The first few seasons of Veep found humor in the minutiae of a politician with a huge title — Vice President of the United States — and comparatively limited powers. The last two seasons flipped that narrative, as that politician became the most powerful figure in the world — only to bring the futility of her former work to the presidential office through equivocal, pandering policies.
But Selina Meyer’s non-partisan (seemingly center-democrat) stagnancy reads as practically nostalgic amidst the current political landscape. With the 2016 election, the type of American politicking Veep satirized — by never expressly naming Selina Meyers’ party and focusing rather on her administration’s ideologically devoid opportunism — was cast into the fringes of American politics, and I’ve wondered what Veep would sink its teeth into now.
The first trailer for the series’ sixth season provides a glimpse into the show’s future. (Season 5 spoilers ahead.) At the end of Season 5, Selina Meyer was unceremoniously stripped of the short-lived presidential title she earned by virtue of an unprecedented electoral tie. Now that she’s no longer in office, she’s trying to fortify an empty legacy and also continuing to grapple with how sexism in politics may have hindered whatever she may have been able to get done.
Perhaps the way for a show that avoided partisan politics to not seem out of touch with a country that’s so deeply partisan is to depict Selina Meyer as someone who’s likewise now a degree removed from Washington.
“Being an ex-president is like being a man’s nipple. People go right by you to jerk off a dick,” she says at the beginning of the trailer, which then delves into her quest to travel “the globe spreading democracy like patient zero.” From this clip, this new form of desperation looks just as promising as vice presidential and presidential desperation. And as always, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s genius continues its reign over the show’s every movement.
Watch the trailer: