Hacks Season 1 (2021)
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Hacks Season 1 Review
Hacks is a comedy drama streaming series that premiered its first season in 2021 on HBO Max. It’s one of the best new comedies to watch.
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“Jesus Christ! I was just wondering why
you were dressed as Rachel Maddow’s mechanic“
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Deborah Vance is a stand-up comedy legend who struggles to maintain relevance with older age. Ava is a millennial writer who is unable to find work, especially after a tweet that got her “cancelled”. The two unite to help each other out through a business and eventually complicated relationship that they develop.
This was a brilliant hook for a comedy show, and thankfully HBO executed it mostly right. Thematically, Hacks is a very rich series that is especially important for Hollywood itself as it depicts this industry with so much nuance, thoughtfulness and most importantly honesty.
The show is very relevant in its depiction of cancel culture and toxic and stupid it is, but it also deals with wokeness and the #MeToo movement. In this last one, the show juxtaposes the very different experiences and attitudes of older women against younger women through this very interesting, realistic generational gap.
The characters are by far the highlights of this show. It is after all a character piece. Deborah Vance is fantastic. She is a cunt, but she definitely has her issues, which are all very well explored. We get a firm grasp not only of her troubled past, but also her personality and her fraught relationships with others. The performance from Jean Smart is absolutely incredible, layered and complex and hopefully she will get an Emmy for it this year.
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Hannah Einbinder is also very strong, unexpectedly for an upcoming talent. Ava is the best written character on the show. She is a lot to take in, but undoubtedly a very grounded in reality person. Her issues, her bisexuality and especially her modern attitudes are all well dealt with. The complex, fraught relationship between these two is the highlight of the entire show and a lot of the funniest, but also most emotional moments are between these two women.
The supporting characters are unfortunately on the opposite spectrum. I did not care about any one of them. The show does focus a lot on Marcus and his relationship with Wilson, but these two men are both underdeveloped and on the fringe of the actual running storyline, so they felt like a detour to me personally. Jimmy and his crazy assistant are funny sidekick characters, but also unimportant in the bigger scope of things.
Hacks in its first season really had a problem with pacing, structure and focus. All of these were uneven and problematic, but hopefully these will be all fixed in the now greenlit second season. The show’s not only quite moving and dramatic at times, but also genuinely hilarious in its dialogue as it succeeds as a great comedy first and foremost.
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It makes fun of so many toxic and plain horrible modern trends (the Etsy jab was particularly funny to me personally as somebody who is in the know about this website quite a bit) while being genuinely well written in both dialogue and characters as well as its plot. I just wish that the show develops its supporting players better in later seasons. The score and most technicalities are quite good, but the lack of an opening theme was annoying.
The first season of Hacks has its underdeveloped characters and weak pacing, but the themes that it explores are excellent, it’s very relevant in its honest depiction of Hollywood and the characterization and acting are particularly strong with Jean Smart being absolutely incredible in an Emmy-worthy performance.
Worst Episodes: Tunnel of Love and Interview.
Best Episodes: Primm and A Gig’s a Gag.
