So, will Season 3 of the series be called POTUS?

As the clock winds down on Veep's second season, the penultimate episode "Running" ends with Selina finally makes a decision that's clearly been in the offing for a while: she's not going to settle for being second banana anymore, either in a 10K run or in the current administration. No, it's time for her to be the first banana going forward.

"First Response" may have been light on the insults, but the self-deprecating comments and crude observations were at an all-time high.

The government shutdown is on and furloughs are in full effect on Veep's seventh Season 2 episode, titled -- appropriately enough -- "Shutdown."

Following Vice President Meyer's disastrous official state trip to Finland last week, Veep was back on its home turf in "Andrew," the title of the show's sixth Season 2 episode and also the name of the Veep's ex-husband (played by David Pasquesi) who we hadn't met before tonight. Maybe it was having to make nice with the House majority leader, Mary King; maybe it was her daughter Katherine's 21st birthday celebration; or, more likely, maybe it was just having her ex around -- who still has the power to stir up latent feelings of loathing-tinged lust inside her -- but Selina kept her tongue in check for most of the episode, foregoing her usual spray of profane insults. And, for the most part, the show followed suit. It was still funny, just not quite as bracingly mean as we're accustomed to.

Selina's European (non-)apology tour took her to Finland on last night's Veep, resulting in the funniest episode of the season and perhaps the all-time funniest episode in the show's young history.

It's comedy night in DC as Selina Meyer prepares to sing a rousing satirical song at "The Vic Allen Dinner." That's both the title of the episode and the grand fête where she performs a version of the Paul Simon staple "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" that targets her nemesis, Kent Davison, who has already royally pissed her off by releasing a photo from last week's daring hostage rescue that displays her in a less-than-flattering light and makes her an Internet meme ma'am in the process.

Zero Dark Veep? That could have been the title of this week's episode, "Hostages," in which the administration finally did something about that Uzbekistan hostage crisis that's been simmering on the backburner since the premiere.

With the midterm cluster[redacted] behind them, "Signals" sends Selina Meyer and her staff on to the next disaster, which in this case awaits them in North Carolina where a pig picnic organized by the state's pork board will serve as the launching pad for POTUS's new "U.S. Hay" campaign aimed at increasing the administration's facetime with rural America. Selina is being dispatched to attend this bit of political theater, but two personal bombshells trip her up from the jump. First, her daughter Catherine pens a controversial review of the pro-Palestinian (and Oscar-nominated) documentary 5 Broken Cameras that threatens to upset ties with Israel. Then, a tabloid report exposes all the secret signals she and her staff use to extricate her from unpleasant situations... like a pig roast. Given all that tsuris, it's no wonder that the tart-tongued insults were flying fast and furious last night. Here were the episode's finest put-downs.

In case you were concerned that HBO's scabrous political satire Veep had lost its mean streak in between seasons, don't worry -- the Season 2 premiere showed that Vice President Selina Meyer and her staff are still as cruel and clueless as they wanna be. I had forgotten just how much I missed this show's marvelous blast of dark-hearted humor when, not even five minutes in, Julia Louis-Dreyfus's veep stage-whispered to guest-star Dan Bakkedahl's Ohio gubernatorial candidate, "I fluffed him, now go fuck 'em" and got a pointed "Aw, shove it" in return.