Hacks explores the loneliness beneath Ava and Deborah’s brutal insults, revealing two stubborn women who need each other more than either is willing to admit.
Hacks Season 1 Episodes 1–3 review: Ava and Deborah’s hilarious insults hide two lonely, stubborn women struggling to understand each other.
After binge-watching the first three episodes of Hacks Season 1 back to back, I wouldn’t say I’ve become a fan of the show or that I’m desperately excited to watch the next episode ASAP. But I wouldn’t say I completely hated it either. I haven’t watched this type of show before, and I’m going to continue watching its entire run because I want to explore a different kind of television that I generally don’t follow.
Comedy is subjective, and Hacks has been a hit and miss for me, especially because I don’t always understand the cultural and native references. However, the show becomes genuinely entertaining whenever Ava Daniels, played by Hannah Einbinder and Deborah Vance, played by Jean Smart go after each other. They open fire, their mouths keep shooting the meanest remarks and insults, and neither of them wants to back down until one of them finally hits a nerve and sees the real hurt on the other’s face. These moments are easily the most entertaining part of the show for me.
But beneath all those insults, there is something much more interesting happening. Ava Daniels and Deborah Vance are two people from completely different generations, with very different careers and problems, who are surprisingly alike in the ways that matter most. They are both straightforward, stubborn and unapologetically themselves, and their inability to understand each other is also what makes them such an interesting pair.
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Deborah Vance : A Successful Woman Who Can’t Afford to Stop Working
Deborah Vance is a veteran stand-up comedian who performs more than a hundred shows a year in Las Vegas. Ava Daniels, on the other hand, is a young comedy writer who was cancelled over a controversial joke and lost her job on a major show. Their professional positions couldn’t be more different, but circumstances force them into a working relationship.
Deborah needs a writer to help her stay relevant, while Ava desperately needs a job to avoid going bankrupt. Neither of them particularly wants to work with the other, and they never miss an opportunity to make that clear. However, since Vance is the boss and knows how badly Daniels needs this job, she naturally has the upper hand.
But this raises an interesting question: why does a famous comedian like Deborah Vance suddenly need someone to write her jokes when she is already performing more than a hundred shows a year?
The answer lies in her declining relevance.
Deborah Vance is an established comedian in Las Vegas, but her audience is ageing, and her organiser wants to attract younger audiences to his venues. He wants Deborah to perform fewer shows, particularly on weekends, so he can give those dates to a musical act that is more popular among millennials.
From Deborah’s introduction, we see that she lives a lavish, incredibly busy life. She isn’t just a comedian anymore. She’s a celebrity and a public figure who does promotional appearances, product marketing shoots and countless other activities. Her days are packed, and she seems to have something to do at every hour.
But there is a particularly revealing moment when all her work for the day is finally done and she returns to her lavish mansion to sleep. Despite having enough money and professional success to retire comfortably, she continues to work relentlessly. Why?
Because she is lonely.
Deborah Vance is married to her work. The constant performances, promotions and endless responsibilities keep her occupied and allow her to avoid returning to an empty house where nobody is waiting to ask her how her day went or whether she is tired.
The people for whom she began this journey of hustle and hardship eventually betrayed her and left her alone. That history of betrayal and resentment has made it difficult for her to let anyone get close to her. She has built walls around herself, and those walls are incredibly difficult to climb.
Now, her work is both her identity and her coping mechanism. It shields her from the loneliness and emotional pain she carries inside. Even though she has reached the top professionally, she cannot simply walk away from the very thing that keeps her going.
That is why she needs Ava Daniels, a younger comedy writer who might help her connect with a new generation and remain relevant. The irony is that Deborah Vance doesn’t particularly like anything Ava Daniels writes for her.
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Ava Daniels: An Open Book Who Doesn’t Know How to Understand Other People
Ava Daniels is a more complex and layered character than she initially appears to be.
She says whatever she feels without filtering her thoughts or worrying too much about how other people might react. She is an open book and, at times, an overwhelming source of information. She casually shares her personal struggles with people, particularly Jimmy and Deborah Vance, often without considering whether they actually want to hear all of it.
Despite being so different from Deborah Vance, Ava Daniels is just as lonely as she is.
If Deborah has built walls around herself to protect her emotions and vulnerabilities, Ava carries a stick made of judgements and brutally straightforward opinions that pushes people away. She has plenty of emotions and desperately needs someone who will listen to her without judging her. Most of the time, she simply wants someone by her side so she can vent and let everything out.
But there is a problem with Ava Daniels, and her ex-girlfriend identifies it perfectly: Ava thinks she knows everybody better than they know themselves.
As a writer, Ava is constantly trying to figure out the people around her. However, people aren’t always who they appear to be on the surface. Sometimes, what they hide tells you far more about them than what they show the world.
Ava doesn’t seem to understand this distinction. She judges people based on their surface-level personalities, and Deborah becomes the biggest target of that habit. It makes me wonder whether Ava Daniels treated her ex-girlfriend in the same way, assuming she understood everything about her without taking the time to listen and learn. Perhaps that is one of the reasons their relationship fell apart.
Ava is so comfortable expressing her own emotions that she struggles to understand people who don’t express theirs in the same way. She assumes that because she can read a person, she has already understood them. But understanding someone requires more than observing their behaviour and forming an opinion.
And this becomes particularly problematic when she starts working with Deborah Vance.
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Two Egos, Two Different Struggles
Deborah Vance is the only person willing to give Ava Daniels a job, but instead of being grateful for the opportunity and recognising that she could learn something from an experienced comedian, Ava behaves as though working with Deborah is beneath her.
She sees Deborah as an ageing comedian whose career is practically over and who has no idea how to stay relevant in modern comedy. Ava believes she is the more talented person in the room and seems to think that Deborah should automatically respect her talent.
But why should she?
Ava wants respect from Deborah without first proving that she can offer something valuable to her.
After landing a major writing job at such a young age, Ava seems to have developed an inflated opinion of herself. Now that she has lost that position, she is struggling to find another job and support herself financially, yet she still carries herself as though the setback is beneath her.
She judges Deborah by her current material and personality instead of taking the time to understand her history. She sees a rich, eccentric older woman and fails to recognise the years of hard work, sacrifices, professional setbacks and personal betrayals that helped Deborah Vance become who she is today.
Ava is experiencing her first major professional setback, and she doesn’t know how to process it. Deborah, meanwhile, has experienced plenty of highs and lows throughout her personal and professional life. She understands what it takes to survive in an industry that can turn against you, and she isn’t particularly interested in making things easy for someone who seems unwilling to put in the necessary effort.
That is one reason Deborah Vance goes so hard on Ava Daniels.
Unfortunately, Ava doesn’t understand what Deborah is trying to teach her. She assumes Deborah hates her and has hired her merely to humiliate her. But Deborah wants her to go deeper with her writing and give her material that feels original and can actually be performed on stage.
We see very little of the material Ava submits, so it is difficult to judge precisely why Deborah rejects it. However, we eventually learn that Ava has been recycling jokes from her previous writing job rather than producing genuinely new material. Deborah, who has read Daniels’s earlier work, catches on almost immediately.
It reveals an important difference between them. Ava thinks she already knows everything she needs to know, while Deborah has enough experience to recognise when someone isn’t putting in the effort.
Ava is doing a half-hearted job because she assumes Deborah doesn’t deserve her best work. She believes Deborah Vance’s success came down to luck and that someone as talented as herself shouldn’t have to struggle so much after being blacklisted over a joke.
On the other hand, Deborah is a seasoned comedian and a relentless hustler. She can see that Ava isn’t doing enough to earn her approval. However, Vance also makes the mistake of measuring Ava’s struggles against her own. Comparing one person’s hardships with another’s isn’t necessarily fair, because people experience setbacks differently and don’t always have the same tools to deal with them.
Both women have something to learn from each other, but neither is willing to admit it yet.
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Why Ava Daniels Can’t Write for Deborah Vance Without Understanding Her
For all her experience and confidence, Deborah Vance isn’t an open book. She has spent years building walls around her emotions and vulnerabilities, using her ability to create jokes as a facade to conceal what she is actually feeling.
That makes it incredibly difficult for Ava to understand Deborah on a personal level. And without understanding the person behind the public image, how can Ava Daniels become her voice and write material that feels authentic to her?
Ava needs to earn Deborah’s trust and respect if she genuinely wants to know her better. She needs to study Vance’s career, understand her experiences and dig deeper into the person she has become. She cannot simply look at Vance’s current personality, decide she has figured her out and expect to produce brilliant comedy.
But Ava is Ava, and she takes the easiest route she can find.
Instead of doing the hard work of understanding Deborah through her career and personal history, she decides to dig into Deborah Vance’s past by opening the mail from Deborah’s sister, despite Deborah explicitly telling her to throw it away.
I haven’t watched Episode 4 yet, so I don’t know whether this decision will lead to major consequences, more drama or another round of public humiliation for Ava Daniels. But I have a feeling this could become a significant turning point in their relationship.
On one hand, I understand why Ava does it. Going through thirty years of material and trying to make sense of someone’s entire career in such a short period would be an almost impossible task. Looking for another way to understand Vance’s past is a sensible idea in principle.
Although, Ava should know by now that Deb is a deeply private person who doesn’t appreciate having her boundaries crossed. Even if Ava manages to learn something valuable about Deborah Vance and uses that information to write something impressive for her birthday, I can’t imagine Deborah being happy about how she obtained it.
Ava might finally get closer to understanding Deborah, but she could end up destroying whatever trust she has managed to build along the way.
A big drama seems ready to explode in Episode 4, and I’m curious to see how this decision plays out.
My Takeaway: They Both Need to Change, Just in Different Ways
Moving forward, I think Deborah Vance needs to start unravelling her emotions and allowing people to see the vulnerable person behind her public persona. She has spent so much of her life hiding behind her work and using comedy to protect herself that she seems incapable of letting anyone get close enough to understand her.
Ava Daniels, meanwhile, needs to learn how to put her emotions and opinions into perspective and give other people a chance to reveal themselves. Instead of assuming she already knows who they are, she needs to listen, observe and allow them to show her who they really are.
Deborah needs to lower her walls, while Ava needs to stop wielding her judgements like weapons.
Both women are lonely, but they have developed opposite ways of dealing with that loneliness. Deborah keeps people out by refusing to reveal too much of herself, while Ava pushes people away by revealing too much, judging them too quickly and assuming she understands them completely.
And that is what makes their relationship interesting to me. They might hate each other right now, but they also seem to possess something the other desperately needs.
Whether they can recognise that before they cause even more damage to each other is something I’m looking forward to discovering as I continue watching Hacks.
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