“Our show started out as a political satire but it now feels
more like a sobering documentary.”
Long-running comedies, especially in the US, tend to take it for
granted that their characters need to develop, which generally means
to improve as people.
In Veep, show creator Armando Iannucci and his successor,
showrunner David Mandel,
understood that Selina Meyer needed to evolve over the seasons, too.
It’s just that here that Selina’s character development consists
of her getting strikingly worse.
“Olu-wakemi Talibah Talbot.
That sounds like a terrorist to me, folks.”
“Talibah, Taliban”
And the finale made it clear that
in fact we’ve been watching the seven season origin story of a supervillain.
"Ma'am, the ICC has issued a warrant for your arrest for war crimes."
"That's because autistic Barbie here tattled on me over
the wedding drone strike."
"Which one?"
"Nope."
Selina’s evolution mirrors a noticeable shift in American politics,
"As the former President of the United States, truth and justice
can gargle my balls."
which have grown bleaker, meaner,
and more shameless in the years since the show began.
"This entire country is getting more disgusting by the second."
"That's a demo we're targeting mostly on Facebook."
Veep’s predecessor, The Thick of It, Ianucci’s take on British politics,
captured the farce and folly of the modern political circus.
"Jesus Christ, see you, you're a
F-[BLEEP] omnishambles, that's what you are."
Veep carried on this mission in an American context,
and did it so well that this satire was widely hailed by insiders
as TV’s most realistic version of DC.
Yet the show faced a potential identity crisis after
the election of Donald Trump.
As the contemporary environment became
more openly toxic and antagonistic,
Veep responded by going darker, too,
"I mean, obviously,
while it is regrettable the loss of innocent lives, you know,
I will never ever apologize for keeping Americans safe."
molding its characters into
recognizable symbols of very recent and raw world events.
"Math was created by Muslims.
Yeah, and we teach this Islamic math to children.
Math teachers are terrorists."
Thus the story transformed from a tale of hapless, mostly harmless absurdity,
"Why does it keep doing the turning?
Oh, High-level West Wings after was recently overheard calling
the president the c-word."
"Oh, wow."
"This is broken, by the way."
into one of pernicious, disturbing and destructive absurdity.
"God f-[BLEEP] America.
No more math!"
Jonah’s obnoxious nature and narcissistic man-child persona
become a lot more dangerous as he rallies crowds around
hate-filled, bigoted rhetoric,
"Algebra?
More like Al-Jazeera."
standing in for the rise of Trumpism.
"This is a horrific country that is
falling apart because it is full of people who are different than me."
Amy, once defined by her hunched, stressy shoulders, physically
and ideologically makes herself over as a Kellyanne Conway figure.
"Jonah Ryan is the only candidate who's honest about his dishonesty."
Mike’s rise in media parodies the decline of journalism into
a mindless entertainment-driven 24-hour news cycle.
"What's wrong with this suit?"
"Oh, it's not Network."
as captured in the irony of him being the one the Chinese government
deems stupid enough to unwittingly deliver their message to Selina
"He said President Liu is watching the election with great interest."
without posing any risk of cracking the biggest story of his times.
“Liu sent you a message inside Mike.
A misfortune cookie.”
Kent’s departure gets at the way that the modern obsession with
polling and statistics leaves our democracy vulnerable to
the influence of demagogues,
"Do the goddamn Islamic math, you're the numbers guy."
"F--[BLEEP] the numbers!"
leading to outcomes that rational citizens like him can’t stomach.
"Jonah Ryan as Vice President?
This is a totally unacceptable outcome."
Selina continues her parallels to Hillary Clinton,
from the philandering husband
"Andrew is very hard to get rid of.
He's like the herpes virus or an unwanted child."
"In this case, he gave me both."
and the investigations into the foundation that bears their name
“I refuse to allow you to implicate me in your financial misdeeds, ma'am.”
“They're not misdeeds.
They were exploited opportunities”
to the couple’s single daughter growing up in the limelight
of her famous parents.
Ianucci even told actress Sarah Sutherland to study footage
of Chelsea Clinton’s body language in public appearances.
Selina echoes Hillary early on in the stir her haircut causes
“Rebranded!
What do we think?
I love it,”
and later in the way she rejuvenates
her career through international diplomacy.
In Season seven,
we see a comical volume of balloons falling on her
at the convention,
and her expressing the feeling that it's her turn
"It is my goddamn turn."
while she struggles to find a clear campaign message.
"Amy, why would you want to be president?"
"So I can nuke America?"
"That's actually not bad."
"It's pretty good actually."
She's threatened at one point with the punishment of no political future.
"You don't have a political future, Selina, that is your punishment."
And she confronts the unfairness of being the first woman to break
into so many rooms full of men
"The party and the nation will never forget all that door
you pushed open.
Yes, backward and in heels,"
only to face criticism from a new generation of women who
take for granted a more progressive set of starting assumptions.
“So how about giving a little thanks to the women like me who
built the ladder that you use to
get up onto your soapbox?
How about for once in your life you stop whining,
you stop complaining, and just man up?”
The final season throws in all these real-world references
"Thousands of women have joined #NotMe to say they've never dated you
and never will."
"Okay, thousands of unattractive women,"
but then mixes them up and reconfigures them.
"If Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her."
"What would you say to someone who might ask,
how can they marry their step siblings?"
"I'm not her brother, and I never was."
"Except for that one year."
"It's exactly what Woody Allen did,
I'm clearly no more of a pervert than he is."
So, for example, the equivalents of
Hillary and Trump end up on a ticket together.
And this, perhaps, could be read as a subtle suggestion that
establishment liberals are more complicit in bringing about the
phenomenon of Trump than they’d like to think.
"M’am you can’t let an embittered, narcissistic man-child be one
heartbeat away from the presidency,
let alone be the president."
On a broader level, all these mirrors send the message that,
while on the day-to-day level,
politics does feel like a meaningless mess of ridiculous moments
and opportunistic power-grabs,
that doesn’t mean that the farce is without consequences.
"Kill her!"
"Yeah!
I mean not her, man, but yeah sure."
Selina might remind us of another female leader on an HBO show
who went dark in the end
"Women, men, and children have suffered too long beneath the wheel."
The veep was never an inspirational figure as Khaleesi
the mother of dragons once was,
but like Daenerys Targaryen she’s a groundbreaking female leader
who feels she has to give up her principles to win her Iron Throne,
can’t resist the pull of power, and is shaped by a toxic, brutal status quo.
"I was a game changer.
I took a dump on the glass ceiling,
and I shaved my [BLEEP] in the sink of the old boys club."
Selina’s perversion of the concept of sacrifice might also remind us
of another recent villain in a big franchise: The Avengers’ Thanos,
"You kill and torture, and you call it mercy."
who is willing to kill his own daughter.
"I ignored my destiny once.
I cannot do that again.
Even for you."
And these parallels underscore that all of these popular stories are,
to varying degrees, speaking to a deep and important crisis of ethics
going on in our current world.
"Madame President, how do you respond to people sick and tired of
politicians offering nothing but thoughts and prayers
when it comes to mass shootings?"
"I want to offer them my th--
my mindfulness and meditations unto the Lord on their behalf."
Veep subtly illustrates that the problems our country faces
follow from Washington’s deeply entrenched culture of expedience
and empty opportunism
"Jonah, your anti-vaccination message is bringing together an unheard of mix
of Orthodox Jews, uneducated fringe conspiracists,
and Kombucha-juicing private school moms."
"That's the real America."
which is embodied in Selina.
"I didn't come to North Carolina to lose.
I don't even like to
change planes here."
Her determination to get ahead by any means necessary with the shrug that
“that’s just how it’s always been,” is reinforced by the song that plays
as she makes her deal with the devil to get the nomination.
“We didn’t start the fire,
it was always burning
since the world’s been turning,"
a song which is also a callback to when she once said
"Billy Joel is gonna sing."
Nothing is sacred to Selina.
"Federal Lands."
"They need to be protected."
"We need more drilling."
"For drilling purposes, let’s frack the crap out of it."
We never learn what party she’s in,
and it doesn’t matter which party she’s in,
because she doesn’t believe in or stand for anything.
"Catherine it is just the party platform.
It’s like a to-do list
of things we’re not going to do."
Despite being the first woman president,
"She's written an autobiography.
A Woman First, First Woman."
she’s a terrible feminist.
"An all-female ticket?
I don't think so.
There American people work hard for a living,
they don't need that kind of bullshit."
Depending on what is most profitable in the moment,
she will capitalize on misogynism
"God bless America for hating women almost as much as I do."
or seize on “Me Too” movement feelings
"Murdered by Tom James."
"That is actually all me, I will take credit for that."
while not supporting the actual women in her life in the slightest.
"She aborted her unborn fetus."
"Play, well dock her a day's pay then."
"What's your mother done?"
"She used our wedding as a diversion to escape
from the Norwegian National Police."
"Smart."
As it takes Selina’s “by any means necessary” mantra to its extreme,
the finale shows how what initially seemed inane and laughable is in fact
powerfully sinister and poisonous.
"You are the worst thing that has happened to this country
since food and buckets and maybe slavery."
And it reminds us that, even if we do live in a corrupt world
that’s dominated by self- interested, rich monsters,
we shouldn’t be taking it for granted
that we have to elect leaders who are terrible people
“Well, if Thornhill strayed once, there might be others.
Maybe a crack whore, if we're lucky.”
“Call me naive, but isn't that unethical?”
“You're naive.
Welcome to politics.”
It is still possible to stand for something
and accomplish something good.
In the future world we’re presented with,
"Well then it's a good thing you got impeached
and they didn't have to invite you."
there’s a silver lining.
It’s not the case that everyone had to be like Selina to make it.
Kemi Talbot, whose progressive liberal values appeal
to the younger generation
"Who's time is it?"
[CROWD] "Our time!"
ends up being a two-term president.
And the reason Kemi really bothers Selina so much
"I cannot stand her."
may be because she represents a future that actually has some ideals
and can’t fully be bought.
"Did President Meyer find a way to steal the nomination from me
like she stole South Carolina?"
"Stealing South Carolina is the
bedrock of our political system, senator.
If you can't figure out
how to steal South Carolina, you have no business being president.
And after Kemi, it gets even better.
President Richard Splett goes on
to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"President Splett's historic three-state-solution Middle East
peace agreement, for which he won the Nobel Prize."
And what’s perfect about Richard’s ultimate ascendancy
is that he’s the inverse of Selina.
Splett has always come across as a ridiculous character
for his lack of a filter.
"You have a Doctorate?"
"Two.
Constitutional law and veterinary medicine,
which was my fallback."
"But you were getting my coffee."
"Which is much harder because you know, you have
so many different moods, like half-caf and full can and macchiato."
and obliviousness to all social cues
“I was Rick's nephew.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“This is Cowgill's nephew.”
“If they tell her who they are, you don't have to say anything.”
Yet these characteristics follow
from the fact that he’s incapable of lying or falseness.
"Sydney Purcell, the super generous guy offered me all sorts
of great stuff, like brand-new kitchen appliances or a brand new hot tub
like the Lieutenant Governor has, but
I'm not supposed to talk about that."
And in the present storyline we see him rising due to this innate,
involuntary integrity.
He’s good to his core, without really even trying to be,
and this is why he ends up being a wonderful president.
So if soulless Selina’s playing dirty represents the hellish state
of affairs we’re living through today,
"Restore faith in democracy?
We couldn’t do that even if we wanted to."
the ending of Veep encourages us to buck up.
Things can get better.
"We are still a nation of laws."
"Ish."
"Esque."
"History is calling.
And it won't go to voicemail."
Hi, guys, it's Susannah and Debra,
and we are The Take.
If you like what we're doing and you're new here, please subscribe.
And if you have the means, and you want to,
please consider supporting us on Patreon.
And there's also a new feature here
on YouTube where you can hit that join button and become a member right here.
Thank you so much for watching.