Hacks is a funny, subliminally provocative series that deals with everything from ageism, to sexuality, to the entitlement of Gen Z. Starring Jean Smart as Deborah Vance, a legendary, ageing female comedian, and Hannah Einbinder as Ava, the young woman hired to punch up Deborah’s comedy routine, the show examines the biases and challenges of women from different generations. The humour comes from their different world views and the grudging admiration that develops. Hacks has won multiple Emmy’s and Golden Globes.
Season 3 explores the power balance between friends, what people will do to achieve their dreams and gender bias in comedy. Quickly — how many female comedians not including Carol Burnett, Tina Fey or Amy Poehler can you name? How many men? Exactly!
Smart came to international fame in Designing Women (1986-93) and has notched up an impressive string of credits in television: she worked on Frasier (2000-01), Fargo (2015) and Mare of Easttown (2021) to name a few, garnering Emmys and Golden Globes along the way for her performances. A partial list of her movies include Sweet Home Alabama (2002) Babylon (2022) and Guinevere (1999) for which she took home an Independent Spirit Award.
At 72, the lithe and lovely Seattle native, as Deborah Vance, allows the audience to explore whether achieving a dream is the sole right of the young? Old people who don’t achieve their dreams simply have broken dreams — right?
Unless...
In season 3, the opportunity to host a late night talk show — usually the purview of men — opens up unexpectedly. It’s a job Smart’s character yearned for in her youth, but was rejected. The bitterness and disappointment of not getting a shot at something she deserved, merely because of her gender, fed her ambition in the intervening years. The “chip on her shoulder” honed her biting wit and helped her achieve fame. So, she believes she’s made peace with not getting her dream job. Then, guesting on an evening talk show, she’s unexpectedly asked to fill in for the host who’s taken ill, and she’s feted for her performance. “Her dream is resuscitated,” explains Smart, looking a decade younger than her years perched on a director’s chair at The London Hotel, Beverly Hills. Hacks asks: how far will she go to get another chance at her dream, and do new biases exist to thwart her ambition?
There’s this thing in Western culture that’s associated with age and women in particular. They shouldn’t have long hair. They shouldn’t date younger men. They shouldn’t aspire to stay relevant. If they would just move over and prepare to die, well, then Gen Z could take what’s rightfully theirs. Smart has different ideas, “except, my character wants her shot at her dream,” she says. Deborah does what women everywhere do to be accepted; she minimises her ability, plays docile and avoids letting her ambition show as that’s deemed “too threatening” — while still throwing her hat into the ring for the gig. When the “be less” ploy appears not to work, Smart takes off the gloves and blatantly goes after her goal — to hilarious consequences.
The actors are proud that the show starts provocative discussions and puts forward various viewpoints so neither side is all right or all wrong. Jean adds, “Until we accept that we all have differences instead of pretending that we don’t, we’re never gonna get anywhere. My character has had a lot of internalised misogyny. That’s why she’s often so concerned with how she looks. We explore what it’s like for women who grew up in another era and ask if she can evolve past the misogyny she lives in and around.”
Hacks prods these generalisations with humour, yet is careful not to lecture. The sensitivities examined come from character. The theme of saying the unsayable litters the series. This season, Smart has to deal with almost being cancelled when a clip of her cracking a joke that’s no longer appropriate, surfaces. The scene prompted an exploration of how to deal with a faux pas. “I don’t find it difficult to apologise when I know I’m in the wrong,” asserts the 1.78m blonde. “But I don’t apologise unless I know absolutely, that I was wrong.”
That might be a lesson we can all take into our everyday conversations where women begin to notice how often they start a sentence with the word: sorry.
Hacks is streaming on HBO-Max now.
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