Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.
One of TV’s best comedies of recent years begins its final season this week as comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) seemingly rises from the dead – but she doesn’t like what she sees.
At the end of season four of “Hacks,” an erroneous media report claimed Vance had died. Season five, streaming its first two episodes at 9 p.m. April 9 on HBO Max, picks up soon after as Deborah and writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) return to the United States to find a memorial at the gate in front of Deborah’s home, startling mourners.
When Deborah learns the network boss behind her now-ended late-night talk show has been speaking ill of “the dead,” she immediately sets her sights on improving her legacy for the next time she’s declared deceased.
“It really puts the idea of legacy — how to live a life and how you want to live a life — into focus for her,” said executive producer Lucia Aniello during a “Hacks” press conference late last month. “As the season progresses, we explore a lot of different ways that she wants to have the relationships she wants to have, the lasting legacy she wants to have for Las Vegas, and for her work as well. That’s something that evolves as the season goes on.”
Smart said this 10-episode final season brightens up compared to the stormier tone of season four.
“Season four got a little bit dark — I think we had earned it – but I was worried that people would hate me, but I think because they cared so much about the relationship [between Deborah and Ava], it was like they were willing to go anywhere with us, which was really wonderful,” Smart said. “But season five, we get back to being profoundly silly, which is really, really fun.”
Einbinder said the sometimes-fractious relationship between Ava and Deborah also takes a turn for the positive.
“It’s nice that we were able to be on the same team,” Einbinder said. “Of course, we have our sparring throughout, which we also enjoy just as much, but it’s so nice for us to be working towards the same goal.”
Season five also features more ensemble scenes where the show’s secondary characters are together with Deborah and Ava and are more involved in the story.
“All of these characters have been on such a journey since season one,” said executive producer Jen Statsky. “It was just very much intentional that we wanted this season to feel as much as possible like this group coming together, kind of this ‘Wizard of Oz’ feeling of this journey Deborah is going on and all the people along the way that are helping her.”
Producers and cast were naturally tight-lipped about how the show will end – might “Hacks” actually kill off its lead character in the final episodes? – but Smart offered her initial reaction to the show’s denouement “just to be extra mysterious.
“I have never asked them how the series was going to end from the day we met until the finale,” she said. “I’ve loved being surprised every episode for all these years. But when they first talked to me about how it was going to end, I was not sure I was real happy about it, but I said, ‘Hey, you know, I trust you guys, I always have, it always turns out great,’ and it did. Now I think it’s kind of perfect.”