Kent Davison

Kent Davison arrives as Selina's new economic adviser, a stiff, unnervingly calm political number-cruncher who speaks almost entirely in polling jargon and dead-eyed metaphors. He treats the West Wing's daily chaos as data to be managed rather than crisis to be panicked over, and pairs off with Ben Cafferty as the office's most deadpan double act.

Gary Cole plays Kent as a man who has removed all urgency from his voice no matter how absurd the sentence, and the writing rewards that by giving him the show's driest one-liners and strangest analogies. His stillness next to everyone else's screaming makes him one of Veep's funniest instruments — comedy through sheer, unbothered precision.