"-Uh.. i like jizz
-Ah shit. He ain't what he used to be."
Goodbye Veep, one of the greatest comedies of the decade, if not the best.
[8.5/10] “What did it cost you?” “Everything.”
It’s silly to try to connect Veep with Avengers: Infinity War, but it’s also hard to disaggregate them in my mind. Selina Meyer is not Thanos. Her goal is one of direct personal ambition than Thanos’s faux-altruistic goal. But the costs, at least in a spiritual sense, are the same.
Selina has her wish. After so much striving, so much conniving, so many lines crossed, she becomes President -- not just for a few months, but for a full term. And all she has to do to get there is: make a deal with the Chinese to let them undo the diplomatic liberation that made her politically relevant again, throw her nearest advisor into a position to have another heart attack, make a ignorant and repugnant man her Vice President at the expense of her other nearest advisor who resigns in disgust, relegate her one time protege to working for him without letting her advance from where she started, ensuring that another of the younger members of her team is out of politics, outlawing gay marriage to get votes but firmly and finally estrange her from her daughter, and throw the one person who genuinely, truly loved her under the bus.
In short, Selina sold her soul. That is impressive, if only because I didn’t think Selina had a soul left to sell. This show has constantly been about Team Meyer being utterly and completely mercenary, having no scruples to get in the way of climbing the political ladder, and being happy to sharply elbow one another whenever necessary or possible. Selina in particular has been happy to throw anything and everyone to the wolves when it suits her.
And yet, there’s something about the change that erupts in her when a (maybe?) dying Ben tells her that she knows what to do, that feels like she enters a new realm of darkness. With one blistering dress down, she eviscerates Tom James’s chief of staff and orchestrates her unexpected rival’s untimely demise with a MeToo moment. She sells out to whatever interests are necessary to get her the nomination, no matter the effects on her allies and erstwhile friend. She’s even willing to make a pact with the most repugnant man, who brandishes the most repugnant ideas, if it gets her what she wants.
There’s well-placed irony in the fact that, after all of the insults, all of his ridiculous ideas, all of his dump truck of deplorables speeches and gestures, Jonah ends up in the VP slot. With all the horse-trading and compartmentalizing going on here, it’s the ultimate gesture of futility. Selina knows full well, and vents, at how useless a drawer the Vice Presidency is to be shoved into and forgotten about. Having that be the culmination of Jonah’s obsequious journey feels appropriate.
That said, the genuine stock and trade of politics has never been Veep’s specialty, and so some of the brokered convention mishegoss to get to Selina’s ascendance and Jonah’s relegation becomes tiring after a while. The delegate-whipping and backroom dealing is a good opportunity for Veep to work in some final blasts from its arsenal of insults, and give the usual rondelay from its foul-mouthed politicians one last airing. But beyond the satire of Jonah’s “terrorist math” prediction coming true, the episode doesn't really kick into gear until Selina goes over to the darkest of the dark side once and for all.
But what does it get her? Well, the presidency, for one thing. And hey, that’s not nothing! But when we see Selina sitting in the Oval Office (once again buttressed by Sue!), being the President who won’t let the veep’s staff in rather than living on the other side of that arrangement, she doesn't seem happy. She’s still reflexively asking for Gary. Her staff is now made up of strangers. And in the end, she’s utterly alone, something that, as conveyed through Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s outstanding performance in the series finale, seems to be getting to her.
All of this striving and backstabbing and cutthroat Washington D.C. politicking still doesn't seem to have made her happy, still hasn’t fulfilled her in the way it was supposed to. The opening of the season asked repeatedly why Selina wanted to be President, and the closest she could come to an answer is “because this country owes it to me.” When that’s the only reason you want something -- because you like the idea of having it, not the thing itself -- then attaining will, as the finale suggests, only leave you alone and empty.
It’s a surprisingly powerful statement from a show that had seemed to adopt a Seinfeld-esque, “no learning, no hugging” policy. The true chutzpah comes in the show’s final segment, which jumps twenty-four years in the future, and you see that these years and years of naked political ambition left Selina’s hangers-on without much either.
Ben is dead. Kent looks like a shaggy wildman who raises livestock. Amy married Bill Ericson and chose never to have kids (an interesting echo given where things started for her this season). Dan is out of politics, never grew up, and is now selling real estate. Jonah was impeached, but is still married to his half-sister, apparently. And poor Gary is still devoted to the object of his courtly affection, despite all she’s done to him, laying the special lipstick on her coffin in a moment that has more emotional resonance than any comedy this foul should be able to muster.
Meanwhile, Richard, the only person in Selina’s coterie with any ethics or morality whatsoever, is the current President, having been reelected in a landslide. All of the shameless political backstabbers ended up discarded, depressed, or somewhere far short of their goals, and the one of their number who was too decent to be real, who shared none of their ambition, is the one who ended up succeeding better than any of them. In some ways, Veep’s finale is a fairytale. In others, it’s the final chapter of a tragedy.
(The one exception to all of this is Mike who, in a hilarious running gag that reaches its apex here, manages to consistently fail upward in the media world, with his boneheaded schtick being seen as endearing and a part of his charm. There’s a lesson, and an implicit critique, in that too.)
What did all of that selling out and betrayal and darkening of the soul net Selina? A one-term presidency that seems to have left her overshadowed by her successors, discarded by history, and bumped from the evening news by the death of Tom Hanks. Selina thought that all of this scratching and clawing would not only bring her happiness and fulfilment, but also a legacy. Veep declares, with her yonic Presidential Library full of disdainful rivals and allies and shoddy stumbles, that she ended up with none of the above.
Veep is a deeply cynical show, about government, about politicians, and about people. And yet, in the end, it delivered one of the most remarkably optimistic, and even moralistic messages imaginable: that the calculated climbers lose, even when they win, and that the good will ultimately prevail. The series was always one measure of caricature beyond the real world and one measure of hitting too close to home. But in its final hour, it buries its protagonist, and with her earthly remains, buries everything she aspired to and represented in the process.
Gary and the lipstick was an unexpected hit right in the feels.
Gonna miss these awful people.
Honestly, I can't imagine a more honest (both hearthbreaking, hilarious and fitting) end to this show. This episode was the cherry on the top of it all. I'll miss you, Veep! And also: big thank you for existing in the first place.
Richard Splett: two-term president, brought peace to Middle East, won the Nobel prize.
Jonah: only ever got to be a veep... and was impeached!
I can't with this show... will miss it so much. I don't think any comedies could compare right now.
A perfect ending to a perfect show. Wow I’m gonna miss these characters.
Brilliant end to one of the great TV shows. Julia Louis-Dreyfus at her brilliant best. And how now does it compare to "The Thick of it"?
i think i'm in grief ? goodbye veep :sob:
idk i hated how they hold all the meltdowns in this for selina only i wanted so bad to see catherine and gary to just FUCKING SPILL or something &¨%$¨&*() anyway goodbye veep
incredible finale! everything was so funny and smart! the scene of selina alone in the oval office was GREAT. i couldn’t stop laughing with all the meltdowns selina had in this episode, and i couldn’t stop crying watching the scene of gary being arrested! catherine celebrating her mother’s death watching the funeral coverage on TV was hilarious. amy marrying bill was random but i loved seeing everyone in the funeral. overall everything was GREAT. perfect ending to an incredible show. and the tom hanks joke had me screaming. absolutely fantastic!
I don’t think I have ever hated a character as much as I hate Selina Meyer. Watching her break bad during the episode was something terrifying. Fantastic acting and fantastic writing. Goodbye VEEP.
IN MICHAEL SCOTT'S VOICE NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I WANT MOOOOOOORE!!!!
Quite the ending. The whole jumping ahead in time is a bit ~ but Selina Meyer's descent into the presidency makes for a very good character arc that goes even beyond the realm of comedy, especially when she betrays poor Gary.
I did not like the future segment. The rest was great. Especially the thing that happened to Gary.
Shout by Paul JBlockedParent2019-05-13T09:35:29Z
That was quite an ending, one of the best comedies to ever grace television, will miss it.....