Hacks doesn’t owe us a mission statement. Even as the series’ commentary on Hollywood has grown more pointed and its real-life parallels more obtrusive, it has never been under any real obligation to spell out themes or adhere to them. More often than not, meaning is ascribed to a text by its readers or viewers. And for many, the pleasures of Hacks have come from simply watching its two complicated leads find a way to bring out the best (and sometimes the worst) in each other.
And yet, especially for those of us who tend to overthink things, every season of Hacks has been about something: navigating the industry as a woman and splitting your head open trying to break the glass ceiling; weighing the demands of commerce against the needs of art; and even illustrating how anger can become a terrible motivator if you cling to it too long. It has also been undeniably funny, getting laughs from everything from Deborah and Ava’s particular brands of self-righteousness to writers’ lunch orders to a mismatched (but winning) pair of managers. What will viewers remember most: the substance or the humor?
A version of that question has been hanging over this season, as Deborah’s challenged the revisionist history that threatens to take the place of her lived experience. What will she be remembered for? More importantly, what does she want to be remembered for? In the season-five premiere, she decided she needed a legacy-defining win to combat the Bob Lipka spin machine, then determined that selling out a show at Madison Square Garden would be her crowning achievement. This, Deborah argued, was how she’d take back control of her story, though she didn’t seem to note that it would still mean measuring herself by the metrics of others’ success. That is, until “Who’s Making Dinner?” (B+), the first episode in this week’s paired offering. The title of the episode is also the title of the CBS sitcom that first made Deborah a star, then a betrayed wife, then a joke, and finally the formidable multihyphenate who can’t speak to any of her accomplishments at the Paley Center exhibition of the show she helped create, thanks to the restraining order she received at the start of the season.
Up until her breakthrough in a Los Angeles jail, Deborah has trouble expressing herself and not just because of the gag order. The new material she tests on her staff in the opening just comes across as hectoring, not cutting, and she’s started punctuating all of her punchlines with “y’all.” Ava urges her boss to lead with observations of what’s actually been funny about the last few years, but Deborah argues that “If comedy says something, it’s supposed to make you uncomfortable. I mean, you’re the one who always says it doesn’t have to be a laugh a minute.” Deborah’s undeterred by the fact her act is “Smith College commencement address at the moment”—she’s found a bully pulpit (or “persecution pyramid”), and she’s going to use it.
Traveling to L.A. for the exhibition opening does little to improve Deborah’s mood or comedy at first. The photo and costume displays remind her of what she’s lost—or, more to the point, what was taken from her—and she’s once again being called “crazy” (sorry, “having mental issues”). When she learns that a previously unaired interview with Frank will be shown—”He’s upstaging me from the grave!”—Deborah loses her already tenuous grip. Before she storms the stage to take some potshots at her dead ex, she tries to justify it to Jimmy: “I’m not just doing this for me; I’m doing this for all women who have been silenced.” (Between his softly bewildered “How?” at this and his physical comedy with Anna Konkle, Paul W. Downs provides several of this episode’s laugh-out-loud moments.) What comes next is flop sweat personified: Calling Joan Of Arc her “sister in the struggle” and lapsing into “y’all”s again is bad enough, then she tells the crowd that Frank’s family “had slaves. Nasty stuff.” She fairly slinks away, but not before watching the unearthed interview with Frank (played in his later years by Peter Strauss and by George Kareman in the flashbacks/sitcom footage). Asked how he knew Who’s Making Dinner? was funny, Frank doesn’t hesitate in telling the off-camera interviewer, “Because of Deborah. Deborah was the funny one. She was always the funniest person in any room.”
It’s not enough to undo taking sole credit for the show, or cheating with her sister, or any of the other injuries that followed. But Frank’s admission shakes Deborah to her core. “It’s been 50 fucking years,” she tells Ava, who cannot resist noting that Deborah “bombed superhard.” (She kids because she cares.) “Why do I still need to hear that? Why should I care about what some kid who I met when I was 18 years old thinks about me? It’s pathetic,” Deborah sighs, more unmoored than ever. She doesn’t have a bead on her material for the Garden show, the one she says has to be “record-breaking,” and, in this moment, she’s also without the anger that’s undergirded her career in the decades since her fall (more like shove) from grace. And even though what she just did onstage hardly constitutes “comedy,” as Ava points out, Deborah is arrested for violating the restraining order as she leaves the event.
The jail scene at the end is more notable for what it leads to than Deborah’s riffing (the “late-night jail” joke from last season was more effective than this “actor jail” one) or even the female bonding (though it is nice to see Deborah pair humor with some empathy). Earlier in the evening, she told Ava that Who’s Making Dinner? has “endured because it was important, it said something,” and that’s what she wants from her MSG show. But after pulling off the alchemy of turning her pain into comedy for her fellow arrestees (who are also prepared to have some chuckles at their own expense), Deborah drops her crusade. She tells Ava that the Garden show “doesn’t have to be important, it just has to be funny.” And I know what I wrote above about mission statements not being needed, but this sentiment does seem to capture the show’s approach as it nears its end. Hacks has already broken ground, won a bunch of awards, opened a new chapter in Jean Smart’s career as well as served as a launching pad for Hannah Einbinder and other talents, and done it all with visual panache and biting wit. Now its creators and characters just want to have fun. It might not offer the same clear through-line as in previous seasons, but who’s to say what will hold up best over time?
Besides, if the Garden doesn’t work out, Deborah is basically building a monument to herself: The Diva, which is what she and Marcus have decided to name their casino, much to Josefina’s delight. As this week’s second episode, “D’Amazing Race” (B+), begins, Deborah and her longtime staff are scoping out potential employees at the return of the Hospitality Olympics (known IRL as the Housekeeping Olympics). But even with a massive renovation on her hands and a make-or-break comedy show on the horizon, Deborah still has time for blackjack, Kiki, and Ava. DJ bursts into the room just then to hold her mom to her promise to compete on the celebrity edition of The Amazing Race, which is the show that helped her get sober. “Phil Keoghan is my higher power,” DJ says, wild-eyed with earnestness or derangement. Though these d’tours typically happen at the midseason mark, you never know what to expect when Kaitlin Olson comes barreling through, and I mean that in the best way. Olson is such a live wire, and even though she isn’t a regular presence in the show, she somehow always embodies the past iterations of DJ and the current one. Today, DJ is a happily married mom and jewelry designer who has the chance to live out her dream of being on The Amazing Race. The fact that the prize money has already been earmarked for charity does little to deter her.
Deborah comes through for her daughter, in part because she figures the cast announcement will give her another chance to promote her comedy show and because she assumes (correctly, it turns out) that DJ will not last a week. It’s a bit mean and calculating, which are both very Deborah, but she just had an epiphany about letting go of the anger caused by Frank’s betrayal—she’s not going to shift from being a hypercritical mom overnight, too. Once Deborah and Deborah Junior are on the road, “D’Amazing Race” takes off, as Smart and Olson both flaunt great physical comedy chops. DJ’s knowledge of the contest rules underscores just how much the competition show has meant to her, and she really does throw herself into the cheese wheel-carting and goat-milking. But, as with so many of DJ’s preoccupations, she doesn’t really have the skill to back up the passion. After spending four hours trying to nail a probably 30-second Mexican clown routine/dance, DJ comes face to face with Phil Keoghan, who tells her the words she’s been dreading to hear. And then she’s right back at the Oaxaca airport with Deborah, complaining about how “they never let Aidan and me preboard because they don’t count MMA as military service. Fucking bullshit.” At least we know DJ can keep up with her mom when it comes to keeping a grudge.
DJ doesn’t walk away completely empty-handed. Though it initially sounds like damning with faint praise, Deborah tells DJ she’s proud of her. “During this race, you just threw yourself into everything. You didn’t even care how you looked.” DJ scoffs, but Deborah explains that DJ is tougher than she is: “I mean, I’ve always cared too much about what people think, ’cause I know how hard it is when people make fun of you or call you crazy, like they’re doing to me right now.” In trying to protect DJ from criticism, she ended up stifling her (though it’s probably for the best that DJ’s reggae album is still unreleased).
It may have taken Deborah 40-plus years to own up to that mistake, but it soon becomes clear that she’s not eager to repeat it with her protégé. Ava’s been keeping her own passion project from Deborah: a reboot of Who’s Making Dinner? that would focus on the original couple’s grandchild, who inherits the house but then has to bring in some roommates in order to afford to live in it. Jessica Duncan (Caitlin Reilly), the streaming executive who backed My Bad, is now making even higher-level decisions, and she loved Ava’s Mall Girl script. The problem is, the idea is too original, so Ava just needs to come up with something else she’s passionate about that also ticks a bunch of demographics boxes, and is not a limited series. (I guess the tide has turned.) Jessica’s offering a blind script deal, so all Ava needs now is a great idea. She’s struck by inspiration in “Who’s Making Dinner?,” telling Jimmy she wants to update the series to be about “chosen family” and what success looks like for generations who will be denied it. You know, “community building, downward mobility.” If Deborah’s comedy show isn’t going to be about something, at least the reboot of her initial claim to fame will.
Despite how much they’ve grown together, Ava is anxious about pitching the show to Deborah in “D’Amazing Race.” “I know it’s triggering for you when people rewrite your story,” she tells Deborah when she finally works up the nerve. But Deborah surprises her and us: “Well, I would trust you to do it.” This stripped-down scene in Deborah’s closet is one of the best of the season so far and just another example of how well Smart and Einbinder play off each other. There’s no bluster or punchlines (well, Deborah’s line about cheap toilet paper leading to hospitalization did make me laugh), just giving and acceptance. The Garden show is Deborah’s future; this reboot is Ava’s.
It may seem like I’ve been giving Ava short shrift in these recaps, but I think it’s because she’s been holding back as much as being held back. I’ve pointed out the key art before, but this season is the first time Ava and Deborah are practically standing shoulder to shoulder, both looking poised, but with Ava still ever so slightly behind. Tricking Kathy Vance (J. Smith-Cameron, it’s been too long) with some forged heirlooms, courtesy of T.L. Gurley (Jefferson Mays), shows what she’s learned from Deborah. But by being honest about what she wants in “D’Amazing Race,” she comes more fully into her own.
Stray observations
- • Samantha Riley and Lucia Aniello handle the writing and directing duties, respectively, for “Who’s Making Dinner?,” while Jeff Rosenberg helms “D’Amazing” from a script by Pat Regan.
- • DJ finally goes on QVC with the perfect product: D’tachables, or detachable earrings. “That’s right, no more bloody lobes! Moms get it.” Too bad QVC recently filed for bankruptcy.
- • DJ and Deborah competed briefly against Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott, Jordan Firstman, Trisha Paytas, Richard Jefferson, and J.R. Smith. They really never stood a chance.
- • Hacks writers and producers Joe Mande (who’s played Palmetto employee Ray lo these five years) and Pat Regan compete in character in baggage handling and bed-making events at the Hospitality Olympics.
- • “I feel like I said that but then a man said it louder, but that’s okay. I’ll just repress it; it’ll make me funnier in the long run.” Oh, Ava.
Danette Chavez is The A.V. Club‘s editor-in-chief.
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