Hacks season 4 continues to underwhelm as it comes on with episode 3, What Happens in Vegas. Despite two absolutely electric leads and a primary story that has the ability to highlight some of the inequities in late-night television, specifically, and women in entertainment more broadly, it continues to pit Ava and Deborah against one another in a fight that seems to have been resolved a season ago.
At the end of episode 2 of season 4, Ava and Deborah had called a truce on their bickering after the network head, Winnie, told them that they needed to get along and make Deborah’s show the best one immediately. Deborah made some staffing concessions and planned a trip to Vegas for a writing retreat. We find out quickly into the trip that Deborah called it a retreat to circumvent labor laws, and what she really wants is to get started on the show immediately.
Deborah and Ava immediately butt heads as Deborah wants to start with pitches and Ava thinks that they need to spend some time getting to know one another. This is where the show continues to frustrate because this little aside between Deborah and Ava is the first of many throughout the episode. Time and again, Deborah is a bit too harsh, and then Ava comes in being a bit too accommodating. While this dynamic has worked in the past, it just feels incredibly played out now that we’re in season 4.
The team arrives at the conference center, where they are about to begin pitching ideas for Deborah’s first show seriously. She shares that one of the keys to late-night television is understanding that it is about the host, stating that people would ask about having watched Carson or Letterman, not the name of the show. She explains that the opening needs to have a theme that is funny and introduces the audience to her and her style. The writers begin pitching ideas, some that Deborah likes and others that she does not. As ideas start to run dry, Ava suggests that the team needs to blow off some steam in order to be more productive, so Deborah takes them out for a huge night in Vegas.
The team does indeed have fun, driving race cars, going to a bar, enjoying some substances on a party bus, and visiting a strip club. The team appears to be bonding as they travel around Vegas together, engaging in various forms of debauchery. When they head back to the writing room the next day, the ideas are flying fast, and the team begins to coalesce around some clever ideas that give the audience a better understanding of who Deborah is as a person and a comedian.
After the team heads back to LA from Vegas, Deborah and Ava are pulled into a meeting with Brian Pile, the showrunner, who informs them that the HR representative, Stacey, will need to supervise them whenever the two of them are together to avoid any issues. While someone did report the illicit activities that happened in Vegas, the primary concern was the tension between Deborah and Ava.
There are some truly funny moments in this episode of Hacks, but ultimately, it still feels like we’re going over ground that has already been covered in the first three seasons of the show. Watching them build a friendship over season 1, seeing it messed up because of Ava’s impulsivity, then rebuilding over season 2 worked. Deborah sending Ava away at the end of season 2 made sense, because the two of them had built something and Deborah could see that Ava was getting offers that would help her develop her career beyond what she did for Deborah, so even though it put their relationship in a strange position, it still worked.
Season 3 was the most popular because the differences between Ava and Deborah helped them make each other better. They have profoundly different communication styles, and seeing how they worked through that was excellent. There was enough tension to keep it interesting and to show how they are separate people, but because the animosity was dialed down, we could actually see how they influenced one another.
Watching the two of them back at each other’s throats again feels almost like it’s bringing down the level of the performances. It’s challenging to maintain the outrage without feeling like the actors are constrained in their abilities. Which is frustrating, because we know that these women are incredibly talented and capable of producing so much more. It’s not to say that season 4 of Hacks is bad, necessarily, but so far, it has been far less rewarding than expected. Sincerely hoping that there is something in store that will bring this back up to what we have come to expect from Hacks.
Hacks Season 4 is now streaming weekly on MAX.
Learn more about the show, including how to watch, at the site for the title.
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