How do you describe the feeling you get when you revisit something you love, only to realize it’s not as great as you thought it was? Is it disappointment, frustration, reverse nostalgia?
Whatever you want to call it, it’s how I feel about Hacks Season 3.
This season the Emmy-winning comedy, starring Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, falls into a dull routine. Sure, on a surface level, it certainly goes bigger: Veteran comedian Deborah Vance (Smart) and young comedy writer Ava Daniels (Einbinder) reunite to try to make Deborah the next host of Late Night, the landmark show she almost hosted earlier in her career. But beneath the spectacle — including a lavish roast episode and Hacks‘ version of a Christmas special — the show’s comedy is running in safe, repetitive circles.
Watching Hacks Season 3, it’s hard not to wish it was more like The Other Two, another Max Original that satirized the entertainment industry. The Other Two constantly pushed itself to be riskier and stranger — take its surreal Pleasantville spoof, or a farce involving a fake Applebees built for a family night out. Ava and Deborah are meant to push each other to be better in a similar way, each making the other’s jokes sharper and stronger. But when held up against The Other Two‘s brilliant third (and final) season, Hacks‘ own third outing just doesn’t seem all that funny. It mostly feels safe.
Is Hacks past its prime?
Jean Smart, Megan Stalter, and Paul W. Downs in “Hacks.”
Credit: Jake Giles Netter / Max
Ever since Hacks‘ first season, I thought it was hysterical. I loved Deborah and Ava’s generational sparring, especially their love language of insulting one another. (Deborah frequently takes aim at Ava’s hands, while Ava zings Deborah over her absurd wealth.) Yet in in watching the entirety of Season 3 — and even revisiting old episodes — I wonder if Smart’s star power and chemistry with Einbinder blinded me to the truth: Hacks was never as funny at it was dazzling.
Looking back, none of Deborah’s insult comedy is all that inspired, nor do the snippets of her confessional stand-up special — the one that essentially relaunches her career — seem that revelatory. There’s stuff to chuckle at here to be sure, like a gag that sees Deborah trying to find a way to circumvent Ava’s new “no more appearance insults” rule. But after all that repetition, this vein of humor begins to feel stale.
Elsewhere, Ava’s horror at Deborah’s more problematic punchlines has become a crutch. The offensive jokes lead to a mini-lecture from Ava, then a sharp reversal by Deborah that forces Ava to concede that she’s a hypocrite — or to make a compromise in order to advance her career. How often can Hacks repeat this formula for laughs without altering it? Practically without end, according to Season 3.
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The same goes for interactions between Deborah and Ava’s frantic manager Jimmy (Paul W. Downs) and his clueless assistant Kayla (Meg Stalter). Often, Kayla will put her foot in her mouth — saying she finds Jimmy’s mom hot, for instance — and then people around her pause to push back on what she said. With this routine, any momentum crashes to a halt, any joke is shoved under a microscope until it isn’t a joke anymore. Even a well-timed reaction shot would do twice the work of these longer bits.
With its drawn-out put-downs of Kayla’s many errors or Deborah’s politically incorrect jibes, Hacks is constantly apologizing for itself. Despite its bluster about bold humor, the show holds the audience’s hand and let them know that a character has said something wrong, rather than letting the audience make that judgment for themselves and react to the absurdity in it. Instead of honing a joke, these moments soften them.
By contrast, The Other Two often leaned further into its jokes and the heightened horrors of its take on the entertainment industry. That’s how we end up with a fake play titled 8 Gay Men With AIDS: A Poem In Many Hours. It’s an impressive piece of satire that The Other Two pulls off spectacularly precisely because it commits to it, with a whole episode set throughout a days-long performance of the show.
Hacks certainly doesn’t need to go to those particular lengths. But I wish it would find any new joke that could give it the same spark, specificity, and freshness The Other Two kept up throughout its run. Otherwise, it’s just resting on its now-worn laurels.
Deborah and Ava are still a great TV pairing — just mostly when things get serious.
Hannah Einbinder in “Hacks.”
Credit: Eddy Chen / Max
Hacks still has one major spark of inspiration up its sleeve. The relationship between Deborah and Ava remains as strangely chaotic, codependent, and compelling as ever. This season takes this pairing to some of their highest highs and lowest lows yet, from the pursuit of Late Night to a hiking trip from hell. And when they’re not sniping each other with insults that feel rote at this point, these two women are having some pretty intense, frank conversations.
Take Deborah’s constant battle with her aging. On a superficial level, this means she uses things like anti-aging straws to keep herself wrinkle-free. But on a deeper level, this means seeking out bigger and bigger shows, like Late Night, as she fears she won’t have many shots left. Her discussions with Ava on this matter are poignant, taking the weight off of Ava’s weaker personal relationship drama and allowing the two to continue to connect on how to succeed in comedy.
Season 3’s focus on family is poignant as well, with Deborah trying to make amends with people like her daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson). Elsewhere, Hacks tackles cancel culture in an episode that, while perhaps not entirely successful in its analysis of the matter, is at least taking interesting risks in reckoning with Deborah’s comedic legacy. It’s fascinating to watch Deborah squirm when she must confront her mistakes. And it’s fascinating to see Ava’s usual lectures actually take on more meaning than just setting up for an “Ava is performative” joke.
Hacks has never distanced itself from heavier, more dramatic themes. So much of the show deals with sexism in comedy, with Season 1 seeing Deborah confront a gross stand-up comedian for harassing female performers. Elsewhere, the show targets grief: Ava spends much of Season 2 mourning the death of her father in the previous season, while Deborah is still processing her lost relationship with her estranged sister Kathy. Despite all this, Season 3 is the first time I’ve thought to myself, “I like Hacks better when it’s functioning as a drama.”
Of course, comedy and drama don’t always function on a binary: The Bear comes to mind, and even The Other Two could get very somber when it needed to. But Hacks is a comedy about comedians — is it too much to ask for it to deliver some laughs?
Hacks Season 3 premieres May 2 on Max, with new episodes every Thursday.