#dan egan killed a dog and i think about it the regular amount

[notbxnny]

I cannot stop thinking about that scene at the end of s3ep5. I mean you think veep can’t surprise you anymore with how morally corrupt these characters are, and then, right in the middle of this extremely intimate scene with all this flirting and chemistry between dan and selena it comes SO incredibly out of left field it’s hard to even process. when dan tells selena he killed a dog, it is such a morbid, jarring tone shift (while still keeping comedic) but while he’s saying it, dan is pretty impassive. he’s a little sheepish, but in a way that says ‘this is such an embarrassing/idiotic childhood story’ a lot more than ‘i am confessing something crazy fucked up to my boss’. it feels like he’s almost proud of it even? like he’s a cat dropping a dead bird at her feet, saying: look at me, look at how ruthless I could be for you, look at the lengths I will go to. while he does acknowledges it was wrong, I think he’s probably convinced himself that it was a rite of passage, something proved he is capable of shedding any softness or empathy or desire that he perceives as weakness, that he has no use for morality. you can see that stifling desperation to bury any vulnerability or humanity, and to win the approval of who he perceives as authority figures, that compels dan a lot more clearly as the show progresses & it’s sorta sad to think how long hes been like that?