Hacks is Back For A Glorious Third Season

 

Looking back on my history with Peak TV, I find an interesting pattern emerging. While I very quickly became enamored with the dark antiheroes and situations that made up the best dramas of the first decade of this century, I had a much more difficult time finding a rapport with almost any of the comedies that came from the same networks.

This was especially true with Showtime. I spent much of my early career boosting all of his incredibly dark dramas such as Dexter, Homeland and later on series such as Billions as being the equal if not superior to so many of the dramas that were airing on HBO. But I never found the same enjoyment of so many of the comedies that aired for longer on Showtime. With exception of Nurse Jackie (and even that began to wear on my in its final seasons) none of the female-centric comedies of the network such as Weeds ever appealed to me. I never truly got into the adventures of the Gallaghers and it still appalls me that Don Cheadle appeared in not one but two of the least enjoyable comedy series of the entire decade. There were exceptions Episodes in my opinion was a highly underrated gem but they all seemed unpleasant rather than funny.

Similarly while I devoured most of the great dramas of HBO in the first decade and several in the second, I generally disliked if not loathed all of their comedies. Not just Curb Your Enthusiasm which never seemed to go away but also Entourage and Veep – which I found distasteful and unpleasant before the leadup to 2016. I’ve often wondered why I spent so much time enjoying network comedies over cable ones and now I think I know why.

For all the snideness and sarcasm in so many of the celebrated comedies of the era – The Big Bang Theory and 30 Rock – there was always more of a sense of community among the laughter. Yes there was a lot of bad behavior but in so many of the best shows you could sense a real fondness for the characters that I found lacking in almost every major comedies on cable. There may very well be more Selina Meyer’s in politics than there are Leslie Knope’s but there’s no question as to who I’d rather spend half an hour with given my choices.

When streaming services became a big deal about ten years ago, I found myself noting a theme in so many of the comedy shows that I was attracted to: we were still laughing at many of the characters but it wasn’t because the characters were behaving unpleasantly (though in many cases they were). Rather they were the kinds of characters that were part of the world that was ignored by most people and were coming to grips with it.

 Netflix’s Grace & Frankie and The Kominsky Method showed just how horrible it can be to be in your seventies and eighties and trying to live knowing that death is coming closer every day. Dead To Me brilliantly showed the story of two women bound by tragedy and how their efforts to connect and move forward became simultaneously sadder and farcical. Amazon’s breakthrough series Transparent brilliantly showed Jeffrey Tambor realizing that he had spent his entire life as the wrong gender and both him – and his family – coming to grips with it. And I think it’s telling, at least for me, that when I finally started watching Hulu regularly it was not The Handmaid’s Tale that drew me in but rather Ramy, a show which illustrated just how hard it was to be not merely a Muslim in America, but not even a very good one.

If there is a common theme in these comedies, it’s that so much of the laughter comes from these characters trying – and failing as often as they succeed – to live their best lives. Something about this is more appealing – and in my opinion, funnier – then watching Larry David being called an asshole by everybody and not seeming to learn anything no matter how old he gets.

I think that, certainly as the new decade has begun, there has been a trend in what we might called kinder, gentler comedies. It was made very clear when, in its final season, Schitt’s Creek swept the Emmys for its final season in 2020. Ever since then we’ve seen an increase in these kinds of shows in the Emmy nominations for Best Comedy. This was clear when Ted Lasso became the sensation of the world in the winter of 2020 mainly because the title character believed in the moral goodness of people. The other show that came around in 2021, just when we needed it, was HBO Max’s Hacks.

I mentioned that in my first review I didn’t much like it and in hindsight, maybe its because I’d only seen the first two episodes and what it seemed like was another cruelty based comedy. Deb Vance and Ava were drawn together out of mutual need, the two of them genuinely seemed to loathe being in each other’s company and there were very clear signs of abuse. I was prepared to abandon in after two episodes and it was only after the Emmy nominations came out that I very reluctantly resumed so.  If you read my blog, you know how quickly I changed my mind: I ranked it number 3 of my top ten of 2021 and by the time of the Emmys in September I was fully onboard with Hacks taking as many awards as it could.

Even in a year when most of TV was on hiatus, Hacks got a lot of love from the Emmys getting fifteen nominations and in a year that was justifiably dominated  by Ted Lasso, it managed to win four Emmys, including Best Directing and Writing in a Comedy. Lucia Aniello won the first and shared the second with her husband Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky. Jean Smart deservedly took the Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy, though even as brilliant as the show was, the field she was competing in was relatively barren.

Hacks was renewed for a second season and when the normal TV returned, it was, if anything, stronger than before with the Emmys receiving sixteen nominations, second to Ted Lasso. It also dominated the Best Guest Actress in a Comedy category, something that had been one of the sole categories of Saturday Night Live for nearly a decade. Laurie Metcalf ended up taking the prize as the series took another  three Emmys, including Smart’s second consecutive one against a much tougher field.

The series has been dominating the awards circuit the first two years. Because the 2022 Golden Globes was not televised, no one noticed that Hacks took Best Comedy and Jean Smart Best Actress. Smart managed a clean sweep of every major award, including the brand new HCA TV Awards. Hannah Einbinder has not seen a similar recognition from the Emmys, but she has already won the first two HCA TV Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Streaming Comedy. (The first year she shared the prize with Hannah Waddingham; the next year she got it on her own. The series has taken prizes from every major awards show, winning two awards from the WGA and the AFI award for TV program of the year. Even the MTV Movie and TV awards have been kind to it, nominating Hannah Einbinder as their Breakthrough Performance and Megan Stalter for Comedic Performance in 2022.

We’ve had to wait a long time for Season 3. We’ve been through a strike in Hollywood and while Jean Smart has been recovering from heart surgery. (She wasn’t able to pick up either the Critics Choice Award or SAG award she won in 2023 because of it.) Now nearly a year and a half after Season 2 ended we are back in the world of Deb Vance. And while I’m not glad that I had to wait this long, I’m so overjoyed they’re back.

Last season ended with Deb finally having the career breakthrough she had spent her life working towards. However, at the end of the season she fired Ava. While she told Ava it was because Ava had her own mountains to climb, there was a cruelty to it that she clearly sensed and we’ve been wondering what would happen.

The first season opens with Deb being named one of Time Magazine’s Top 100 and finally becoming the worldwide phenomena she has never expected. The problem is, now that she’s bigger than she thought she has realized the truth of Oscar Wilde about the only thing worse than getting what you want. Everyone laughs at her jokes without her even having to tell them. Her staff basically tells everything she loves is fabulous as we see in a hysterical moment when she tries on a hideous dress from the 1980s and everybody in her entourage tells her it’s wonderful.

Ava has moved on in the past year. She has career success, writing for a Daily Show type new parody On the Contrary. She’s also in a healthy relationship with a female DC star and in the second episode its clear the two of them have a robust sex life. But Ava clearly still misses Deb, to the point that when she sees her on a billboard she rear ends a bus.

The season premier begins at the Just For Laughs comedy festival where Jimmy (Downs!) and  Kayla, his partner in his new agency (Megan Stalter again perfect) are trying to recruit talent. They have what seems to be a base of senior clients which has made them a joke among the younger talents. Kayla is still as blissfully clueless as ever, renting a $300,000 Lamborghini to the event which Jimmy is terrified to drive, telling Jimmy that they should recruit a new young comic who was on Stage 4…only to be told he’s dying (“Oh, he has stage 4!) and still not very good when it comes to helping him recruit people. (“Do you know Reese Witherspoon? I feel like I know her.)

All four of the leads intersect in Montreal and when Ava learns Deb is here, she panics and tries to avoid her, and naturally ends up in the same elevator as her. Their initial encounter is sweet, so Ava then knocks on her door and demands to know why Deb didn’t insult her haircut.

Their first reunion is hysterical for a while. Ava is dying to try the Tom Cruise coconut cake and when she sees Deb’s dress is the only one who tells her the truth (“I’m sensing Big Bird energy!”) She then gets an unbiased opinion from a bellhop (a gay one, per Deb’s request) who tells Ava what she thinks and then backtracks when Deb appears. All of this is per usual, until Deb asks Ava for help with a joke.

Ava for the first time explodes as we see how much her being dismissed hurt her. The loss was so great that she and her girlfriend had to go into couples counseling and she’s still infuriated that Deb didn’t bother to respond to any of her texts. But even after this there’s a sign of the bond between them: at the end of the episode, Ava gives her the punchline.

The next episode shows Ava and Deb have started texting again and its clear that it’s helping Deb. She’s been having trouble sleeping for a while but the teaser ends with Deb passed out in her bed and her loyal maid texting her back. In the second episode Jimmy confronts Deb about appearing on late night, something she’s been terrified off since she lost her show half a century earlier. She agrees to come on (and to create a new story, she plays a prank on Carrot Top) but the night she does, the host gets sick. They agree to have Deb guest host and Deb then finds herself in the midst of some truly clueless writers. Naturally she calls Ava, who picks up immediately and helps talk her through the jokes. Deb asks Ava to show up but Ava is disconnected – because she opens the door a moment later.

The sequences where Deb hosts Late Night are among the most poignant Jean Smart has ever done. There’s a moment where we see  a reflection of the young Deb from nearly half a century ago before she comes out. Then she does go out and from beginning to end absolutely kills. Every moment is hysterical. Then when the show is over she asks the producer for a moment to decompress. The lights go out and we see a sadness on her that we almost never see – Deb never lets her guard down. In the final minutes Deb learns the host is going to retire and she sees an opening. She asks for Ava’s help.

One of the great joys of the era of Peak TV has been seeing that Jean Smart can do anything. We saw her play Martha Logan in the best season of 24,  Christina Applegate’s bewildered mother in Samantha Who? an underrated gem of the 2000s. Then in the 2010s we saw her play the head of a Minnesota mob family in the brilliant second season of Fargo. Leading up to her return on Hacks she received back-to-back Supporting Actress in a Limited Series nominations for two very different roles in very different HBO limited series: an aged and bitter Silk Spectre on Watchmen and Kate Winslet’s mother on Mare of Easttown. You throw in all of the guest roles she had before, including memorable stints on both Frasier and Harry’s Law and it somehow seems wrong she only won three Emmys prior to taking on Hacks. Admittedly, the competition has been pretty cutthroat in every category she’s competed in over the years,

But watching Smart over the first two seasons is one of the great joys of the last decade because there’s an icy cold exterior that is very difficult to penetrate. But if you cut Deb Vance, she does bleed. She tries her best to hide it with equally cutting jokes,  but she knows the failures that’s she had to undergo to get to where she is. There are failed marriages, few friends, and as we’ve seen her relationship with D.J. (Kaitlin Olson, who we will see soon) has been a jagged pile. Now Deb sees a chance to realize her dream. The question is, what will she do to get there?

Hannah Einbinder’s Ava has quickly become one of my favorite characters on TV. We’ve learned a lot about her over the last two seasons – her struggles with her sexuality, her parents inability to accept her career and her father’s death at the end of Season 1. Ava also has an innate ability to get in the way of her own happiness. We see it very clearly as she and Ruby plan to a vacation together and Ava finds a ring while packing and believes Ruby’s about to propose. But when Ava decides to choose Deb and wants to propose to Ruby, she is cut short when Ruby tells her the ring is actually a prop for the show.

Now I’ll be honest, I am fully Team Ava and Ruby’s attitude in the aftermath of this is horribly cruel. But the fact is there is something weird about Ava and Deb’s relationship. There is love there – I’ve seen it play out so many times in the last two seasons and I know the two of them care for each other. But a part of Deb still thinks of Ava only as an employee and Ava still seems to like some part of the abuse she has undergone.

Yet that dichotomy is still why I think Hacks is a revolutionary series compared to much of the previous decade. Deb is the center of the universe and many of the characters orbit her, but there’s genuine compassion for all of them. This is true of Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) Deb’s aide-de-camp for decades. A black gay man who has put so much of his personal needs after Deb’s, there’s clearly respect and devotion between the two. Marcus cares for Deb in a way not even Ava will and he can see around corners and find new avenues for her that Ava still can’t. Marcus, like Deb, has a business like exterior but a warm interior, though its even harder to get beneath the surface there. We see it in a scene in Season 2 when Marcus goes to see a man making knock-offs of Deborah Vance merchandise and the two get into a hysterical debate about who the bigger Deb Vance is. But when this man tells him that he is only filling a need and if he doesn’t someone else will, Marcus listens and takes the idea to Deb. She jokes about it but she agrees to a pitch as well.

There’s a similar attitude between Jimmy and Kayla. Paul W. Downs may have gotten this role because of who his wife is but every time Jimmy’s onscreen you can see how much he’s willing to do for it. Jimmy spent the first two seasons trying his best to handle Deb and Ava because no one else would but when his agency was going to terminate her, he decided to go with Deb on his own. Kayla’s decision also showed her own devotion: she may not have much of a brain and she shoots from the lip, but she does have a good heart. Stalter steals every scene she’s in but you can see that’s there’s someone who knows she’s the subject of the joke but still wants to be able to tell them.

As I’ve mentioned much of the best comedy in the decade has been more towards the disenfranchised trying to make the best of a world against them (Abbott Elementary, Reservation Dogs) or comedies that try to build bridges between generations rather than put walls up (Only Murders in the Building, So Help Me Todd) Hacks has been one of the very best shows in this new era and it is likely as the Emmys moves into a period of transition this year that it will do even better than it has in its previous two seasons. Already Jean Smart is looking like a formidable force for her third Emmy in this category; Hannah Einbinder is rising fast to contend against, of all people, Meryl Streep for Best Supporting Actress and Clemons-Hopkins and Paul W. Downs look like they will be forces in the Supporting Actor category.

I should mention that MAX is now following the pattern some streamers do and dropping the first two episodes at once and then the rest on a weekly basis. This may be the first time in my entire life that I’m actually irked that a streaming service of any kind is actually following a pattern I have spent a fair amount of time advocating for even at this blog. Because the moment I saw the first two episodes of Hacks, I immediately wanted to watch the next one and indeed the entire series, I know even without having to watch the next few episodes this show will be on my top ten list for the year (in 2021 and 2022 it was third both times). Shows like Hacks have always been treasures. We need them now more than ever and not just because we always need to laugh.

MY SCORE: 5 stars.