Summary
- Jean Smart shines as Deborah Vance in
Hacks
Season 3, with Hannah Einbinder as a perfect counterpoint. - Parallels between Deborah Vance and Joan Rivers’ lives and careers are evident, adding depth to the show.
- Hacks cleverly satirizes cancel culture and explores the sacrifices made for professional success.
In its third season on Max, Hacks is just as hilarious as ever. The great Jean Smart, who’s already won two Emmy Awards for her leading work as washed-up comic Deborah Vance, remains brilliantly on-point. And Hannah Einbinder, as Deborah’s cynical writer Ava, is once again a fantastic counterpoint to Smart’s larger-than-life performance. The Season 2 cliffhanger, which saw Deborah fire Ava, had many wondering if the series had written itself into a corner, but within the first couple of episodes of the new season, those fears thankfully proved unfounded.
Many have already written at length about the parallels between Deborah Vance and other famous female standup comics like Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Rita Rudner, and Paula Poundstone. Series creators Paul W. Downs, Lucia Aniello, and Jen Statsky have openly admitted to taking inspiration from multiple comedic legends and creating a sort of amalgamation with them. However, one obvious influence for Deborah Vance stands tall above all the others – the late Joan Rivers, one of the biggest female comic pioneers.
Deborah Vance and Joan Rivers Had Similar Personal Lives
The first parallel between Deborah Vance and Joan Rivers is in their tumultuous personal lives. Both lost their husbands; Rivers’ longtime lover, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide shortly after they bitterly divorced, while the Hacks pilot opens with Vance learning of the death of her ex-husband, who had left her for her sister. Additionally, both comics had daughters who played a big part in their showbiz-driven lives.
Here is where the details differ, as all accounts report that Joan had a very close relationship with her daughter, Melissa Rivers. Melissa would regularly help her mother host red carpet events on the E! Cable network, and she often seemed as much a creative partner as a daughter. Melissa held almost nothing but praise for her mother; in a 2015 interview with AARP, she stated, “They say, ‘oh, their children are their great legacy or their grandchildren are their great legacy’. But honestly, I think my mother’s greatest legacy is laughter. You think of her and you laugh,” And Melissa was the one who only recently refused to allow a biopic series about her mother to move forward.
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It’s safe to say Hacks doesn’t depict nearly as positive a relationship between Deborah Vance and her daughter, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), one of the show’s funniest characters. When we first meet DJ in the pilot, she’s in the midst of drug addiction while battling resentment towards her mother’s constantly demeaning nature. We learn early that DJ hires paparazzi to secretly follow Deborah around and snap embarrassing pictures of her, which she subsequently sells on the market. Yet Deborah’s disdain manifests clearly in the fact that she lets DJ do this to allow her to feel “self-sufficient.”
Yet while these are the clearest parallels, other small moments in Hacks depict surprising overlap with Rivers’ career. An early episode depicts Deborah undergoing “eye maintenance,” perhaps a nod to Joan, who famously underwent numerous cosmetic surgeries. One of the show’s funniest gags expounds on this, as Deborah is shown to always start her days with an extensive hair makeup routine, even if she doesn’t even plan on leaving the house.
Deborah Vance’s Career Trajectory Is Eerily Similar to Joan Rivers’
You could dismiss the similarities in Vance’s and Rivers’ personal lives as coincidence, but the parallels in their overall career trajectories are much harder to ignore. Regarding Joan Rivers, it’s hard to overstate how influential she was in her prime. She spent over 50 years as a standup comic, quickly becoming famous for the bluntness of her humor and a willingness to throw shade at herself. But she was never afraid to be controversial; she would regularly put celebrities up for ridicule and often got pushback for it, most notably when she once made fun of Elizabeth Taylor’s weight. Rivers would also face criticism for making jokes about the Holocaust (even though she was Jewish), and yet she became even more famous for her refusal to apologize for her work.
The other key factor in Rivers’ meteoric rise came in 1983 when she was made a “permanent” guest host on The Tonight Show when her personal mentor, Johnny Carson, needed time off. Three years later, Fox Television Network offered Rivers her late-night show, The Late Show With Joan Rivers, making her the first woman to have a talk show on a major network. However, her decision to accept the job came with personal ramifications. Fox deliberately scheduled the show opposite her mentor, and Carson, feeling personally betrayed, never spoke to Rivers again and even banned her from returning to The Tonight Show.
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In Hacks, Deborah Vance is introduced as a trailblazing female comic with an acerbic wit much like Rivers’ and a similar refusal to back down from potential controversy. One of the later episodes in the most recent season even shows Vance’s past coming back to bite her, as a video supercut of her off-color early standup work starts to spread like wildfire on the internet. The resulting episode is a hilarious satire on “cancel culture”, and more specifically on how those accused of problematic behavior very rarely have to face actual tangible consequences outside of a brief slap on the wrist. And it gave us an all-time great moment when even the stone-faced Marcus finally lost his temper at Vance.
Things overlap even more when considering how Vance’s professional success came at the cost of her personal relationships. Deborah Vance is revealed early on to have once been part of a comedy duo with her ex-husband, Frank, but he gradually grew resentful of her continued success and eventually cheated on her with her sister. This plot point obviously shares many similarities to Johnny Carson’s decision to sever ties with Joan Rivers upon growing jealous of her prospering career. While the overlap between the two isn’t one-to-one, they feel rooted in similar enough emotions that the minor divergences barely register.
Hacks Is Indebted to Joan Rivers, but Not Exclusively Her
Of course, while both Jean Smart and the Hacks writers have openly admitted to drawing influence for the show from Joan Rivers’ career, such as in this interview with the New York Post, they never intended to make an explicit parallel. True inspiration is rare in making any kind of art, and often, the best thing a creator can do is to mix and match their various sources into a combination that feels brand new and alive.
That’s exactly what they accomplished with Hacks; while Deborah Vance stands amazingly well as a character on her own, thanks in no small part to Jean Smart, she becomes even more fascinating when familiar with Joan Rivers’ legacy and career. Hacks is streaming now on Max.
