"It's impossible not to use the word 'searing' for Veep, particularly this year, because as the finale proved in multiple ways, there's more than a little bit of anger in the jokes, anger at not just the coarsening of American politics (that's been going on forever), but the venality of it as well," says Tim Goodman. "The finale made clear that was a worthy point to make. In the end Veep decided that the awful aspects of Selina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), which were her defining characteristics, would need to go that one inch further, moving from the thing about her that made the audience die laughing to the thing that made her truly despicable. Selina was always a terrible person. It's not like there was some Walter White-like Breaking Bad evolution. Veep just decided to be more starkly honest about the toll of her presidential ambitions. It was a very bold decision from writer (and director) David Mandel and company — no doubt, Louis-Dreyfus had to be all-in on the decision — because it wasn't just that it shifted the emphasis from hilariously awful to unacceptably awful when it came to Selina and her craven pursuit of the presidency; it pushed Veep, at several points near the end of the nearly 48-minute episode, into dramatic territory it hadn't trod before. Luckily, Louis-Dreyfus is an actress, not just a fabulous comedic actress, and she sold the shift beautifully, depicting how absolute power in the form of gaining the presidency corrupts absolutely."
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TOPICS: Veep, HBO, David Mandel, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tony Hale, Series Finales