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This article contains spoilers for Veep season 7 episode 7.
The American sitcom landscape of the mid-’00s was a mostly optimistic place. NBC toned down the bruising cynicism of Ricky Gervais’ U.K. Office in favor of a workplace hangout sesh. That show’s pseudo-spinoff, Parks and Recreation, imagined what a devoted public servant could achieve in local politics as long as everyone worked together. The multi-Emmy award winning juggernaut Modern Family acknowledged the nuclear family as a flawed, but ultimately loving institution filled with people just doing their best.
Over on HBO, however, comedy was decidedly less jolly. The twin-billing of political satire Veep and tech bro lampoon Silicon Valley presented a world as pessimistic as any drama. It didn’t matter whether you were in the public sector or the private sector – everything sucks and we’re all gonna die one day. But with jokes!
Of the two HBO offerings, Veep was easily the more brutal. Created by British comedy legend Armando Iannucci, Veep followed Vice President (Veep) Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) as she came to grips with how little power her officer actually afforded her. From the beginning, the show was as irreverent as Iannucci’s other satirical political offerings like The Thick of It and In the Loop. Iannucci, Louis-Dreyfus, and the show’s team of writers turned profane dialogue into an art form with Selina lashing out upon finding herself as “only” the second most powerful woman in the country. As the seasons went on and Selina inched closer to the presidency, however, the show evolved from a clever satire into a devastatingly grim exploration of humankind’s depthless black heart. And TV was all the better for it.
Iannucci departed as showrunner from the series following its fourth season and was replaced by TV comedy journeyman David Mandel (who had previously written for Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and The Simpsons). Under Mandel’s tenure (which just so happened to coincide with the presidential candidacy and eventual election of Donald Trump), Veep went from acerbic to acidic. The final three seasons of Veep aren’t just mean…they’re satanic. To this day, one of the series’ most frequently-shared clips comes from the seventh episode of season 5. In it, Selina Meyer doesn’t merely insult a foe, she verbally eviscerates her in such a thorough fashion that the victim can only mutter “dear God” as if she had just gazed into the pitiless eyes of death itself.
By the time the seventh and final season rolled around, Veep was a vividly angry beast. Perhaps challenged by the frequent refrain of “Veep is probably what politics is really like! LOL,” the show’s writers plumbed deeper and deeper to find the most reprehensible shit for Selina to say and the most wretched policies to enact, all but daring the real world to follow its demonic example.
Veep‘s descent into beautiful madness culminated in with its final episode, fittingly titled “Veep,” in which Selina Meyer finally abandons all pretense of being a human being to become the ruthless political shark she’s always been. The episode takes place during her party’s* contested National Convention, where no candidate has secured enough votes to be the presidential nominee. This means that Selina must wheel, deal, and kill to get the nod and another chance at the White House.
*Veep shrewdly never reveals which political party any of its characters belong to, acknowledging that the relentless pursuit of power is truly bipartisan.
Things start off innocuously enough. Within two minutes, Selina has only merely told her daughter Catherine (Sarah Sutherland) to shut up, made fun of her injured war hero running mate John DeVito (Ian Roberts), and informed her chief rival Kemi Talbot (Toks Olagundoye) that “Stealing South Carolina is the bedrock of our political system. If you can’t figure out how to steal South Carolina, you have no business being president.” But as the reality sets in that Selina really might not win this thing, she begins to become unhinged.
Following the double whammy of her chief advisor Ben Cafferty (Kevin Dunn) suffering a heart attack (“Eighth time’s the charm”) and her old running mate/occasional lover Tom James (Hugh Laurie) re-entering her race, all seems lost. Then, in what amounts to the closest approximation to actual human warmth the series ever attempts, Selina has a fateful conversation with Ben from his hospital bed.
“How can I do this without you?” Selina says.
“Don’t be an idiot, Selina. You know exactly what to do,” Ben responds.
Selina, indeed knows what to do. So she does all of the following:
– Convinces Tom James’ romantic partner and assistant (Rhea Seehorn) to report Tom for sexual impropriety.
– Promises to kill gay marriage to the bigoted (and deeply closeted) Nevada governor Buddy Calhoun (Matt Oberg) in exchange for his support, despite her own daughter being in a same-sex marriage.
– Offers Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simons) her VP slot.
– Sends Gary (Tony Hale), arguably the only person who ever loved her, to jail for her own crimes.
All of this, of course, is accompanied by dialogue so dark that it clouds the air like a swarm of flies belched forth from Satan’s rancid stomach. Selina’s villain monologue to Tom James’ assistant is so ugly, I can barely summon the courage to write it down.*
*Ok fine, here it is: “The only difference is that I was the most exciting conquest of his life and you just had the hotel room closest to the ice machine. He will never see you as anything other than the TGI Fridays hostess on Proactiv who lets him bend you over his desk while you close your eyes to avoid coming face to face with that photo of his family’s trip to Aspen while he drowns your little mermaid back tat in a pool of jizz and admires his own reflection.”
There’s a similar volley of vivid dialogue regarding Selina’s choice for Veep. Upon learning that the loathsome but politically useful Jonah Ryan will get VP, Selina’s former advisor and current Ryan flack Amy Bruckheimer (Anna Chlumsky) literally falls to her knees and begs Selina to reconsider.
“Don’t make Jonah your VP,” Amy wheeps. “Ma’am, you cannot let a vindictive, narcissistic manchild be one heartbeat away from the presidency let alone be the president,” to which Selena responds: “I’m not gonna die! Because I’ve got the heart and the twat of a high school cheerleader who’s only done anal.”
Kent Davidson (Gary Cole), Selina’s consummate numbers man, screams “FUCK THE NUMBERS! I will not be part of a campaign, let alone an administration that includes Jonah Ryan as president. That’s an unacceptable outcome.”
Selina shuts them both down by declaring “Enough!” and throwing a chair. Moments later she will bully Jonah into accepting the VP job and will then secure all of the delegates necessary to become the nominee.
Even as Veep embraces a level of base villainy not often seen on television – comedy or otherwise – it’s all undeniably thrilling, hilarious stuff. Louis-Dreyfus does more than give her all. She transforms into a wicked thing, clearly reveling in the role that allows her to say such wonderful filth. It works as both high octane comedy and a measured character study into what one person will sacrifice to get everything they’ve ever wanted (even if they already had it).
Of course, what makes it all at least somewhat palatable is the fact that none of it really matters in the end. Yes, Selina wins the nomination and eventually the presidency but that does little to fill the gaps in her soul even while she makes the world a worse place. Selina agrees to allow China to take Tibet, follows through on her promise to kill gay marriage, and has a particularly upsetting phone call with the Israeli prime minister “So what did the Palestinians do this time? My daughter was the exact same way. A whiner. Tell me: how can the United States help you?”
But then she dies 24 years later. As people are wont to do. Her funeral at the Selina Meyer Presidential Library is a sparsely attended non-event that’s upstaged by the news of Tom Hanks’ passing. The current U.S. President Richard Splett (Sam Richardson) has already brokered a historic three-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and seems poised to undo the rest of the damage that a Meyer presidency hath wrought.
In the end though, the point of Veep isn’t to see evil punished. It’s to see evil at work and revel in its awful, yet comedic destruction. How closely Veep resembles actual American politics remains up for debate. What’s not is that few shows ever captured pure narcissistic malice more effectively.
All seven episodes of Veep are available to stream on Max in the U.S. and Sky and Now in the U.K.
The post The Veep Finale Remains a Satisfyingly Evil Text appeared first on Den of Geek.
