Proud of Hacks

In honor of Pride Month we're talking about the Emmy/Peabody/Golden Globe-winning HBO series Hacks, starring Jean Smart as seventy-ish stand-up comedy legend Deborah Vance, pushed into updating her act by hiring young Gen Z writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder, daughter of former SNL star Laraine Newman), whose career is also in trouble. It's hate at first sight until they begin to bond over their unexpected similarities: tremendous career ambition, troubled relationships with family and romantic interests, and struggles as women in the entertainment industry still dominated by men who never seem to age out of their positions of control. And it soon becomes pretty clear that, as co-host Dolores puts it, "The whole show is queer, and not just because Ava is pretty gay for Deborah."