Friends, fans, lovers, enemies, and El Hefe all descend upon New York City this week for Deborah’s career-defining stand-up show. The air crackles with excitement in the opening moments of “The Garden,” as Deborah puts the finishing touches on her set, a montage capturing her latest grueling routine—workouts, ice-water facials, vocal exercises, choreography. It’s an energizing reminder of how she got to Madison Square Garden, and how Hacks got to the penultimate episode of its critically lauded, award-winning run: hard work and talent in equal measure.
That energy continues unabated in “The Garden,” even after the shocking reveal mid-episode, which we’ll get to in due time. Lucia Aniello is back at the helm, and she shares writing duties once more (and for the second-to-last time) with her co-creators Jen Statsky and Paul W. Downs. Hacks has featured some great directors and writers, all of whom have contributed to the show’s identity, but the domino-toppling of “The Garden” practically demands the original trio. This is what the final season has been building towards, with its callbacks, setbacks, triumphs, even the flirty interludes. And it’s a work of art.
18 months have passed since Deborah quit late night, and although the title of her show is Deborah Vance: Gagged, she’s now free to promote it everywhere: billboards, The Breakfast Club—you name it, she does. She’s spending the last week leading up to “the best 9/11 that New York has ever had” rehearsing and depriving herself—but only of food, judging by the call she makes to Marty. Ava’s on the other side of the country, pitching her Who’s Making Dinner? reboot with a proud Jimmy sitting next to her, but it’s a non-starter. “It doesn’t feel personal,” Jessica says after listening to Ava describe her reboot’s themes of economic hardship and Gen Z kinship.
Ava’s disappointed, but it’s understandable—aside from her connection to Deborah, there’s no clear reason why she would “need” to be the one to tell that story. And I realize everyone wants to make the next Friends, but Ava’s idea boils down to “roommates,” and she hasn’t really had any; her living arrangements over the last few years have consisted of a hotel, a tour bus, a brief stay in a mall, and room and board at the palatial home of one of the most demanding bosses ever. She’s out of touch with her generational cohort, a fact that becomes crystal clear later when she’s arguing with Deborah over QR codes and minibar usage. Their little tiff, which is really more of a way for Deborah to let off a little steam on the night before her show, inspires Ava to write a new pitch for Who’s Making Dinner?, one shaped by the most important relationship in her life. Ava sells Jessica on the idea by describing the two leads, so obviously inspired by herself and Deborah, as two women who “help each other see the world differently and they both become better people for it.” More than any other idea she’s worked on throughout the series, this is the story she needs to tell, and her confidence in pitching it is another sign of growth for Ava, who not that long ago (at the end of season two, to be precise) worried that she had nothing of real significance to say. And her statement echoes something Deborah said in season one’s penultimate episode, “Interview”: [W]hen you share a sense of humor with someone, it’s like finding someone who speaks your own private little language, and you make each other better.” Deborah was talking about her late ex-husband Frank, but she was also foreshadowing the relationship that’s been the core of the show.
These are just two of many full-circle moments in “The Garden,” along with Marty, after learning he’s been laid off by the VC bros who bought the Palmetto Group, whining to Deborah about ageism. You’ll recall that he effectively pushed her out of her residency in search of fresh (read: young-skewing) talent back in season one. Deborah’s sympathetic, even if she can’t resist deadpanning about the situation: “Welcome to the club. I mean, you’re 40 years behind, but we’re happy to have you.” Later, Deborah proves yet again that she can forgive, if not forget, by offering him the job of running The Diva, which he immediately accepts. (He’d better not try to book Pentatonix.) But the clattering of dominoes really started to pick up for me mid-episode, when Deborah, dressed in her hard-won Carol Burnett jumpsuit, wonders about the lack of crowd noise at the Garden. Her team—Ava, Jimmy, Kayla, and Randi—is also nonplussed about the eerie quiet at what should be a sold-out event. Clack, clack, clack, wait, who’s the lone person in the audience? Bob Lipka, who was able to easily buy out the show thanks to the low price point Deborah set to make room for the Little Debbies.
18 months of smearing Deborah in the press and enforcing her silence weren’t enough for Bob—he now wants her to sign an NDA (for what he hints is a lot of money) and agree never to speak of him or Late Night again. Apparently, the last year and a half was “a fucking nightmare” for Bob, the smol-bean CEO who almost lost the trust of his board and whose bonus package was reduced after Deborah’s “heroic” exit. Rather than see her stir up support once more with her Garden show, Bob bought out the tickets to undermine her again. “Do you really want to spend your golden years fighting a losing battle?,” he asks her. When Deborah turns pensive, her eyes briefly lowering, I’ll admit I had a flicker of doubt; I thought she might at least ask for a beat to consider the offer, possibly to buy time to scheme with her team. But this is Deborah Vance, after all, so she fires back a succinct “Fuck your NDA, and fuck you.”
Backstage, Team Deborah is even more livid, with Ava hollering “Siri, google ‘how to sink a superyacht.’ No AI!” into her phone (one of the funniest moments in an episode full of them) and Kayla invoking Luigi. Deborah seems both more collected and more delusional than the rest of them, though, when she suggests doing the show for free in Central Park that weekend. Deborah’s plan and everyone’s unquestioning support recalls the start of the season, when they were backing her every play, but the energy is different. They likely would have pulled off selling out MSG without Bob’s interference, so there’s no reason to stop swinging for the fences now.
After a great “Deborah gets to work” montage, this episode serves up an “everyone pulls together” sequence that weaves together multiple season-five storylines, including Deborah’s brief fling with Nico and her brief time on The Amazing Race, while also pulling from the past. The first stop is Central Park, where Laurie Metcalf returns as Alice a.k.a. Weed, the exacting tour manager from season two. But any tension fades away when Weed reveals that Deborah did her fellow workaholic a favor when she fired her. “You gotta crash and burn before you can rise,” Weed tells her before agreeing to let them use Fall Out Boy’s stage for the show. The dominoes keep falling at the permit office, where I’ve Xenit All podcast producer Jimmy bonds with Anastasia (Yamaneika Saunders) over a love of Xena: Warrior Princess and is able to secure a permit (also Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz just keeps giving). Marty offers to have tourists bussed in from Atlantic City while Nico and Trish encourage their followers to attend her show. People who once stood in Deborah’s way as well as those who have stood by her side come through; even Joy Behar agrees to forgive and forget, but only after receiving a very specific apology on The View.
“The Garden” ends with twin victories, with Deborah setting a record in Central Park, one that Ava notes would be a great lede for an obituary, and Ava getting a pilot order for her reboot, plus the added bonus of Deborah acknowledging, unprompted, that they’re on stolen land. And Hacks hits another high note, its sharp storytelling over the last five years, and especially this season, coalescing in this half hour. It makes the impending end even more bittersweet, but I’m more excited than ever to see how Aniello, Downs, and Statsky bring their story to a close.
Stray observations
- • “God, I love this business. It’s 90% the most delusional, lazy people you’ve ever seen in your life and 10% the most delusional workaholics. And I for one am proud and honored to be part of that latter 10%.” Hell yeah, Randi! I know everyone’s leery of spin-offs right now, but I think Robby Hoffman could hold down her own Ballers-esque show.
- • This line from Ava’s revised one-pager sums up the core dynamic so well, that I can’t help but wonder if it was part of the real-life Hacks pitch: “We’re both headstrong women who have different points of view on just about everything but we do agree enough to not want to hang out with anybody else.”
- • Speaking of real life, Jean Smart’s boyfriend, actor Joe Pacheco, plays Nina’s windsurfing boyfriend Jack.
- • If this is the last we’ve seen of Bob Lipka, I’m glad for my girls. But Tony Goldwyn’s so good in his latest “man with a big job who nonetheless can’t handle the women he’s drawn to” role.
- • Given all the returning faces we’ve seen so far, who do we think will show up in the finale?
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