There are a lot of reasons that the current political climate in the United States may have you feeling depressed, pessimistic, downcast, or oppressed. Undeniably the worst thing about the Trump administration is neither the emboldening of racism nor the lingering air of uncertainty and dread, but the effect that this political climate has had on comedy. I mean, just look how bad that joke was! Comedy is dead, Trump killed it, and as I write this Mitch McConnell is dumping the body in the Tidal Basin.
Maybe there are still people out there that find SNL’s weekly Two-Minutes Hate, featuring Alex Baldwin’s Trump impression, to be amusing. But I suspect that is more a side effect of the general lobotomization of the American public than it does anything genuinely amusing about Baldwin essentially just repeating word-for-word a Trump tweet from the previous day and then winking knowingly at the camera (though it’s still better than whatever the hell Comedy Central’s The President Show was supposed to be). Trump impressions have officially crossed into the “Walken Zone”: that event horizon beyond which all impressions increasingly become over-the-top impersonations of a previous hyperbolic impression, thus diverging irrevocably from any actual attempt at mimicking the behaviors of the original person.
It seems fitting to me that Parks and Recreation, arguably the greatest political comedy ever (and in general one of the best comedy TV shows ever, regardless of theme) aired its last episode over a year before Trump announced his candidacy, and Veep, probably the closest rival to the title of best political comedy ever, is getting ready for its final season (premiering March 31, and the only of the show’s seven seasons to have been written and filmed entirely during the Trump presidency; the previous season was released after his inauguration but was written before the election). Veep, especially, feels almost exhausted, as if even it can’t believe the political reality that it in part prophesied, while Parks and Recreation is thoroughly a product of the Obama era, which now feels incredibly ancient (indeed, the 10 year anniversary of the show’s premiere is 41 days away).
Parks and Rec and Veep are similar in many ways and different in many others, and I think the ways in which they are both similar and different say a lot about the way the political climate in the U.S. has changed over the past decade. They are both unique, too, in the way they conceptualize politics and contribute to political discourse. There are an endless number of “political” TV shows, but most of them tend adopt the conventions of other popular TV genres, simply adding a political context as window-dressing. They don’t have anything in particular to say about politics, other than that they exist. Some are attempts at prestige dramas with male anti-heroes in the mold of The Sopranos or Breaking Bad, like House of Cards. Others are simple procedural dramas that throw in government-sounding words like legislate and caucus, like Madam Secretary. Some are soap operas, like Scandal. Others are just stupid, like Homeland.
Both shows are notable in the way that they manage to be politically apolitical. On one hand, neither show ever tells you what political party their protagonists, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) and Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), represent in their various elections, nor what political parties are represented among the varied casts of characters on either show. On the other hand, the beliefs (or lack thereof) of the characters play an important role throughout both shows. And the way in which they do take political stances, and what they have to say about politics in general, are mirror images of one another.
It would be no surprise to anybody that has watched Parks to hear that Leslie Knope is a liberal. Although she’s never branded a Democrat, it is clear that the show’s politics are liberal-progressive. Leslie’s stances range from supporting gay (penguin) marriage to imposing a soda tax to promote public health. Her opponents, and most characters espousing any sort of conservative belief, are typically presented as some of the most over-the-top, idiotic, or absurd characters on the show. Ron Swanson’s often ludicrously libertarian beliefs especially are held up as a target for derision and mockery by the audience.
However, there remains a distinct lack of true partisanship. For one thing, the focus of the show on specific small-town issues has a way of disconnecting the stances taken by Leslie (and others) from broader political currents. For another, Leslie often fails and is forced to deal with the consequences of forcing her personal beliefs on friends or a public that may not share them. Many plot points throughout the series are solved only when a compromise of some sort is reached, or personal connections allow political opponents to reconcile and do what’s right for the public good. Finally, his stance on child labor laws notwithstanding, Ron Swanson is consistently presented as a source of sage wisdom.
The show is, for lack of a better phrase, “ideologically apolitical.” The basic underlying theme in the show is the sense of devotion to public service and the optimistic belief in the ability of people of different belief systems to work together to achieve some greater good. It is fundamentally a reflection of the sense of hope and energy that came along during the Obama years, especially during his first term. In many ways, it is the more contemporary comedic answer to The West Wing, which shared a similar confidence in government and politics.
Veep takes a different path. It is not “ideologically apolitical”, it is “cynically apolitical”. While a more liberal bent is hinted at occasionally, the primary motivation and ideology behind the show is narcissism. It is realpolitik, but stripped of the desire to achieve any practical results. Selina is driven entirely by her desire for power, affirmation, and adulation. Every politician on the show is cynical, self-serving, back-stabbing, and insincere. Partisanship is irrelevant, because there are no parties when everybody is acting only in their own self-interest. While Parks tries to transcend partisanship by appealing to higher ideological values, Veep undermines the notion that partisanship is at all meaningful by appealing to psychological egoism. An egoism detached from any sense of hedonism, because everybody is too miserable to genuinely enjoy any of it. It is closer to Dr. Strangelove than to The West Wing.
I spent some time trying to think of other analogues for the relationship between Parks and Rec and Veep. One may be the relationship between Friends and Seinfeld. Both were comedies about a group of young adults living in New York during the 1990s; the former was a seemingly innocent celebration of friendship and togetherness, while the latter was a dark mirror in which common every day annoyances were reflected back on us through a group of dysfunctional sociopaths (and was obviously a much, much, much better show … seriously, fuck Friends).
A comparison I thought a little more apt was, oddly, the relationship between Entourage and BoJack Horseman. Let me first say that I am not trying to defend Entourage as being on the same level as any of the other shows I am mentioning. Because it’s not. But I think it’s an interesting comparison nonetheless. Entourage, while making lots of in-jokes about Hollywood and celebrity and poking fun at that culture, was ultimately celebrating the very lifestyle it satirized. It’s basic message was along the lines of, “Yeah, Hollywood is kind of stupid, but doesn’t it look so fucking cool, guys?” BoJack Horseman, on the other hand, strips away all the layers of artifice and lays bare the existential void at the heart of the whole hollow pursuit. It’s message is closer to, “Yeah, Hollywood is kind of stupid. And so are you for thinking about it. And so are all of us for indulging in it. Life is meaningless.” Similarly, Parks and Rec is both parody and celebration of government, while Veep digs a little deeper and makes us question the whole damned thing.
Veep was the perfect show for the twilight of the Obama years and the ascendancy of Trumpismo. The show is about the swamp, and how deeply the entire political system (from the White House to K Street) is mired in the muck. It flamboyantly confronts you with the insincerity we all suspected from our politicians and bludgeons you over the head with it. What’s more is that the show presents the whole governmental apparatus as a house of cards, flimsily constructed on a thin veneer of custom, tradition, and a sense of decorum (at least in public). It pretty perfectly predicts not only the sources of discontent with the American political system, but the types of people capable of rising to power in that system, and how powerless that system is to stop anybody who doesn’t want to keep that decorum. That is, it perfectly predicted Trump, and everything that came along with him.
As I said, it seems fitting, then, that Veep will soon be off the air. It feels already left behind by the zeitgeist it saw coming. The jokes in the new trailer all resonate pretty strongly with the current political climate, while also feeling like the exact same jokes they would have written if none of this had happened in the first place.
Once Veep is gone, where will we turn to for political comedy? SNL doesn’t seem like it is going to offer anything new anytime soon. Most comedies have veered away from the political in search of greener pastures, like The Good Place (seems fitting that the creator of Parks and Rec, after seeing where politics has gone, basically decided “fuck this, let’s just all pretend we’re dead”). Is it too optimistic for me to assume and hope that some show will come out of nowhere, like both Parks and Rec and Veep did, and manage to perfectly and humorously capture the current political climate? Leslie Knope would reassure me to have such faith in the world, while Selina Meyer would just call me a fucking idiot.