The first season of Hacks premiered on May 13, 2021, on HBO Max, and it was a juggernaut of a show, immediately receiving critical praise and accolades.
The show’s premise seems standard: a legendary comedy icon, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), meets struggling millennial comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). They do not hit it off. They share a lot of words until they begrudgingly agree to a professional dysfunctional comedy partnership, only to learn they are each other’s soulmates. Deborah has found her twin flame in Ava and vice versa.
However, to reach this point of frenemyship enlightenment, the pair had to go through five seasons of inflating their loving hatred for each other. And at the end of the series, the Hacks balloon doesn’t pop. It gently deflates with a sigh of hope and love.
The fifth and final season glows with a refreshing, optimistic energy. A show that I usually associate with being so acerbic, toxically delightful, and filled with the most petty behavior that makes me cackle as much as it triggers me.
It’s not to say that show creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky didn’t serve healthy portions of snide irreverence in season five. It’s as if they read the social landscape and realized that audiences didn’t need more scathing sarcasm to end the show. It just needed a little bit more joy — especially after the past couple of years we’ve been having.
Season five is set after season four, when Deborah, who was in Singapore dodging her non-compete contract, finds out the world thinks she is dead, thanks to TMZ. To set the record straight, Deborah and Ava immediately board a plane and head back to Los Angeles.
In the past, putting a bookend to a beloved, award-winning comedy has been bittersweet, with results being divisive amongst fans, critics, and the like. The Hacks finale felt satisfying.
The final seasonthrew everything it had — sometimes a little too heavy-handedly — in its final season, delivering a heartfelt and hilarious payoff to the previous four seasons of ups, downs, incredible insults, and finely-crafted jokes good enough for Deborah Vance.
The gang is all back to join Deborah and Ava on their showbiz misadventures, including no-nonsense Josefina (Rose Abdoo) and fastidious assistant Damien (Mark Indelicato). And it is always great to see Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), who is still booed up with Wilson (Johnny Sibilly). He ends up buying a rundown casino with Deborah.
The eager and loyal Jimmy (Downs) and his endearingly chaotic assistant-turned-co-manager Kayla (Megan Stalter) are joined by the enterprising Hollywood savant Randi (Robby Hoffman) as their endangered agency traverses the rocky terrain of the industry, as well as Kayla’s deplorable father Michael (W. Earl Brown), who owns Latitude Arts Agency.
We get to see Kiki (Poppy Liu), Marty (Christopher McDonald), Mayor Pezzimenti (Laura Weedman) and Deborah’s daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson) one last time with Olson’s appearance being a storyline involving Amazing Race, which feels out of left field and shoehorned in but is an absolute joy to watch (I told you they were throwing everything they had). In particular, there was a return of a character that made me smile so hard because I had just watched Big Mistakes. (This should give you a HUGE hint.)
As I savor-watched the final season of Hacks (meaning, I watched two episodes at a time), I never realized how fantastic the casting is on the show. It’s always been sharp, fun, smart, unexpected, and for the final season, shameless — and why not? The series is ending. If there’s an opportunity to include Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America writer Tony Kushner as Deborah’s memoir ghostwriter, then by all means, stunt cast away! The series is set in the world of showbiz, so it only makes sense that names like be dropped all over the place. Cherry Jones, Leslie Bibb, Trisha Paytas, Jordan Firstman, Christopher Briney, and Ann Dowd in blue alien makeup make an appearance in Hacks’s last hurrah. And RuPaul’s Drag Race icon and self-proclaimed “high-class Russian hooker” Katya Zamolodchikova pops up in a fantastic scene that reminds me of a Drag Race maxi-challenge.
For those who are in the orbit of Hollywood and show business, Hacks hits close to home. The series parallels the real-life entertainment industry hubbub, but also skewers issues impacting women, older people in the industry, and queer people. All the while, the show keeps its tongue firmly planted in its cheek.
Like The Comeback, Hacks dedicated a chunk of the season to an AI storyline with Deborah and Ava having very different opinions. Unlike The Comeback, Hacks makes its stance on AI very clear — especially in the scene when Ava gets hit by a self-driving car and spills her boba everywhere.
Hacks stems from similar TV series and films from the past that explored the dysfunctional relationships between an older, experienced, strong-minded mentor and their talented, ambitious and progressive mentee — and most of the time, these stories involved women: Patty Hewes and Ellen Parsons in Damages; Rachel and Quinn in UnReal; and Miranda Priestly and Andie Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada. It’s the same dynamic we have seen between Don and Peggy in Mad Men, as well as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad. The main difference is that Hacks is ten toes down in the earth of comedy.
Unexpectedly empowering, Hacks has amplified the prowess of Designing Women icon Jean Smart. Annihilating the competition, Smart won four Emmys for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Deborah Vance. She also became one of two actors who have completed the comedy trifecta, nabbing an Emmy in the comedy lead, supporting, and guest categories throughout her career (the other actor being Betty White). And I know that age ain’t nothing but a number, but Smart holds the record as the oldest woman to ever win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series.
The series won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for its third season, and Einbinder won her first Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series in 2025. In total, Hacks has 12 Primetime Emmys on its mantle.
Hacks is now one of the most decorated comedies in the history of television and can be added to HBO’s vault of TV excellence. In season five, everyone wins. There were earnest moments that were too on-the-nose, but in the grand scheme of things, these moments felt like a liberating catharsis after a roller coaster four seasons. These special moments were earned.
Admittedly, the final moments of the series gives “happily-ever-after” energy and in a time when cynicism reigns supreme, the hopeful and heartfelt ending is welcomed. The final shot is the perfect way to remember one of the greatest comedy duos in TV history.
As the final episodes streamed, it became more and more about two friends rather than Deborah and Ava. The heart-wrenching twist felt thrown into the mix, but as abrupt as it was, it worked because it hit all the right emotional chords. This was the first time in the run of the series that we have felt pure love between Deborah and Ava.
Hacks has always been a dysfunctional love story, but the final episodes finally allowed Deborah and Ava to let go, and the result was beautiful. It makes me want to have my own dysfunctional relationship with a legendary stand-up comedian.
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