Longtime watchers of Hacks (2021–Present) know how satisfying the premise of its fourth season is. After years of residencies, touring local comedy clubs, and a special that shoots her to stardom, Debora Vance (Jean Smart) finally achieves a long-awaited dream: to be the host of a late-night show, the job she lost out on years before we met her at the start of Hacks. But Deborah’s latest and most satisfying success isn’t just celebratory. The striking and unexpectedly frustrating reality of Deborah achieving a top spot in her field makes for the most compelling and stirring season of the show’s run thus far.
Like all good seasons of Hacks, Deborah’s success as a former Las Vegas residency comedian comes with complications, namely in the form of her co-comedy writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). This season, Ava acts as Deborah’s head writer in the late-night writer’s room, which sees a questionable team-building “work trip” to Las Vegas from their Los Angeles headquarters as much as productive sessions to make Deborah’s show achieve the top spot on TV. If you were worried the adjustment to corporate scenery wouldn’t work, don’t worry—the show’s usual beloved shenanigans aren’t too far away.
Meanwhile, the opening episodes are taut with tension over Ava’s threat to reveal that Deborah slept with the head of the network before she was named host—information Ava uses to force Deborah to give her the head writer job at the end of season three. Each scene navigates the pair’s boiling hatred with their desire to see the show succeed, a delirious and frustrating equilibrium that appears to damage their relationship indefinitely.
As they work toward creating a show they are proud of, Smart and Einbinder are an eternally matched pair. Every scene together bristles with anger and conflict, or else turns heartbreaking and sentimental, then, even in a single line of conversation, grows winsome, loving, and supportive. Their pairing feels especially, equally harmonious and waspish this season, from the touchy blackmail plot to a scene where Deborah imagines Ava as the only audience member during a taping—the show’s most poignant moment that encapsulates the dedication they have to each other.
Other pairs and additions to this season fill out Deborah’s novel world of stardom. Jimmy Lusaque Jr. (Paul W. Downs, one of the Hacks’ co-creators and co-runners alongside Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky) and the inimitable Kayla Schaefer (Megan Stalter) navigate the world of celebrity management as new but unsteady business partners and harebrained supporters of Deborah and Ava through their personal turmoil. Kayla and Jimmy recruit Randi (Robby Hoffman) for their company’s first assistant, and Randi’s eccentric personality accentuates the sheer ridiculousness of the trio and the industry they work in.
When the events of the penultimate episode occur, it feels like a culmination of Deborah and Ava’s work, one that honors their years of conflict and camaraderie. Meanwhile, the season finale can ultimately translate as scattered, unusually removed from the rest of the season’s successful storytelling. But the show plays its smartest trick in the final minutes of the episode, where Deborah confronts her life and legacy with a newfound drive for excellence that sets up her and Ava for a formidable next segment.
At its conclusion, the season can feel like the pinnacle of Deborah’s career—and it makes us question where she will go next, especially considering the high stakes and apparent “end-goal” feeling of this latest plot. While the first three seasons had clear markers—residency, tour, special, then this season’s late-night plotline—our entry into season five seems murkier, making us less sure of where its characters will go.
But that’s also what makes this season the most exciting; with a confirmed fifth season on its way, the thrill of a new storyline lies not in the anticipation of benchmarks Deborah and Ava will hit but in the progression of a career whose direction we don’t yet know. For once, the equilibrium of the season finale rests with Ava and Deborah’s friendship, at a stable place…for now.
And perhaps that stability will grow into something even more intimate. In the season five announcement, Einbinder joked (promised?) that she would “continue to pitch the lesbian arc” between Ava and Deborah. A girl can dream!
Review Courtesy of Arleigh Rodgers
Feature Image Credit to Max via IMDb