Things have never been easy between Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). Even when they’re collaborating and mostly on the same page, their respective issues inevitably get in the way, fueling the rewarding-yet-thorny dynamic at the heart of this winning Max comedy. They were thrown together mostly against their will in season one, dealt with litigation and reinvention in season two, and tried to find a way to live (read: work) without each other for part of season three before accepting the obvious truth: that they bring out the best in each other.
What Ava and Deborah didn’t acknowledge as readily—or maybe just didn’t want to accept—was the fact that they also tend to bring out the worst in each other. They know better than anyone how to hurt each other, even if Ava had to take a crash course in order to keep up with a veteran schemer like Deborah. But there’s no getting around it anymore in season four, which opens with two episodes that see the two women down in the proverbial muck. “Big, Brave Girl” picks up in the immediate aftermath of Ava’s blackmail play, with series director and co-creator Lucia Aniello framing Ava and Deborah as they speed down the hall alongside each other, the sound muffled as they sneak glances. They’re neck and neck, and the visual seems clear: This is the most even footing they’ve found themselves on. Naturally, Deborah’s having none of it: “Well, aren’t you a big, brave girl?” she sneers at her new head writer. “I guess I am. It’s for the best,” Ava condescends right back. “We’ll see,” Deborah responds with the old malice in her eyes. This is going to get ugly.
Emboldened by her successful gambit against someone she admires and currently despises, Ava’s in a cocoon of sorts. She believes she’s on top and nothing can bring her down (ah, the folly of youth). She brushes off her manager Jimmy Lusaque Jr.’s (Paul W. Downs) concerns: “Nothing amounts to anything with [Deborah]. You’re loyal to her; it builds zero goodwill. So don’t worry about her feelings! She doesn’t have any; she’s heartless!” Jimmy’s warning—”You’re not gonna beat her at her own game. Nobody beats Deborah”—holds up throughout much of the premiere, as Deborah deploys vicious “pranks,” including setting Ava up for a drug test and sending a pair of her panties to their boss Rob (Dan Bucatinsky).
As Ava grows increasingly flustered, at one point screaming “I don’t give a fuck about the Bates Motel!” while hanging off a pole on a studio trolley, it looks like the old dynamic is reasserting itself—that of being tortured by Deborah until she finds a way to make her once-and-maybe-future mentor see her humanity, usually by appealing to Deborah’s own. Think of season one’s pepper-shaker victory and season two’s breakdown while looking for her dad’s ashes (which Deborah unwittingly threw out). On her first day as head writer of a late-night talk show, all Ava’s accomplished is splashing urine on herself and disrupting a studio tour. She might have gotten some of her own back during the raucous back-and-forth during the HR training conducted by Daisy (Michaela Watkins, always a welcome addition), but taking turns rattling off their misdeeds may have also reminded her of how tough things have always been with Deborah. Ava looks poised to accept defeat, or at least retreat for now.
Deborah certainly acts like the winner at Bob Lipka’s (Tony Goldwyn) big party, gliding around in a great red dress while being lauded by him and Winnie Landell (Helen Hunt). The tide’s about to turn, though, as Bob, in a tense moment disguised as flirtation, warns Deborah not to tell anyone about their night together at the golf retreat. We know Deborah’s shaken because she agrees to use the portable toilet (with marble decals, because Bob’s a billionaire) and comes out with toilet paper stuck to her foot. The day has taken its toll on her—Ava’s betrayal is soon followed by Marcus’ (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) news about the sale of DV Industries to QVC. Upon learning about his departure, Deborah complains about having no time to enjoy her triumph. But then comes the real fear: “How is this happening again? How is it everyone leaves me as soon as I get what I want? Am I in a goddamn time machine?!” This one-two punch sent Deborah back to the last time she was headed for the late-night chair, and that’s what really has her lashing out at those closest to her.
So when she spies Ava, who somehow managed to run the gauntlet set for her, at Bob’s party, Deborah’s like a velociraptor. She tries to attack, but Ava counters by revealing that the woman she’s talking to is Nikki Lipka (Claudia Christian), Bob’s wife. Despite apparently smelling like pee, Ava soon has Deborah on the ropes, making a veiled threat about “giving women exactly what they deserve.” Deborah tries to reassert her dominance, resorting to physical aggression by digging her nails in Ava’s arm. But her dirty tricks are nothing compared to the bombshell in Ava’s arsenal, and Smart deftly plays Deborah’s growing realization of this fact, shrinking in that glorious dress, her tone turning wheedling as she acquiesces to Ava’s demand that she admit she’s lost. Ava imparts her own warning: “I know you’ve been at this for 50 years but guess what? That means you’re tired and I’m just getting warmed up.”
Is this the new normal on Hacks? Is Ava, who has been so open about the qualities she respects and rejects in her boss, in line to become her? Series co-creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, who wrote the season opener, seem to place Ava on a slippery slope with that line. But in the final moments of “Big, Brave Girl,” as Deborah and Ava pretend to once again be the kind of women who lift each other up, pressed cheek to cheek for a New York Times Magazine cover story meant to recover ground after Deborah’s first press conference, Ava blinks back tears. Deborah seems similarly brokenhearted, so maybe their bond isn’t beyond saving. But it’s not going to be easy.
“Cover Girls,” the second part of the premiere, further establishes just what an uphill battle it’s going to be—not just to find a new equilibrium, but to make Deborah’s new show a success. The NYT Magazine cover story hails Deborah and Ava as the new “Queens Of Comedy,” which pisses off the former and delights the latter (though Ava’s so irony-pilled that she initially wants to share her joy on social media with the caption “Oops, they let a dumb bitch into the Times“). After that moment of vulnerability at the photo shoot, Deborah is back on a rampage—she fights Ava on just about every decision regarding the writers’ room, including the writers. When Ava pushes back about hiring old hands, an exasperated Deborah yells, “We’re not going to hire unemployed people!” She and Ava snipe at each other over staffing, which culminates in Deborah revealing she knows what “QPOC” stands for and dismissing Ava with a “begone.”
All the recent instances of airing out their dirty laundry—at the HR meeting, at Bob’s party, at the photo shoot—have done little to mollify either woman. Deborah continues to look for ways to undermine Ava, including throwing away the office pourover carafe and hiring a psychic (Polly Draper, back as Diana) as a consulting producer, while Ava resorts to cheap name-calling (“Bitchabod Crane”). Deborah’s insults aren’t much better; when Ava says she’s just trying to make her life easier by leading the writers’ room, Deborah tells her to “kill [herself].” Even the “queer person of color, you bitch,” doesn’t really land, as slack-jawed as it leaves Ava. Their back-and-forth is evolving, so the repartée is different—it’s not as funny. Most of their remarks, like Ava saying that Deborah is “neck and neck with Mary Magdalene for the world’s oldest whore,” aren’t incisive; they’re just mean.
Though these failed retorts initially struck me as false notes in Samantha Riley’s script, upon second viewing, they seem to be by design. Being at odds means Deborah and Ava are both off their game, though they spend much of “Cover Girls” in denial about that fact. It manifests in other ways, as Ava and Deborah get into a screaming match outside of the Comedy Store, in plain view of people with smartphones, while scouting a potential writer. Ava losing it is one thing, but Deborah knows better and usually dissembles better. The combination of Ava’s betrayal and the pressure to nail the late-night gig has frayed her nerves, though, and Deborah lashes out, telling Ava she’s “not the right person for the job.” She acknowledges the very point that pissed her off at the start of the episode, that Ava helped her become honest and vulnerable again. But that made Deborah’s comedy “niche,” she tells her. “Late night is for housewives and mechanics,” she continues. “You’re very good at what you do! But you are not the right person to lead that show!”
She’s speaking more out of fear as much as anger in that moment—Deborah’s hurt, but Cliff Biff’s (Hal Linden) words of caution are still ringing in her head. She’s once again so close to getting what she wants, and just like last time, things are starting to go to hell. When Winnie summons her and Ava to explain themselves after their public blowout, Deborah can only muster up dated jokes about Bob Evans. Winnie, a not-so-invisible Gen X-er, cuts the shit, telling Ava and Deborah that the network was going to cancel Late Night and replace it with a clip show. Deborah represents a “big swing,” and, as Winnie notes, “you take a big swing when you need a grand slam.”
Deborah, seeing that their infighting made them lose sight of the big picture, offers a truce at the end of “Cover Girls”—and the terms are actually equitable. She agrees to hire all of Ava’s picks for the writers’ room, with the caveat that they also hire veterans like Merrill Markoe. She also proposes a writers’ retreat to Las Vegas and drags Ava off to the tarmac before the latter’s even finished her Barnes & Noble Café coffee, so we’ll see just how long Deborah can keep this up. But what we do know after this two-part premiere is that Hacks is back, strong and trenchant as ever, ready to teach everyone—not just old hands—some new tricks.
Stray observations
- • Welcome back to Hacks coverage! Max has changed the release schedule again: After the two-episode premiere, we’ll get one episode a week for four weeks, then episodes seven and eight together on May 15, followed by episode nine on May 22, with the finale on May 29.
- • Jimmy and Kayla are also embarking on a new, though much less acrimonious, journey together, with the latter deciding to make animal performers part of her clientele. As with some of Kayla’s previous silly moves, this turns out to be a stroke of genius: She sells a Lassie reboot with pilot commitment, something that Jimmy admits is unheard of at that moment. Hacks definitely won’t be eliding the real-life contraction in Hollywood.
- • Jimmy, on Deborah’s ruthlessness: “Once she had someone removed from an organ transplant list. The woman lived, but it was a miracle.”
- • Winnie: “You think George Clooney does pranks because they’re fun? The man is sick.”
- • Deborah’s often hailed as a pioneer, but she lost her nerve after losing the late-night job the first time. And though Deborah wouldn’t admit it now, Ava helped her find it again. Marcus reminds her of this in one of the most poignant moments of the premiere: “You gotta dance with the one that brought ya.”
- • I don’t know what the future holds for Carl Clemons-Hopkins on the show, but if this is the last we see of Marcus, I’ll miss his wry-yet-warm presence. In season two, he provided a counterbalance to Ava and Deborah while also looking poised to go on his own journey to balance having a head for business and a heart that wants something more. Here, he points out that Deborah’s been coasting—something that Ava’s touched on, but that he has even more insight into because he represents one of the longest relationships in Deborah’s life. “You need to put your whole ass into this,” he tells her, echoing Winnie’s sentiments.
