Amy Brookheimer was a complicated character. She had no illusions about the game of politics and could play it as well as the next person. She had a moral compass. She didn’t always follow it, but it was there. Mostly, though, she had no time for incompetence, idiocy, or anything that didn’t forward her goal of putting Selina Meyer in the Oval Office.
She did not suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately for her, fools surrounded her. She spent so much energy trying to save Selina from her own worst instincts, she didn’t have any left to prevent her from being brutally honest with those around her. This led to some truly wonderful rants and insults.
“You are like an earlobe. You’re just there, just wobbling.”
One of the most incompetent people on Team Meyer was Communications Director Mike McClintock. Aside from Gary he’d been with Selina the longest, but he’d never been particularly good at his job. In the episode “Catherine”, he avoided making an announcement that he knew would be met unhappily. His continual reluctance drove Amy crazy. They finally laid down a concrete event where he had to make the announcement but when asked if he had informed people, he was still avoiding it, not wanting everyone to be angry at him. In the end, everyone still yelled at him, including Amy.
“Dan is a shit… He’s a massive and totally shit. When you first meet him, you think surely to God this man can’t be as big a shit as he seems, but he is.”
Amy and Dan dated before Selina hired him in the first episode. Before Selina hired him, she wanted to find out more about him, so she asked Amy what she thought about him. Amy let her know immediately what she thought of Dan and held nothing back.
Amy continued, “Because like if there were a book with covers made of shit, you’d think, ‘That’s intriguing. I wonder what’s in this book that they saw fit to give it covers made of pure shit.’ And then you open it and… shit.” Despite Amy’s vivid descriptor, Selina still invited Dan to join the team, and he more or less proved Amy right.
“You’re not even your mother’s favorite Jonah, Jonah.”
With the amount of abuse he took in the show, Jonah would almost be a pitiable character. Instead, with everything he does and says, he just makes himself worthy of the bile thrown at him. The sole reason he worked at the White House is because his uncle Jeff owned the New Hampshire vote. But he acted as though he was the most powerful person in Washington.
As the White House liaison to the VP’s office, Selina’s team had to deal with him. But they didn’t have to like it. So when Jonah enters the office with, “Look who it is, everybody. It’s your favorite Jonah,” how else can Amy respond.
“Hello Leon. It’s always good to see the most left-swiped face on Tinder.”
Amy tried to play nice with the press. She knew that staying on their good side was the smart thing to do. The one person she couldn’t really manage that with was Leon West. Working for the Washington Post, Leon had a huge audience. But he was also an enormous pain in the ass of Team Meyer. He always lurked, trying to catch them out on something.
Leon ambushed Amy in the grocery store, trying to get her to spill which of Selina’s staff members had called her a c***. (It turns out it was everyone, with the exception, of course, of Gary.) When he approached with an insult, she had to respond in kind. She couldn’t help herself.
“She’s offering you vice president, you monument to vaginal dryness.”
In the final season, Amy left Selina’s staff after being offered a better, more challenging job as Jonah’s campaign manager. Her years in Washington had taken any idealism she had left and ground it into a pulp. She didn’t believe in anything Jonah stood for, but she knew if she managed to have him be a real contender for president, her credentials in Washington would go way up.
Managing Jonah was an arduous task. He wouldn’t listen to anyone, he insulted everyone, and his most heinous ideas always took off with his base supporters. But he did have a strong base, which, in order to secure the nomination, meant that Selina had to offer him VP to get his numbers. But Jonah, as always didn’t understand what was going on, leading Amy to snap at him.
“You have three kids by two different men. Maybe your last word should have been, ‘no’.”
Possibly the most contentious relationship in Amy’s life was that with her sister, Sophie. Other than sharing parents, the only other thing they had in common was an attraction to Dan. Very occasionally they got along for a short amount of time, but it always ended with them sniping at each other.
When their father had a health scare, Amy went to the hospital even though it’s during the mid-term elections. It turned out to be nothing, and Amy was frustrated that her sister made it seem like their father was dying. In their argument, Sophie accused Amy of always needed to have the last word. Amy certainly did in that fight.
“Gary, your inner child needs to grow an outer man.”
For the most part, as long as they didn’t threaten her position in Selina’s administration, Amy got along with the rest of Team Meyer. That included Gary, who many others made fun of or ignored. Of her whole team, with the exception of Mike, they were with her the longest and were the closest to her. That being said, occasionally she would be frustrated with his meekness. When he avoids telling Selina about a painting that he had moved, leading to problems with Native Americans, Amy and Sue both tell him that he has to just do it.
“Were you sent from the future to destroy me? ‘Cause it’s working! ‘I think that each candidates has merits and demerits, and I don’t know my left butt cheek from my right butt cheek, but I believe in listening to both butt cheeks and farting out my asshole mouth.’”
Amy never hated anyone the way she hated Karen Collins, an old friend of Selina’s who joined the campaign as advisor. Karen was infamously indecisive, never coming down on one side or the other. As Selina’s campaign manager, Amy kept trying to get Selina to make firm decisions, but she’d be swayed by Karen each time. Finally, when Doyle dropped out as Selina’s running mate, Amy tried to get her to ask Tom James as his replacement. Selina asked Karen’s opinion, and as always she equivocated.
Amy continued, “That’s not even bullshit. Bullshitting takes talent. You have none. You’re just a blah-blah-blah bitch.” An excellent take-down and something everyone had wanted to say.
“You are not Michael Jordan. You are a seven-foot-seven, goony-looking Lithuanian who’s going to drop dead of Marfan Syndrome.”
Again the target of some of Amy’s most poisonous bile was Jonah. But he set her up perfectly. In Nevada, Amy and Dan tried to get a recount of the presidential votes as Selina lost by a very narrow margin. They were forced to take along Richard who had in depth knowledge of Nevada’s voting system, as well as Jonah, who had been regulated to Richard’s assistant. Jonah, of course, chafed at that, saying, “You guys have Michael Jordan sitting on the bench here, but you’re starting Hakeem Olajutwat.” Never has a Jonah insult been more deserved.
“You have achieved nothing apart from one thing. The fact that you are a woman means that we will have no more women presidents because we tried one and she f***ing sucked.”
In the same scene where Amy took down Karen Collins, she also turned on Selina. The fact that Anna Chlumsky didn’t win an Emmy for this scene alone was a travesty. For years Amy offered Selina sound advice only to have it ignored and then be blamed when things went wrong. She’d finally had enough and told Selina exactly what she thought of her on her way out.
The lead-in to the above quote was just as good. “You have made it impossible to do this job. You have two settings – no decision and bad decision. I wouldn’t let you run a bath without the Coast Guard and the fire department standing by, but here you are running the country. You are the worst thing that has happened to America since food in buckets. And maybe slavery.” Brilliant.