotta give her some character development as Biden’s running mate, so this is what they chose to go with. And with that, they’ve established all the important characters in this presidential race, but we still have about half a dozen more episodes to rehash these same jokes until it’s hopefully over. And once again, it’s not a great sign if the most interesting thing that could happen to the series is that the president dies of the disease he constantly said was no threat.