‘Hacks’ Season 5 Review: Happy Days Are Here Again [A]
Deborah Vance has died! At least that’s what her fans think when TMZ runs a bunk story that after her late night show freak out and Singapore sojourn that she has passed away. Thankfully, that’s not true, or else there wouldn’t be much of a fifth and final season of one TV’s funniest shows.
But her return is met with a gag order from Bob Lipka (an icy Tony Goldwyn) and Comstar that she can’t perform comedy, or even speak publicly, for 18 months. Deborah wants to EGOT. She has a Daytime Emmy for hosting a Boggle game show, a Tony for producing Spam-a-lot and no less than seven Grammy losses for her stand-up shows. She drums up the idea of being able to win for recording the audio book of her memoir, which she hasn’t written yet. The Oscar seems like the most out of reach, but Kayla and Jimmy’s assistant Randi (the consistently brilliant Robby Hoffman) is an awards savant, and tries to concoct a way for Deborah to jump on a doc short as a producer.
She embarks on a quick romance with young rock star Nico Hayes (played by The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Christopher Briney). He’s super anti-press while Deborah needs all the press she can get, including calling her own paparazzi to shoot the pair coming out of restaurants. Meanwhile, Ava (Emmy winner Hannah Einbinder) embarks on her own mini-romance, dipping her toe back into boy town with a sex worker named Eli who wants to be a magician (An instant boner killer for Ava). All of this is short-lived, however, as Deborah (Emmy winner Jean Smart) sets her sights on the biggest apple, headlining one night at Madison Square Garden after her gag order is lifted while Ava toils away at getting her first screenplay read by producers.
That’s just the set up for the final season of Hacks, which also finds Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) wanting to turn the fictional Paradiso, one of Las Vegas’s most venerable old casinos, into a new, boutique and bespoke version, and a TV show retrospective at Paley Fest (the show opts for the grandness of the dome of the Academy Museum vs the real location of the Dolby Theatre), highlighting the 50th anniversary of Deborah’s classic sitcom Who’s Making Dinner?, a show where her ex-husband took all credit and rights, holding up a squeaky clean mirror of what’s happening to her right now.
Guest stars abound this season, most I can’t reveal here but we have an alien Ann Dowd (not the bald one) who gives Deb some sage advice at a meet and greet after she receives a heartfelt but off-putting piece of fan art. “They support us, we show up for them. Just tell them what you need. They want to feel like they’re in a relationship with you and that you need them more than anyone else and it sounds like you might.” And the iconic Drag Race superstar Katya Zamolodchikova shows up as a Deborah Vance impersonator to help advertise the MSG show only to call Deb a “crusty old cunt.”
In an episode that’s surely going to set the Deb/Ava shipping fanbase aflutter, Deborah becomes hell bent on acquiring the outfit Carol Burnett wore on her final show for her comeback concert. A quick phone call with legendary costume designer Bob Mackie reveals he doesn’t have the jumpsuit anymore and that it was bought at auction by one of Deb’s arch enemies, lesbian entrepreneur and Hollywood culture collector Kelly Kirkpatrick (played with divine preciseness by multi-Emmy winner Cherry Jones). After meeting with Kelly, who catches the wrong gaydar vibes when Ava drops by unannounced, Deb concocts a plan to pretend her and Ava are lovers when the visit Kelly and her much younger girlfriend Monica (The White Lotus‘s Leslie Bibb in a sexy, hilarious performance) at their Montecito home (the Ellen DeGeneres/Portia De Rossi vibes are vibing). Talk of Chapstick lesbians and pillow princesses befuddle Deb but Ava locks onto Kelly and Monica’s open relationship and wants to get down. The episode, directed by co-creator Paul W. Downs and written by Guy Branam & Andrew Law & Bridget Parker, is one of the series’ great examples of balancing a very classic comedy setup with a deeper undercurrent of pushing through emotional walls.
Two things of note that I must comment on; the brooch budget this season must have been in the seven figures as Deborah’s costuming is dripping in them. Speaking of costumes, Paul W. Downs being the show creator putting him thumb on the scale to have his outfits be one size too small (or have no costume at all) is a chef’s kiss and we thank you for your service.
In a welcome shift from previous seasons, Deborah and Ava’s relationship isn’t largely adversarial. No veiled and unveiled threats, no lawsuits. Squabbles yes, a few behind the back deals, sure. But these are two women who have turned their perpendicular tracks into parallel ones. Smart and Einbinder are impeccable here, each finding new crevices to excavate, both comedically and emotionally.
The invasion of AI permeates the season as well; Ava is hit by a self-driving car, her and Deb are confronted with using AI to create jokes. It’s a subject that the new season of The Comeback also deals with directly and deftly. The inability of artificial intelligence to replicate emotions, spontaneous behavior and general humanity vs regurgitating existing material. “There’s one thing that won’t change and that’s people wanting great stories,” says Ava at one point.
The largely single set family sitcom, usually just a living room that people came in and out of, often with an iconic couch, was a lasting success for nearly 50 years. Multi-cams recorded in front of a live studio audience, jokes weren’t just funny, the laughter was contagious and palpable. Premium cable began to wean itself off of the old network style in favor of darker themes, darker comedy and a dependence on the viewer to provide the laugh track.
Over the last 20 years or so, Hollywood has turned the camera on itself, and mostly in the form of television comedy. With 30 Rock, Entourage, Party Down (which gets a fun shout out here) The Studio, The Comeback and Hacks, the industry is looking for ways to entertain, poke fun at itself, but also provide the audience with nuggets of behind the scenes workings, making us feel a bit less like observers and more like insiders (listen to alien Ann Dowd). But that barrier only comes down when a show doesn’t feel like navel gazing or just gassing itself up. Show creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky have mined not just great comedy out of the matchup of Deborah and Ava, they’ve created a lasting expression of female power and bonding, from its most superficial level to the deepest core of love and respect. By the series’ conclusion, we’re taken on quite a roller coaster of emotions, both scary and healing, in what ends as one of the best shows of the decade.
Grade: A
Hacks returns for its fifth and final season April 9 on HBO Max. The 10-episode season will debut new episodes weekly, with two new episodes on April 30 and May 7, leading up to the series finale on Thursday, May 28.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
- Critics Choice Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema & Television Honorees: Hannah Einbinder, Dan Levy, Bre-Z, ‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Jacob Tierney and More - April 7, 2026
- ‘Hacks’ Season 5 Review: Happy Days Are Here Again [A] - April 7, 2026
- TCM Film Festival to Honor Glenn Close with Hand and Footprint Ceremony at the TCL Chinese Theatre - April 2, 2026
Critics Choice Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema & Television Honorees: Hannah Einbinder, Dan Levy, Bre-Z, ‘Heated Rivalry’ Creator Jacob Tierney and More 
‘Hacks’ Season 5 Review: Happy Days Are Here Again [A] 
‘The Serpent’s Skin’ Review: Alice Maio Mackay’s Heart-Wrenching Supernatural Horror Romance Sparks with Visual Flair [A-] 
AwardsWatch Podcast Ep. 339 – Reviewing ‘The Drama,’ Starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson