As Veep and Silicon Valley continue, here are questions about their future

Is Veep or Silicon Valley new tonight on HBO? After being #blessed (yep, using that ironically) with many episodes as of late, it’s fair to want more without any waiting.

Alas, waiting is precisely what you’re going to be doing for a very long time — think from now until spring, most likely, when the two shows return with new batches of episodes. Last week was their respective finales, and each show ended in a rather curious place.

On Silicon Valley, Richard Hendricks managed to stumble his way out of a very terrible position, and all of a sudden, he has a chance for redemption that he may not deserve. Richard became very much unlikable through season 4, and his actions were not ones to either endorse or celebrate all that much. He was unlikable, and that made both him and the world around him more of a struggle.

Moving into Silicon Valley season 5, one of the questions that Mike Judge and the other folks over at HBO need to ask themselves is rather clear: How far down the hole are they willing to send Richard? It’s okay to have him be unlikable at times, but they need some of that wide-eyed enthusiasm there mixed with the underdog spirit. They also need to find a way to capture Erlich’s energy without Erlich being there, given that nobody else on the show is anywhere near so bold.

Questions for Veep season 7

Here, it’s actually rather simple: What material can be mined out of Selina Meyer running for President for a second time? This was one of the things that the show received some criticism for in the wake of the finale airing this past week. Part of the fun for season 6 is that you brought Selina outside of the strictly-political sphere to focus on a question not often asked: What does someone do when they don’t have that money or power anymore? What is life following the Presidency look like? Well, we got our answer over the course of this season, and it wasn’t all that pretty … but it was also hilarious.

With season 6, the risk that you run is whether or not we’ll as viewers be sucked into the same thing that we saw back during season 5, with Selina trying hard to get reelected then while dealing with a team of power-hungry idiots that were supposed to be helping her. Most of the comedy for the time being appears to be staked on the idea of having Selina compete against Jonah Ryan, king of the power-hungry idiots and a guy who is mostly just how to proclaim that he is right about something and understands people more than the average politician.

Dear Jonah Ryan, a message: You’ll probably destroy the world if you’re President.

If you missed it…

We have posted some official scoop about Veep season 7 already, if you haven’t had a chance to check that out yet.