'Veep' Season 6 Teaser: Selina Like Patient Zero, But For Democracy
Veep is currently facing a very strange challenge that the show couldn't possibly have seen coming when Armando Iannucci first created it several years ago: namely, the fact that real-life politics has far surpassed any twisted insanity that a bunch of TV writers could ever come up with. Since the inauguration, each day has yielded enough blunders to account for a season's worth of storylines on Veep, and our actual politicians are starting to make Jonah Ryan look smart and decent. And none of this is really funny — it's actually kind of terrifying.
So will Veep season 6 try and reckon with our new (and horrible) political reality? Will it accidentally comment on recent events? (You know, the way every movie seems to be "about Trump" now despite the fact that all of them were conceived and shot well before the 2016 election.) Or will it blithely continue on, as oblivious to the real world as its characters are? We'll find out when Veep returns in a couple of months, but in the meantime here's a trailer to remind you of where we left off with Selina Meyer. Watch the first Veep season 6 teaser below.
Veep Season 6 Teaser
There's not much about that teaser that seems to comment on current events, though I did sigh a bit at her line about being "the first female president." It wasn't so long ago that millions of Americans thought we were about to get our first female president, even if November feels like it was ten years ago.
Anyway, to refresh your memory, Veep season 4 ended on a cliffhanger, with Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Bill O'Brien (Brad Leland) tied for electoral college votes. Season 5 saw Meyer and O'Brien continuing their grueling battle in court and in Congress, and ended with both of them losing out to O'Brien's running mate, Laura Montez (Andrea Savage). In the finale, Montez was inaugurated as president and Selina made her exit from the White House.
Showrunner David Mandel has promised that "there is no twist" coming — that Selina is really and truly out of the White House — and the first Veep season 6 teaser makes good on his word. In the brief snippets we see, Selina is clearly struggling to adjust to post-presidency life, and tackling this new chapter of her life with the same dizzying combination of foul-mouthed cynicism and wild-eyed optimism. As always, faithful Gary (Tony Hale) is by her side. So is Richard (Sam Richardson). Sadly, the rest of her former staff are nowhere to be seen. I know it's probably unrealistic to expect that Selina's more ambitious staffers will continue following her around now that she's no longer president, but hopefully the writers will find some way to work Amy and Dan and the rest of the gang back into the show.
Veep returns for season 6 on April 16 at 10:30 PM.