At the end of the Season 4 premiere of Hacks, Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) pose for the cover of a prestigious magazine. Glamorously dressed and impeccably lit, they look ecstatic, beaming in every shot. And why shouldn’t they be thrilled? The photo shoot is for a feature that will celebrate their respective historic accomplishments: Deborah, the 70-something stand-up comedian, is set to become the first female host of a major network’s late-night show, while the 20-something Ava will be the program’s head writer—the youngest to ever land such a gig.
The truth is, however, that the pair are miserable. In the final episode of the Emmy-winning series’ third season, Deborah rescinded her original job offer to Ava, but then Ava blackmailed Deborah into hiring her anyway. The subsequent rift between them threatens to end their new show before it ever begins airing. “You broke my heart,” Deborah says as she plasters on a smile for the camera. “You broke mine first,” Ava retorts.
Hacks has often brought its protagonists close together only to pull them apart. Deborah and Ava inspire each other as much as they cause each other terrible emotional distress—and at the start of Season 4, which began streaming on Max this week, they’re back on the outs. They see each other as the reason their new roles have been frustrating: Because of their bickering, the network has hired an HR rep to follow them around, and they loathe having to keep up a unified front in public. Yet Hacks argues that the pressure the women place on themselves to prove that they deserve their positions—positions they’ve long desired—is the real reason for their turbulence. A dream job can inspire tremendous worry for anyone who wants to keep the role and do it well. But in an industry in which people like Deborah and Ava rarely ascend to the top, the show suggests that such achievements come with taxing, intangible responsibilities: having to set examples, silence critics, and never show the strain of being a trailblazer.
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Deborah, for one, chases perfection to her detriment, getting swept up in focus-group findings about her performance on the show. A viewer said they want to be able to see her legs? Okay, the crew can saw off the bottom of her desk. People like female hosts with longer hair? Fine, she’ll get extensions. When Deborah learns that mothers don’t find her engaging, she green-lights a regular segment featuring a TikToker known as “Dance Mom,” whose whole shtick is being a mom who dances. Deborah’s fear that the show won’t be a hit causes her to have a panic attack during her first episode’s dress rehearsal. Throughout her decades working in comedy, Deborah was never afraid to go onstage. But she’s become insecure about why she has the job she’s long desired. She didn’t develop a following because of her long legs or hair; her fans like her self-effacing jokes, her snappy delivery, and her ability to spin personal anxieties into gossipy comedy gold.
The risk of getting what you want, Hacks posits, is losing sight of what made you want it in the first place. Deborah’s burdens are hyperspecific to Hollywood; only Joan Rivers could relate to this kind of industry scrutiny hounding an older female late-night host. Ava’s resentments, meanwhile, are more universal. She is desperate for the staff she assembled to like her, but achieving that goal requires her to do anything except write: She takes the team to a Las Vegas nightclub as a bonding exercise and brings in bundles of balloons to celebrate their birthdays. When Deborah demands new material, Ava has no time to come up with a single line; instead, she has her employees rattle off ideas while she feverishly transcribes them, prints them out, and then dashes through the studio, Broadcast News–style, to deliver them to Deborah. It’s all exhausting for her. “I’m not suicidal,” Ava insists in one episode. “I just want to die.”
Hacks is a comedy that studies the work of comedy—the meticulous craftsmanship behind a joke, the vulnerability that can sharpen a stand-up set. As a satire, it skewers the business, demonstrating how women like Deborah and Ava must climb steeper slopes than any of their male peers to prove their worth. But the show has also begun to probe whether an ostensibly thriving career can truly bring fulfillment. Season 4, as a result, feels markedly introspective. As it dials up the absurdity of its version of Hollywood—“Dance Mom,” played by the always great Julianne Nicholson, is an especially memorable recurring character—Hacks grounds its wildest moments in the question of whether Deborah and Ava can remain themselves. Can they succeed at their new jobs with their voices and instincts intact?
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The show hints that it’s possible, albeit only if the pair can help each other relieve the tensions they face. Hacks keeps having Deborah and Ava break up and make up because their dynamic is so compelling; Deborah isn’t just Ava’s whip-smart boss, but her overbearing surrogate mother too. Ava is more than Deborah’s trusted sounding board; she’s also a walking reminder of Deborah’s looming irrelevance within the industry that has exiled her before. Yet their relationship also highlights the way creative work is a constant negotiation. It’s a constant battle between artistic and commercial interests, between one’s intentions and society’s expectations. For both Ava and Deborah, the phrase dream job turns out to be an oxymoron. Working in the world of late-night TV is gratifying for them. It may also be destroying them.
