In Massachusetts, famous funny people are like a dime a dozen and why you should watch Hacks
In Massachusetts, famous funny people are like a dime a dozen and why you should watch Hacks
Believe it or not, these ideas are connected.
True Fact: Famous Funny People (or FFPs) are all connected in some way, shape or form to Massachusetts in that they’ve either spent formative years in the Bay State or were born here.
And for those from Massachusetts, which is roughly 1/2 of my readership, here is the MA city/down breakdown:
What led me to create this infographic and why was I thinking about this?
While I was watching the finale of Hacks on HBO Max, which I’ll get to in a second, one of two main characters (hint: not Jean Smart) goes back to her hometown of Waltham, MA. Waltham has arrived folks. It’s now known for being more than just the former Watch City capital and the former city which housed the Celtics’ off-season practice facility.
As I’m now living in Waltham, this inevitably led to a full scale investigation on Google to sleuth as to which of the writers, producers or even actors has a connection near enough to Waltham for this to be THE town that our Hacks protagonist hails from. Sure enough, if you scroll up and look at the picture above, that Boston person in the top right who you may or may not recognize and who is wearing a server attire is one of the Hacks producers. She was also in The Good Place which I believe is another show she worked on.
The other Hacks showrunner (of Broad City) is Lucia Aniello is also from Massachusetts - the town of Hadley, which is coincidentally not far from the Eric Carle Museum, which on our trip to Amherst, MA a few weeks ago, we sadly didn’t get to because it was sold out. Carle, died a few weeks ago now but was the beloved writer of (drumroll, please):
Now that we’ve gotten out of our system(s) what a fine state Massachusetts is for nurturing creativity and talent in the hearts and minds of it younger and older adults, I will talk about why you should be watching Hacks.
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Reasons to watch Hacks
The Jeanassiance of Jean Smart - I didn’t coin this term “Jeanaissance” to refer to the second career coming of Jean Smart, but damn (Liam Hess did in Vogue or maybe he borrowed it from NY Times, but at any rate), I wish I had. Jean Smart is having the career of her life at the moment. In her younger comedic heyday, I was never a big Designing Women fan. It was over my head as a kid and fair enough too: Likely, 10-year-olds weren’t the target demographic.
Either way, Jean Smart, is fantastic as layered, complicated fading comedienne, Deborah Vance, who is on her way out of Vegas - or is she? She has loads of money, a paid residency tenure gig doing standup pretty much every night, an active fanbase (at least in Florida), a street named after her in LV, hob nobs with the rich and famous, and commandeers with the help of her COO, Marcus, a mad QVC business empire.
At heart though, she’s a comic who loves the stage and lives for stand-up. To say, she’s Joan Rivers if Joan Rivers were the inspiration for a fictional biopic called Hacks, is to not fully do justice to Jean. Jean is fab.
Jean as Deborah has a very checkered past which the show delves into quite a bit to help us understand how she came to be the formidable Deborah Vance - the same person who burned her ex husband’s house down and showed no remorse after or at the very least never extinguished that rumor and used it to her advantage.
Vegas makes for an interesting backdrop for a show (says the Massachusetts snob) - There I said it. The Vegas landscape is mesmerizing and it plays such a critical element in Hacks. Ava, played by OG SNL’s Laraine Newman’s daughter, Hannah Einbinder, is perfect in the role of disgraced, Gen-Z talented comic writer Ava who is trying to be someone in Los Angeles, but she never quite feels confident enough to be herself. It’s only thru her metamorphosis by way of her relationship with Deborah, and her daughter DJ, played by Kaitlin Olsen, and effectively by stepping outside of the rat race of LA and into the Vegas scene that she finds herself fulfilled. Coincidence? I think not. Then again, she lives in a hotel which is also a casino.
It’s funny but deep too - #MeToo, Aging gracefully but acknowledging certain truths (Deborah says to Ava in the season finale, “You can’t cry with your whole face. It’ll give you wrinkles.”), Self Love (Ava’s ginormous hands are a running joke), Sexism, Sexuality (Ava is bisexual) Generational differences (there is a particular episode later on in Season 1 where Ava is at a nightclub with Deborah and an old colleague and she tries to order a coffee - Some jokes ensue and are at the cost of Millenial, Gen Z, and Boomer pride.
The writing is good and the acting is well done. Ava is deeply insecure but she’s also loyal and principled. She tends to use self-deprecation to mask and draw attention to her flaws in quick succession. Her tongue is her weapon and her shield which is true of Deborah as well. It’s where they meet, where they find common ground to forge a deeper connection from.
Favorite episodes: Episode 1, Episode 5-7, Finale (Episode 10). I generally enjoyed the show more once Deborah and Ava got past the superficial differences, accepted their situations and each other, and started to bond, hence the later episode love.
Looking forward to next season as the show has been renewed but also would have been happy to bid adieu to our comedic duo. There’s something to be said for ending something while the novelty is still there. This show could have been one season - a self-contained limited series.
All episodes are available for bingeing now on HBO Max.