In a recent interview that I loved, the podcaster David Perrell asked the novelist Yann Martel whether he has ever used AI in order to write. “Why would I?”, Martel counters, rightly bewildered. The novelist then lays out the ultimate analogy for a writer using a chatbot to ‘help’ them write: “It would be like hiring someone to have sex for you.” This is the most elegant of knockout punches, one that clearly establishes both the artistic desire to write — to struggle while finding their own unique way forward — as well as the joy of the writing process itself. Writing is the best part of writing.
The final season of Hacks wrapped up this week, and this new season — streaming in India on JioHotstar — comes with a manifesto: the show takes on Artificial Intelligence with disdain. Both of the protagonists struggle with it. The young comedy writer Ava is inherently distrustful of AI, decrying its ecological and social decay, specifying “no AI” when using Google/Siri. (She is also hit by a self-driving car.) The veteran comedian Deborah Vance, however, is curious about a tech-bro who suggests how his chat-boy can help to punch up a bridesmaid’s speech with Deborah’s own distinctive voice.
Deborah is initially flattered, even fascinated, by the possibilities. “If you’re good, you can’t be replaced,” she tells Ava, just like many chatbot-addicted users today who are sure that they — and they alone — aren’t being taken for a ride. It is, however, once the techpreneur hardsells her on how good the chatbot will eventually become — so good that Deborah herself may use it instead of stumbling around for the right punchline — that he goes too far. Like Martel, Deborah is confounded by the suggestion of using something pre-created to be creative. The uncertainty of the stumbling around is the creative process, she explains, indignantly. The best jokes are only good jokes because they’ve been bad jokes first.
There is an evolution to a joke, from an idea to a punchline to the right rhythm to that ineffable improvisatory flourish that can only be added in once an audience has laughed or not. It’s a work of art but also of craft, of constant sharpening and rewriting.
To that end I wonder how many drafts of jokes are written, episode after episode, season after season, by Hacks creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W Downs and Jen Statsky, to keep their material so sharp and so insightful. Coming on the heels of a great season 4 where Deborah became (as is only possible in fiction, it appears) the first woman to be the number one late night TV host in the US, season 5 has her shunted from the job, contractually unable to perform, and grappling with the idea of her legacy, whatever it may be.
“So I have decided to EGOT,” she says in the first episode, declaring her intent to win an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony, the awards fourfecta that signifies a true pop-cultural sweep across all media. This sounds delusional but soon, along with Deborah’s harangued agents, we begin — at least briefly — to believe in this manifestation. If anyone can do it, Deborah can.
Jean Smart is relishing the role of a lifetime as Deborah Vance, truly larger than life and justifiably so. Her Deborah is more self-aware this season — albeit sometimes begrudgingly so — and less unreasonable, while remaining as vainglorious as ever. This season Deborah often laughs at things said by Ava or by her other friends, acknowledging that she doesn’t have to always be the funniest person in the room. She may frequently seem out of touch, but she is an undeniable force of nature, a star who deserves the pedestal she has created. Does she cross the line? Sure, but as she says, wisely, “Everything’s unethical if you think about it too much.”
She leads a “complicated and intermingled” life — in Ava’s words — with Ava, her writer and resident woke alarm. This is Smart’s series but Hannah Einbender really shines this season as Ava, with her virtue-signalling balanced by her own writing ambitions. As a character she is finding her own voice and telling her own stories, and her evolving equation with Deborah has never felt richer or — relatively speaking — healthier. They’ve got each other’s back.
The lines are delicious. When Deborah calls the legendary costumier Bob Mackie for a favour, he responds by saying “Deb, if I do something for you, then I’m going to have to do something for Cher, and the next thing I know, Sabrina Carpenter is outside my door with a sewing machine and a gun.” “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” says Deborah about a reckless plan, “and I went on a date with Saddam Hussein.”
Hacks is about comedy. It is a reckoning of the generational gap between comedians of the past who could say anything and comedians of the present who can do anything. Over the last four seasons, it has been a slugfest about oneupmanship, about self-expression, about rivalry. This final season is about two artists working together to create something true and lasting. That leap of faith is a beautiful thing.
A joke is a tightrope walk. AI will never know how it feels to fall. Or to fly.
Streaming tip of the week:
Symphony (JioHotstar) is Josh Johnson’s latest comedy special. Using musicians as segment breaks between seemingly unrelated riffs on cab-drivers and cowardice, he builds towards something beautiful. “If art is how we decorate space and music is how we decorate time,” a sign says starting the show, “comedy is how we decorate reality.”