‘Veep’ Season Finale: ‘I Hate This Country’
In the midst of a season finale that felt — curiously, almost alarmingly — like a series finale, Veep’s embattled President Selina Meyer stared blankly and said, “I hate this country.” Unlike Game of Thrones, this finale was no triumph for its core female character. Coming at the end of a weekend in which TV news covered the despair, rage, joy, and confusion over the implications of the Brexit vote, Veep seemed uncannily in tune with the mixed moods of both Veep characters and Veep viewers.
If I didn’t know that Veep had been picked up for a sixth season, I’d say the Season 5 finale was a fitting end to the series. In a startlingly swift reversal of expectations, Hugh Laurie’s Tom James failed to gain the presidency, and a stunned, bummed Selina exits the White House — or tries to: Even her Nixonian departure, boarding a helicopter and turning to give a dissonant victory wave, was scuttled when the mechanically disabled chopper had to return to the White House grounds.
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It was, as so many episodes of Veep have been this season, a wonderfully fast-paced, corrosively funny, deeply cynical yet touching and moving episode. I’ve been startled at how much the show has surged under new showrunner David Mandel after creator Armando Iannucci’s departure, never thinking the show could equal the British Iannucci’s acid disdain for American politics. Instead, Mandel has only deepened that disdain, hilariously and yet with an undercoating of tragic truth.
Irony abounded this night. It was loyal, soft-spoken Gary (Tony Hale) who melted down most fiercely when the results were in and the Meyer-James team had lost to a new president — the odiously phony Laura Montez (Andrea Savage). When Selina chose to get blackout drunk in the wake of defeat, it was the polite, terribly uncomfortable Richard (Sam Richardson) with whom she shared her woozy thoughts. (In one of the episode’s numerous funny side monologues, the babbling Richard figures out that he “auntie” is actually his mother — Veep’s rare entry into Game of Thrones territory.)
To make sure that we really understood that the next season will feature a postpresidential, and most likely postgovernment, Selina, the episode took us right through the Montez inauguration, with the oath administered by a man of the cloth played by producer (and former New York Times theater critic) Frank Rich swearing in the new prez.
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By far my favorite non-Selina moment occurred when Kevin Dunn’s Ben and Gary Cole’s Kent bumped into each other at a literary agency, each planning their next career move, and Ben jokingly quizzed Kent on his supposed plans for a YA novel series — a taunt that, of course, the literal-minded Kent took seriously.
Ultimately, however, it was Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s amazingly sustained performance, this year as a placeholder president intent on locking down her legacy by freeing Tibet, who carried the show on her small but stiletto-bolstered shoulders. Yes, she spoke her inner truth when she said, “I wish I’d won,” but her outer armor is dented yet still in place. Selina Meyer has been denied the moment Hillary Clinton is also now seeking — Veep is going to give us the glimpse of a first female president that will doubtless be scary and amusing. But think of it: a postpresidency Selina, set loose to say what she really thinks about things, in public? Even for HBO, the oncoming sarcastic obscenities may prove a challenge. Congratulations on your brilliant loss, Selina; long may you run.
