‘Hacks’ is back – with the same conflicts, but they still satisfy

The dynamic that Hacks created when it premiered in 2021 was television lightning in a bottle. Deborah (a strutting Jean Smart) was an aging Vegas comedian who had been beaten up by the business and whose point of view had badly calcified. Ava (a sharp-elbowed Hannah Einbinder) was a young writer whose behavior had blown up her career in Hollywood and had no choice but to take a job helping Deborah freshen up her act. Both women entered the dynamic with little use for each other, but watching them develop a genuine professional and personal relationship made that first season satisfying at a level that neither drama nor comedy achieves all that often.

Since then, they have argued and reconciled several times, and every season has ended with the suggestion that the relationship may not survive. As the fourth season begins, Deborah has what she’s long dreamed of: a gig as a late-night host.

But things are complicated. At the end of last season, Deborah changed her mind about making Ava head writer of the new show (making her a regular writer instead) in order to guard against conflict with the risk-averse network. In response, Ava went nuclear, blackmailing Deborah by threatening to reveal that Deborah slept with the network CEO played by Tony Goldwyn, knowing people will think that’s how she got the job — even though Ava knows that’s not what happened. Deborah, knowing that this allegation of trading sexual favors for advancement, though false, could destroy her, relented. Ava became head writer.

I thought at the time, and think now, that this threat was a bridge too far. It’s infuriating to have someone rescind a job offer in favor of a lesser job offer, even when — as Ava is — you are probably not experienced enough for the job you were initially offered. It would be understandable to be angry and resentful, to end a professional relationship over it, and to never speak to somebody again.

Ava’s response, though, was to blackmail a woman by threatening to make people think she effectively slept her way to the top, when Ava knew it was a lie. This was a betrayal of everything Ava has ever claimed to believe in — all over the difference between being head writer and being on the staff. This is the second time, after the gossipy letter she sent a group of other writers near the end of the first season, that Ava, when angry, has tried or threatened to ruin Deborah’s life by capitalizing specifically on the same kind of deeply personal misogyny she knows Deborah has experienced for decades and that Ava herself rails against. This is not merely cutthroat self-interest; it is dishonest and malicious, and it’s pretty hard to imagine the relationship ever really recovering.

Predictably, the fact that Ava obtained her new job this way makes the situation miserable for her and Deborah both. (Ava seems to have forgotten that getting this job working with Deborah will require her to … work with Deborah.) The first part of the season is occupied by this return to open hostilities after last season was largely spent getting the two to a point of hard-earned closeness.

It’s hard not to feel like Hacks is going in circles. Deborah and Ava are like any other couple — romantic, platonic, or professional — that breaks up and gets back together so many times, over the same issues, that it seems nothing can ever really change between them, which causes the stakes to drop. Why invest in this particular fight or this particular reconciliation when the cycle will inevitably repeat? It plays as though the writers have bought into the Moonlighting fallacy that a couple cannot be interesting if their relationship stabilizes, only here it’s a friendship and a collaboration instead of a bantering prelude to sex. It seems inevitable you’ll see a reconciliation, and then a new fracture after that, once per season.

And yet: It’s still an awful lot of fun to watch them together. Smart and Einbinder have some of the very best chemistry on TV, the dialogue is always on point, and the reason audiences follow along for all this in the first place is that both of these women, and the relationship between them, resonate with so much honesty. So even though it seems highly unlikely that these two people could (or should) ever trust each other again, you sort of want them to.

The supporting cast continues to shine, too: Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) have a different power dynamic now that they have their own agency. Both actors are excellent, and wisely, the writing has toned down the degree to which Kayla is a clinging vine Jimmy can hardly stand, turning her into an irritatingly competent odd duck in whose contributions Jimmy keeps finding value.

Elsewhere, Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) finds that Deborah’s new late-night job complicates his position as the boss of her QVC-centric retail empire. It would have been good to see a bit more of Marcus than we do, but every bit of Marcus adds nuance to not only our understanding of who he is, but our understanding of who Deborah is as well. A couple of new supporting characters are added this go-round, including one played by the wonderful Michaela Watkins, who has improved everything she’s ever been in.

I have quibbles — the show’s writing lets Ava off the hook too easily, my eyebrow arched over some of the ways television works in this world, and at this point, I’ve seen enough crazy nights in Vegas on screen to last me the rest of my life. Still — still! — these performances just shine, and riding on a circular track can still be entertaining if the scenery is good enough.