HACKS IS BACKS!!!!! And sadly, this is the final time I’ll get to write that. Because as we all know, this fifth season is also Hacks‘ final. I feel good about it, especially since the trio of geniuses behind the show — Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky — maintain they’re getting to end the show on their own terms and in exactly the way they pitched it initially. That is a special thing, especially in today’s television landscape where far too many shows are cancelled, cut short, or chopped before they even get to air.

And on that note, this season five premiere is steeped in the horrors of the current state of the TV industry. Hacks of course approaches those horrors with humor, but it also does so without pulling any punches and looks at both the broader impact of streamer/network mega-conglomeratization as well as giving personal, immediate stakes to that reality.

We begin just after season four ends, Deborah and Ava returning from their stint in Singapore — where Deborah’s alcoholism and nihilism took a bitter turn for the worse — to correct the TMZ reports that she had died. This pseudo brush with death jolts Deborah, who becomes determined to reclaim and redefine her legacy. Even after she proves she’s alive, she’s crucified by the press, the narrative about her echoing the same sexist undertones from earlier in her career.

It’s easy for the press to vilify Deborah, because the press is run by evil corporate overlord Bob Lipka. I don’t even have to tell you real men like Bob Lipka exist and are controlling what you get to see/not see on television and in the press. I’m sorry to put a MAN’S name in the headline of a Hacks recap. I, like you surely, am always most invested in the repetitive and yet repeatedly entertaining cycle of Deborah and Ava’s relationship. But it really was the fact of Bob and everything he represents that I kept thinking about as I watched the Hacks premiere.

From Jimmy asking Ava to “write and sell a huge international hit that has potential for sequels” to the super strict non-compete still looming over Deborah to Bob making sure she’s painted as the villain in the press, the wild and unsustainable pressures placed on television’s creatives by television’s executives are on full display throughout the premiere. And then comes the real nail in the coffin: the streaming service that owns Late Night deplatforms not only every episode and clip of Deborah’s groundbreaking late-night show but also My Bad, Deborah’s stand-up special. Bob Lipka is the ultimate television villain not in the sense that he’s a great villain on TV but in that he represents a literal threat to television itself. It actually works quite well that he isn’t present for any scenes in the premiere; we only see him in a clip played on a phone, part of an interview where he’s passive aggressively trashing Deborah. Bob gets to control all these strings from the shadows. It doesn’t matter that Deborah and Ava aren’t face-to-face with him; he wields so much power over their lives and their art. “They’re not just rewriting me; they’re erasing me!” Deborah cries out.

So much is lost when a series is deplatformed on both a personal level for the people who poured so much work into it and a broader cultural level for the viewers and fans. Streamers can disappear work without warning. Scrapped shows can become tax write-offs. Even if you don’t work in the television industry yourself, if you know someone who does, you’re likely well aware of just how bad things have gotten. Hacks isn’t pretending it has all the answers for how to fix it; rather, it’s just realistically capturing what it’s like for creatives to navigate this hellscape right now.

It’s ironic that the return of one of television’s greatest current comedies reiterates just how broken television is right now, but that is indeed the appeal of Hacks, which is so much about the realities of working in comedy. The meta-commentary works, because it’s still so grounded in the specificity of Deborah and Ava and their ongoing relationship. Its this emotional scaffolding that holds the story up. When you’re a working artist, the art and the business of that art gets all tangled up, which can cause the sort of identity crisis we see both Deborah and Ava spiral through many times over the course of the series. In this latest iteration, they’re up against an impossible enemy: the structural limitations of Hollywood in its current form. It’s cathartic to watch them loophole their way into new creative paths. At the risk of sounding as corny as Ava often sounds (and god do I love her for it), watching Hacks and knowing its creators got to land the plane when and where they wanted to does give me hope.

Favorite Deborah Line: “You can’t write my memoir; you’re too obsessed with me!”

Favorite Ava Line: “God I knew that social media detox was gonna bite me in the ass. First I was tagged in some verrrry unflattering photos, now this?!”

Favorite Kayla Line: “Sorry about that, hun, I’m super bipolar.”

Side Notes:

  • It’s almost alarming to me just how accurate the costuming on the show is when it comes to the specific flavor of “bisexual white girl” that Ava is…the Champion tee with a single chain necklace…painfully accurate details.
  • Tony Kushner cameo!
  • Sorry to say I have the same delusional level of ambition and self-confidence as Deborah Vance who thinks EGOTing is something she can do no problem.

Welcome to my Hacks recaps! In the past, I haven’t necessarily written about every episode, but I think I intend to this season since it is indeed the last! These will not be scene-by-scene recaps (you can find those elsewhere) and will instead be more like my Pluribus recaps, zooming in to a particular thread, theme, scene, or idea.

Don’t want to see ads? Join AF+