Newsletters: We Needed the Glorious Return of Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’

We Needed the Glorious Return of Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’

with Kevin Fallon

Everything we can't stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

This week:

Thanking God/Oprah that Hacks is back.
Reeling possibly forever over this Dolly Parton/Taco Bell news.
Some important movies to watch.
Some important Netflix info to ponder.
Thanking God/Oprah for Christine Baranski.

Hacks Is Back. We Finally Have Peace.

I have come to learn that few images spark more joy than that of Jean Smart in a leopard print glamour kaftan swanning through the Nevada desert.

Hacks premiered last year like a ray of light piercing through storm clouds. The world feels pretty terrible right now. It felt pretty terrible then, too! What's more fun than years of static misery? What a time to be alive!

But if things don't seem to have really changed, other than the specifics of what exactly is making the act of existence so particularly crushing at any given moment, at least this hasn't changed either. If the simple pleasures we get, the fleeting distractions that uplift, are fun things to watch on TV, then Hacks is still the serotonin blast, the satiating fuel for joy-parched souls, that it was.

The HBO Max series stars Smart as Deborah Vance, a trailblazing stand-up comedian at the sunset of her career, being pushed out of her popular Las Vegas residency for younger blood. She's imperious and intimidating, regal and brash, and undeniably strong with a vulnerable streak. Smart crafted a character in the mold of Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, whose bawdy one-liners, obvious ego, and radiating star quality made the fictional Deborah Vance an instant icon; gays started wearing Deborah Vance merch with her face on it as if it was a rock concert tee.

The tension at the heart of the series was that Deborah was being forced to work with a young comedy writer, who herself came with career baggage, in order to remain relevant enough to keep her Vegas slot. Hannah Einbinder's Ava, a moody, resentful millennial, was Deborah's foil-turned-Odd Couple confidant. In sly and subtle ways, the series deepened over the course of the season, exploring how their respective traumas bonded them despite generational differences and their collective obstinance.

That's what made the series great, and its haul of Emmy Awards speaks to that. But it's the kind of once-in-a-lifetime performance from Smart that created not just a fandom or admiration, but an obsession. Smart playing Deborah Vance is one of those performances that you can't stop talking about, and won't. Apologies to every human being I encountered throughout the course of Hacks' first season for interrupting every conversation to blurt out some hyperbolic monologue about how great Smart is on Hacks and how meaningful a showcase this is after such a long career. A Starbucks barista and I once wept together while bonding over it.

The first two new episodes of Season 2 premiered this week on HBO Max. Are they as "good" as the first season was? It would be almost impossible to measure up to that.

Judging by the episodes we screened, the new season lacks the tightness and direction of the veteran legend mounting an unlikely comeback and confronting what her life would mean without her career. But it makes up for that by embracing what it means when a series that was so tethered to a completed storyline loses that grounding. Season 2 of Hacks says a hearty "yes, and…" to chaos.

After a moving finale in which Deborah surprises Ava at her father's funeral and, not only emcees the service, but invites Ava to go with her on tour, a wrench is thrown in their path toward happily ever after.

In a testament to how brutally real this show about stand-up comedy had become, Deborah slaps Ava near the end of the first season. Ava quits and, in a drunken and high fit, sends an email to Hollywood producers she had previously interviewed with for a job exposing all of Deborah's worst behaviors and personality traits, giving them permission to use the details in a series about a shrew of a powerful woman who abuses those who work for her.

The reunion at the funeral for Ava's dad should be a kumbaya moment, but the audience knows that the other shoe is about to drop. In Season 2, it takes a beat for that to happen, and it falls like an anvil. Not a cartoon anvil, though. It's an earned, emotional moment. It also is the catalyst for the season's chaos.

Deborah doesn't behave in the way you'd expect when she inevitably finds out, and it's great material for Smart's delicate drama chops and uproarious penchant for vengeful comedy. It all unfolds during what ends up being the major conceit for Season 2, which morphs into a road trip comedy. We were going to say road trip "buddy" comedy, but that's not entirely accurate for what unfolds between Deborah and Ava.

There are things about the new season that don't work in confusing ways. The side characters of Jimmy, the agent (played by Paul W. Downs), and Kayla, his hilariously incompetent assistant (Meg Stalter), get beefed up screentime and their own plot outside of the Deborah drama. It turns out some things are better in small doses. Similarly, spending more time with Carl Clemons-Hopkins' manager character is, in theory, nice—it's a very likable role performed by a very likable actor. But you can't shake the feeling that these threads are distractions from the main show.

That spectacle is Jean Smart as Deborah Vance on an elaborate tour bus driving through the Midwest's finest B- and C-tier cities. As a sweetener, Laurie Metcalf boards the series as Deborah's tour manager, a woman who is serious-as-hell about her job. It is my firm belief that Laurie Metcalf joining Hacks is the gift from the universe we've all been owed after what we've endured these last years, and Metcalf doesn't disappoint. Duh. She's Laurie Metcalf.

Mark Indelicato also joins the tour as Deborah's assistant, which adds a fascinating new dynamic. These are characters whose messy lives are forgiven, and maybe even implicitly encouraged, because it's all fodder for the all-important, unimpeachable art form: Comedy. He pops that balloon.

"I don't like comedy," he says at one point. "Everyone's trying too hard. It's, like, so awkward."

It's never great when a series writes its own indictment, yet here we are. But we're also here with Laurie Metcalf. On a bus. With Jean Smart. Quibbles may be had, but all is forgiven.

Hollywood Mad Libs Lost Its Mind Again

There are times when you wonder if you're just online too much. (Those times include: The moment I wake up until the moment I pass out phone-in-hand still autoplaying Instagram Stories, the three-minute exception each day being the sacred time watching Kelly Clarkson's new "Kellyoke" drop from her talk show.)

The endless scroll and flickering digest of information can dizzy you into a bleary-eyed and nonsensical fog of buzzwords, headlines, and viral phrases, to the point that you can't steady yourself enough to determine if what you're reading could possibly be real. Welcome to 2022. It's all insane, yet it's all real.

This is all a lead-up to my astonishment, my bafflement, my utter refusal to take the news story that I had just seen at face value. Every few hours since I first read it, my body will suddenly spasm, like when you're having one of those dreams where you're falling. The memory of what I read manifests itself viscerally, a reaction that can only be physical because the words that are presented in the order they were are that preposterous—and therefore that activating.

Here they are: Dolly Parton will star in a TikTok musical alongside Doja Cat about Taco Bell's Mexican Pizza.

This is actually happening. The newly-voted Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee confirmed the news with the most batshit sentence I've ever seen. On her Instagram, Dolly Parton posted, "I'm making #MexicanPizzaTheMusical with @TacoBell."

The quick background is that Taco Bell had removed the Mexican Pizza from its menu a few years ago. Singer Doja Cat was instrumental in the public service of making people like my friend Maddie feel whole again, like everything was finally right with the world, by pressuring the chain to bring it back. Sometimes, creatives stage musicals on TikTok. And then some cosmic force put all those facts in a blender and added the words "Dolly Parton," and—boom, crash—here we are.

The musical will premiere on May 26. More importantly, the pizza will return on May 19.

Just Some Movies You Definitely Need to Watch

Apropos of absolutely nothing horrifying and shameful and, socially and humanly speaking, apocalyptic that is going on right now—we'd never bring up politics—here are three movies that I insist every American watch right now.

The first is a new one. It's called Happening. It is, as my colleague Nick Schager wrote, a "period piece as timely as they come." Set in 1960s France, it chronicles the lonely, desperate journey a young university student must go on in order to obtain a legal abortion.

Another came out in 2020. Never Rarely Sometimes Always is a horror movie, in that it is not fantastical or exaggerated, but upsettingly rooted in reality. It's about a teenage girl who lives in a rural area where it is not possible for her to attain an abortion, so she and her cousin set out on a harrowing and dangerous journey to New York. It's absolutely brutal.

The other is the film Dirty Dancing. Remember that film, the swoon-inducing crowd pleaser with the fun songs, Patrick Swayze's abs, and the cool lift? The entire plot, that iconic romance, exists because of a cautionary tale about what can happen if a woman doesn't have access to a safe and legal abortion.

Anyway, I don't know why these films are on my mind or why you should possibly watch them right now. Who could say?

I'm Sorry…Netflix Is Doing What Now?

Not too long ago, Dave Chappelle released a Netflix special that was criticized because the transphobic rhetoric, especially coming from a platform as huge as his and the streaming service's, posed real danger to the lives of trans people.

To my recollection, no major LGBT organization called for the special's censoring or for it to be removed, but they did rightfully call out the potential for harm and ask questions about what responsibility Netflix might have as the host of that content that paid Chappelle tens of millions of dollars to make it. Netflix's own employees staged a walkout in response to how the company handled the concerns.

Anyway, I thought you should know that this is now the company's next step: an update to its company culture memo that states the company will never censor artists and, if there is content that "you perceive to be harmful," then, basically, tough noogies. "If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you."

That's not a joke, that's really what the memo says. Just something to think about while you stream The Ultimatum.

Christine Baranski Saved Us, Once Again

I've had to look at this photo collage of Christine Baranski reacting to a picture of herself giving Elon Musk a death glare at least three times daily this last week in order to summon the will to keep going.

Hacks: A dip from perfection is still very high quality. (Now on HBO Max)

Love on the Spectrum: The best—and maybe only good?—relationship show. (Thurs. on Netflix)

Conversations With Friends: Or, the answer to the question: What has Taylor Swift's actor boyfriend actually been in? (Sun. on Hulu)

The Lincoln Lawyer: Matthew McConaughey isn't even in it! (Fri. on Netflix)

Firestarter: I am begging: Someone save Zac Efron's career! (Fri. in theaters and on Peacock)

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We Needed the Glorious Return of Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’

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