Hacks, HBO, Deborah Vance, Psychoanalysis. Psychology,
The thing that sets this series apart is that the two principals are both totally and entirely unlikable. Vance is vain and magisterial, and Ava is self-indulgent and childish. What they have in common – and what Deborah appears to admire in Ava – is that they are both intensely focused on getting ahead at any cost and therefore are total jerks to the people around them. This series is a tough watch through the first few episodes. We hung in there, partly because the reluctant daughter recommended it, but also partly because we sensed that the characters would become more likable, but it wasn't easy...
What seems to distinguish Deborah and Ava is that Vance is successful and Ava hasn’t, apparently, done much of anything and is at the end of her rope, can’t get work anywhere else, and is therefore desperate, though still proud enough to quit when Vance demeans her. Very quickly, in the first season, they both become aligned when Vance’s primo gig gets pulled out from under her because she is no longer the draw she once was and, though she could retire on her wealth and her continued ability to sell her line of products on QVC, she will have lost her audience and we discover that Deborah desperately desires to the connection she feels with a devoted audience as much as Ava desperately desires to so something, anything. Vance is a performer and feels like she is herself when she if performing. Ava is trying to find herself.
I am a big fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but it has always felt too clean and simple. Hacks does not feel clean. It feels gritty and, in a Vegas sort of way, real. That is, as real as the lives of entertainers who both mock and define what our culture is and should be while doing that from within ersatz replicas of great architectural wonders of the world for people who are in town for conventions and/or to figure out how to get rid of excess wealth through the promise of gaining more wealth can be.
It sounds like I must have hated this show – and a part of me did. But it was the part of me that I would rather disown. The part of me that identifies with these characters – and particularly with Vance. Oh, I have been nowhere near as successful as she has been. But I, like her, am much closer to the end of my career than I am to the beginning of it. And I, like her, am beginning to feel less and less relevant. And I, like her (it turns out) despite having had a reasonable successful career, did not – at least in my own mind, achieve my full potential.
We discover Deborah’s potential when she assigns Ava to review and digitize her collection of jokes, sketches, videotapes, and records of her career. This scut work has a purpose, of course. It is not articulated clearly in the series, but if Ava is going to write for Vance she needs to know what works and what does not – she needs to know who this woman is. But the apparent reason is that Deborah needs this stuff catalogued and it appears that she is treating her employee like clerical staff rather than as a junior colleague. It feels like she is trying to demean Ava.
I have been given scut work to educate - and demean - me, too. My former, younger self identifies with Ava - the one who wants to belong (and I think Vance both identifies and feels some affection for the part of her younger self that she sees in Ava, though it takes a while for Ava, and the audience, to see and appreciate this. The scut work feels like part of a hazing process).
In my own life, Ava's and Vance's going through old clips parallels my reviewing my career to make a case for promotion at work. This is a review I should have done years ago. But the first time I was up for a promotion was such an embarrassing experience that I haven’t wanted to put myself in the sights of those who would judge me again. So, I have been, like Ava, reviewing records from years ago and dredging up what I did when.
What Ava discovers is that Vance was in line to the be the first woman to have a late-night talk show (something that still hasn’t actually happened out here in real life), but her life melted down when her husband, who had been her business manager and biggest supporter, had an affair with her sister. We suddenly have an explanation for Vance’s bitterness and mistrust of anyone who is close to her - anyone that she doesn’t have on her payroll and therefore imagine having complete control over. And we begin to feel something like empathy for this very prickly character (or at least I do – I, after all, haven’t wanted to put my vulnerabilities out there again for many years).
It is hardest, though, to feel empathy for Deborah Vance in terms of her relationship with her grown daughter, Deborah “DJ” Vance (Kaitlin Olson). DJ is a loser. She just isn’t good at anything. And this appears to be, at least in part, because Deborah (her mother) keeps running her life, so she has very little true autonomy and instead she engages in faux moments of running her life – making truly terrible jewelry that is way too clunky and big – as a failed means of supporting herself, for instance. Over time, we come to see that this has much deeper roots – Deborah took DJ on the road with her after the divorce from DJ’s father and, though this was intended to be an expression of her maternal caring, Deborah was too wrapped up in her own career and achieving success to be tuned into her daughter.
Of course, I hope that my devotion to my career has not interfered too much with my parenting, but it certainly played a role in marital distress and a failed marriage, as well as a great deal of personal angst and many sleepless nights that left me feeling less than at my best. So, given a chance to review my career, was it worth it? Would I do it all over again?
Deborah is proud of her career and married to continuing to do what she does indefinitely. That said, we can see that in Vegas she is just mailing it in. We also see, through Ava’s eyes, that she is not relevant to a younger, hipper crowd. And then the hammer comes down – she is booted by the owner of the casino that has hosted her for many years in an arrangement that has been mutually very enriching. Angry and embittered, Vance sets out to reinvent herself – with Ava as her devalued muse and co-author. In spite of ourselves, we come to admire the pluck and verve of these two women who are very hard to like, but somehow easy to identify with.
Just as in Seinfeld, part of what is attractive about this pair, and the rest of the planets in the solar system that revolves around Vance, is that they are part of a community despite their apparent lack of redeeming value. Perhaps as in Seinfeld, part of the attraction is that, despite Woody Allen’s protestations to the contrary, we actually are looking for a club that could tolerate having us as a member. And that we could belong not because of the ways that we have made ourselves look good – not because of our shiny resume, as it were – but that we could belong warts and all. Even though we have a face that only a mother could love, we wish that the world would turn out to be a supportive maternal figure.
So I think that we enjoy this pair and their entourage not because we like them, but because we are like them. Their flaws are our flaws and, through identifying with them, they become likable (and perhaps teach us something about being able to like ourselves as we learn to like them).
In the second season, as they are on the road and Vance is trying out her new material on audiences that want to be sympathetic, she keeps falling flat and, while she gets a few laughs, she doesn’t connect with the audience. Ava has convinced her to be more straightforward and real about the facts of her life. Vance didn’t actually burn down her house when she found out about her husband’s infidelity – her husband did that and framed her so that he not only torched the house but also her career. But putting this into her act makes her come across as self-pitying, self-mocking or, worse, she turns, in a few performances, to mocking her audience.
The magic happens when she is able to turn her keen judgement back on herself. She doesn’t just tell what happened, but recognizes the humor in the ways that her efforts were self-destructive. She amuses herself – and her audience – by being amused with herself. She learns to simultaneously take herself very seriously – honestly articulating her experience instead of pretending that things were not so bad – and also to take herself way less seriously – to recognize that, despite the cards being stacked against her, she made her situation even worse by being headstrong and self- important. And that becomes funny. She unites with her audience in good-humoredly poking fun at herself, and she and the audience laugh together at the result (not all that differently than what Mrs. Maisel does from the get go).
Perhaps if I can just learn to take myself a little less seriously – while also recognizing just how powerfully attached to the important things in my life I really am – I, too, can connect more genuinely with those around me. Maybe I, like Deborah and Ava, can become more likeable, while remaining deeply (but hopefully more adorably) flawed.
Post script: In the discussion among the writers after the last show of the second season they hint at doing a third season. I hope this doesn’t happen. The second season wraps things up. Let’s leave it at that.
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