Hacks

All right. Had a bit of a break the past couple of days, trying to get my writing muscles back. Especially since I have something due in a few days. Let’s start with a quick review.

Hacks is a new show from HBOMax (or HBO? Is there a difference?) starring Jean Smart as a long-time Joan Rivers type comic who employs a Gen Z writer. It’s a great concept, but shakily executed, and aside from the usual issues (caricature, target practice at easy targets), there’s one huge one that really stands in the way of what could have been a great show.

First – Jean Smart, wow. I’ve always liked her, since Designing Women days, and she is spectacular in this role of Deborah Vance, coasting and closing in on 2500 shows at a fictional Vegas casino. She’s riveting, nuanced, hilarious and real. Her line reads are on point and completely natural. Engrave that Emmy statue, now.

And as I said, the concept is great. The problem?

The second lead character – Ava, the Gen Z writer – and the actress, Hannah Einbinder – who plays her.

I’m going to call it the Carrie Bradshaw problem. In Sex in the City (which I hate-watched back in the day), Carrie Bradshaw, played, of course, by Sarah Jessica Parker – is, even as she is obviously problematic in numerous ways, even to those who know her – also the glittering center of the show’s landscape, assumed to be beautiful and talented and endlessly appealing – and we, the viewers, are watching this thing and watching her onscreen, seeing a different reality – yes, reality – and wondering what’s wrong with with these people. Do they not see what – and who – I’m seeing?

Sort of the same thing here. Ava’s supposed to be smart and hilarious and witty – who lost her job and tumbled down the Hollywood ladder because of a ill-considered tweet (unrealistic because she lost it all over a tweet about a closeted gay conservative senator – yeah, right) – but she isn’t funny.

I mean – at all. We’re give no evidence on screen that this woman is talented or capable of putting a coherent sentence together, much less a funny one. She’s a sullen, entitled child – which is part of the point – but the piece would have been much, much better with say, someone with a Sarah Silverman type sensibility and an obvious level of talent.

So you get how this is going to go, right? As the comedic differences and the generational divide is explored, both main characters learn from each other, grow and emerge the better from the experience. And that’s essentially what happens, but Hacks ultimately fails, in my view because the playing field between Ava and Deborah just isn’t level, either in terms of what we see of their talent and definitely the actors playing them.

But here’s a couple of valuable takeaways:

The essential creative conflict between the two that emerges is generational – between “jokes” and an approach that’s rooted in personal experience and putting that out there in a real, but humorous way. I was hoping to see a lot of grappling with this, but it didn’t happen – it was clearly a theme, but ineffectively expressed because it was hidden under some boring subplots and because Ava, who supposedly represented the latter viewpoint, was such a weak character in every respect.

But of course the conflict isn’t just about comedy. Or even about art. It’s about confronting your life, period. Deborah keeps saying she is completely uninterested in living in the past – besides not being funny, it’s unhealthy and limiting, she’s sure.

The point being, though, that compartmentalizing like that is limiting in its own way, as Deborah observes herself in her final show, skipping through various notable events that occurred during her Vegas residency and how…she told the same jokes every time, no matter what was happening in the outside world or in her own life.

There’s value in that, but there’s also a risk of confining and alienation from what’s most real, and ultimately from other people.

There were a couple of good conversations on that score, and worth thinking about on a broader level, both for anyone who creates, but even if you don’t, just…in life?

Are we coasting? Engaging with the world and with others just through easy catch phrases and habitual conversation – or are we at all trying to be real? And what are the limits of that? When does that cross over into self-indulgence and absorption?

Oh, and never have I felt so seen as when Jean Smart as Deborah sends Ava into a gas station convenience store to get her a Diet Coke.

“From the fountain” – she firmly specifies.

Thank.You.

I also watched about half of Mare of Easttown, then read the summary of the rest of the show. I’m probably going to watch the last episode later, then write about it. It has its good qualities, but I can’t get on board the Praise Train for this one, and not only because I am deeply weary of crime and suspense dramas being fixated on violence against young women. Although that’s part of it, definitely.