On the Unexpected Delights of Hacks

In the first episode of Hacks, the show’s premise is laid out with the familiar beats of a generational comedy. We meet the once legendary comedian, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), who is now delaying her retirement with a lucrative, if creatively unfulfilling, nightly show at a hotel on the Las Vegas strip, while spending her days sunbathing and playing blackjack at her eerily immaculate mansion in the middle of the desert. We meet Ava (Hannah Einbinder), a down-on-her-luck 20-something comedy writer in Los Angeles whose burgeoning career has flatlined following a controversial tweet about a closeted gay senator. With Deborah’s show at immediate risk of being canceled and Ava without any show at all, both are at a crossroads. After being set up for a meeting by their shared agent at Deborah’s palatial home, they trade barbs so vicious that they very nearly part ways for good. Thankfully, a final insult unlocks their shared sense of humor.

Trying to make a comedy about comedy can be a minefield. For every The King of Comedy or Obvious Child, there are a dozen other self-indulgent messes that fall at the first hurdle: Namely, the writing lacks the off-the-cuff energy that makes good stand-up feel so electric. It helps in this instance that Hacks’ three showrunners—Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs, best known for their work on Broad City—all have backgrounds in the comedy circuit. Perhaps more importantly in this instance, though, Deborah’s gags are supposed to be a little hokey or dated, and the knowingly hollow gusto with which Smart (in a spectacularly funny performance that continues her so-called “Jeanaissance,” following standout performances in Fargo, Watchmen, and Mare of Easttown) delivers them becomes part of the joke. When it comes to Ava’s pithy, purposefully tweet-length observations about Gen Z life, too, the writers are very clearly poking fun at themselves. 

Yet while the parallels between Deborah and Ava’s personalities become clearer over the course of the series, when it comes to comedy, their approaches couldn’t be more different. For Deborah, nothing is off-limits; her critique of the Twitter transgression that got Ava canceled is simply that the joke wasn’t funny enough. Ava is instinctively averse to Deborah’s willingness to punch down, and resents the latent, internalized misogyny that underpins many of Deborah’s jokes. But their biggest hurdle in reaching creative symbiosis is their differing ideas on the perfect formula for a joke. Every joke needs a punch line, Deborah argues. “The traditional joke structure is very male,” Ava responds.

For much of the series so far—which has been cannily released by HBO Max in weekly drops of two episodes, allowing it to build word-of-mouth attention while also offering just the right dose of binge-viewing satisfaction—it has felt like the writers have been erring more towards the looser, distractible spirit of Ava’s approach to comedy. We’ve been taken on unlikely tangents, including a trip to the Nevada desert to track down an antique pepper shaker and a promotional appearance at a pizza parlor. The details that flesh out the characters often prove to be more hilarious than the broader sweeps: Deborah refilling the canisters of her at-home soda fountain or throwing her iPad in the pool after watching a video from the a capella group that is threatening to steal her regular Vegas slot; Ava referencing Busy Philipps’s Instagram stories or branding a fusty, posh antique dealer “Lemony Snicket.” Then there is the generous time given to its supporting cast: Carl Clemons-Hopkins as Deborah’s beleaguered assistant Marcus; Kaitlin Olson as Deborah’s neglected, wayward daughter, who ropes Ava in to help her flog the hideous, bauble-like earrings and necklaces she designs under her brand D’Jewelry; and Meg Stalter as the overfamiliar agent’s assistant. “We gotta go the clurb, girlie!” Stalter shrieks down the phone to Ava during a moment of crisis. 

With all of these diversions, the deepening of Deborah and Ava’s relationship almost sneaks up on us. In the show’s superb eighth (and most recent) episode, Deborah finally tries out some of Ava’s new material, returning to the dingy club in Sacramento, California, where she first made a name for herself. An anecdote about one of her fellow comedians who was subject to the club owner’s unwanted sexual advances back in the ’70s is glossed over by Deborah with typically acerbic humor. But the story hits differently for Ava, who challenges Deborah about why she never confronted this behavior once her star had risen. Clearly, the comment gets under Deborah’s skin. She goes off-script to offer him $1.69 million if he promises to never step foot in a comedy club again, inviting him onstage for full, humiliating effect. (After double-checking whether that offer bars him from podcasts—it does—the guy begrudgingly accepts.) The episode’s revelations felt less like a punch line and more like a subtle tribute to the female comedians who paved the way for women like Ava, and to those who gave up on their dreams due to the oppressive boys club of the comedy world. 

It brings to mind Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, the 2010 documentary about the comedian who is the most obvious precedent for Deborah’s character. Throughout the film, Rivers offers surprisingly candid insights on the grit and determination it took not simply to rise to the top of her field as a woman, but (even more grueling) to stay there. It’s a remarkable, unvarnished portrait of a complex character whose comedic patter can include ruthless criticisms of others’ appearances, but who is ultimately always willing to turn the joke back on herself, mocking her plastic surgery or the suicide of her husband with bracing, acid-tongued wit. Whatever life threw Rivers, she used comedy to make sense of the bad times and to get her back on her feet.

The joy of Hacks may lie in watching Deborah and Ava slowly discover that, for better or worse, this implicit philosophy has governed both of their careers: The darker end of the comedic spectrum has offered a lifeline for both of them. (You might think that after her cancellation, Ava would simply choose to take another career path, but clearly, she just can’t quit comedy.) It’s increasingly clear that their shared flaws transcend any kind of easy generational explanation, instead offering a kind of before and after of what it means to work as a woman in entertainment, carefully leavened with enough silliness to avoid feeling too on the nose. Where exactly Hacks will go in its final episodes this week, or, indeed, in its second season, which was just announced, is anyone’s guess. But with its first eight episodes alone, Hacks has already delivered a smarter punch line than many comedies could ever aspire to.

Originally Appeared on Vogue