Veep crams more jokes into a half hour than any other show currently on television and perhaps more than most actual Presidential administrations likely can cover in two terms. With that in mind, we decided to see if we could calculate just what Veeps Joke Per Minute total (or JPM) is.
This carefully calibrated equation is calculated by literally counting off the number of jokes in each episode via tally mark. Then I divided that by total number of minutes in an episode. TV sabermetrics are pretty easy.
As for what constitutes a joke? Well thats where the killing comedy part comes in because we need to analyze them far beyond they were likely meant to be analyzed. Thankfully, the vast majority of Veeps humor is dialogue-based. Most people would acknowledge that the vice president of the United States calling the freakishly tall and equally as loathsome Jonah jolly green jizzface is a joke (and a damn fine one at that). For the most part, spoken lines are easy to keep track of as jokes. And since a lot of the dialogue is insult-based, the characters are aware theyre being funny. We will also count lines of dialogue in which a character is unaware they are being funny but the former is much easier to track.
We also have to count visual humor (for example: Jonah flattening a woman while running to a meeting he wasnt invited to) and conceptual humor (the sheer absurdity of Gary passing notes about a painting during a meeting for peace in the Middle East). And then there are the jokes that seem uncategorizable but are too funny to be ignored. The vast majority of these usually involve Garys facial expressions or uncomfortable laughs. Its not always a simple process but we think we were fair in calculating the correct number of jokes for each other. Below are the final statistics, along with some commentary for each episode.
I still actually enjoy Modern Family quite a bit, but Veep really deserves to win for best comedy.. hopefully some day. Karen was probably my favorite character to hate in ages -- so glad they brought her back for the finale. Pitch perfect delivery every time.
