There is something Cool and maybe even Important in VIP being a show about absence. Vic is constantly trying to create a sense of permanence on set and in their own life that fails at the end of every episode in a winking, literal meta but also In The Shows Universe. what does this mean! can we ever know? Maybe! More under this break (4.5k more), brought to you by Chompsky's.
childhood, disruption, and re-interpretation
starting from the very end: one of the most important, recurring features of VIP is the presence of Vic's childhood. Vic and their guests are constantly engaged in a process of re-interpreting or revealing the past.
fundamentally, Vic's childhood is about absence. the most immediate episode to pull from is 1.3 Vic's Ex Step Grandmother (henceforth Nana).
in this episode we get: the reveal that Vic and their twin sister Katie were left alone for four days; the implication that Vic and Katie spent a significant amount of time away from their parents or with other family; the loss of Vic's biological grandmother; the absence of another set of grandparents; repeated instances, allusions, and references to abuse including the Burning Off of All Of Vic's Hair By Nana.
absence intermingles with the destruction of a "conventional" or "successful" family unit and this is accompanied by geographic instability; Vic moves around frequently in their childhood and, critically, their father also moves away from them to Miami.
In 2.9, we get: Steffi Pops "that's all I had to hear about is 'Oh, my dad left. I wonder if he's coming back'" / Vic: "It was just you were my only friend at the time".
looping back to the act of re-interpretation: Vic, on seeing Steffi again, repeatedly insists that they don't "remember" her adverts and they're forced to re-interpret their own memories of their childhood, coming back to the fact they "didn't really have anybody else to talk to".
and just a Fun Detail: Vic didn't know how to count until college (Steffi: "one, two, rainbow" / Vic: "I never learnt to count because this is sort of what I had in my head. And try going into sort of a college level math class and saying 'One, two, rainbow'"). #myfailure #myimplications
and just because it's impossible Not To Mention: Vic is also potentially Half Imaginary. Do With That What You Will.
3.7, Oops Lil Fart. Vic's dad a) appears totally uninterested in having any interaction with them b) only wants to talk to their old imaginary friend Oops Lil Fart (henceforth Fart) who he had an affair with, breaking up his marriage to Vic's mom.
at the end of the episode, Fart calls Vic's dad again and mentions that they need to talk about Their Child, AKA Vic. Sure. Okay.
taking this on a thematic level, Vic is half-absence. by being a product of an affair, the destruction of their family is their genetic heritage as much as their psychological inheritance.
SO: Vic's childhood is defined by absence, both literally in absence of any meaningful social connection and further in the absence of a conventional family unit or Any Meaningful Family At All.
while we do get mentions of Katie (and then later Vic's two younger brothers), there's the same degree of distance and complication implied. Vic's other set of grandparents are constantly away on cruises — geography!!
and Vic's niece wants them dead. that's a thing also.
if you want to SKIP a bunch of theory here and get straight back to Vic jump to "The Host" (ominous bell chiming) (Resident Evil Groans)
the talk show is a staple of the Conventional American Media Landscape. now, especially, it's media about media, content about content.
but what about VIP the fictional, in-universe show you're asking? how does this work? VIP is a model simulacrum of the talk show .
so a) what's a simulacrum b) how is VIP a simulacrum of the talk show?
"in the media and consumer society, people are caught up in the play of images, spectacles, and simulacra, that have less and less relationship to an outside, to an external “reality,” to such an extent that the very concepts of the social, political, or even “reality” no longer seem to have any meaning (...) the narcoticized and mesmerized (...) media-saturated consciousness is in such a state of fascination with image and spectacle that the concept of meaning itself (which depends on stable boundaries, fixed structures, shared consensus) dissolves." (thank you Jean Baudrillard)
Vic, and the show, are "in such a state of fascination with image and spectacle" and therefore we get the effect of simulacrum: the concept of meaning we give to things is removed. the universe of VIP is explicitly related to aspects of the "outside" (MSNBC, Dropout, Bill Cosby) but they become divorced from our understanding of them: they come to exist as images within the show which is sensationalist, in pursuit of spectacle. critically, Vic is The Example Ever Of A "media-saturated consciousness".
let's get even more down and dirty. the three requirements of Aristotelian tragedy are Action, Time, and Place. what has all of these? the conventional talk-show!
but, instead, VIP suspends all of these throughout an episode.
the past repeatedly enters the present in VIP - Vic is faced with Nana, Steffi Pops, Dan Wesley - and we further cut to and from through the addition of green-screen segments (e.g flashing back to a Fannoli live performance).
Especially in later seasons we move beyond and around the "set", revealing it's artificiality and therefore denying unity in place
And In Terms of Action There Are So Many Tangents and Segments That We're Just Going to Cross That One Out As Well.
VIP is divorcing from our concept of a talk show (therefore our external reality!) every episode. the show is unable to adhere to convention and actively cannibalises it
and also, the host is the centre of the talk show; we're pre-Copernicus here. all of your modern talk shows are marketed around The Host and grow in ways that are partially representative of them.
thematically, then, the functioning of the show itself is an extension of Vic
one (very!) French idea here and one (very!) old idea illustrate that the in-universe existence of VIP is defined by an absence of conventional meaning and order; it's actively hostile to both. and, consequently, this is representative of Host Vic.
In the same way that Vic tries for convention and Flunks Out with F's, the show does too. more on this later!
So What's Going On With the Meta
it's only getting worse from here. VIP existing as a simulacra means it has to have a relationship, even if this is constantly diminishing, with an external reality. that's the meta of the show.
while the "universe" of VIP is a simulacra, VIP as a show isn't purely fictional (we open with our improver's (improvees?) getting ready at the top of every episode!). so external reality is coming in every episode and, consequently, we've got a heightened capacity for meta.
e.g the "please stand by" cards. we're getting an intrusion of external reality (the actor Vic Michaelis breaking) BUT it's treated internally as a sudden break in content
meta continually converges with and complicates the VIP-verse.
3.9, Stop, is a great example of this. all of that America stuff flips around because sure, it's America, a place that exists in reality, complete with its politics, but when it's brought into VIP that's not the meaning we're getting anymore. it becomes nonsense-adjacent because it's now an internal concept assimilated into the VIP-verse, slowly making it its own, separate, thing.
but our concept of America exists in the episode concurrently because when actor Vic breaks at an America Joke external reality is Firmly Re-Instated for a moment
Now we're cooking. each episode of VIP is an entropic closed system (analogically!)
entropy (simplifying this beyond belief) is the measure of a system's disorder while "a closed system (...) does not allow transfer of matter in or out of the system, although the transfer of energy." thank u wikipedia #badscholar
entropy naturally increases over time and therefore things will trend towards disorder
In any given episode of VIP, what we can consider as matter can't come "out" or "in" — characters, people, etc, have to "stay" in the episode, especially Vic — but energy can, this is the "meta" of the show. the removal of energy from VIP prevents it from becoming totally disordered.
e.g, unity in time is reinstated through absence — at the end of the episode Lil Fart is released to Connecticut, Dan Wesley goes back into his ice-box, etc — this is necessitated by the meta (the episode literally has to end).
so the meta becomes tangled with in-universe thematics
while the in-universe VIP trends towards disorder, the end of an episode freeing up Vic to follow someone off-set (Hayes Steele) or go harass the crew (Any Episode Ever), the removal of energy from the system through the meta (AKA the End of An Episode) denies this because it prevents Vic from taking any further action (and this reinstates absence Thematically!)
but what did you just say about VIP colliding with an external reality and therefore becoming more disordered? surely removal isn't the only mode of energy in VIP?
CORRECT! Energy is also added through the meta!
let's cast our minds back to 2.16 Spencer and that Odd, Strange, Break From Convention where all the Effects Got Sorta Weird and they played That Music etc
on a meta-level this is signifying to us, the audience, that something has changed (on a very basic level, it gave the episode Importance Thematically by departing from convention, tying into the fact that it was the season finale)
BUT, in-universe, there's an awareness of effects and pantomime and that confuses things - obviously, Vic is subject to effects, e.g the appearance of smoke during Steffi Pops and lighting during Boris, and able to comment on them. However, this extends into an awareness of effects that should be meta
during the steffi pops episode (can You Tell I Like That One), Vic comments that a censor bar appeared over their mouth as a child. What!
at any given moment, therefore, we don't have an entirely clear grip on what's going on internally versus what is happening solely externally, it's a low-level constant fourth-wall break. vip moves away and away from an external reality, and convention (!) by threatening to consume it and deprive it of meaning. episode to episode this progression towards disunity is controlled by the addition and removal of energy. we're teetering right on the edge but never fully over because we know the episode has to end and take us out of the simulacra, restoring conventional meaning just for it to be violated again. think Sisyphus and his boulder.
and this, also, is thematically Vic repeating the cycle, more on this later.
comedy and trauma theory, this one is Really Quick I Promise
how are comedy and trauma working together in VIP though? Taking all of Vic's shit at face value makes it overwhelmingly sad. But VIP is a really, really, good comedy. And we're Laughing at Vic during the show.
trauma and comedy, on a certain level, work with the same techniques in literature and (generally) media. incongruity is central to the punchline and the traumatic experience
keeping it brief comic incongruity theory outlines that what's making us laugh is the violation of our expectations (which, of course! is what VIP is doing constantly by Consuming our External Reality! And violating our expectations! By Removing the meaning they are based on!)
example: Dan Wesley Sharon "Why is he wearing a mask, did something happen? (...) I had to wear one of those once when I went on a tour of the World Trade Centre."
So There's a Couple Of Things Here. But a Large Part of the Incongruity being generated comes from the violation of our expectations -- Dan is treating something we know with ignorance and therefore violating our shared expectations. and also 9/11.
but representations of trauma rely on incongruity as well
the Trauma Plot of the past decade Loves and Relies on narrative fracturing, ellipsis, and expectation violation to convey the traumatic experience which defies convention and normalcy
TLDR; This Goddamn Show. deploys a technique that Fucks Up conventional narrative, fractures it, splits it down the middle, etc, therefore mimicking the traumatic narrative but employing it comically
this is less Related to Vic but just a Cool Thing That's Going On
BUT ALSO, The Beautiful Simulacrum's Purpose (on a practical level rather than a thematic one!) enables a base level comic incongruity that increases exponentially as an episode goes on
in things getting gradually more and divorced from their meanings we're put in a state of suspension where pretty much any expectation can be violated or restored (and therefore violated-in-restoration because we expected the violation) (cool and fun to explain jokes)
Grown-up Host Vic Michaelis is a No Good Bad Time. But what's their recurring, overarching motive? what's driving them? what makes them tick? you guessed it.... absence!
Vic is a Tyrant on set; they're not a Nice person. they repeatedly display abusive tendencies and behaviour. they Kind Of Killed a PA. they don't understand boundaries.
but they're also totally incompetent, easily taken advantage of, unstable, self-abusive and More
Vic's ostensible goal, the one they most clearly claim, is to get a better job and move up the ranks to MSNBC
Vic's other goal, that they deny, cajole, perjure, fumble around, is to achieve conventional social fulfilment; the white picket fence life. Vic tries to establish themself into romantic, platonic, and familial relationships with guests, showing a complete and total willingness to achieve this regardless of their own wellbeing or safety
if you think there's a David-sized negative space right now that will be touched on (#touchingonit)
Vic repeats the cycle. the way they behave as an adult mimics the patterns of the adults around them while they grew up which is Not Good.
again. there's a lot here. but i'm going to pull from a recent Recent example: S3 cut for time. Bianca says "and we're sure that's water in there? (...) Okay, I want somebody to always be checking what's in that cup" while watching Vic drink from their mug. in 1.3, Nana starts drinking on set after it's brought in by a PA, insisting that it's her "medicine".
Vic adopts Spencer at the end of S2 (Whoof) and, when S3 starts, he's no longer anywhere in sight. unrelated, they made a geographic move, like their dad, to Hungary.
And Also, guests repeatedly comment on the absence of purpose / joy / life inside of Vic #myfailure
taking this all together, we start to get a sense of the "Host" Vic versus the person Vic. This is a difference commented on explicitly by their therapist (alex!) in S3. Vic, as the host, is attempting to maintain a situation in which they are in complete control. Vic, as the person, is inserting themselves into the media they grew up with and trying to distance themself from "real-life". The TV is safe. They can't be hurt anymore if they're on the TV.
But none of that is true. And Host Vic can't ever succeed. Two to three reasons for this:
Vic, the person, cannot hold on to any relationship established on air because they fall back on the patterns they learnt growing up
Vic, the person as the host, is constantly divided by themself. the Host's desire for an abusive Total Dominance is progressively melded into AND at war with Vic The Persons desire to be liked/loved.
in S3, Vic claims to be a New, Improved Host and refuses to engage in romantic behaviour with any of the guests. this is a departure from the previous seasons. Instead, they're in a maladaptive relationship with Alex
Vic, as The Host, is attempting to engineer an even more Total Dominance by refusing any vulnerability and claiming to be """healed""". Vic, as a person, is Repeating the Cycle - inserting themself into their Alex's familial life (meeting his daughter because they showed up at his house Unwanted!) and attempting flirtation. they're trying to secure their safety on-set through gaining control over Alex via relationship (#theimplications) at the same time as they're seeking an off-set relationship where they can establish themself into a conventional family unit
Vic's attraction/repulsion to people comes from the fact that they want very badly to be liked, loved, admired, accepted, but they also reject any vulnerability or Actual Connection because they're unable to bear being dependent without control. and part of this rejection is playing a conventional role rather than being themself. as in the Alex Example. And this melds with the Host's desire for Complete Control making a Mess of Things.
2.2 Hayes Steele, Vic wants to become one of Haye's boys (aka his son) and Follows Him Off Set To His Helicopter. Unrelated: Hayes is comfortable financially to the point of excess.
Finally, The Theory. Vic can't ever succeed because the episode (internally and externally) has to end. everyone is going to leave. the host is constantly getting killed.
Vic has trapped themselves in another cycle! Any form of fulfilment/control/protection in the show is impossible. it has to end.
900 episodes in-universe end just before (or even during) Vic chases a guest off set/attempts to follow someone And 900 episodes end, for us, on a freeze-frame of Vic Desperate-maxxing in pursuit of connection
So the in-universe show is melded with the meta and both of them, thematically, work to re-establish absence at the end of every episode. Vic's on-set sand castle crumbles. it's a bad time. yay!
I haven't touched on this because: Can Of Worms. But in S1 we get the Infamous Curse: until you mend the bond with your step-daughter (Bianca) people will write explicit fic about u throwing up Black Bile (#support). (we will touch on this again later) (#touchingonit)
and at its heart what is this about?? removing absence and breaking the Cycle. by restoring The Bond.
And in the S3 "Cut For Time", we get The Conversation. The Longest Ever On-Screen interaction between Vic and Bianca Where the Bond is Kind Of Mended (they confirm they care about each other. and like. touch. physically. in a hug #iusedtoprayfortimeslikethese) and also Not (Vic assumes the role of sugar parent. and says they would've adopted Bianca.)
BUT this happens in cut for time!! Vic's "fulfilment" / "hypothetical curse breaking" happens outside of the episodic cycle
So, Vic, as of S3, is willingly destroying themself by staying On Air. They're unable to envision any alternative because of the Cycle.
Vic's childhood conditioned their Bad, Wrong, Dead Behind The Eyes Personality
And, now, it's this maladapted sense of self and surrounding that they make their decisions off of. Their only choice is repeating the cycle.
The show is Vic's own personal pound cage and, at the same time, a thematic extension of them: They do it to themself.
so What's Going on With Vianca Then?
Vic is constantly seeking to insert themself into a "traditional" roles where they can become socially conventional and acceptable by proxy (partner / step-parent / hookup / (and new!) sugar parent). this is most clearly typified in their failmarriage to David, Bianca's dad.
David is someone with a Lot of Money, who Vic insists is "not bad" (Okay.)
We know that Vic and Bianca went to college together. We also know that Vic married David because of Bianca. And that they're Fixated on her. In a cool normal way.
in the S3 cut for time, we get Bianca: "Also, I don't talk to my dad that much. He's fine but he's not my favorite person." / Vic: "So I should've gone for your mom instead?"
AKA: THE CONFESSION. Vic's marriage was never about David, it was a means of getting """closer""" to Bianca. the confession!
So, let's deploy the Vic Formula we talked about before
Vic's desire for convention and control arises; their attraction (on a platonic and Maybe Sexual Level. A secret third thing also) to Bianca makes them feel dependent on her. This Causes Them to Do A Bad Thing.
By marrying Bianca's dad Vic gets: acceptance into a conventional-ish family, "control" over Bianca, certainty that Bianca can't leave them, access to Money (and therefore financial security to a certain extent), Connections (David took them to a Goop party), and (again) Control, Control, Control
But What About The Earlier Seasons
Vic, especially across S1 and S2, insists that Bianca is a no-good, mean, step-daughter, who bullies them and can't/won't accept them, or spend time with them, etc.
By casting Bianca as the bratty step-daughter, Vic is given a position of direct superiority over her in the conventional family narrative. Also, they're creating (and televising!!) a social situation that hypothetically elicits sympathy/pity for them. obviously, in practise, the bad, dead, wrong, thing in Vic stops this from working but. in the theory of their mind.
it's true that Bianca doesn't seem to Like Them, Or Want To Be Kind To Them, Most Of The Time BUT Vic's representation of this is also Not At All Reliable
it's also true, though, that the Bad, Wrong Thing in Vic makes them mercurial/ill/prone to wishing death upon Bianca but Baby that's all the spin-cycle
s3 cut for time gives us this Bianca gem: "I can't have that kinda eye contact (...) it's like I know what's happening behind those eyes". Vic overhears and leaves, saying they want some time in their trailer. or not even really overhears because Bianca says it very clearly in Earshot.
But Bianca's relationship with Vic is tethered in the "know" and the Rejection of the "know". She's probably the only living person who knows Vic to any degree of accuracy. And she doesn't want to a lot of the time! They're work! They make it fucking impossible. But she Knows Them. and Cares.
AKA: Bianca can see the Cycle, "what's happening behind". despite her alleged desire to Not See Them or Interact With Them she's stuck in It Too. both literally in being in the news media simulacrum and also Emotionally, ooooh ooooh oooooh
Vic's relationship with Bianca represents their worst tendencies at the same time as it exposes the motivations behind them. they're tethered!
so. VIP (the show as a whole) interacts with and threatens to consume reality in the same way as the Traumatised Conscious, creating an unstable viewing experience. order is restored through absence at the end of an episode.
Vic's Bad Brain threatens, in the same way as VIP, to consume an external reality whole gradually divorcing / unanchoring from conventional meaning through a fascination with spectacle, a total infatuation with the TV
the episode is Vic repeating cycle in miniature
they're trapping themselves in a structure that, at the end, only takes them back to the Absence / Rot / Hurt. Anything created in the episode is immaterial. Vic cannot hold on to the static.
all of their attempts to follow guests off set/insert themself into their lives come to nothing.
absence is the axiom of their childhood. they're starting and ending in the same place. #thecycle #myfailure
Vic exists as the Host and Themself simultaneously
VIP is (to a certain extent!) a show about doubling: Vic and the guest, the in-universe show and the Real Show, Vic and Bianca. A Bunch of Stuff Comes in Pairs and the tension between them generates the Show. unbreakable shield meets unstoppable spear. aspiring trad step-parent meets college friend/daughter who wants them dead And is also Meta-physically Tethered to Them.
and so, we get Vic as Host and Vic as Person orbiting each other, causing nasty, horrible stuff.
Vic as the Host is forced into re-interpreting Vic as Person's childhood as guests undermine their control and force them into acknowledging things outside of the show. they do want to do this!
They cannot outrun themself! And they don't like the reminders!
Vic as Person's desire to be liked/loved melds into Vic as Host's desire for control which makes things a Clusterfuck
TLDR; Vic is a terrible, horrible person who is driven by an engine of internal contradiction. and their past continually threatens to eclipse their present. the only logical response to this for them is to Be On TV and this traps them in another cycle of absence and impermanence. they do it to themself!
cool okay anyway. my ao3 is host to a couple of further Thoughts in the form of fic and Maybe in Three Months something New. that's all!! I like this show!! i will try and use tumblr more regularly and not in 5k chunks! go my viclings! contact me to discuss The Theory!
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