Top 10 Reasons You NEED to Be Watching Hacks

There’s always just a little bit of hesitation to start a brand new show, no matter how good it looks, without knowing if there’s going to be a second season. There are few things worse than finishing the first season super excited for season two only to find out that it’s been canceled. We’ve all been there and we get it. Which is why we wanted to start this list off right away with the news that HBO Max has already renewed “Hacks” for a second season. In fact, they did it back in June of 2021, just a month or so after the show premiered.

Just because someone has done great work in the past doesn’t necessarily mean that everything they do is a hit. But, it’s definitely a good sign, as is the case with the co-creators of “Hacks” Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky. You see, the three of them all previously worked together on one of the best comedies of the 2010s, “Broad City.” Well, one day on their way to a monster truck rally to film something for Downs’ episode of “Netflix Presents: The Characters”, they got to talking about funny women who didn’t get the recognition their male equivalents did. And that conversation was the germ of the idea that led to “Hacks.”

We think “Hacks” is one of the best shows on TV. But to quote numeros infomercials, “don’t just take our word for it.” The members of The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences think it’s pretty darn good as well. In fact, the show racked up a total of 15 nominations for the 2021 Emmy awards. It picked up nominations in multiple acting categories, including lead, supporting and guest. And the show itself picked up nominations for both Outstanding Writing For A Comedy Series and for Outstanding Comedy Series. All very well deserved.

Time! We’d all like more of it and there never seems to be enough of it to do everything we want. We get that fitting another show into your repertoire right now might seem like a daunting task. But that’s just another reason why you need to be watching “Hacks.” While there will be a second season, right now there’s only the first season, consisting of 10 episodes averaging about 30 minutes each. Which means, after you watch the first episode and love it you can binge the whole thing in like 5 hours. That’s less time than it takes to watch “Titanic” and “The Notebook” back-to-back, and who hasn’t done that at least once or twice?

Las Vegas isn’t often used as the setting for a TV show. When we think Vegas on screen the first things that come to mind are gangsters, criminal capers and “CSI.” And for some of us also, “Rain Man” and “Swingers”. OK yeah, and “The Hangover.” But what’s fun about “Hacks” is that it gives us a look at Sin City through two very different lenses. Deborah Vance is a Las Vegas legend living in a mansion, driving a Rolls-Royce and flying in a private jet. On the other end of the spectrum we have Ava Daniels, a young comedy-writer from L.A. living in a casino hotel, eating from the cafeteria and trying to get work done amongst the slot machines.

While the relationship between Deborah and Ava is the heart of the show, the entertainment industry is what brings them together, for better or for worse. And as we see, there is a lot of for worse in the business. Ava is in her current desperate position because of a Tweet she sent out that basically got her “cancelled.” As for Deborah, she’s a living legend, but also having to deal with the ageism that’s common in the entertainment industry and towards women in particular. The show might not be about the industry, but the business is all around and “Hacks” does a great job at giving us a look behind the scenes without being overhanded about it.

Ava and Deborah are both strong women, but that doesn’t make them the same. Just like how they see Vegas through different lenses and are dealing with different aspects of the harsh entertainment industry, they also have different ideas about how to fight it. Deborah came up when her business was even more male dominated than it is today and she fought for everything by working hard, writing jokes and making success her power over sexism. Ava, on the other hand, wants to attack and confront the unfairness head on rather than just prove it wrong.

Sure, on the surface Deborah is the Vegas Legend in the twilight of her career and Ava is the snarky, Gen Z comedy writer, but that elevator pitch doesn’t do these women, or their characters, justice. There’s much more to both of them, and another thing that makes the show so good is how they slowly reveal all the “more.” We don’t get one big information dump or one big lay-it-all-out-there speech. The layers to both characters are peeled away throughout the season in ways that are totally genuine to them and the story.

The “Designing Women” star never went away, but as the 2000s rolled around, Jean Smart was not on the tips of most people’s tongues anymore. However, she continued to work and starting around 2015 saw her star begin to rise once again with Emmy nominated roles in both the second season of “Fargo” and in 2019 the HBO limited series “Watchmen.” Also, in 2021 just as “Hacks” was premiering on HBO Max, people were watching Smart in her Emmy nominated supporting role in “Mare of Easttown.” They say that it’s difficult for women in Hollywood to find good roles as they get older, but Smart has bucked, or shall we say hacked that trend!

We can tell you about the depth of the characters, the setting, the interesting and intelligent look at the entertainment industry and women in said business, but the show also needs to be funny. Not only is it a drama-comedy, but the two main characters are a comic and a comic writer, so if they aren’t funny the other stuff doesn’t matter. And while many of use “LOL” in our text conversations when we haven’t actually laughed out loud, we can legitimately promise you genuine laugh out loud moments galore, having audibly ha-ha’d many times every episode. And it isn’t just the two main ladies either. The supporting cast is also great and we especially love show co-creator Paul W. Downs as Deborah and Ava's manager, Jimmy.