Roush Review: ‘Hacks’ Final Season Stages One More Triumphant Comeback
Review
Hacks
The reports of Deborah Vance’s death were greatly exaggerated.
So begins the fifth and final season of HBO Max’s justifiably celebrated show-biz comedy Hacks, concluding the underdog story of scrappy, steely and legendary stand-up comedian Deborah Vance — who in the real world by now would have been honored with one of those Kennedy Center life-achievement prizes for American comedy named after Mark Twain, who coined the above phrase when his obituary was falsely published. Like with Twain, it would be wrong to underestimate a powerhouse personality like Deborah’s.
In the career-redefining role that has won her a Best Actress Emmy for each of Hacks’ four previous seasons, Jean Smart shines more brightly than ever, raging with barbed wit and unquenchable purpose after her most significant career speed bump to date. “I’m alive! It’s hard, but it’s worth it,” she declares after rumors of her death surfaced while on a sabbatical in Singapore, where she retreated in exile in last season’s finale after her late-night TV show was abruptly canceled and her voice silenced with a punitive non-compete clause by a vindictive studio boss (Law & Order‘s Tony Goldwyn).
For Deborah, being deprived of the spotlight and a platform to crack jokes is like being starved of oxygen. Making matters worse, her nemesis smears her in the press with suggestions of a mental breakdown, and in the cruelest blow of all, has erased her digital footprint by scrubbing her best work from the Internet. But as her loyal Gen Z sidekick and collaborator Ava (fellow Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder) reminds her, after several more setbacks, “You do your best work when you’re backed up against the wall.”
While there is still snarky banter to enjoy between these generationally mismatched partners — Deborah the impossibly mercurial and self-indulgent diva, Ava the relentlessly self-righteous social justice warrior — this season thankfully finds them more often behaving in unison, putting aside their cultural differences to forge an alliance in the common cause of finding Deborah “a legacy-defining win.” My favorite is when she briefly considers going for Oscar bait with a serious role in a prestige movie: “Find me my Mo’Nique moment,” she orders her minions. Eventually, they settle on a more credible holy grail: selling out a comeback concert at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
It won’t be easy, with everyone on Team Deborah suffering humiliating consequences from her blackballing, including her longtime nice-guy manager Jimmy (series co-creator Paul W. Downs) and his unfiltered partner Kayla (the wild Megan Stalter), whose boutique agency struggles to survive. Having multiple rooting interests is fine, though at times the series seems less focused than before, meandering through the midsection of a 10-episode season while Deborah scrambles to generate publicity without breaking the no-public-performance rules of her termination contract.
Courtesy of HBO Max
Some of the stunts, including a detour into reality TV and an elaborate Vegas magic spectacle, are more silly than funny. And while AI serves its function as a reliable villain in two subplots, the satire is more biting in the current season (also its last) of HBO’s The Comeback. Even when the farce is inspired, as when Deborah and Ava’s relationship is misconstrued as romantic by a rival comedian who possesses something Deborah covets, you might wonder how any celebrity in their orbit wouldn’t remember that Ava was head writer and showrunner of Deborah’s late-night show. (They even shared a significant magazine cover.)
Nit-picking aside, Hacks remains to the end a terrific entertainment about entertainers who live to make themselves, and by extension others, laugh. Stay with the twists and turns, even the occasional groaners, for a satisfying finish, providing a fairy-tale happy ending for some and for others a bittersweet reckoning that whatever hurdles life throws at you, nothing is as important as friendship — and perfecting the next joke.
Never doubt that, when all is said and done, Deborah Vance will always get the last laugh.
Hacks, Season 5 Premiere, Thursday, April 9, 9/8c, HBO Max
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