Veep Season 5 Review/Thoughts
“I want Secretary of State, ’cause that is the least you can do.” “I was thinking vice president.” “That’s literally the least you can do.”
If that was the series finale, it’s a hell of a note to end on. When creator Armando Iannucci announced he would be leaving after the end of the fourth season (which won a well deserved Emmy for outstanding comedy) it was a bit alarming. Showrunners have come and go on various shows over the years but as of late it’s something that raises a red flag. The quality of a show has typically gone down with a new creative team over the last few years. The fourth season of Community was outright disaster, The Boondocks became a self parody of its once thought provoking self, and Dexter derailed itself so quickly it was hard for it to ever regain its credibility. A lot was on David Mandel to somehow keep Veep’s quality alive, but he not only managed to bring the show to its best season yet, but a possible endgame for the DC staff we’ve come to know and love throughout its run.
That’s the weird thing about Veep, it was such a hard show to get into in the first place. These are awful individuals; people who are not even remotely qualified to work in government still manage to have jobs at the end of the day. They treat others like garbage, come up with hurtful insults and overtake positions in Washington, it’s the anti Parks and Recreation and the show House of Cards wishes it could demonstrate. It’s awkward at first but once all of this is realized, it becomes an incredibly funny and one of HBO’s most ambitious shows since the days of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Within this season, Selina Myer (Juila Louis-Dreyfus) tried whatever she could to still keep the presidency after the election ended in a tie. She tried to get Jonah Ryan (Timothy Simmons) to run for congressman in New Hampshire so he can vote for her in the house election; she blamed China for hacking into her phone over an offensive tweet, she tried to fire staff members that have called her a “cunt” over the years she’s been in the White House, and neglected her daughter in order to seek out a deal to free Tibet. It is pure ridiculousness at its finest and we got to have some great guest appearances from John Slattery, Hugh Laurie, and Peter MacNicol. Don’t be surprised come September that Veep overtakes the Emmy nominations for comedy, because this ensemble gave it their all for the fifth year in a row, and offered more chilling performances.
Tony Hale’s meltdown in the finale is one of the greatest moments in the show, realizing that he’ll be out of a job soon because of the failure of his colleges to keep Selina Meyer as the president and calling them out for it. “Well, that just kind of made this whole year worth it.” ~Ben Cafferty (Kevin Dunn). People really wanted Amy Poehler to get a win for role as Leslie Knope in Parks and Recreation, but there’s a reason JLD won in that category for four years in a row. The folks behind Veep work so hard to make a wildly wonderful comedy and she kills it each and every year it’s been on the air.
Lastly, let’s talk about the documentary episode because that was some excellent pay off the show spending a minor part of this season build towards. The entire episode was painfully hilarious. No really, I needed hit pause ten minutes into the episode because my sides were aching from laughing so hard. Jonah making commentary about how he’s getting, “so much pussy I’m shitting clit” only to be yelled at by his uncle (Peter MacNicol) and reveal he’s in a classroom with younger children around is so perfectly brilliant it’s hard not to at least be amused by all of this.
Veep’s future remains to be seen. As great as that finale and season in general was, the show does not have much life left in it. Unless the show decides to jump ahead a few years into the future to rally a campaign to get her presidency back, there’s a reasonable chance this next season will be the end of the show. It’s better to end a high note, than to spend another few years trying to determine how it will all end. It sucks, I’ll miss seeing these oddballs but the show will be better off for it. It took awhile to get into Veep, but I’m glad I stuck with it. It’s been an immensely satisfying season, and the future looks more wildly creative than ever before.
