Veep (final season)

If any additional evidence were required (and it is not) probative of the exponential rate of deterioration in American political discourse, HBO's Veep is exhibit A.  Although I don't entirely remember the comedy series' first season, I think that the titular character, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, played her part, VP Selena Meyer, a bit like a starry-eyed, if exceedingly foul-mouthed, Mary Tyler Moore -- she was a little naïve, an attractive earnest woman surrounded by vicious political operatives of the opposite sex, always willing to use her physical appeal, if necessary, but, generally, pragmatic and well-meaning.  The real villains were the manipulative men around her:  sordid campaign managers and press secretaries, venal donors, and, of course, a menagerie of narcissistic, wholly self-serving politicians.  There were some fairly dark episodes (in one show, Selena has an abortion and, then, claims her young female factotum, Amy, was the one who needed the procedure), but, by and large, the audience had the sense that Selena was ineffectual but not evil.  The show's final season strips away any illusions that the audience might have about Selena's character and motives:  she is shown to be a destructive, wholly unprincipled monster, a sort of female demon nakedly embodying the will to power and nothing else.  This is dispiriting but, in accord, with our dysfunctional national politics -- Donald Trump is affirmatively evil and engages in criminal conduct; since Selena Meyer represents a caricatured female version of President Trump, then, of course she must also be flamboyantly evil and viciously criminal.  Her character has hardened and her potty-mouth is now overflowing with extravagant and horrific vituperation. (The leading lady has been ill and, although this ungallant to note, Dreyfuss looks old and gaunt in some of the episodes -- her features are sharp as a razor.)  The show's dialogue has always been highly stylized, a torrent of rococo insults and degrading characterizations of other politicians and, of course, the body politic in general -- Meyer customarily refers to her electorate as "morons" or worse.  But, in these final shows, the level of invective achieves an almost Dante-esque fury -- vicious verbal assaults, including Selena spectacularly humiliating the mistress of an opposing politician, reach a thunderous level; the verbal cruelty amounts to soul-murder.  Is any of this funny?  Not really.  Rather, the show aspires to a kind of lacerating Swiftian satire, not so much comical as simply horrifying. 

In broad terms, the half-hour episodes in the final series involve Selena's quest to be nominated for President by her party.  (Her actual party affiliation is unclear -- it's simply assumed that neither party has any real distinguishing characteristics and each are simply vehicles for the ambition of their monstrous political operatives.)  Selena's lust for the nomination erodes what little remains of her moral compass.  She colludes with the Chinese who hack into the vote in North Carolina and trades Tibet for Peking's support.  In the final episode involving "horse trading" for nominating convention delegates, she agrees to abolish gay marriage and supports fracking on government lands in exchange for the votes of Western and Intermountain delegates.  On a trip to Oslo to accept a secondary Nobel peace prize (based on her alleged support of Tibet), she inadvertently reveals that her regime has committed various war crimes with drone-assisted missile strikes.  The International Criminal Court at the Hague issues a writ for  her arrest and she has to seek refuge in the Finnish embassy -- the Finnish Prime Minister, an attractive hyper-competitive blonde, apparently is lesbian and lusts after Selena.  When the American public learns that Selena has killed innumerable Afghans and Pakistanis with drone strikes, she surges in the polls -- Americans like cruelty (as witness Trump's success).  With the assistance of an actual Soviet era war-criminal and torturer from Eastern Europe, Selena escapes the embassy and while flying back to the United States learns to her dismay that her popularity is now waning -- gun-camera footage of the drone strike on the Afghan wedding shows that the bombing also killed an elephant and the public denounces her for murdering the animal (not the people).  Her opponents are no better.  Her chief rival, Jonah, is an idiot from New Hampshire, a swine who sexually harasses everyone around him, is married to his own sister, and panders to the anti-vaccine crowd.  When this candidate discovers that algebra was an invention of the Arabs, he denounces mathematics as "terrorist math."  This earns him a huge following and, when a real terrorist shooter is revealed to be a trigonometry teacher, Jonah rises spectacularly in the polls. Selena has recruited for her VP a hapless, policy-minded Iraq war veteran whose legs were destroyed by an IED.  (The show indulges in a series of fantastically cruel jokes about this man's disability -- this is cringe comedy at its most extreme and the show's screenwriters apparently feel licensed to indulge themselves in this sort of thing because the "witticisms" are uttered by characters defined as amoral and criminal.)  On the basis of political expediency, Selena makes the wounded war vet nominate her for President -- then, she betrays him by naming Jonah as her running mate.  In an earlier episode, Selena has been complicit in the murder of her ex-husband, a philanderer who has periodically appeared in the show to blackmail her with various requests for political favors and money.  (Despite his disloyalty, Selena, who is sexually promiscuous, sometimes sleeps with him.)  Among all of the self-serving and vain characters, one figure stands out for his unimpeachable loyalty to Selena -- this is Gary, Selena's "body man":  he carries her purse with make-up, tampons, various sorts of pills and narcotics and remains pathetically loyal to his boss right up the show's penultimate shot.  Selena rewards Gary's unconditional love with insults and abuse.  At the show's climax, after Gary has just put on her lipstick, Selena delivers her acceptance speech -- she has pinned the murder of  her ex-husband on Gary and, while she is speaking, we see FBI agents hauling him away.  (At the end of the show, at Selena's funeral 25 years after the events chronicled in the series, the surviving characters all mock Gary for limping up to her casket and putting her favorite lipstick on top of its lid -- he's been in Federal prison for 20 years.)  The final episode focuses not just on bad conduct but something worse:  betrayal.  Selena betrays the Dalai Lama who is counting on her to free Tibet; she betrays her lesbian daughter who is an advocate for gay marriage; she betrays her most loyal supporter, Gary, and, in fact, has him sent to prison.  In the White House, we see her agreeing to use food as a weapon at the behest of the Israeli prime minister.  For a moment, the camera lingers on her face before she takes the call from the Israeli leader -- she has a look of blank and total despair on her face, but this quickly turns to resolve and she's perky on the phone:   of course, the Palestinians are always "whining", she agrees, and have to be punished by being systematically starved.  In the coda, we see excerpts from Selena Meyer's funeral -- she's buried at her Presidential library, a vaginal-themed building to celebrate that she was the first female president.  The pallbearers are confounded by the vulva-shaped entrance to the mausoleum and can't get the phallic casket inside:  "It seems to be too tight," the media commentator says, "They're having trouble getting inside...oh, there...it's slipped right in."  Unfortunately for Selena,  Tom Hanks has died on the same day as her funeral and the air waves are occupied with tributes to the actor. 

I don't know what to make of the show.  One principle is that the more incompetent the character, the higher they aspire and the more successful they become.  A nitwit African-American aid replaces a dog as the mayor of Lurleen, Iowa and, then, by a series of improbable events, rises to become lieutenant governor, then, governor of Iowa and, at last, the President of the United States.  There are nasty wisecrack about places like the Carolinas, Iowa, and Montana.  In the final season, one of Selena's operatives, Amy (now working for Jonah), has an abortion and the show strives to engineer the most tasteless and vile jokes about the process and the vacuum equipment used.  The jokes are simply hateful -- they don't make any political point as far as I can see and they aren't directly relevant to any theme in the show.  Once again, I suppose the show's writers would justify these jokes as being indicative of the soullessness of the characters uttering them -- but someone had to write these jokes and, presumably, felt they were entertaining or comical enough to include them in show.  So the claim that the jokes are made by vicious characters and shouldn't be attributed to the scriptwriters is a little hollow.  Someone is taking way too much pleasure in making exuberantly racist, sexist, and fascist jokes.  The show's descent into pure political and moral nihilism is compelling, but it's not funny.