Selina Meyer Was Awful. That's What Made Her Dandy.

Selina's last scene. Photograph: Michelle Groskopf

This piece contains spoilers for the series finale of Veep.

When Armando Iannucci created Veep in the starting time of this tumultuous decade, he wanted to brand a prove about American politics prepare in a place where, in his words, "at that place's power but where at that place's not power." Eventually he focused on the vice-president's part and decided to make that vice-president a adult female because, "I thought, well, if it's a female person vice-president then at least we won't get people maxim, 'And so is this Dick Cheney?'"

Instead, he got questions well-nigh whether Selina Meyer, the vice-president who would go on to inherit a presidency, and so lose information technology and, in the series finale, ruthlessly reclaim it for herself, was Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton.

"By then we merely said, 'No, it's Selina Meyer,'" says Iannucci. "That's who she is."

Selina Meyer was indeed like no ane else. She was the first female president in U.S. history, a trailblazer who broke the highest glass ceiling and who also once walked into a glass door by accident. She was a daughter who resented her female parent and a mother who preferred not to be effectually her own girl. She hated men — "I'chiliad used to dealing with angry, aggressive, dysfunctional men, i.e. men," she in one case said from her seat in the Oval Function — but she hated other women simply every bit much. When her advisor Ben Cafferty suggested this season that she should consider some other female candidate, Kemi Talbot, equally a running mate, Selina responded: "An all-female person ticket? The American people piece of work hard for a living, okay? They don't need that kind of bullshit."

Past inventing her and so giving Julia Louis-Dreyfus the opportunity to fill her with bluster and seize with teeth, Iannucci didn't intend to make a comedy about an anti-feminist with a low-key feminist streak running through it. But it became clear pretty early on in Veep'southward run that you can't tell the story of a woman in American politics without commenting on what information technology means to be an American adult female trying to wield power. And what that means is being such a walking, talking, unapologetic contradiction that information technology becomes second nature to pivot when the political moment requires it.

Selina Meyer was certainly feminine. She cared about her shoes and her lipstick choices. Her decision to get a less-than-flattering haircut in flavor three all the same, her sense of fashion and beauty was sharp. (That floral dress she wears in the finale? Gorgeous.) Only her behavior is what could exist described, in stereotypical terms, every bit male. She's aggressive. She's blatantly ambitious. She curses like an inebriated sailor who learned how to speak English language by listening to old Andrew Die Clay albums. She lies and acts with no regard for ethics; the merely principle she follows is, "Me commencement."

Based on history and this country's long-continuing human relationship with misogyny, a woman with these qualities shouldn't be able to win over the American people. In the early seasons, Selina doesn't, exactly. Most of the time she either fails upward by chance — she only becomes president in the third season because she inherited the position from a president concerned about his suicidal First Lady — or she outright loses, be it during an election or something as unproblematic as a photo op at a frozen yogurt shop on D.C.'s U Street.

In the concluding flavour, which, equally noted in this extensive look at how the finale came together, reflects the darker political climate nosotros're all living in, Selina embraces what, in a more just world, would seem to be her less-electable qualities. Even her entrada slogans — "New. Selina. Now," which is practically a command, and "Man Up" — suggest she'south flipping the bird at any ideas about how a female candidate is supposed to acquit. By bulldozing over her competitor, Tom James (played past Hugh Laurie), embracing Jonah's raging idiocy and making him her veep, and and then, saddest of all, destroying Gary, the staffer she one time promised to never fire because, "I am not going to let become the ane person in this core grouping who actually gives a shit about me," she finally becomes president. Merely as we see in the Oval Office scene at the end of the final episode, she's completely solitary. Her core group now consists solely of colleagues who ultimately give no shits about her.

The last episode of Veep, which is called "Veep," can exist described rightly as a cautionary tale. A show that began every bit an absurdist one-act about Washington weasels run amok ends as a tragedy about a guild in which morality no longer seems to affair. David Mandel, the showrunner who took over Veep in season five after Iannucci'south difference, and who wrote this episode, makes it clear that this is not how anyone should strive to exist, especially not if one of their goals is to exist happy and accomplish something meaningful.

On one hand, the Veep finale is a commentary on and reflection of where things stand in American politics. But on some other, it's a pure fantasy. There is no way a woman could do all the things Selina does and exist embraced by the public. We don't encounter what happens between the convention and her return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but we assume she had to pull a few boosted underhanded tricks out of her bell sleeves to beat incumbent Laura Montez in the full general ballot. It'due south hard to imagine that working out in reality.

Even the idea of two women running against each other for president is impossible to fathom in real-life America. Remember about this: in Veep world, the United states has experienced not one, not two, but 3 female-run presidential administrations by the yr 2020: Selina'due south first one, Montez'due south, and so Selina'southward second. In the bodily United States we haven't been able to pull that off even once, when the woman running was overqualified for the job and facing a candidate even dumber and more offensive than Jonah Ryan. And if you call up that comparison is unfair, I refer you to this week's latest existent-life-imitating-Veep moment.

You think about things like this and, especially if you're a woman, y'all can't assist but admire Selina Meyer even if you tin can't disregard her choices. That'due south partly considering Louis-Dreyfus is playing her. It's tempting to say that an appealing actor tin can brand a horrible character likable, only that's not exactly right. A actually gifted actor, and Louis-Dreyfus is, tin tap into a flawed person's depths and reveal the extent to which they're genuinely figuring out what they're going to exercise next in existent fourth dimension. Louis-Dreyfus did that, moment after moment and episode after episode. She didn't brand Selina likable. She made her fascinating.

In the finale, after Selina convinces Michelle to accuse Tom of sexual misconduct, crushing his election hopes and, most likely, his marriage, he comes barreling into Selina'southward skybox calling her a monster and a conniving cunt. "What the fuck are you?" he asks, finally, a question that implies she is no longer a human being with any sort of soul.

I watched Laurie and Louis-Dreyfus rehearse that scene and moving picture it, and every time Laurie, every bit Tom, lost information technology, information technology was similar watching every human on globe give voice to his greatest fright: that a adult female, or multiple women, volition gang upwards on him and ruin his entire life. The fact that Michelle's accusations are a lie — her relationship with Tom was completely consensual — make them a doubly awful matter for Selina to accept orchestrated. Not only is this bad for Tom, information technology's also bad for women who really have been harassed and want to be heard and believed.

Selina, of course, doesn't care, and Louis-Dreyfus conveys that by having Selina be every bit blasé every bit she can perhaps be in the face of Tom's rage. While rehearsing the scene — which, as initially scripted, has Selina dismiss Tom past saying, "I guess some people can't play the game" — Louis-Dreyfus asked Mandel: "I just wonder if in that location'south something else to say? Something yous might say nigh a hysterical woman, but we can do information technology from a woman'due south perspective?" Mandel liked that idea.

When they filmed it, he gave her the line, "She's and then emotional," the "she" beingness Tom. Selina says it wryly to the erstwhile white senator she's meeting with when Tom interrupts them. Then Louis-Dreyfus advertisement-libbed, "This is why nosotros demand more women in role."

I can't deny that when I spotter Selina dismiss him with a "toodle-loo," a shiver goes upward my spine. This is not how anyone should treat some other person, in politics or anywhere. Literally no ane should do the things that she does. Simply seeing a woman cut an aroused, ambitious, dysfunctional human being downward to size with the kind of language often weaponized against women is undeniably empowering. In the thorny minefield that is gender and politics, there were glimmers of something admirable in the way Selina Meyer did what she had to do, and to hell with what anyone else thought.

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Selina Meyer Was Atrocious. That's What Made Her Peachy.