Deborah Vance was famous for her sense of humor, but not anymore. Or at least, not as much as she used to be in the increasingly complex ecosystem of Las Vegas entertainment. Ava knows she can help her and she'll try it with all the playful swagger of a happy-go-lucky millennial. But along the way, both women must understand that there is something more complicated in making people laugh. Or even harder than the life that surrounds them, the expectations and fears of both, are more complex than failure and triumph. The second season of HBO Max's Hacks keeps its premise intact.
In an interesting and brilliant play, he takes her to a dimension that borders on drama and that concerns not only her characters. At the same time, it involves the idea of the atmosphere that surrounds them and that turbulent inner world that surrounds them.
The first season of Hacks was one of the great surprises of 2021. It was not only the revelation of the awards season. Also, in one of the most curious programs in the HBO Max catalog. With its combination of humor, drama, satire and, in the end, a painful reflection on contemporary loneliness, Hacks amazed. The big question then was if his second season would have all the sensitivity of the first chapters. Or at any rate, if she could keep up with the sneering jokes and high-caliber existentialist musings that made her famous.
The routine of laughter and tears, Hacks in its purest form
With two episodes released, Hacks shows that he returned in top form. At the same time, the peculiar portrait of Deborah Vance becomes more complicated, powerful and endearing. This story about old age, the search for purpose, but especially the very contemporary fear of anonymity, grows its characters. And he does, as the argument encompasses various points of interest about its main plot . The teasing dialogue between Vance and Ava, a comedy writer searching for her place in a world that has grown richer and darker.
What might seem like one of the many stories that base its effectiveness on the chemistry of its characters, is something more curious. On this occasion, Hacks does not attempt to recount the sorrows of isolation and spiritual defeat. Rather, he focuses his best narrative weapons and his quick dialogue on making something clear. The series wants to delve into its strange landscape of youth and old age, triumph and failure.
To do it also, between two irritating, complex characters who maintain a powerful, almost emotional bond. And “almost” because in Hacks nothing is what it seems, what you try to understand, much less what it might seem under its malicious jokes. The series patiently takes to establishing its ideas and letting the characters show them off, in a rare perception of witty set pieces. Deborah needs to renew her repertoire and knows that she has to do it. Ava is sure that she will be able to help her. But there is something humiliating and painful in that witness pass. The late and complicated evolution of what Deborah has been for most of her life. And without a doubt, what she will have to leave behind for her new tour.
But what may seem like a simple plot is actually a twist to the symbolic of Deborah's humor as the common thread of her life. Off and on stage, the character is extraordinary. The character is a journey through adult defeat, uncertainty and worry about the future. Ava, on the other hand, is once again the element that supports the broader idea of what awaits Deborah. Will the latter dare to face it? The series poses the question from the pain and the humor. An ingenious mix that the series handles with dazzling skill.
Back to the roads
The second season of Hacks explores the preparations for Deborah's national tour, the ins and outs of Ava's mourning for her father. And between both things, the condition that both characters need a jump into the void. They will give it, in the form of a sudden and extravagant decision. How much can one learn from the other in an unexplained situation? Maybe getting on a bus and crossing the country is the answer.
Sign up for HBO Max and you will have access to the best series and exclusive movies like The Wire, The Sopranos or Game of Thrones. Includes the entire Warner catalogue, Cartoon Network classics and big releases like The Matrix and Dune.
Subscribe to HBO Max and save 35% So the second season of Hacks is a journey inside and outside. One between potholes, the notion of the country in transit, the condition of coming and going through old and new problems. Like the unclassifiable series that this journey into the unknown by Hacks is, it is also a journey of his characters through their wounded spaces. And one of special beauty and power. There are laughs — Hacks is a perfect humorous structure — but this time, the drama is something deeper. And between the two, there is a whole new story — unexpected and unique — to tell. Perhaps its greatest quality as a continuation of an amazing story.
