Goodbye Veep: the nastiest, sweariest, funniest show on TV is over
Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ political antiheroine has shared her last insult, leaving and behind an audaciously meanspirited comedy that will stand the test of time
In politics, the saying goes that everyone worries Washington is as cutthroat as House of Cards, and wants to believe it’s as nobly run as The West Wing. And yet the closest to the truth of the situation, to the idiocy and narcissism and vitriol fueling the US government, is Veep.
That Armando Iannucci’s blistering satire of the executive branch has persisted through two diametrically opposed real-life presidencies testifies to the universality of its viewpoint. Proper nouns change, administrations give way to new administrations, but malice and incompetence are forever. The series will come to a conclusion after seven years this Sunday, and in an amusingly Seinfeldian fashion: Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s hapless presidential contender Selina Meyer made a deal with the devil, accepting under-the-table assistance from a meddlesome China with the election, and now faces some rather troubling treason charges.