Powerless

Rewatching “Veep” and “The Thick of It”, I think I struck on the aspects of the seasons I like which are absent in the seasons I don’t like nearly as much.  Early on, both shows are about people supposedly in power who constantly find themselves powerless.  In later seasons, the main characters find themselves out of power and even more powerless.  There’s plenty of comedic schadenfreude in the former, but the latter just feels cringey.