Like all fans of Hacks my heart
cracked in two when Ava betrayed Deb in the final minutes of Season 3 in order
to get her job writing for late night. At the halfway point of Season 4, one
can't help but be reminded of Oscar Wilde's famous statement: "The two
worst things in the world are not getting what you want and getting it."
I can't help but think that even had Ava
not betrayed Deb in the final minutes and the two of them had gone into this
with a united front, the exact same conflict that is playing out after the
halfway point would still end up causing a wedge between the two leads. Because
nothing has made clear about the divide between these two women – and by metaphor,
the divide between comedians, particularly in late night today – then the way
the two of them see their current jobs.
A huge amount of the fun during the three
seasons has been watching Baby Boomer Deb Vance (Jean Smart) and millennial Ava
(Hannah Einbinder) push each other's buttons about what it means to be a great
comedian. There's an argument that Deb has gotten far more out of the arrangement
than Ava to this point. By pushing herself to delve deep and become edgier and
more personal, Deb has moved beyond the fiefdom she had in Vegas and as a
relatively limited idol to achieve mass success as a comedian and eventually
receive what she's wanted for fifty years: to be the first woman in Late Night.
It has also caused her to grow immensely socially in that she is far more
accepting of Ava's point of view on issues involving women and LGBTQ+ relationships
then she has been in her entire life. She's also managed to rebuild her
relationship with her daughter DJ and is slowly rebuilding with her sister.
Ava has similarly managed to make cultural
gains over that same period. She understands that Deb's attitude, while still
fundamentally bullying, is very much a front for a woman who is hurt after
decades of loss. She's slowly but surely rebuilt her relationship with her
mother and has come to realize that there are more sides to every issue. But
where she hasn't made the biggest change has been how she views comedy. Last
season Ava managed to land a job writing for a Daily Show type comedy series
which has much to do with the kind of personal politics she's always believed
in. She went on hiatus from that to try and help Deb land her gig at Late Night.
It's here the divide between how the two view the world was always going to
show.
Ava has grown up in an era when late night
existed solely on the success of a niche audience that will watch you week
after week – the era of The Daily Show, Full Frontal and HBO's own Last
Week Tonight. She lives in the era of streaming and cable and thinks that
success can be built on strictly a limited audience. She is therefore less
equipped than Deb to deal with the head of the network (Helen Hunt) tells her
that the alternative to Deb getting the job in Late Night was no one – the network
was just going to run a clip show or something in syndication. Both she and Deb
were given a mandate that the show had to become a massive hit.
Deb Vance, of course, knows that world having
spent much of her career on the edge of it and nearly touching it. She no doubt
spent her career getting gigs on Carson and no doubt watched as Leno and Letterman
managed to command audiences that were larger than some network shows of the
1990s. And she's always understood the world of commerce better than Ava. She may be a little too obsessed
with focus groups but when in 'Clickable Face' she tells Ava: "This isn't
about you. It isn't even about me…This isn't about twelve shows on the road.
It's about selling soap." Ava believes you can sell soap and still make
art because she grew up in the era where cable and streaming were prominent and
network notes were non-existent. When Deb tells her: "You can't,"
it's a statement of fact that is reverberating across Hollywood and not just in
late night. Considering how many cable networks have shed original programming
for reruns and how many companies are merging in order to survive – including HBO
merger with Warner Bros that led to the creation of HBO Max - it's a message that people like Ava would
do well to listen to. Considering that even before the cancellation of Stephen
Colbert this past month Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers have had to make moves
economize you'd think Ava herself would know it.
But this is a part of comedy or life Ava has
never willingly accepted. How much of what she is doing is out of envy for what
her colleagues are now accomplishing politically is unclear. (I'd like to think
the writers of Hacks were making a subtle joke about how much of late night
has moved from comedy to political activism but I'm honestly not sure.) In any
case Ava demonstrates what is frequently the worst part of her personality: in
which she wants to put politics into comedy regardless of whether it isolates
the audience.
In many ways when Ava tries to put a joke
in about the paid maternity leave in Sweden with Deb denies to her face and
then tries to submarine her is the biggest sign yet of Ava crossing the line professionally
with her boss. The writers purposely make this another weak joke (Ava by
far is still the more heavy-handed with her material then Deb) to make a clear
point: Ava is far less interested in being funny than making political points
to the biggest audience possible. This is made even clearer in the scene preceding
where Deb sees Ava as part of her throuple and Deb clearly judges her for "pleasing
everybody."
It's here we see that at the end of the day
there's a part of Ava that still prefers the acceptance of her contemporaries
to people like Deb. When Deb tells her about the work relationship the two of
them had which has been the foundation of the show for three seasons, Ava tries
very hard to say that it was meaningless. Even more hurtful is the fact that
Ava has told the married couple not to watch the show: "I told them to
wait until it got good." The
implication couldn't be clearer: Ava only thinks Deb's show will be good when her
vision for it is accepted and the fact that Deb is the onscreen talent is
irrelevant. The look on Smart's face clearly registers; Ava has said hurtful
things about Deb before but never to people she supposedly cares about.
We see this play out in a different context
when Dance Mom (Julianne Nicholson) auditions for Deb's show. Ava is firmly
opposed to her presence, and the fact that she might draw in the audiences the
show needs is something she casually dismisses. When told Dance Mom has a lot
of followers she says: "So did Charles Manson." Deb is on the fence
and eventually weighs against it, mainly because she thinks it would make the show
look bad. Now I know things will work out for Dance Mom (and that in typical
fashion, things will spiral) but Ava's reaction is more calculated. Deb (initially)
rejects Dance Mom because it will be a bad look for the show and she's allowed
to make that decision because she's the talent. Ava is upset because it goes against
her artistic principles – even if the show gets a bigger audience, what does it
matter if we sell our soul?
I haven't finished the current season yet
but I know enough spoilers to know how the journey will end for Deb, Ava and the
late night venture. I might at some point return to this after I finish the
season (which I expect will happen this month) but I would warn certain people
in television for taking too much of the wrong lessons from it. So keep two
things in mind. First this show is about Deb, Ava and those around them and
while it criticizes certain things in Hollywood I suspect it will still come down
on the side of art over commerce every time. Second remember that what happens
near the end of the season is not a parallel to recent events because the
choice does not come from the network but from Deb. It is meant to call back to
Jack Paar not Stephen Colbert. Keep that in mind before you think the writers
of Hacks saw the future.
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