Hacks Review: Trust the Process / The Captain’s Wife (Season 2 Episodes 3 and 4)

Living in close quarters with someone can test any relationship. Throw in a lawsuit and there’s bound to be friction, right?

In the case of Hacks Season 2 Episode 3, “Trust the Process,” and Episode 4, “The Captain’s Wife,” the boundaries of Ava and Deborah’s complicated relationship are tested but not as much as one might expect.

Picking up on Episode 3 there’s some passive aggression on the bus when Ava has to squeeze in on top of Deborah’s light therapy bed. There’s straight-out aggression when Deborah tosses her kombucha out of the window.

Yet the show doesn’t commit to bringing the characters all the way back to square one.

The tenderness the characters show each other undercuts all the cringe moments. You can’t put the feelings Deborah and Ava have for each other back in the box, as much as they try.

When Ava discovers that their extremely odd tour manager Weed, played by Laurie Metcalf, threw out Ava’s father’s ashes, Deborah insists on turning the tour bus around. She even gets into the dumpster to help look for them.

On Episode 4, Deborah offers to paint Ava’s nails, a pretty intimate form of female friendship. On the same episode, Ava implores Deborah to think critically about her sexuality, showing she’s still not afraid of pushing their employer-employee relationship.

It’s pretty obvious from the start that Deborah’s lawsuit comes from a place of feeling betrayed by someone she cares about. Damien even hints at this by suggesting that if it had been anyone else Deborah would just fire them.

The problem is how much can you extend the build-up to that confrontation without dragging it out? Right now Hacks seems on course to drag it out long enough that it loses its potency.

The tension of things unsaid would be just as effective without the plot device of the lawsuit, making it more annoying than anything.

Outside of the duo’s wacky tour adventures, the show shifts its focus to Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) who got the short end of the stick on the first two episodes. The problem with having such a deep bench of interesting supporting characters is there’s never enough time for all of them.

Even more so than with DJ or Jimmy, Hacks is emotionally invested in Marcus and as a result, so is the viewer.

His awkward encounter with Wilson is heartbreaking, but it’s his meltdown at the vet clinic when they won’t release the puppy to him since he’s high that’s truly a gut punch. It’s not just Marcus’ love life at stake but his entire sense of self as a successful, responsible person.

For a lot of Season 1, it was Marcus’ storyline that grounded the show outside of Deborah and Ava’s over-the-top behavior. Now even he’s lost his way.

Season 2 is starting to feel stuck between wanting characters to grow and needing them to backslide to generate conflict. It would be unrealistic for every character to have magically undergone the growth they needed in Season 1, but Hacks needs to be careful about taking so many steps back that it starts to feel inauthentic to the characters.

Ava, Deborah, and even Marcus are compelling characters because deep down we know they want to change. Under their bravado, they’re not happy, which is enough to drive the conflict.

Hacks shines when it lets its characters just be who they are, which is where it should focus the rest of the season.

Additional Thoughts:

• “Those poor people have seen enough bombings.” Shout out to Oklahoma City!
• First The Flight Attendant, now Hacks. Margaret Cho is getting that HBO Max money.
• The line delivery on “I’m trying to be a good person, you dumb b*tch” is one of Hannah Einbinder’s best. Ava is at her funniest when she’s trying (and failing) to be nice.
• Just how far out at sea were they?
• I hope we see Joe on the puppy cam when Marcus joins the tour.
• I never expected to hear Chacos talked about so much on an episode of television.

What did you think of this episode of Hacks? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of Hacks stream Thursdays on HBO Max.

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