“Hacks” Season 2 — Review no spoiler

HBO Max’s Hacks is at its best

Plot:

Hacks explores the unstable relationship that develops between Deborah Vance, an aged comedy legend, and Ava Daniels, a twenty-year-old comedy writer forced to work for Deborah. In the first season, the two women were put together by manager Jimmy. Deborah needed to raise things up to become attractive even to a younger audience, while Ava needed to rehabilitate her entire fledgling career.

Cast:

Jean Smart as Deborah Vance

Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels

Carl Clemons-Hopkins as Marcus

Paul W. Downs as Jimmy

Megan Stalter as Kayla

Rose Abdoo as Josefina

Martha Kelly as Barbara

Episodes:

The episodes of the second season are 8. Created by Lucia Aniello, Jen Statsky and Paul W. Downs.

Thoughts:

The second season of the HBO Max show is just as hilarious, heartbreaking and ruthless as the first season was. Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is still a daringly funny bully with a heart of gold and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is still a self-sabotaging disaster. The most important thing, however, is that the second season manages to deepen the complex relationship of these two comedians with each other and with the vicious art form on which they are both dependent.

The first season ends with the duo in what seems to be a great place. Deborah shows up at Ava’s during an emotional moment of need and Ava convinces her to go on tour to perfect a completely new and much more sincere act. The problem is that Ava extremely drunk, and enraged after one of their hellish quarrels secretly sent an email with details of Deborah’s worst behavior to a pair of mercenary showrunners trying to write a show about a horrible elderly female boss.

Hacks picks up season 2 exactly where the first season left off, with Deborah preparing for her tour and Ava realizing she had stabbed her mentor in the back. Season 2 also attempts to let the secondary characters deal with the fallout of what happened to them last season, we see Marcus after the breakup, Jimmy trying to get rid of his assistant Kayla, is the daughter of the boss, so he finds himself having to talk to Barbara (Martha Kelly) the human resources representative, who will try to help him.

The second season explores even deeper the relationship between Ava and Deborah; It speaks to something that’s true but rarely expressed in TV comedies, which need tension to thrive but can’t have too much out of fear that it would make a serial narrative unsustainable. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible: The pleasure of watching Hacks is in the way the show explores how a person might be pushed to change by someone who hates them just as much as they might be by someone they love.

This second season, it’s not just good. It was very successful.

Duration per episode: 30 minutes

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Stream it now on HBO Max

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