Hacks season 3 finale: The art of losing

You can’t keep going to the hardware store for milk.

Kathy was the first person to learn this lesson about Deborah Vance, even if it took her a lifetime to figure it out. And she certainly won’t be the last. Like most narcissists, Deborah is charming as hell; that’s how she reels you in. And once you’ve gotten close enough to see the face behind the mask, it’s already too late.

Deborah and Ava’s relationship has been nothing but lovely this entire season. The older woman finally gave her young collaborator the respect she deserves; and Ava, in turn, used her X-ray vision to see into the heart of her mentor’s insecurities—and love her even more for her fragility. So it was all but guaranteed that the honeymoon would end in heartbreak. In the season-three finale, the shit finally hits the fan—and boy, does it ever make a mess.

Deborah is riding high after finding out that she landed the Late Night gig; she’s already packing up her mansion to relocate to L.A. Everyone’s excited for her, but you can practically hear the Jaws theme as Deb’s eyes go black as a shark’s. The first casualty? Her and Kathy’s tentative reconciliation. They’d been planning to spend the weekend together, but Deb is too busy, so she can only do Sunday—which includes a trip to their parents’ mausoleum.

The sisters stand before the crypt, Kathy somber and Deb bored out of her skull. Of course she hasn’t put her phone on vibrate, and of course she steps away to take a call from a producer. When Kathy accuses her of being disrespectful, Deb drops a nuclear bomb: She had their parents’ bodies relocated to a corner plot in Vegas way back in 1997, so they’ve brought flowers to an empty grave.

Kathy has an epiphany: She’s wasted half her life crawling on her knees in an attempt to reconcile with a terrible person. “I did one really bad thing, but you have done hundreds!” she shouts. (Thank god HBO is giving J. Smith-Cameron a spotlight post-Succession.) Deborah offers her sister a nonapology, then, once again, brings it back to her. Has Kathy heard she’s got a late-night show now? And for the first of two times in this episode, one of the most important people in Deborah’s life walks away from her.

Fortunately, things are going great with Ava. And that’ll definitely never change! As we knew she would, Deborah asks her protégée to quit her job at On The Contrary and come aboard as the head writer for Late Night. Ava had actually come to ask Deb the same thing; she’s been hitting a wall trying to write her own stuff, but she’s chock-full of ideas for her good buddy.

Her admission brings up the major theme of “Bulletproof”—that the professional and the personal are inextricably linked. Deborah and Ava are a crack team, which comes not just from their combined comedic chops but from their hard-won understanding of each other as people. When Ava says yes to the offer and tells Deb that she never stopped believing in her, the naked affection on Jean Smart’s face is a thing of intimate beauty.

The flipside, however, is that Ava is subsuming her own creative vision in service of Deb’s. She may still be young—as Deb reminded her on that fateful hike in the Alleghenies—but there’s only so long you can put your own career on the back-burner.

Ava wastes no time in giving notice to Lewis, and the graceful way she drops the news is a testament to how much she’s blossomed as a professional since we first met her. Lewis offers her the head writer position at On The Contrary, but Ava just knows her place is at Deborah’s side.

The woman of the hour isn’t feeling nearly as secure. Rattled by her confrontation with Kathy, Deb shows up on the doorstep of Cliff Biff (Hal Linden), a TV legend who was executive producing Late Night during Deborah’s brief tenure in the hosting chair. When she asks him why it didn’t work out back then, it’s clear she’s cruisin’ for a bruisin’—and Cliff sure delivers.

Initially, he offers the pat explanation that the bad press surrounding Deb’s infidelity/arson scandal was too much for CBS to handle. She calls bullshit, so Cliff gives her the real answer: There are a million reasons why a show can fail, and “if you’re a woman, make it a million and one.” When he advises her to never give the network “an excuse to say no,” a terrible inkling begins to form behind Deborah’s eyes.

She walks into her first big meeting at Television City with Cliff’s words ringing in her ears. When she clocks the sheer number of people packed into the conference room, we can see Deborah talking herself out of the brazen confidence that got her here in the first place. Getting everything you ever wanted also means you have everything to lose.

In the kitchen of her L.A. house, Deborah tells Ava that she’s got bad news: CBS wants her to keep Steve, the “hockey jersey guy” who’s been at Late Night for decades, on as head writer. Deb swears that she has no choice in the matter, but she still needs Ava on her staff. (She needs her, you guys!)

Surprise, surprise: Deborah is lying through her teeth. While picking up sad takeout, Ava runs into Winnie Landell on the sidewalk and pitches herself as head writer. Winnie blithely tells her to talk to Deb, because the network has given her full hiring power. As the camera closes in on Ava’s face, I started hearing that Jaws music again.

In a season full of barn-burner scenes between Einbinder and Smart, this is the one that should feature in both of their Emmy reels: Ava storms into the mansion to confront Deborah with her betrayal, and she goes ice-cold like it’s season one all over again. She lied because she didn’t think Ava would understand—and hey, it’s a lot less pressure being number two. “You’ll be the woman behind the man behind the woman!” she says brightly.

Ava shoots back that if Deb keeps Steve on as head writer, the version of Late Night they both fought so hard for will “just be the same shit in a dress.” And then she uses that X-ray vision to cut to the quick: “I know you. You’re already making decisions out of fear, and you’ll keep doing it.” When Deb accuses Ava of letting their personal relationship cloud her judgment, Ava proves wise beyond her years: “What we make together is good because of our relationship.”

The generational gap that’s always stood between them is suddenly a chasm. Deb’s experience coming up in the chauvinist ’70s taught her that the only way for a woman to shatter the glass ceiling is by climbing on the backs of other women she’s bested or betrayed on her way to the top. But Ava’s grown up in an era that’s taught her she doesn’t have to swallow that misogynistic bullshit anymore: The only way women can truly succeed in a male-dominated industry is by lifting each other up, not cutting each other to ribbons.

When Deborah says that the business isn’t fair, Ava, tears in her eyes, replies: “I’m not asking for the business or the world to be fair. I’m asking for you to treat me fairly, because you owe me that!” Deb is unmoved, blinded by the flash grenade Cliff lobbed at her: “I cannot give them any excuse. This show has to be bulletproof. It has to work. I’ve lost way too much for it not to.”

She’s talking about Kathy and her ex-husband, of course, but also the years she’s lost to the Sisyphean struggle of life as a female comedian, all the men she let talk down to her, all the rage she had to swallow back until it choked her. And, as Ava points out after Deb says she’s willing to sacrifice even her, she’s also given up the chance for any true human connection. “You’re lonely all the fucking time. And you’re gonna die that way, too.” Daaamn, girl!

It’s only after Ava has stormed out that Deborah permits a single tear to roll down her cheek. (I’m reminded of a line Elizabeth Bishop wrote right around the time Deb lost the Late Night chair: “The art of losing isn’t hard to master; / so many things seem filled with the intent / to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”)

Another relationship that’s teetering on the brink due to the fuzzy boundary between the personal and the professional: Jimmy and Kayla. Up until now, Hacks has always treated the latter as pure comic relief, which has been awesome because Megan Stalter is one of the funniest people alive. But in “Bulletproof,” the writers surprise us by taking her very seriously.

Kayla shows up at Jimmy’s ad hoc coffee-shop office with the news that she’s booked a lunch with her childhood friend Bellette Donaldson, a former Disney kid who’s trying to transition to serious actor thanks to her role in Darren Aronofsky’s new “goat-demon movie.”

The three meet at the most gorgeous restaurant I’ve ever seen in my life, and Bellette (Kathryn Newton) quickly establishes herself as a grade-A asshole. She begins by telling Jimmy that she calls Kayla “Pepperoni Stick” because she once caught her with a pepperoni stick in her sleeping bag at a sleepover. We expect a joke here, but when Kayla hunches her shoulders and mutters, “I was eating it…” it’s clear that something darker is at play.

As Bellette shares more stories about all the times she bullied Kayla (isn’t it hilarious that she once dared her to climb inside a dryer, and then the cleaning lady turned it on?), Jimmy decides they should absolutely not work with this woman; so he puts the kibosh on the meeting without asking Kayla’s input. He thinks he’s protecting her, but his partner sees things very differently.

In the scene that follows, Stalter proves that she’s just as skilled at drama as she is at absurdist comedy. Kayla tells Jimmy that she doesn’t need him to be his white knight; she needs him to respect her as a fellow manager. He gets hella condescending, reminding her that it isn’t her job to set up meetings; she’s supposed to be doing “assistant stuff,” which she’s very bad at.

I got choked up when Kayla declared, “I’m sorry I suck, okay?!” She knew no one thought she deserved her position at Latitude; but when Jimmy asked her to partner with him, she thought he did—until now. “I mess up, but I’m really trying.” Jimmy doesn’t grasp the implication of her words until she tells him that she’s not sure if she’s got what it takes to be a manager and walks away with plans to leave L.A. for a while.

It’s only right that these two get a (platonic) rom-com ending. Jimmy books a last-minute ticket on Kayla’s flight to Mykonos so he can beg her to stay. Sure, she isn’t great at keeping the trains running, but her clever schemes were exactly what secured Deborah the Late Night gig. (When he tells her, “Sometimes, the most innovative visionaries struggle with executive functioning,” this ADHD writer’s heart grew two sizes.) Kayla agrees to stay, now with the title of manager and an assistant of her own.

Meanwhile, Deborah and Ava’s story is playing out less like Love Actually than Blue Valentine. When Ava meets up with Jimmy to check out his new office space, he advises her to stay on with Deb despite what happened: “I just think you and Deborah are too good together to give up on this.” When Ava says he should tell Deb that, he once more proves his mettle as a rep; he’s telling Ava instead because he knows she’ll do the right thing.

That depends on your definition of “right.” The next morning, Deborah strides into Television City to find Ava waiting in the writers’ room. Deb’s thrilled—and smug—to see that she got to keep her favorite scribe. But then Ava proves herself to be the older woman’s true protégée: It would sure be a shame if anyone found out that Deb bumped uglies with the company chairman a few days before she got the Late Night offer. “So I think I am your head writer, after all.”

“You wouldn’t,” Deborah snarls, to which Ava coolly replies, “I would. Wouldn’t you?” Like Margo Channing before her, Deborah has created a monster in her own image. As the two sit down at either end of the table, flanked by the rest of the team, Ava seizes the reins: “Shall we begin?” These poor staff writers have no idea what they’ve signed up for.

Stray observations

• Though Hacks brings a (sort of) closure to Deborah, Ava, Jimmy, and Kayla’s stories, it leaves Marcus’ journey to QVC as a loose thread. All we see is Damien’s breakdown when he realizes Marcus is about to leave him holding the ball. (“I don’t want to know when one fiscal quarter ends and another begins!” he wails.)
• Guest stars of the week: It’s a delight to see Kathryn Newton nail another comedy role after her breakout earlier this year in Lisa Frankenstein. And it’s quite a get for Hacks to cast Hal Linden as a network-TV legend, considering he was dominating the small screen around the time of Deborah’s first hosting gig on Barney Miller.
• Deborah and Kathy’s parents died within a few years of each other in the late ’60s, when Deb was a teenager and Kathy was just a kid. Knowing what they must’ve gone through back then makes the strain in their relationship even more gut-wrenching.
• “As far as brand deals, I’ve been leveraging Maytag and Frigidaire against each other. It’s getting nasty.”
• Naturally, Deb got an updated vanity plate for her car now that she’s a California girlie: LA DIVA98.
• “I’ll take you shopping. Or better yet, you can take me shopping! We can go to that size-inclusive thrift store that was on the school bus you were telling me about.”
• In a mostly dramatic episode, the woman on the airplane who films Jimmy “proposing” to Kayla was a welcome respite. When she screams for them to kiss and Jimmy screams back, “WHAT IS YOUR DEAL?” I have a hunch the writers were sending a sly message to the rabid KayJimmy (JimKayla?) shippers out there.
• The cliffhanger that “Bulletproof” ends on is incredibly juicy—which makes it even more maddening that Max has yet to renew Hacks for a fourth season. Get your butts in gear, guys!