Hard work is no joke

There have been many shows about stand-up comedy over the years. We have the classic Seinfeld and we’ve got the award-winning hit by Amy Sherman Palladino, Marvellous Mrs Maisel. This is why it’s hard for a new show about stand up to come in and make a space for itself. However, Hacks manages to do that in a number ways.

In the series, Deborah Vance (played by Jean Smart) is an ageing comedian based in Las Vegas whose star is waning and Ava Daniels’ (played by Hannah Einbinder) comedy career takes a nosedive after she’s ‘cancelled’ for making a homophobic joke on social media. Deborah is about to lose her Vegas residency as her jokes are just not considered as funny anymore. Ava on the other hand, in true cancel culture fashion faces backlash for her inappropriate joke and loses her tv deal. Deborah hires Ava in order to keep her residency, and the latter takes the job because she needs the money.

I’m going to go back to the first episode of the first season to explain why I’m writing this review. When Deborah initially meets Ava, she finds her unimpressive and refuses to hire her, which makes Ava angry because she feels Deborah wasted her time. This is the moment where a sharp generational contrast is drawn between Deborah and Ava. Ava shows up for the interview without even doing any cursory research on Deborah and rather than feeling embarrassed about being unprepared for the interview, she’s enraged that she wasn’t hired. Deborah calls her out on her entitlement and says, “you want a standing ovation just for showing up?”. This moment speaks volumes about a millennial culture that perhaps has a skewed perception on what they feel they ‘deserve’. Within that same scene, Ava states that her ‘Life is ruined’ and Deborah comments that that’s just a Tuesday for her. Once again, drawing focus to the fact that struggle and resilience that were considered cultural norms are perhaps now often overlooked and undervalued.

I graduated in 2010 and soon began looking for a job. I technically do make the millennial category – just by a hair though. Everywhere I went, they wanted someone with job experience so they could hire you and pay you an entry level salary. Interns were expected to work for free for months on end, just so they’d have a few more lines to put down on their cv.

We had to be hungry to work. Overworked and underpaid was the motto. And we had to be grateful that we were getting the opportunity to work.

I have now been working for over a decade. If I switch jobs in two to three years, my parents scoff and comment on my lack of commitment and drive. In their day, it was common for people to work in the same organisation for the entirety of their careers.

I work from home now and while my pace is slower and I’m grateful for being able to take a nap on a slow work day, or run an errand or schedule a dentist’s appointment, I find that for the most part my professional responsibilities haven’t changed.

I see a whole new generation entering the work force. Most of them began their first jobs as remote or work from home employees in the pandemic. Social media wasn’t something they learned about in their late teens or early university years. They grew up with it as though a natural part of their daily lives. They’ve always instagrammed their meals, tweeted their thoughts and communicated to friends through filtered Snapchat pictures.

This is a generation who graduated from university in the midst of global rhetoric on ‘work/life balance’. On the heels of the lying flat movement. On the brink of the four-day work week transition.

I now see a palpable shift in work attitudes. It is now fair to ask for better work hours, turn down responsibilities that may be deemed undesirable, disappear for hours during a work from home day.

I question whether they have it right and if I was wrong all along. However, there is an entitlement without the education and discipline taught through hard work. This sense of ‘wokeness’ without the actual exposure or relevant life experiences that inculcate a real-life wisdom. These are many of the shifts on work culture that Hacks addresses.

The second season of Hacks aired earlier in the summer. I wanted to like the second season and it does have its merits. Like any other show foraying into its second season, it focuses on developing supporting characters. We see more of Deborah’s relationship with her daughter where she makes an effort to repair this relationship while also being supportive of her.

However, Ava and Deborah’s relationship seems more contentious than ever once Deborah finds out about Ava’s email to screenwriters revealing some of her darkest and most egregious behaviour.

There’s also some of the same humour targeting millennial fads. Where last season it was Ava’s matcha latte station, this season it’s about her kombucha. However, it feels more trite this time around. The first two to three episodes drag a bit.

There is however, a development in the type of stand up Deborah does this season. Her jokes are more personal. She lets her audience get to know her. She reveals herself more through her routine. It is definitely a departure from her comic material last season which was a lot of generic material on wives being tired of their husbands – humour that felt out of touch and ‘old’.

If you continue with the second season though, it improves in other areas too. The lesbian cruise episode explores some thought-provoking questions about sexuality and even addresses issues of lack of sexual satisfaction that may have been acceptable by older generation of women, when sexual pleasure was primarily viewed as a male right. Ava also makes an interesting point about women often confusing the rush they feel from male attention with desire. This episode once again elevates the show and once again gives us what it offered in its first season: a level of refreshing insight while still maintaining a light and playful tone. That being said, Deborah’s homophopic jokes, while they were intended by the writers to be bad, are still uncomfortable to hear.

As Deborah’s character is developed more this season, there is something to be said for the way her imperfections are humanised. In episode 6, the writers make a tongue in cheek joke about ‘girl boss’ feminism and also show how far Deborah is from the ‘women can have it all’ fantasy that is often forced down viewers throats ad nauseum with shows like Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, The Bold Type…should I keep going? Deborah is a flawed: she is selfish, she is a bully, she was cut throat and competitive, and she took other women down on her way to the top. She was a bad wife and an indifferent sister. And as the writers focus on in this episode, she was a bad mother. Both neglectful and absentee. But that is the truth of fame and success: woman can’t have it all. And that aspiration is guaranteed to make women feel like failures if they can’t excel in all areas.

All in all, second season continues, the series does redeem itself as. The humour finds its footing and so does the story.

One scene in particular stands out. When Deborah and her team go to LA to sell her series, they stay in her LA mansion. Deborah hasn’t been able to sell her mansion because of the neighbours tree house. The only offer she gets for the show is one 30-minute episode as part of a ‘mandated’ production about women in stand-up. Deborah goes home, she puts on goggles, picks up a chainsaw and cuts down the tree where the tree house is. Right after, she announces her decision to self-fund her show. The chopping of the tree thus being a cleverly executed metaphor for her taking matters into her own hands.

The only area where the new season leaves something to be desired is the lack of story graduation for Ava. She seems often side-lined and instead, Deborah’s manager Jimmy and assistant Kayla have been given more screen time on the show this season. Ava’s comedy writer credit in the very last episode, where the story line also throws in Ava’s ex as well as her decision to finally rent her own place in Vegas, all seems forced. Like the writers decided to jam all of it into one episode to tie her story up before the season is finished off. It feels forced and dissatisfactory to say the least.