Hacks (Season Four), a review

I’m not happy here, and I don’t think you are either.

There’s a fine line between a comedic drama and a dramatic comedy. With its latest season at an end, it feels safe to say that ‘Hacks’ often feels like neither.

Comparisons to ‘Hacks’ and ‘The Bear’ have been making the rounds as of late, and I’ve seen a lot of people defend the former by stating it is always viewed as a comedy. That humour is the forefront of the show, and thus the two do not mirror each other at all. That ‘The Bear’ is a show that puts its dramatic foot forward. As somebody who has watched the entirety of Hacks in the past month…that was true.

Not anymore.

In many ways, season four of ‘Hacks’ is a departure from the tone and scope that made the first three seasons so enjoyable. Instead of carefully threading the dramatic tension with comedy, most of the season’s first half is miserable. The jokes don’t land, the drama is increasingly repetitive, and the finale is almost mundane. It is telling that the Jimmy and Kayla dynamic, once the worst part of the show, is now a regular highlight.

Let me be clear, there is stuff to like in this season. The first three episodes are genuinely good drama for the most part, and ‘D'Christening’ (Episode Seven) is amongst the best episodes of the series. But this is not a product as a while I would defend, or even bother to watch again.

Paranoia is the name of the game with this season, and it’s to the show’s detriment. When Ava is spiraling, the writers chose to lean into the absurdity of it all. But when Deborah is in a crisis, the show becomes a screaming match over six episodes. Few jokes landed, and it seems that the writing leaned away from snappy punchlines and mean quips. The absurdity and good humour never make a comeback either, as the show switches from the duo in conflict to Ava’s paranoia and fear - which culminates in her believing Deborah has killed herself.

So much of this season hinges on the idea of legacy, interchanging between Deborah’s personal legacy in DJ and her son, to her professional legacy, which she ties to her hosting of ‘Late Night’. This comes to a button with her obituary shaking her out of a rut, similar to how she began the series. This malaise of idleness is both out of character, and deeply unappealing to watch.

I think the lore of Deborah Vance became the show’s greatest weakness this season. With Kathy’s absence and DJ showing up occasionally, you’re left with very little except Deb’s obsession with her version of ‘Late Night’. But that single-minded determination never gets examined. After a season where she has had to accept the importance of her integrity and relationship to Ava, she once again throws it away in the finale. Because they wasted the climax in the episode prior and have nowhere to take it.

Cutting the ‘Late Night’ storyline in the penultimate might make great dramatic sense on paper, but in practice, it made the abrupt shift to Singapore feel useless. We rushed through a lot of interesting plot points in order to end on yet another rug pull. The fake-out suicide is the worst of it - repeating an idea that they’d already used earlier in the season when Deborah thought Ava walked into the ocean. If it’s meant to be a dramatic parallel, it lands with an absolute thud.

This one episode depression spiral is…boring. It’s flaccid. You don’t get any sense of urgency or humanity from it all, because the show doesn’t have a destination for the characters. After a season of hinting towards some grander theme, the “legacy” stuff doesn’t actually seem to mean anything tangible. Ava and Deb as a duo do not have an end goal in mind. If next season is meant to be the last, then it has a huge mountain to overcome after the meandering of this season.

Deb once again treating Ava like dirt while drunk should mean more than what it does. The show has just proven she values her, so this aboutface absolutely should signal something important. It’s clear that the subversion of expectations is meant to be clever here, but the show then leaves itself no time to examine the dynamic it accidentally sets up. If Deb isn’t suicidal, then she’s just reverted back to seasons one and two.

Why?

I make it a point to criticize what a season is, and not what it isn’t. I don’t need to have my hand held, and the problem here isn’t that the show didn’t follow the fanfiction in my head. But the final episode sets up a dynamic between the two and functionally drops it. Deb is clearly meant to have depression for the episode. But we’re watching what seems to be an entire season’s worth of drama in the finale. They’re rushing it.

The major issue is pacing. I quite liked a significant portion of the season, when it allowed a comedic rhythm to develop. But this often felt like watching a series of clips stapled together, rather than a cohesive ten episode season of television.

If I can point to another issue: nobody is comfortable with each other. Deb spends much of the season isolated, Ava is clearly drowning in her position as head writer. By phasing out much of the supporting cast and slotting in new dynamics that never settle in, the show is made worse. Banter is basically reserved for Deb and Ava or Jimmy and Kayla. Nobody else makes the cut. There are many scenes where it just fades into empty silence. Previous seasons used this for comedy, but it often feels like the show cannot conclude the moment. Jean Smart is funny, but her mugging isn’t enough to sell these jokes, many of which probably should have been workshopped.

Comedy is subjective, but I do know that there’s been a shift between seasons. Maybe they really want the Emmys. Maybe every writer got hit by lightning. Or just maybe, the season is just a bit of a mess. Stranger things have happened!

Three genuinely great seasons is more than a lot of people get. ‘Hacks’ is a show that I have really enjoyed watching, and unlike something like ‘The White Lotus’, the quality drop is not substantial enough to kill my enjoyment.

But it is still a quality drop.

Would I still recommend? Probably. But maybe not with the same enthusiasm.