#hacks 4.09

[sapphicscholar]

Needed a live reaction cam set up panning to everyone’s reactions when Deborah quits and announces her love for Ava on live television like

Josefina: nodding with a glass of wine, turning to someone we’ve never met (bc at least one of them learned to have a social life outside of work) like “finally, I’ve been telling her this for four years, but does she listen? No!”

Marcus: texting water cop “do we think she’s allowed to go back to making gay jokes now?”

Damien: totally missed it because it’s just on in the background at Deborah’s insistence to log another live viewer

Kiki: hopping immediately into the group chat like “good for you two! I knew you’d work it out. Btw can we still do celebrity strip poker next week? I was really counting on seeing sally fields topless to make up for having to sit through parent-teacher conferences. They just don’t recognize Luna’s brilliance. She colors outside the lines for a *reason*!”

DJ: cooing at AJ, “would you look at that, little man? Would you just look at that? Tells the whole world she loves her head writer before I get one single product placement for D’Jewelry”

Nina: excitement that goes way too high about an Ava mention immediately gives way to panic that also goes way too high about Ava being out a job, and of course it happens the *moment* she spent that vibamix money on windsailing equipment

Mayor Jo: leaving a drunk voicemail for someone who is definitely not Deborah “god, Deb, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Now be honest: is that why you two got arrested? I won’t tell anyone I won’t. But I have a Zamboni for rent if you’re interested. Spice it up a little.”

Melissa Etheridge: huh, would you look at that? There was a reason for all those jokes after all.

Winnie (ok this one mostly works if you’ve read my fic dirty work) : texting Ava “guess you and the missus made up then”

Marty: going back through his text history with Deborah copying and pasting every single joke she’s made about his 20-something girlfriends into a novel-length message to Deborah

Ruby: sitting in bed with her new girlfriend, about to embark on the world’s longest backstory to explain her reaction

Emily, Dev, and their new +1: “did we tell you about the time Deborah Vance bought us the entire dessert menu and tried to have a foursome?”

Aiden’s parents: “I knew she wasn’t Catholic.”

[streepytime]

Ava: You… Jesus, Deborah… you did that. In front of millions.

Deborah: If I’m going to say it, I’m going to say it loud. I’ve wasted enough time being careful.

Ava: You meant it?

Deborah: Every word.

Ava crosses the room now, close enough to touch her but not daring to yet. Her voice drops, reverent.

Ava: Then say it again. Just for me.

Deborah looks at her, really looks at her. All her sharp edges have softened, melted by something too real to mask with wit. She takes Ava’s face gently in both hands.

Deborah: …I love you.

[eloiscbridgerton]

HACKS 4.09 – A Slippery Slope

[royalarmyofoz]

HACKS 4.09

[echofades]

HACKS 4.09 | A Slippery Slope

[pagets]

We're gonna die together!

HACKS 4.09 "A Slippery Slope"

[hbomaxsource]

🏀

Hacks 4.09 A Slippery Slope

[wistfulwatcher]

HACKS | 4.09 A Slippery Slope

[everythingiisromantic]

killing myself party tonight!!!!!!!

hacks, 1.01 there is no line x 4.09 a slippery slope

[sapphicscholar]

Hacks Episode 4.09 Thoughts

As always, thoughts below the cut!

We’re here at the penultimate episode, and it’s all about the growth, baby! But what I love most of all is that it’s imperfect, proceeding in fits and starts, which is much truer to life than any grand arc would have been (even as we get grand gestures). But here we get Ava who fucks up, but in a way that isn’t driven by drugs and a desire to burn the whole thing to the ground. It’s an honest kind of mistake—a sitting around the bar with your old co-workers bitching about your bosses kinda deal. And when everything is collapsing around her, we see that kernel of doubt blooming into bigger fears about betrayal, but she calls Deborah. She fucking calls Deborah and asks point blank if Deborah was being honest on the beach, or if she’d just said what she thought she had to. And I think the ordering here matters. Scared and hurt and worried as she is, Ava wants to believe the best in Deborah, even when she’s drowning in the middle of her own personal hell, and that’s saying a lot.

Similarly, we get to see a Deborah who’s willing to cave on certain things. She’s grown enough to mount the perfect defense against the “you can’t say anything anymore!” crowd (by throwing out a joke that they don’t want getting made for a change), but she’s also willing to sacrifice it to appease the network and the corporate machinery that protects men just like Sommers. She’s trying to work with Ava to repair the damage, to keep her on, knowing damn well they make a better show together than anything she could make on her own, but she’s also still the woman who’s biggest piece of advice for girls out there looking up to her is to not eat salad dressings with cream in them. Because she’s not perfect, but she’s trying, and every season she’s getting a little further down the road. And so when it counts the most? When it really comes down to it, rubber hitting the road? She’s all in. Long gone is the Deborah Vance of the pilot who insisted there was no line in comedy, who told Ava a gig was a gig no matter what they asked of you or who you had to appease. This is a Deborah who can stand up and say the line is right here, and she’s not willing to cross it; a Deborah who can look out into the audience—the living, laughing proof of her ultimate success—and tell them not even a dream gig is worth playing by rules she never agreed to. And it’s lovely because it’s the kind of character growth we’ve been working to across so many seasons.

Now…the big gesture. I mean, fuck, how can you not love it? And it was something I mentioned I could see happening this episode in an answer to an ask earlier this week. And genuinely, for the sake of Hacks as a show, I think it’s what needed to happen because the narrative balancing act wasn’t working well with how much their in-show universe needed to expand outward for Late Night. But also…imo the issues that they had this season with pacing, narrative balancing, and continuity in between the solid bookend pairs of episodes (I’m assuming 10 will be strong) undermined the emotional payoff the moment should have had. Because here’s the thing: Jean Smart is a wonderful actress who can sell us on the fact that Deborah has loved making this show, that it has been a lifelong dream come true. She can manage the tears glistening in her eyes, the little catch of her breath as she announces she’s choosing to walk away from it anyway. And we know (if we’re careful viewers) why it’s such a meaningful thing! We heard the story about her falling in love with late night as a child. We know exactly what got wrenched away from her the first time. We’ve seen her claw her way up to a place where someone like Winnie Landell says, “yeah, we’re gonna risk it all and take a chance on her.”

But the problem is…we haven’t really gotten to see Deborah be happy making this show. We got the set up for it at the end of episode 6, but then 7 was spent largely on a non-work plot, and the montage in 8 was a quick overview of the fun Deborah was having with her guests, which isn’t quite the same as the value she finds in making her own late night show, but more significantly: it was short. In contrast to the many episodes we spent seeing Deborah miserable, sacrificing the integrity of the show just to fuck Ava over, we didn’t have the narrative buy-in to earn this culmination and have it land with the true force of the sacrifice it was. Instead, a lot of fans were talking all season about this moment as exactly the kind of choice that Deborah would obviously make because obviously she wasn’t really happy. Which was exactly why I wasn’t enthusiastic about it! Because I think that Deborah did love it (indeed, that’s what JPL are now telling us, without really having shown us). Instead, what we got shown more so was the joys of success. But there’s a really different weight to seeing Deborah sacrifice a successful show vs. seeing Deborah sacrifice a meaningful show. And I fear that latter piece didn’t land as well as it should have (even as we buy it in the context of this isolated episode). It’s emblematic of the larger issues I’ve had with many of the middle episodes, where emotional/affective continuity was deprioritized in favor of guest stars, splashy scenes, and punchlines. I’d be curious to see who the continuity editor was for this season (a role that’s historically been filled by writers of single episodes)… But it’s a pity because it’s a sacrifice that is So Big, and it deserved to land with all the weight it should have carried.

Smaller things:

I like Jimmy and Kayla fine, I often find them funny, and I particularly love Paul Downs’ capacity for embodied and vocal humor. Here, we do get hit a little in the face with the obvious parallels they’re seeking to draw between the two partnerships, so I see the work the Jimmy/Kayla dyad is doing as mirror and foil all at once. But it didn’t do that work for much of the season, and while I don’t need them to be on perfect parallel trajectories, in the face of the narrative weakness of so many of the middle episodes, I’m reluctant to find the sheer amount of screentime afforded to them worth it in the end. I think that there were ways to have their story play out that were tighter (and just as funny). Dance Mom just…maybe coulda been a one-off (sorry!)

Also, last note, but the final moment actually left me feeling some kind of way about Bob Lipka. Obviously he’s not a good person, and he had no idea the kind of sacrifice he was asking Deborah to make when it came to Ava (bc, let’s be honest, it’s exactly the kind of thing one does in corporate if there’s been a leak to appease the board and show them it’s been handled!). But when he tells Deborah she’s throwing away her career and shakes his head, muttering, “it’s a damn shame,” I believe that he believes that. I actually believe he believes in her. And we don’t have to value his profit-driven, shareholder-beholden vision of what Deborah’s show could have been! But I do appreciate that this show often makes its recurring antagonists a little more complex than their one-off villains (think Drew in 1.69 Million or Ethan here). I don’t know, it’s part of why I cared enough to write him into the fic I posted late last night, and I appreciate that the show is leaning into the fact that he can be a shitty person whose values contravene our leads’ and, implicitly, the viewer’s, but who can still in some ways line himself up with Ava and the rest of us in saying that it’ll be a goddam shame if Deborah’s career ends here, even if only temporarily.   

[dustdotorg]

you spin me right 'round, baby

summary:

Five times friends and family react to Deborah's bombshell opening monologue, and one time Ava does.

pairing: ava/deborah

fandom: hacks

rated: t

length: one-shot, 8.7k

spoilers for 4.09

[lesbianologist]

A scene that i don't see many people discussing is in 4x05 when Deb sees Ava with the couple in the restaurant. Like, she did not listen to a word that man said to her because she was too preoccupied on watching Ava like a hawk. And this was definitely a moment of jealousy and possessiveness. She wants to be the most important person in A's life, even when they are not on good terms, and she wanted that couple to know. I really loved this scene in general.

yes yes yessss i talked about this on my tiktok for an insane amount of time.

this scene reeked of possessive ex energy from deborah lmao. the throuple hadn’t broken up with ava yet, but i think that this moment clearly planted the seed. they later cite emotional walls and unresolved hurt from an ex, and everything about that interaction with deborah suggests they assumed she was the ex in question.

(delving in more below the cut)

the “is it weird seeing each other outside of work?” question only makes sense if something deeper is suspected, and deborah’s response—“ava used to live in my guest suite,” delivered with that smirk is anything but casual. i wish i had a photo/screenshot of that moment. and then comes ava’s “i just wrote jokes for her,” and deborah looks crushed. she doesn’t argue, just absorbs it, visibly gutted.

deborah’s “you’re a lucky guy.” further solifidies that she was being territorial/possessive. it’s not a compliment—it’s a claim. she’s not trying to charm him, she’s trying to make a point: “i was here first”. and when ava admits she told them to “wait” for the show to get good (the show she and deborah built together), deborah just leaves. she doesn’t gut her with some nasty remark, doesn’t undermine their throuple status, doesn’t deflect onto another joke—not really. she just leaves—not coldly, but quietly, wounded.

everything about that scene plays like the unraveling of something unspoken. definitely not coworkers. not even friends. it’s an awkward, awful, temporary breakup in slow motion.

and that is exactly why king princess’ “cursed” played in 4.06 on the beach. because literally everything leading up to 4.05 was them being in a temporary place of being split/exes, and trying to be friends, and how difficult it was to just move on and be just that. because they can’t. and in 4.06 they reunite and it’s clear that this is it for them. completely. same with 4.09 and having a rendition of “dreams” by the cranberries playing during their faux honeymoon scenes. because that song is about falling in love.

hacks is a love story, point blank.

[royalarmyofoz]

HACKS 4.02|4.09

[echofades]

HACKS 4.09 | A Slippery Slope

[pagets]

HACKS 1.01 "There is No Line" / 4.09 "A Slippery Slope"

[actualhumancryptid]

I loved the new episode of Hacks.

7 and 8 were still absolutely mid. Maybe I will enjoy them more when I do a full rewatch. But there has to be a more interesting way to go 'look over here!' before pulling a twist. and show how much pointless, meaningless shit came with Deborah's dream. But what do I know.

anyway, good things. I love the mirroring of 4.09 and 'A Gig's a Gig', and also the 'Where's the line?' throwback. I think it landed quite powerfully.