Australian Federal Labor MP Graham Perrett’s reaction — and the aftermath of his reaction — to the most recent Veep episode sounds like something that would only happen to a politician…in an episode of Veep. Which, yes, is now the thing people say whenever a funny fate befalls a politician — or whenever a politician does something inept, unethical, callous, misinformed, incongruous, scandalous, manipulative, crass, etc. etc. etc. But Veep showrunner David Mandel has likewise weighed in to say just how perfect an example of (the most innocent, non-corruption-oriented) Veep-adjacency this is, so the analogy remains. Oh, and yes, here’s what happened: the MP has suffered from injuries from a dangerous combination of Veep and rice.
BuzzFeed News reports, after parts of the story were originally broken by The Australian, that Perrett, a parliamentarian who represents Moreton, Queensland, was watching the show on Sunday night while also eating sushi. A morsel of rice went down the wrong tube after he began sushi-ing and laughing simultaneously; Perrett fell, and was knocked unconscious, resulting in a black eye and stitches. (He seems to have been behind; it turns out he wasn’t watching Sunday’s incisively perfect episode, in which Selina Meyer meddles in an election between two corrupt potential leaders in Georgia in order to seal funding for her running joke of a Presidential Library.) “I started choking and I kind of stumbled forward and knocked my head on the corner of the kitchen cabinet,” Perrett told BuzzFeed News.
BuzzFeed’s Mark Di Stefano tweeted the original report (from the Australian), and Julia Louis-Dreyfus responded with an understandable bit of incredulity last night:
Perrett clarified:
If you’ve seen that episode, you may recall a scene where oaf Congressman Jonah Ryan is interviewed by Dan Egan on CBS news, with Dan ceaselessly hinting at Ryan faking still being on chemo for testicular cancer. “I was laughing so hard when Jonah then gets interviewed by Dan…And then [Dan] delivers the first shaving pun, like, ‘you recently had a close shave with cancer,'” the MP recapped to BuzzFeed News, pinpointing the exact joke that’s the culprit. “My wife walked in to find me knocked unconscious on the ground, with blood everywhere… I must have been out for only a few seconds because when I came to again, I was still laughing at Jonah.”
Veep showrunner David Mandel responded:
I would like to make an official statement on behalf of Veep and the United States. We would like to apologise to Australia, our key ally in the Asia-Pacific region, for writing something that would cause bodily harm to your people…It really does seems like something in the show, so I guess I’ll have to wait a year now to use it.
And speaking of politicians watching TV shows…check out our list of politicians…watching TV shows.