So many films and television series have shown us the misery of a comic attack and the joy of a comic murder. But bypassing the cliché, the entertaining third season of “Hacks,” which has just ended, dramatizes a more innovative and cutting-edge moment on stage: the crisis of success.
At the end of a triumphant special, comic Deborah Vance (played with charm and compassion by Jean Smart) tries new jokes and is shaken to see her audience laughing at everything, no matter how funny.
Like most comics, she has spent her career developing material by gauging audience reaction, but faces a problem familiar to stand-up superstars. His new fan base disrupted this artistic process. Smart plays this realization with nuance, without ever abandoning her performative charisma, but showing herself little by little surprised, then panicked at the idea that she can no longer trust her audience. This reveals the character’s sensitivity while also countering the idea that laughter is a purely honest response.
No comedian has expressed his confidence to the crowd as often and with as much conviction as Jerry Seinfeld. He said his fame might earn him a few minutes of public goodwill, but after that he had to be funny for laughs. After seeing him perform several times on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, this always seemed hard to believe. Maybe if he got on stage and read “The Great Gatsby” like Andy Kaufman did, he could blow up the Beacon Theater, but I wouldn’t bet on it. In addition to being one of the world’s most successful stand-ups, Seinfeld is also one of its most prolific talking heads, weighing in on art in interviews and documentaries. Comedy, for him, is the ultimate meritocracy, perhaps second only to (as he put it) the NFL.
“Hacks” (about Max) is as obsessed as Seinfeld is with the art and politics of comedy, and that was especially evident last season when its episodes coincided with his epic, relentless promotional tour for the Netflix film “Unfrosted.” » At times, the show and the star’s media appearances felt like they were in conversation with each other, with Seinfeld philosophizing about comedy and “Hacks” providing dissent.
At 72, Deborah Vance is just two years older than Jerry Seinfeld, and they share a prickly personality, an inexhaustible work ethic, a love of craft, and a generally apolitical outlook. But these aging legends are also a study in contrasts, starting with the fact that one is fictional and the other a real person who created a wildly popular fictional version of herself. While Seinfeld is a model of stubborn consistency among veterans, Vance listens and learns from younger critics and repeatedly evolves. Therefore, to a certain class of comedy nerds, “Hacks” may seem like a young person’s fantasy of an aging comic.
In a recent interview with Bari Weiss in which Seinfeld raised eyebrows over his nostalgia for an era of “dominant masculinity,” he described the rules of comedy as thankfully “immutable.” “Hacks” is built around the idea that comedy, like the world it reflects, is evolving. Its central relationship embodies this, focusing on the differences between the old-school showbiz of a Vegas entertainer like Vance and his younger, more progressive writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder).
Last season, Ava inspired Vance to take his work in a vulnerable direction, and this year, Vance seems more open to social and political change. Seinfeld has said he no longer acts in college but has been told by other comedians that students are too sensitive, and recently in an interview with the New Yorker’s David Remnick, he bizarrely blamed “the far left and PC shit” for diminishing success. network sitcoms like “Cheers” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Vance is also irritated by the so-called younger woke generation, and there are times where the show satirizes them. But his arc is mostly about being challenged and growing from new ideas.
Vance launches into a game of older comic book cards that she has long wanted respected, calling them “out of touch” after making throwback jokes about the genre. The next day, she yells at Ava for getting into her head and making her care about more than money and peer approval.
This clash creates another in the penultimate episode of season 3 when a video of Vance’s old cheap and stereotypical jokes goes viral just before she is to be honored at UC Berkeley. Ava encourages him to apologize, arguing that no one really gets canceled. This gives voice to an increasingly popular (and sometimes exaggerated) perspective that cancel culture doesn’t exist, that comics brought up never face real repercussions, and, instead, that their careers benefit from it. .
To be fair, Seinfeld himself has expressed skepticism about fear-mongering about cancel culture. When Weiss asked him about further censorship, he shook his head, adding that it was “not a real thing.” And like Vance, he adapted his material to the times, even if his observational humor rarely demanded dramatic change. When he repeated a 1982 set on one of David Letterman’s final late-night shows in 2015, he cut a big joke, telling the host that the topic was now no longer taboo.
But it’s hard to imagine Seinfeld doing what Vance did. Not only does she appear on a college campus to respond to offensive jokes, but she also apologizes and solicits his comments. Would a comedian his age really listen to him and take bits in a public forum? Comic apologies are a much-mocked form, which tends to be dismantled and attract a lot of criticism. It’s sort of the fairy tale version where not only is she not centered, but her actions result in a New York profile that celebrates her. And then this story led a television channel to give her a job as a talk show host. I imagine Hasan Minhaj laughed sinisterly at this plotline.
The typical Cancel Culture narrative involves hysterical outrage and an angry, desperate artist. But this one is a model of measured criticism and reasonable responsibility. While this strains credibility, it is more easily degraded by the complexity of Smart’s performance, who still refuses to make the sentimental choice. What she makes clear is that while Vance grows, it’s usually when it benefits him professionally as well. She may be apologizing because she feels regret or because she really wants to get a night job. Smart’s portrait takes into account both motivations at once.
In the stunning season finale, we’re reminded that what hasn’t changed is that Vance’s first priority is his career. She has the kind of stubborn ruthlessness that a woman emerging on the sexist comedy scene of the 1970s and 1980s would need.
The challenge for aging comedians is how to give their fans what they want while evolving with the times. It’s harder than it seems. And in some of the best scenes of the season, when Deborah and Ava get stuck in the woods, she explains that one of the reasons for getting plastic surgery is to make her body match what she thinks of herself. “I don’t feel my age,” she said. “Then I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself.”
There is a poignant side to this confession, but also a stubborn side. An artist must change but not too much. Or as Vance says when Ava says she redoes her face a lot: “I don’t redo it.” I refresh.