Veep season 6 finale recap: “Groundbreaking”
This season of Veep has been a bit unstable as the show attempted to find footing with its new premise.
The Veep season 6 narrative can be easily summed up thusly: Selina out of office. Despite its stumbles, Veep ultimately chooses that writing without politics has made the creative team take a huge hit. Even through its unevenness, it was hard to not appreciate the ambitious nature of season six, which makes “Groundbreaking” such disappointing finale.
A lot of “Groundbreaking” deals with Selina’s flashbacks to her when she was Vice President, Senator, and even during her mysterious “spa” days.
The biggest joke in these scenes seems to be everyone’s hair choices rather than any new substantial information about the characters. Not to mention, all of those flashbacks and not one Sue sighting is a painful reminder that Veep has been missing one of their core members since the start of this season.
The intermingled flashbacks cut through with the realization that Selina’s library is back in jeopardy right before the grand opening due to the knowledge that it was slave-owned land. Catherine immediately defies her mother’s wishes claiming that having a mixed ethnicity grandson means she should respect his history enough to willingly close her library.
Of course, Selina doesn’t really care about Catherine’s wishes and chooses to go ahead with grand-opening. Unfortunately, the news of the ground’s history breaks due to Leon West which prevents Yale from opening it.
Later, it’s revealed that Selina was the one who leaked her library bad press to Leon West because she’s planning on running for president again.
Not only does this move make any logical sense, but it also just comes out of left field. Why would Ben, who encouraged her not to run in the premiere, now back her so happily? They also mentioned that Selina could be slapped with some jail time over her data scandal during her last campaign but apparently, that’s a non-issue now?
“Groundbreaking,” is perhaps the sloppiest finale in Veep’s run all because they’re trying to rush Selina back into the White House next season rather than have her work her way back into a position of power.
In other news, Catherine and Marjorie finally have their baby which is dubbed “Little Richard” rather than one of the gender-neutral names that had previously been thrown around. Within only a few minutes of Selina meeting him, he becomes a political prop for her to use as an example of her “tolerant personality”.
Andrew also comes out of the woodwork and continues to be a terrible human being who doesn’t serve much of a purpose anymore. Speaking of Selina’s previous romantic entanglements, she finally breaks things off with Jafar due to the fear he could affect her presidential run.
It’s a small moment of humanity that reminds viewers that Selina isn’t a completely heartless political monster but it’s hard to care about such a short-term relationship.
Another big bombshell is dropped in “Groundbreaking,” with the realization that Amy is pregnant with Dan’s baby. Throughout Veep Anna Chlumsky and Reid Scott have had sizzling chemistry, so it seems natural that the two would eventually get together.
What’s bizarre, is that Amy gets pregnant from an encounter that the audience never even knows about, so it’s not a storyline that anyone could predict. It’s another bomb out of left field that feels a bit rushed or even random.
Nevertheless, this storyline hopefully means that Amy will get more to do next season rather than babysit Mike or hang around. Considering Mike was fired in favor of Leon West, this seems like a good possibility.
Was “Groundbreaking” a satisfying conclusion to the arc of season six? Definitely not. In fact, fans of the show probably could have skipped the entirety of this season because all of the meaningful developments happened in the second half of this finale.
Next: HBO renews Veep for new season to premiere in 2018
Either way, Veep has paved the way for a familiar campaign season next year, and at least promises that the entire cast will be together again! Thanks for watching this season, and feel free to hit the comments with your feelings about the season finale.