An elegiac tone dominates Hacks‘ season-four finale, “Heaven,” even though at first, Deborah’s career seems to have died without so much as a funeral. She quit her dream job as late-night host in such a public fashion, and yet the world seems to have just moved on: There’s no mention of interviews or exposés this week, not even the one that Lewis was working on at On The Contrary. Deborah’s last stand has gone the way of so many late-night clips, swallowed up by the press cycle and all the viral, Dance Mom-like bits. Was Bob right? Did Deborah burn it all down for nothing?
Well, no—but also, maybe yes. Let’s start at the beginning of the end, with Deborah in a strip mall, appealing to her last legal resort (Teddy Margas), who just confirms what she knows but refuses to accept: that the non-compete clause is iron-clad, and she has no legal recourse against Bob Lipka and his media conglomerate. Ava doesn’t fare much better with her proposed “blowjob for Bob in exchange for our jobs” strategy, so they’re both back at square one. But despite being quite accomplished, especially compared to Ava, Deborah thinks she’s the one coming from behind. “If I’m not on that stage, I have nothing,” Deborah says, but Ava thinks she’s being melodramatic. That’s because, for Ava, 18 months isn’t that long a time to wait; but for Deborah, it might as well be an eternity. As she did so elegantly in “Join The Club,” Deborah reminds Ava of the different stages of life they each occupy. A 29-year-old like Ava can talk vaguely about doing things “one day,” but as Deborah told her in that season-four episode, “Anything I want to do, I have to do now or else I’ll never do it. That’s the worst part of getting older.”
Deborah succeeds in gently pushing Ava away, returning to Las Vegas to lick her wounds (i.e., eat, read, and watch TV in bed). We’ve seen her bounce back before, but not from such a devastating blow. The media frenzy around her divorce and losing the late-night gig the first time around all happened well before the show’s timeline began. The Deborah we’ve come to know has always had some ace up her sleeve, some way to fight back; she was a savvy “contract doll,” as the strip-mall lawyer says. But her voice becomes so small when she admits to Ava that she has no creator credit on Who’s Making Dinner?, the sitcom that put her and her ex-husband on the map, because at the time, she didn’t know to ask for it. She comes away just as deflated after failing to get Marcus to join her attempt to reclaim ownership of Deborah Vance Industries. “I can’t perform. I don’t even own my own name,” she despairs, but like Ava, he just tries to get her to see the bright side of things (while at the factory where they build parts for solar panels, aptly enough). This is Deborah as we’ve never seen her before: out of options and out of control.
Series creators and episode co-scribes Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky, and Paul W. Downs draw considerable suspense from Deborah’s unusually fragile state. The scenes of her reminiscing with her ex-lover, former boss, and current friend Marty are quickly followed by Marcus’ viewing party at the demolition of the Tropicana. “Damn. It’s the end of an era,” Marcus muses, and he could be talking about so many things: his time working for/with Deborah, her career, a TV industry that supports women late-night hosts and incisive comedies. In any case, glasses are raised while a casino and hotel are razed, and the world within Hacks feels a little smaller, a little less gritty, a little less fun.
Deborah’s soon on the rebound, turning a trip to Hawaii for pleasure into a trip to Singapore for one last stab at glory. Once Ava knocked out after dry-swallowing a possible horse tranquilizer on the private jet (seriously, what is with her and water?), Deborah found a loophole: She can perform comedy in front of an audience as long as someone’s translating it into a different language. It’s a silly solution, but the fact that Deborah jumps at it is more proof that she’s desperate for direction. Seeing how excited her boss is at the prospect of performing again, Ava indulges her, once again putting Deborah’s needs before her own.
It looks like “Heaven” at first. When Deborah isn’t playing to tourists in the casino hall, she and Ava dine on great food, drink bottles of Champagne, sing karaoke in Mandarin, and make new friends (well, Deborah does). Days, weeks, and eventually months go by in this modern-day Xanadu (the Coleridge one, not the Olivia Newton-John one), but in a role reversal, Ava is the one who’s keenly aware of the passage of time. Ava sees Deborah growing complacent again—content to perform the same old jokes, night after night, likely out of fear of starting over once more. Her boss and friend isn’t having fun; she’s anesthetizing herself. “You’re not acting like yourself, and I feel like you’ve given up,” Ava tells her as gently as she can. Deborah is incensed: “I took a late-night show to number one. And you know, regardless of your judgment of my material, I perform every night. What do you do while you’re here? Except follow me around with your empty little notebook and your big shorts?”
Hacks seasons tend to end with an impending rift, so Deborah’s barrage of insults is right on time. It’s cruel of her to tell Ava, who’s stayed by her side, “All you’ve ever done is work for me. I have an amazing life. I’ve done everything. What have you done? And why aren’t you doing it now?” But she’s not wrong: Ava has hitched her wagon to Deborah’s star, as this season’s key art illustrated. (Okay, that’s a moon, but you get my point.) There’s no time left, either in this episode or in this season, to actually explore this, but there’s reason to hope that the show will dig into Ava’s own dreams and what her life might look like outside of her work with Deborah in the future. Despite the growing melancholy and a late-hour scare, Deborah is still alive and looking ready to fight again. After seeing what TMZ reduced her career to—”They’re saying I killed late night!”—in her prematurely published obituary, Deborah snaps out of her pleasure-filled daze. “That is not how I am going to be remembered, that will not be my legacy,” she fairly yells at Ava. “I’m no quitter! We have some rewriting to do.”
The season ends on a note that’s both galvanizing and ambiguous. Ava’s eyes flash fire, but she isn’t given a chance to respond. Maybe Ava will tell Deborah to go fuck herself after being pushed away yet again. Maybe she’ll agree, but only on the condition that they make something that represents them equally. Maybe, when they set off on a truly innovative venture, Deborah will realize she can’t keep up with Ava, and their relationship will enter yet another new phase. As I have at the end of every season, I see the potential for so much more. More than ever, though, I find myself hoping that any future episodes center Ava more. (Please don’t tell Jean Smart I said that.) The promotional art may have made room for Ava after season one, but it still shows her grasping at Deborah. We could play armchair psychiatrist and say this represents Ava’s need for acceptance, or her desire for success on a level with Deborah’s, or dismiss this all as overreaching. But I think part of the reason they struggled so much this season is because their dream—Deborah’s, really—was already a lost cause. Winnie told them how hard the fight would be, but the truth is it was a losing battle from the start. Late night, in our reality or the show’s, isn’t thriving, so it’s not going to support any real innovation (but I do hope John Mulaney gets to keep experimenting with it, even if it’s only on a weekly basis). Originality isn’t prized, in the show’s reality or ours, which is why Jimmy was pushing Ava to have a take on some existing IP and why, well, take your pick of dispiriting industry stories from real life. Deborah may have made history as the first female late-night host, but she was ultimately late to the party. Let’s hope the same can’t be said for Ava.
For a season grade, I give this a B+. There were some series highs, and I loved watching all the seemingly small moments and references coalesce into an engrossing story about art and commerce, but overall, this outing felt a bit more repetitive than seasons two or three (the strongest so far for me). But I say that with the caveat that it’s part of the point and allure of the show, because television is nothing if not repetitive. And I’m also one of the few, proud defenders of Mythic Quest season three, which was also accused of spinning its wheels, but that was also, for me, the point!
Stray observations
- • Thank you for reading along and for your comments, which made watching and writing about this show, which I adore, even better. I did my best not to insert a bunch of “THIS IS HOW IT FEELS TO BE IN MEDIA RIGHT NOW” observations, but I couldn’t omit them all. But the red-faced/bulging forehead vein kid meme is an accurate depiction of what I look like watching and writing about Hacks.
- • Wild speculation time: Kathy was only mentioned in disparaging jokes this season, but if the Who’s Making Dinner? rights transferred to her as Frank’s widow, maybe we could see J. Smith-Cameron again? (Or a third actress in the role? It could be fun for the show to constantly recast the role.)
- • It was smart to focus on Ava and Deborah in the aftermath, instead of doing drop-ins with the many new characters of the season. But it also made sense to feature Jimmy, who’s been with them since the beginning.
- • The lack of media furor in the wake of Deborah’s quitting is likely due to the non-compete clause and any NDA she signed. But it still seems odd that there was so little coverage and virtually no mention of On The Contrary and Late Night With Deborah Vance being owned by the same studio/conglomerate. (Lewis called Winnie Landell his boss or some such in Montreal in season three.) Bob probably couldn’t have stopped the report from running, but wouldn’t he have at least tried?
- • “You look like Ace Venture, Pet Detective.” Josefina provided some of the best, most underrated reads.
