Spoilers ahead for the season-six premiere of Veep.
Veep’s sixth season picks up one year to the day since Selina Meyer’s crushing loss. She’s not POTUS. She’s not Veep. She’s just a citizen, walking among everyday Americans — her least favorite kind of Americans! — who do not, in her view, properly appreciate the fact that she was the first female president of the United States. Where does this new season of Veep find her and her merry crew, the most profane public servants to ever populate our nation’s capital?
Selina
Selina has all but hibernated since her crushing defeat. The premiere finds her making her first public appearance since the loss, announcing to all the world that she is focused on the Meyer Fund for Adult Literacy … and, also, AIDS! Her offices are in the South Bronx, much to her and Gary’s dismay (“I’m not the president of the Dominican Republic”), and she is feeling, as usual, totally underappreciated and neglected by our fair nation. “Being an ex-president is like being a man’s nipple,” she says wisely. “People go right by you to jerk off a dick.” She’s in the market for high-paying speaking engagements and is secretly plotting her valiant, unwelcome return to the political stage. In personal news, she’s back together with her skeevy ex and Catherine’s deadbeat dad, Andrew (ugh) and is so strapped for cash that she has to get an allowance from Catherine, which really means getting an allowance from Marjorie, who oversees the loving couple’s finances.
Gary
Gary is still Selina’s bag man and emotional-support puppy, and even though it is not clear how the cash-strapped Selina is paying Gary’s salary, he seems to be enjoying himself. He gets to hang out with Selina all the time — now that she’s not important anymore, it’s not like her schedule is all that packed — and has a gift-wrapping room of his very own. That said, he would prefer to be in the Meatpacking District. So chic.
Mike
Mike, who seemed like a pretty in-over-his-head press secretary last season but considering the dopey gum-swallower we’ve got behind the podium now maybe wasn’t so bad, is a stay-at-home dad to biological twins and an adopted daughter who was supposed to be an infant but is actually a second-grader (?). Mike’s clothes and skin appear to be totally covered in food and/or drool and/or other unidentifiable baby goo at all times. By the end of the premiere, he has a job again, if you consider doing a bunch of unpaid work for Selina’s not-even-started memoirs a “job.”
Jonah
The personification of the Peter principle, Jonah Ryan is the congressman from New Hampshire, basking in the glow of pity-love for being a cancer survivor. Jonah’s been done with chemo for months but he keeps shaving his head for appearances. Just in case you were wondering if his brush with mortality made him a better, more self-reflective person or anything.
Dan
Dan finally landed a job co-hosting CBS This Morning, a dream job that quickly devolves into nightmare when he gets paired with Jane, an impossible nightmare colleague. Dan’s efforts to be so bad at his job he’ll get fired backfire — much like Jack Donaghy’s attempts to tank NBC with garbage programming on 30 Rock — even though he taunts Jonah so much that Jonah loses his mind, yells about how he looks “like a penis,” and storms off the set.
Amy
Amy actually got engaged to the dopey, too-pure-for-this-Veep-world Buddy! She is also his campaign manager. Can’t imagine what could go wrong there. Their sex life is … not great!
Kent
Kent is putting his pollster mind to work in Jonah’s office. (Where are Jonah’s hot interns, by the way? I want to hear about Colt’s birthday party!)
Ben
Ben got this job at Uber working for “a bunch of dumbass millennials too lazy to learn how to drive drunk.” He hates it there, obviously, and he gets gently, progressively reamed out for explaining that he’s allowed to say “Chinamen” because “my wife is oriental.” By the end of the premiere he has bailed on this insufferable gig to work with Kent for Jonah. Quite the knock on working at Uber: It’s actually preferable to have Jonah as your boss than “Aiden.”
Richard
Still working for Selina in some lackey-style role, still failing at basically all of his interpersonal duties (“The secretary’s name is Jenniker? That can’t be right”), still delightful.
Sue
MIA for now, but I believe she’s the one staffer, referenced in last season’s finale, who got to stay in the White House.
