This time last year, as part of Northern Slant’s summer series on political movies and TV shows, I recommended Veep as “an outstanding piece of American political satire created by a Scotsman – the brilliant Armando Iannucci. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Vice-President (and subsequently President) Selena Meyer and the show follows her and her staffers as they put the fun in dysfunction while trying to make the Veep look as good as she can.”

Monday night saw the final episode, and the like of the show will probably never be seen again, arguably cementing Louis-Dreyfus as, in the words of one critic, “one of the greatest performers in TV history.” Or, at the very least, making people forget she was ever in Seinfeld.

The HBO show ran for seven years (Iannuci left after Season Four), and its writing and outstanding ensemble cast built a reputation for being toe-curlingly brilliant at using exactly the right putdown at exactly the right time, some – most – of which were beautifully, naturally, and perfectly sweary.

In The Guardian, Charles Bramesco called the show “an audaciously meanspirited comedy that will stand the test of time.” Examining the nature of Louis-Dreyfus’s character and how her fictional career straddled two very different real-world presidencies, he writes: “That Armando Iannucci’s blistering satire of the executive branch has persisted through two diametrically opposed real-life presidencies testifies to the universality of its viewpoint. Proper nouns change, administrations give way to new administrations, but malice and incompetence are forever.”

He continues: “The election of Donald Trump could have thrown a wrench into the show’s intricate workings, upending its understanding of an America hungover from all the talk of hope and change. Instead, the writers got meaner, nastier and more jaded. As America slipped into the early throes of a moronic variation on fascism, things grew more flagrantly unethical for Team Meyer.”

At New York magazine’s Vulture, Jen Chaney describes the process of creating the finale, with the challenge of “having to craft a satisfying conclusion to a story about behind-the-scenes political atrociousness in a time when real-world, out-in-the-open political atrociousness had become the norm.” She also writes brilliantly about the emotional ending to the series – including the context of Louis-Dreyfus’s real-life cancer diagnosis – and its effect on the production and the cast.

“It’s jarring to see so many tears here,” Chaney writes, “since the people shedding them are responsible for some of the most coldhearted and despicable characters on TV.”

(A rundown of the final episode is here – spoilers, obviously, included:)

Thrillist was just one media outlet that compared the finale with that other television phenomenon that is captivating and confounding its audience at the moment:

“On Sunday’s Game of Thrones, dragon queen Daenerys Targaryen laid waste to King’s Landing, scorching the Earth, burning women and children alive. Beloved (and not so beloved) characters died in her massacre. And yet nothing in Westeros was quite as devastating to me as what Selina Meyer did to Gary in the series finale of Veep. The often brilliant comedy ended its seven-season run with an episode that highlighted the best of its brutality. Not only were the insults fast and fierce, per Veep’s status quo, but there were tragic consequences to its protagonist’s ruthlessness that were both shocking and strangely moving. It was a relief, considering the rest of the season had been wildly hit or miss.”

As for the connection to the successes and failures of real-world politics that has ensured the show continued to push the outrage envelope, Jan Chaney writes that, “in the final act, Selina, who has engaged in truly horrible behavior over the years, would need to do the worst things she’s ever done — and would learn that those choices haven’t harmed her.”

Art imitatating life?