Veep’s near-perfect fourth season came to an end over the weekend, and season four solidified the HBO comedy as one of the funniest shows on television. Alec Bojalad at Den Of Geek sat down to calculate exactly how funny by determining the Jokes Per Minute (JPM) of every episode of season four.
Things start to get a little fuzzy when it comes to the rules of what exactly constitutes a joke, but like any good scientist, Bojalad explains his method: All dialogue-based, visual, and conceptual jokes count, as do jokes that don’t really fit neatly into one of those categories, like tiny changes in Gary’s facial expressions. In other words, Bojalad was extremely thorough.
The JPM for the whole season clocks in at 4.28. “Testimony” has the highest JPM of the season (4.92), with a total of 158 jokes throughout the episode. The lowest JPM belongs to “East Wing,” coming in at 3.81. But even a “low-joke” episode for Veep packs in an incredible amount of humor. Despite its relatively low JPM, “East Wing” still has a total of 112 jokes throughout. Every episode, in fact, broke 100 jokes.
Other Veep stats we’re interested in: Fucks Per Minute, Sue Shade Per Episode, Gary Panic Attacks Per Episode, Mental Breakdowns Per Character Per Season.