Hacks – Bulletproof

By: Kelly Kearney

In a shocking twist that is sure to leave many Hacks fans as stunned as they are heartbroken, the relationship between Ava and Deborah heats up in the final episode, resulting in an epic meltdown the two might not be able to come back from. After landing her dream job, Deborah is forced to look into the past for what didn’t work the first time so that her future in late-night won’t suffer a similar demise. Her return to the Late Show needs to be “bulletproof,” but what does that mean for Ava, her writing partner and closest confidant? Will Ava be a part of Deborah’s future, or will her fears of repeating the past tear them apart? Let’s dive into all the break-ups and breakdowns in the season three finale of arguably one of the best shows on TV today.

All Roads Lead to Late-Night

The finale opens with Deborah (Jean Smart) dancing around her former flame, Marty (Christopher McDonald), when she drops off the master key to the Palmetto she’s apparently had for years. It’s news to him that she has had access to every inch of the place since she was a headliner. Now that she is leaving Las Vegas for Los Angeles, she thought it was time to return it and say goodbye. After his shock and annoyance at all of the security breaches he will have to answer for, Marty hugs Deborah and congratulates her for landing the Late Show. Their hug turns into a dance around his office since he’s been practicing his steps for his wedding. Dips with Deborah beat the male instructor she walked in on, so the two take a twirl for old-time’s sake.

Like Marty, everyone is happy for Deborah, even her slightly disappointed sister, Kathy (J. Smith-Cameron), whose plans for a meet-up are on hold for the show. Kathy wanted their sister’s weekend to be the start of fixing their relationship, but that will need to be shortened to one day now that Los Angeles is calling. At the very least, Deborah promises Kathy she will make time to join her in paying her respects to their parents at their final resting place. Later, when the sisters do meet, Deborah turns the solemn remembrance at the mausoleum into a fiasco and spends the entire time on the phone. The sisters wind up arguing about proper mausoleum etiquette, which forces Deborah to admit their parents won’t mind since she moved their remains to Las Vegas and never told Kathy about it! Kathy is livid, and thanks to all the therapy she admittedly had to go through to handle the onslaught of her sister’s feud, she is finally able to admit that this reunion isn’t going to work. Forget family; she can’t even be friends with someone who would do something like that. “Why have I spent my entire life trying to make amends with someone so awful?” Kathy wonders as she tearily leaves Deborah standing in front of the empty graves of their parents. Deborah always has a way of pushing everyone away to focus on her career—Kathy, Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins), and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) are always her sacrificial lambs, but there is something about the comedian worth forgiving, and as we have seen in the previous seasons, they always do. Hopefully, Kathy and Deborah will figure this feud out in season 4 because blood will always be thicker than water, and after the final moments of this episode, Deborah might need a family infusion.

Stepping away from the mausoleum debacle, Deborah’s manager, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), might’ve cinched the coveted Late Show hosting gig for his VIP client, but his fledgling company can’t survive on her successes alone. From his make-shit office in a restaurant, Jimmy meets with Kayla (Megan Stalter), who has an idea for a new client who could get them out of happy hour and into a real office. Jimmy needs to sign some young and up-and-coming talent, and Kayla has just the right person. What she lacks in professionalism, Kayla makes up for in enthusiasm. She wants to be taken seriously as a manager, and now that a fire has been lit under her to make this deal, Kayla takes off from the restaurant, leaving behind a promise to fill Jimmy in later.

Perfection Comes at a Cost

Over at the mansion, Ava walks in on Deborah, watching tapes of her old pilot. The comic legend is nervous about the show and worries that whatever tanked her first chance at late-night will come back to haunt her. She mentions the name Biff Cliff—a legend in the business and the man who single-handedly killed her first shot. Everything about this show must be perfect, and the only way to make sure of it is to bring Ava along with her. The only problem is that Deborah told Ava to work on her own material. Would she want to shelve that to join her at the Late Show? This was supposed to be a job during her hiatus, but Deborah takes the risk and asks Ava to sign on as her head writer anyway. Luckily, Ava’s brain only works in Deborah Vance mode because, as hard as she tried to think about her own material, she couldn’t get Deborah and the show out of her mind. Before she answers, she hands Deborah a pile of papers full of ideas for the Late Show, and it’s a sweet, if not revealing, moment of how connected these two creative minds are. Would Deborah have landed this gig without Ava’s influence? It’s doubtful, and Deborah is finally in a place where she can admit that, sort of. Ava excitedly accepts and hurries to quit her job with “On the Contrary.” Even after the producer offers her a head writer position to convince her to stay, Ava only has eyes for Deborah and the Late Show. The closer these two get, the more honest Deborah’s comedy becomes, which is why what the star does next is truly shocking.

After looking up Biff Cliff’s (Hal Linden’s) address, Deborah pays him a visit to ask the man who stole her dreams what she could’ve done to prevent it. Biff is honest with her and says her pilot was perfection—the highest rated in the history of the network—but she is a woman, and the world expects perfection from women where it doesn’t with men. Losing out on the gig never had anything to do with her talent; it was all to do with the press surrounding her divorce and setting Kathy’s house on fire. If she were a man, bad press like that would have been easily overlooked, but not for a woman, who needs to be “bulletproof” to succeed. The network will always be looking for a reason to send her packing and fill the spot with a less deserving man. The glass ceiling is holding strong in Hollywood, and Deborah needs to stay sharp if she has any hopes of breaking through and turning this show into a success, which brings her to Ava and the question she asked her earlier. Is the young and up-and-coming writer a risk? Deborah is having second thoughts, even after network executive Winnie Landell (Helen Hunt) told her she was allowed to hire anyone she wanted. Her fear of failure interferes with her loyalty to the person who helped her land her dream job, so she lies to Ava and tells her the network insisted she keep the former head writer and make Ava his second. It isn’t long before Ava uncovers the truth when she runs into Winnie and pitches herself for the job. When Winnie tells her the decision to demote Ava came from Deborah, she runs home to the mansion for one of the worst, most gut-wrenching fights the two have had in the series. Ava is broken by Deborah’s fear-driven lie since she has dedicated her entire life to Deborah, and now she realizes she will never get the same in return. She accuses her of acting in fear, and in turn, Deborah accuses Ava of mixing their personal relationship with their business. Ava fires back, “What we make together is good because of our relationship!” Then, in what will no doubt be on Einbinder’s Emmy reel, she asks Deborah if she is willing to lose her over this decision. When Deborah admits she will if it comes down to a choice between her partner and her dream, Ava crumbles like she was kicked in the chest. It’s a break-up that’s intertwined with love, betrayal, and a complete disregard for the partnership that relaunched Deborah’s career, and Ava cannot control her tears. Deborah stays stone-faced and only allows a single tear to fall after Ava storms out of the room.

Break-ups and Proposals

Ava and Deborah aren’t the only breakups brewing in the finale. Marcus hasn’t gotten over Deborah ditching him and his friends at Pride. With her new job at Late Night, his role at Vance World is in danger of taking a backseat, and now he is putting himself and his career in first gear. He never tells Deborah about his plans, but Damien (Mark Indelicato) catches on when he starts talking about home security and fiscal quarters. The younger assistant wants nothing to do with the job—in fact, when he realizes Marcus is grooming him to be his replacement, Damien melts down into a puddle of whining tears and says, “I don’t want to talk to vendors! I don’t even pay my own taxes!” Can Deborah live without Marcus—or better yet, can the man who has imprisoned himself in the successes of one woman make it on the outside without her? It’s a question that pops up more than once when it comes to Deborah and the people she surrounds herself with.

Back to Kayla, who managed to convince a friend and current hot young actress, Bellette (Kathryn Newton), from a popular goat demon movie to take a meeting with Jimmy. Bellette is just the type of up-and-coming talent he needs in the bank, and lucky for him, she saw how he rebranded Deborah and wants him to do the same for her. She is done with teen flicks and wants to be taken seriously as an actor, but the pitch falls apart the moment Jimmy realizes Bellette isn’t a friend of Kayla’s but her bully. Since they were kids, Kayla has been the butt of this woman’s jokes, and Jimmy won’t put up with it. He walks away from the meeting, but Kayla isn’t happy that he defended her. He never asked her how she felt about stepping over her to cancel this meeting she set up or if she could put the personal aside for a business she is trying hard to learn. She realizes Jimmy won’t ever see her as anything more than a problematic assistant and tells him she is leaving for vacation to rethink her career path. At that big truth, Jimmy realizes he needs Kayla by his side, and he hasn’t given her credit for trying to meet his job expectations. In a hilarious misunderstanding taken straight from the world of rom-coms, Jimmy rushes on board Kayla’s plane and gets on one knee, beseeching her to stay with him. The other passengers hold their breaths and get out their phones as they assume they are witnessing a proposal—and they are! Jimmy asks Kayla to be his partner, and she accepts, even before she sees the amazing office he rented for them. Ava does see it when she stops by to ask Jimmy for career advice now that she is out of two jobs. He tells her to take the second writer job on the Late Show and prove herself worthy of head writer, and he knows she will get it one day. He also knows the show will fail without her by Deborah’s side. He gives Ava a lot to think about.

Dr. Frankenstein, Meet Your Monster

And think and plot she does because the season wraps up in the biggest twist to date, setting up a barn burner of a season 4 that flips the dynamics between the comedy team. When Deborah arrives at Television City and finds Ava in the writer’s room waiting for her, she immediately lets out a sigh of relief, assuming her partner got over their tiff and has agreed to take the demotion, but that’s not what’s going on here. Deborah taught Ava how to scratch and crawl her way to the top, and in the process, the comedian saw glimmers of her younger self in the writer. That alone should have prepared her for Ava’s next move. Blackmail is right out of the Deborah Vance handbook, and Ava has read everything about that woman and then some. To secure her role as head writer, Ava threatens to reveal the fact that Deborah slept with the Chairman of the Company, Bob Lipka (Tony Goldwyn), right before she got the job—shooting holes into her bulletproof return to Late Night. “You wouldn’t?” Deborah asks, “I would. Wouldn’t you?” Ava responds. She took everything she learned from Deborah and threw it back in her face, and when Winnie and the staff of the Late Show filter into the boardroom, Deborah makes the announcement that Ava Daniels will be her new head writer. Dr. Frankenstein is set to wrestle with the monster she created; let’s hope their battles don’t end in burning down the network and Deborah running out of time to make her dreams come true.