Hacks

 Hacks is sit-com in three consecutive seasons.  It premiered in May 2021 on HBO Max and has been renewed for a fourth season at the conclusion of its third series in 2023.  The program is very entertaining, sharply written, and has excellent actors.  In essence, Hacks is an "odd-couple" buddy comedy featuring Jean Smart (Deborah Vance)as a 70-something comedian struggling to re-invent herself with new routines and jokes with the assistance of an earnest young writer Ava played by Hannah Einbinder (the actress is the daughter of SNL's Larraine Newman).  Ava is about 25, politically correct, and bisexual (primarily lesbian although she hooks up with men from time to time.)  She acts as the foil to Deborah Vance, a fantastically wealthy show biz personality, who had been performing to sold-out crowds at the Palmetto Casino for the previous thirty years -- her show has become a bit archaic and rote and the boss at the Casino has decided to replace her.  This triggers a crisis in Deborah Vance who reaches out to Ava whom she has employed as a joke-writer and general factotum for new material.  The show is about the strained relationship between the two women (Deborah Vance is monstrously selfish and Ava more than a little irritating with respect to her virtue signaling) and how their work relationship matures into something like mutual respect and friendship.  Since the show's narrative trajectory is from sarcastic acrimony and hearty dislike to affection, the program can't really reach its sentimental climax, always implied by the dialogue, without destroying itself.  Therefore, like many sit-coms the show has a perpetuum mobile aspect -- it has to regenerate itself by showing the women's attitudes toward one another evolving into close friendship, but, then, throwing a wrench into the works, contriving new reasons for them to be at odds and dislike one another.  At the end of each season, there is a touching scene of friendship and, then, some sort of clash between boss and her paid-servant and writer that casts their affection into doubt and threatens to make them irreconcilable enemies again.  For instance, at the end of the third series, all plot complications have been resolved into a happy ending -- Vance gets her network late-night show, seems about to reconcile with her estranged sister, and has anointed Ava as the head writer for the program.  But Vance, then, betrays Ava (out of paranoia about the late night gig succeeding) and Ava fights back, blackmailing her boss with the threat to expose an embarrassing sexual impropriety.  This is parallel to an earlier season in which Ava drunkenly exposes some of Vance's peccadillos, seems about to get fired, but stays on the famous comedian's payroll albeit subject to lawsuit for violating her Non-Disclosure Agreement.  (Vance enjoys suing people and seems to be casually vicious.)  This plot complication is resolved when Vance dismisses the lawsuit but, then, fires Ava, saying that she wants to encourage her to "write her own material" and be successful in her own right.  Of course, the firing must be only temporary, otherwise the show would implode.  The money-maker situation has to be preserved at all costs although this gives the show a sort of herky-jerky aspect.

At its heart, Hacks is not so much different than the old Mary Tyler Moore Show if the focus of that program were primarily on the boss figure, that is, Lou Grant who, if I recall correctly, later got his own show.   A successful sit-com requires excellent supporting actors (think anchorman Ted Baxter, for instance, on Mary Tyler Moore or Carl Reiner, Morey Amsterdam, and Ann Marie on the old Dick Van Dyke show) and Hacks has an abundance of funny, quirky, and interesting second-bananas:  there's a lonely gay personal assistant, Deborah's agent and fat side-kick, Kayla, the casino owner, Marty who is, a cynical old Vegas hand, as well as several other amusing sycophants who work for Deborah and, often, travel with her.  There's quite a bit of soft-core gay sex to distinguish the Cable show from network TV and the jokes are often quite raunchy, but the program has its heart in the right place and, ultimately, is just as didactic and sentimental as Mary Tyler Moore -- the show affirms the value of personal growth:  Deborah has to re-imagine her act and extricate herself from various personal traumas in her background; Ava's arrogance and know-it-all preaching to the indifferent Deborah has to be tamed and she must learn both a measure of humility but also self-confidence as to her own abilities.  Deborah's dirty jokes and ethnic slurs must be re-evaluated and, ultimately, she has to apologize for some of her more hurtful schtick. The conflict between overweening ambition and relationships sacrificed to this ambition must achieve a proper balance and so on.  The show's premise is that the flamboyant, cruel and witty Deborah Vance must learn life-lessons from the "woke", hip Ava and, of course, vice-versa.  In this respect, the show isn't all that different from an old Andy Griffith episode -- it's just got a lot dirtier dialogue (one of Ava's would-be girlfriends wants to piss on her; Ava figures out the woman is a Republican and says she won't be pissed-on except by progressive Democrats) and more sex -- I don't recall Barney Fife getting it on with Floyd the Barber, although this always seemed a possibility to me.  

The series, somewhat like Curb Your Enthusiasm, provides a glimpse into the lives of ultra-rich celebrities.  Deborah Vance has several homes, but spends most of her time at a lavish French chateau somewhere in the foothills near Vegas.  (At Christmas, she has snow machines blast artificial and chemically toxic "snow" all around the premises.)  She jets around in a private plane and hobnobs with other arrogant and entitled show business types.  She's not merely a stand-up comic but has a fantastically successful home shopping network line of apparel and other accessories.  Hacks asserts that Deborah was badly damaged when she was allowed to host a network late-night show or, at least, it's pilot thirty years earlier but, then, lost the gig when gossip asserted that she had burned down her ex-husband's house in a fit of pique.  Vance's sister betrayed her with her husband, destroying her family and creating infamy about the comedian which caused the networks to cancel her program.  (Vance, gamely, capitalized on the scandal with a series of lurid jokes about torching her husband's place.)  The estrangement between Vance and her sister, now lasting forty years, is also a source of conflict on the show, antagonism that seems always perpetually about to resolve, although the program requires that acrimony persist in order to keep regenerating its plot.  

Despite her sadism and selfishness, Deborah Vance is portrayed as a survivor, a woman who has made it  big in an avowedly sexist milieu.  Hacks has a number of shrewd things to say about how women who don't comply with gender stereotypes are treated in the show business and society in general.  This critique, I think, may account for the many Emmy awards that the show has won, including an Emmy for best actress for Jean Smart.  These awards are justified.  The show is generally very good, funny, and entertaining.  If it occasionally brings a tear to your eye, this is just gravy.