Hacks season four: Biting comedy has always been a relationship drama

There’s a word that is used a lot in association with healthy emotional behaviour and relationships: vulnerability.

Stoicism and repression are out and sharing and honesty are in.

That’s easier said than done. We’re so used to being taciturn about what we’re really feeling, scared of seeming “weak”, or exposing our soft underbellies lest we be exploited. It’s easier to say nothing, or use humour as a defence shield to undercut emotional moments we’ve been socialised to believe is uncomfortable.

Being vulnerable with someone else? That’s the real power. When you’re vulnerable with someone and they are with you, you form a deeper, more invested and longer-lasting connection.

It’s why there’s a male friendship crisis. Men don’t talk to each other, not really, not about anything that actually matter. Which is not to say that women find it easier, they just have better networks and more normalised expectations.

It’s this matrix that makes Hacks, the biting and raw comedy, so fascinating, even in its fourth season, which premieres today.

The show is centred on two women – the ageing comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and a Millennial writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder). The premise is hinged on the differences that separate them, mostly generational, while blind to how similar they really are.

When the series started, Deborah has been doing her Las Vegas stand-up residency for years and years, and Ava is hired to freshen up her material. They’re both spiky and flawed, more insecure than either would admit.

Over the first three seasons, Deborah and Ava push-and-pull each other. Sometimes they’re in sync and other times they’re really not. But they make each other better, personally and professionally.

Ava forces Deborah to confront her malaise, to make her hungry for the goals she once had while Deborah shakes Ava out of the younger woman’s propensity to give up or self-sabotage. They both push each other closer to the ambitions they’re sometimes afraid to acknowledge out-loud.

Sharing their vulnerabilities with each was not natural, they have both been hurt and disappointed, but the beauty in Hacks is the time and space it’s allowed those characters to develop over years so that those moments of raw honesty, when they let their guard down, comes organically.

At the end of the previous season, Deborah and Ava are left in a dark place. Deborah is given the hosting duties of a late-night network show (think: David Letterman), something she has always wanted, and Ava blackmailed Deborah into giving her the head writer job after she was rebuffed.

When the fourth season starts, their relationship is fractured, which makes for scathing dynamics as they try to find a balance between destruction and detente. Will they get back to a place where they were at peace?

That’s not the goal, because Deborah and Ava are always evolving, and something new will come out of this. There are immature pranks, which are obviously hilarious beats to watch when you have two quick-witted characters who know exactly how to hurt the other.

But that also gets to the heart of being vulnerable with someone else. They know how to exact maximum pain, that’s always the risk. Those thorny dynamics are always present in Deborah and Ava’s relationship, and dramatically, it’s incredibly rewarding to experience because the writing on this show is superb.

There are also story beats involving showbiz shenanigans, especially with this season set almost entirely in Los Angeles (a mid-season episode is a tribute to LA after the wildfires, which burnt down the house the production used for exteriors of Deborah’s mansion).

You’ll see familiar landmarks as well as just city spots such as the buzzy Arts District restaurant Girl & the Goat and the Americana outdoor mall. By the end of the season, you will have seen every part of the Universal Studios backlot tour.

The supporting characters and actors including Paul W. Downs and Megan Stalter as the agents trying to launch their fledgling business as well as manage their hostile clients, and Carl Clemons-Hopkins, who’s not in this season enough, provide the texture for this series.

They’re all fabulous but it’s the Smart and Einbinder show, whose performances are so superb you sometimes forget you’re watching actors play a role.

Whatever is going on with Hacks – sex shop mishaps, TikTok dance mums, can Deborah and Ava launch a late-night show in an era of declining relevance – the one thing you can always count on is the continued evolution of two incredibly complex characters and their relationship. The show never lets us down on this front.

You love to see it.

Hacks season four is streaming on Stan with new episodes weekly