Our fear of the old boys’ club must be unlearned. What reads like political sloganeering is merely a reality-based statement. If a system favoring one gender at every turn is the one that raises you, you either figure out how to game that system in your favor or become what’s expected of you and make do with the proffered scraps.
This is what Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) internalizes in “Hacks,” although the portions she carved from her Hollywood exile are anything but meager. All unwritten but commonly understood laws have loopholes, a lesson Deborah’s protégé Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) learns from Deborah before teaching her a few supplementary drills. Deborah rolled the dice on Ava, a nobody who revives the veteran comedian’s stagnant career. Yet at every turn, Deborah finds some excuse to backstab Ava, allegedly out of some version of respect, and Ava retaliates by sabotaging herself and her boss.
