#vic's ex step-grandmother

[dropoutconfessions]

I really want to see more VIP fics. There's only five on ao3 atm.

-

[wolfziedraws]

POV you're the TV in Vic's guest house

[red-and-frantic]

truly obsessed with the latest very important people episode.

"it's me and you against the world! what's up with that!" 🤝 vic getting spanked and then subsequently pantsed 🤝 "it's gross, and it's gonna meme, and i don't want that." 🤝 vic drinking an entire mug of coffee, pickle juice, and werthers wrappers 🤝 ""i came." i love that chapter." 🤝 "the colour is your colour." 🤝 "have i ever killed a dog? yes. have i ever lost a tooth? no." 🤝 lisa and vic eating press on nails 🤝 "you've never had pizza." "only the sewer kind." 🤝 "you've never been with a man, have you?" 🤝 "i'm being a good interview!" 🤝 the two of them threatening each other with chairs 🤝 "i love to love hair. i love to love war." 🤝 "i know you don't want me to sing, i'm gonna sing." 🤝 "why is your hair so small?" "because you burned it all off-" 🤝 "what is the meaning of life?" "family." 🤝 "psych!!"

this lives rent free in my brain i hope vic and lisa know what they've done, truly the vip!vic lore in this episode is unmatched

[megdchristopher]

For the last week I’ve been sketching some Very Important People. First round includes Anna Garcia as Princess Emily, Ify Nwadiwet as Denzel, Lisa Gilroy as Nana, Jacob Wysocki as Zonton, Kimia Behpoornia as Marionette, Josh Ruben as Kepl (and Dr. Milk), and Zac Oyama as Tommy Shriggly.

[brennan-lee-mother]

The director said “take five” but Lisa Gilroy heard “change lives”

[eternally-tired-cryptid]

Love learning lore abt Vic's character from Very Important People

[embraceyourdestiny]

@veryimportantpeopleshow Vic’s Ex-Step-Grandmother was one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen, but also the most heartwarming. Great episode, had me cackling the whole time :)

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

Dirty Laundry with Usha, graNma sWeetie, Plug Strutt, and Vic's ex step-grandmother.

Hosted by Jawbone, with Squak Airavis tending bar

[veryimportantpeopleshow]

Meet just a few of the very important people from...Very Important People:

Vic Michaelis as Vic Michaelis

Ross Bryant as Lucian Azethothe

Rashawn Nadine Scott as Martha Tops

Isabella Roland as Leighanna-Jean Gruthers

Lisa Gilroy as Vic’s Ex-Step Grandmother

Jacob Wysocki as  Zonton de la Doll

Brian David Gilbert as Prof. Avery Goodman

Brennan Lee Mulligan as Augbert

[man-peach-reborn]

You know the drill, reblog for sample size

[dropoutdottv]

This week on Dropout: on Monday, a special cut-for-time edition of Make Some Noise season 2; on Tuesday, a Dungeons & Daddies-ful Dirty Laundry with Beth May, Anthony Burch, Will Campos, and Alice Stanley; on Wednesday, episode 2 of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Junior Year; on Thursday, the FHJY ep 2 Adventuring Party talkback; and on Friday, the Very Important People Last Looks behind-the-scenes for "Vic's Ex-Step Grandmother"

[starkju0]

Vic's Ex Step Grandmother, aka Fast Grandma!

[kathleenkatmary]

Seriously though, the character work that's being done by Vic Michaelis as host!Vic on Very Important People is so incredibly impressive, and it's better than what we get from a lot of traditional narrative shows. I think it's particularly impressive because the format of the show, in terms of both the fact that it's improvised and that everything we see, all of the information we get about them, their life, and their personality, comes entirely from what happens and what is said in the interviews. Vic's Ex-Step Grandmother is the only episode so far where the guest is someone that Vic knows, who is tied directly to their life and their past and where the interview itself gives us a significant amount of information about them. With most of the others episodes we still learn a lot about host!Vic, but everything we learn about them in those interviews is sort of indirect. It comes in not just the questions they ask, but how they ask them. It comes from their response to the answers. It comes from seeing the bits where they interact with the crew. From the small tidbits of info they drop about their husband, their step daughter, etc. in response to something the guest has said or done. From the way they relate to the guests and the relationships they develop with them.

And even within those things, it's still done in really subtle, indirect ways. So much of it comes from Vic's facial expressions, or their tone of voice.

Think about the way we'd usually learn these kinds of things about characters in more traditional narrative shows. There would be a lot of scenes of them interacting with people close to them. We'd see them doing different things that are specifically relevant to whatever the writers want us to know about them. There would inevitably be some level of expository dialogue about their life, their past, the personality, and their issues.

We get very, very little of any of that with Very Important People. We have to learn everything about host!Vic from what happens during these interviews. We don't even, so far anyway, and aside from the episode with their Ex-Step Grandmother, have an outside perspective on who host!Vic is, what they're like, etc., at least not from anyone who actually knows them. We'll sometimes get comments from the guests about what they're observing in the moment, and occasionally Vic will say something that other people, usually the crew, have said about them. But we have yet to get any kind of outside perspective from someone who really knows them (again, outside of the one episode with their Nana), to tell us "they think they're like this, but they're really like this" or "they always do this when they feel this way or that way", or even to inform us of what Vic might be like just based on how they act around them. That is so often in storytelling an incredibly important part of how we learn about a character: seeing and learning about how the other characters who really know them see and feel about them. So far, that has not really been an aspect of how we learn about host!Vic. It's pretty much all come entirely from Vic's performance and the choices they've made.

Honestly, really thinking about it, I'd say that if I had to compare it to a more traditional narrative series (in terms of this specific topic), I'd say the closest one would be In Treatment. I'm only referring to the 2008-2010 run with Gabriel Byrne. I have not seen the more recent reboot, nor have I seen the Israeli original. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the show, episodes run about 30 minutes long, and they take place pretty much in real time, with each episode covering a therapy session between Byrne's character, the therapist, and a patient. The series was almost entirely limited to those sessions, so pretty much everything we would learn about both the patients and Byrne's character came from the discussions that happened in those therapy sessions.

It's still quite different though, for several reasons. With VIP, Vic doesn't interview the same character twice (at least not so far), so the relationship built between them is limited, so the information that we can learn about Vic (and the character who is being interviewed) is also limited. With In Treatment, Byrne's character sees the same patients every week. So we do get to see relationships develop between them and as those relationships grow we learn more about the characters based on those relationships. Also, the fact that they're therapy sessions kind of inherently means that we're going to get some real digging into the characters. And that goes for Byrne's character, too, because the last episode every week is always his session with his therapist. A whole episode every week to deeply explore his character, his relationship with his patients, etc. We get nothing like that for host!Vic. Nothing where they can examine their feelings or actions, nothing where we can deeply dig into the things that happened in their life that might be causing the emotional reactions we see, etc.

So while I think that there are some strong similarities between Very Important People and In Treatment in terms of having similar formats where pretty much everything we learn about the characters come from these conversations that happen between two people in a short span of time, by having those conversations happen in the context of therapy sessions, In Treatment is pretty much entirely designed to be able to naturally dig into information about the characters and explore it. Whereas Very Important People almost feels like the opposite. Interview shows like this, in reality, tend to be pretty artificial. Even the ones that do get really personal and really dig into people's lives. Regardless of how personal an interview might get, both the interviewer and the interviewee absolutely, without question, do a ton of prep work and rehearsing. Even when an emotion that's shown is honest, it's unlikely that it's truly a pure, in the moment reaction. So trying to really show who a character is through the format of an interview show, showing us only what happens in the interview and nothing else, is absolutely going to be a challenge. But Vic Michaelis is doing such an impressive job with it. We see their sort of 'host facade', and even with that they do such a really stunning job of making it so clear the image that host!Vic is trying to put forward and why. And then they go so much deeper with the ways that mask is constantly slipping and all of the things they decide to show us underneath it.

I think the most impressive part of it all is exactly what we're shown and when. Michaelis has been really smart about what information to let out at what times, which bits of information or emotion to show with each character they interview, etc. Think about how little of the show, at least when it comes to the guests, so far has directly related to Vic and their life, and now think about how much we already know about them, both their life and their personality/flaws/desires/insecurities/etc. And it's all improvised. This would all be impressive even if this was all scripted and there was a painstaking plan for how and when to reveal each bit of information, but the fact that each episode is improvised and they don't even know who the guest is going to be until the person has been all made up just makes it even more impressive.

And really, I think even just the fact that it is an interview show is so interesting. Because interviews/interview shows are so artificial, so just the choice to use that as the sort of medium through which to explore this character is fascinating to begin with. But the way host!Vic is sort of presented to us in that context is also really interesting. Because the host version of host!Vic is so artificial, and throughout the show so far we've seen them desperately trying to project that artificial version of themself. But the reality of who they are inevitably breaks through. And it usually breaks through more the more they develop a relationship with the guest. Which just brings us back around to how fascinating it is that in this improvised show where they have no idea who they're going to be interviewing that the information we learn about host!Vic really does come down, if not entirely then a significant amount, to who the guest for the episode decides to be and how they may or may not relate to or appeal to host!Vic.

I love all of Dropout's gameshows and such, but I really think that Very Important People is by far the most impressive show they've got on right now. I think it's the most impressive thing I've seen from them. It's so unlike anything else on television and it's using stuff that's so completely unusual for television as it is now to tell character stories that are actually really compelling, and to find different ways to build and explore character.

[heytherecentaurs]

Very Important People is fucking hilarious. Lisa Gilroy’s character Vic’s ex-step-grandmother is like if a totally unhinged drunken Al Pacino method acted as a grandmother. Vic is so funny and they’re down for anything. I had actual tears I was laughing so hard. This is the best episode so far. Truly so wickedly funny and demented.