‘Hacks’ and the Character Loop
The show loves this trope so much it just keeps doing it.
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Hacks is a delightful enough show1. Focused on the relationship between veteran comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and the young writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), who helps her evolve her comedic persona and revitalize her career, it’s a sharply-written jokefest that’s consistently enjoyable because the writers know where the edges of their characters are2. Deborah is a jaded Boomer who disdains the youth and doesn’t understand social media—but she’s perceptive and, deep down, empathetic. Ava is sarcastic and smug about being Very Very Online—but she’s smart and understands that Deborah has a skill set she lacks. They’re very funny together.
The show tracks their relationship as it evolves from the purely professional (with Deborah in charge as the employer) to an awkward combination of personal and professional as the two women develop a codependent and somewhat unhealthy relationship3. This is also fun! Ava’s messy personal life and constant humiliations give Deborah a lot to work with, and Deborah’s kitschy taste and braying delivery gives Ava plenty to work with, too. There’s just one problem: Their characters are in a loop, orbiting around each other in exactly the same way each season4.
The Loop
Here’s the Hacks loop in a nutshell: Ava and Deborah fight. They say mean things. They do mean things to each other5. They are miserable in both their personal and professional lives. Something big happens and there is a crisis. They are there for each other, have a heart-to-heart, and then spring into action as a renewed duo, committed to being each other’s bestie.
Now, that’s a common and very workable setup for serial fiction, which tends to be pretty loopy as a rule. But the show has reset and returned to this fundamental dynamic each and every season now, and as a result there’s a predictable structure to every new season of Hacks: Deborah does something to hurt Ava deeply, Ava grows bitter, Deborah misses Ava, their paths cross, and a rapprochement is somehow engineered6. The two join forces to work toward a heartwarming goal, usually involving Deborah somehow overcoming yet another age- or gender-related obstacle in her career.
On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s funny! And fun to watch. On the other hand, this does take some of the fun out of it, because you kind of know the story beats that are coming. You know where the characters are headed, really. It all might be funny, but so are a lot of knock-knock jokes. That doesn’t mean you don’t get tired of it after a while.
You Look Like a Ball Girl at the U.S. Open and Not One of the Fast Ones
This is common enough in serial fiction, especially comedies, where the situation is key, so returning to first position every season is a feature, not a bug. But you see it in any ongoing fiction, whether it’s a book series where characters always return to their factory settings between books or a film franchise where the situations get bigger and more complex but always have the same fundamental shape7. But just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s good writing, natch—it’s effective writing in the sense that it gives you the outcome that you want, but it’s not good in the sense that it can be boring as fuck.
And the central relationship in Hacks is kind of boring at this point. I mean, how often can you watch two people go through the same basic dynamic before pretending to be surprised becomes work? As I write this, it looks like the show intends to break the cycle with the season 4—in fact, they weaponize this loop against the audience when it looks like Deborah will once again betray Ava to save her show—but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s been hitting this button over and over again for years8. Because in order for that twist and weaponization to work, you can’t have viewers giving up on the show because they think they’ve seen this pattern before. Trust me: ‘It gets really good later’ isn’t the strong recommendation some people seem to think it is9.
What’s really unfortunate is that the show has always had potential for a more interesting dynamic that wouldn’t actually blow up the show’s central conflict. There are so many ways Ava and Deborah could be arrayed against each other—creatively, philosophically, emotionally—that don’t involve professional warfare over and over again10.
Maybe I’m just butthurt because getting paid to write humor at the level that Ava does in this show is something I’ll never be able to do, in part because I am (apparently) not nearly as funny as I think I am11 and in part because that kind of work ethic is not my jam. I prefer jobs where I am paid lavishly to sit around smiling vaguely and sipping expensive whiskies. And let me tell you, there are not a lot of those jobs around12.
NEXT WEEK: Your Friends and Neighbors chases the wrong story.
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As your astronaut-cum-explorer into the undiscovered country of old age, I can confirm that at a certain point, “delightful enough” is enough.
Just like I know precisely how many pants and whiskey jokes I can make in these essays. The number is 23, any combination.
Co-dependent and somewhat unhealthy also describes my relationship with pants and whiskey.
Maybe my brother Yan is right and all American television shows should be 3.5 episodes total like British shows.
This is also describing my relationship with both pants and whiskey. This is getting weird.
This also describes my relationship with whiskey, which hurts me over and over, yet I keep crawling back (cue montage with sad music as Jeff and a bottle of Glenmorangie stare dolefully out a window in different cities, sighing).
See the Disney-fied versions of both Star Wars and Doctor Who. Bigger, yes, but at what cost (our sanity, mostly).
Personally, I love a good, deep rut. I like to dig it into a trench and install flooring and furniture, live out my days in there.
The Duchess, assured that a 30-year old Jeff would someday be “husband material,” would sadly agree.
Two words: Paintball episodes.
LIARS! I am reliably hilarious. Also: Handsome.
I envision this as a kind of department store window display gig. Call me.