At first glance, Hacks (2021-ongoing) might seem like just another buddy comedy with two mismatched women thrown together for emotional growth and career hijinks. And for a large part, it is just that. Created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs (who also portrays Deborah and Ava's manager Jimmy, a loyal softie), and Jen Statsky, Hacks also quietly builds, and then boldly delivers, a sharp, funny, emotionally intelligent manifesto on what real power can look like when women hold it. And perhaps more importantly, how it changes when we stop measuring power by how well we imitate men.
Feminist scholars and activists have known this fundamental truth for a while now—simply putting women in positions of power doesn’t automatically defeat patriarchy. A woman running the show can still replicate the toxic behaviour she learned climbing the ladder, especially when that ladder was built by men. Hacks knows this. It’s why Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance is such a fascinatingly complicated character. She’s brilliant, brutal, magnetic, and occasionally monstrous. She’s also a woman of her time—shaped by the impossibility of being a woman in comedy, when no one believed she belonged there. That is until Hannah Einbinder’s refreshingly unorthodox Ava Daniels waltzed into her life.
Deborah had to outwork, outwit, and out-cruel the men. And for a long time, she thought that was empowerment. So did many of us, raised on the splashes of third-wave feminism, where breaking glass ceilings mattered more than what was built afterward. We came of age believing that being “one of the boys” was the price of admission. Once we joined the workforce, (and other spaces exclusively held by and for men earlier) we began to understand that real change meant more than just presence. Female leadership alone isn’t enough. Those women have to evolve too, to help create workplaces that are genuinely inclusive and safe, so future generations of women can do more than just survive.
Much of the series is amazing to watch because it does not write off Deborah as a 70-something lost cause destined to make tone deaf jokes with a niggling inability to grow. Characters her age (think Pierce Hawthorne from Community (2009-2014)) are usually relegated to be relics of their time. They are shown to cling to their boomer humour and cry about how times were “simpler” back in their day. But that’s not our Deborah.
Ava, the millennial/gen Z mess who is pulled into Deborah’s well-guarded world in season one, spends much of the show as an audience surrogate. She is outraged by Deborah’s methods. But as the seasons progress, the show does something remarkable: it allows both women to learn from each other without flattening their perspectives. Ava doesn’t have all the answers just because she knows how to be politically correct. And Deborah isn’t just a relic of an outdated mode of feminism. And, most importantly, they both want to make something that lasts in a world that would happily squeeze them in a box.
In the recently concluded fourth season, this desire comes to a head when Deborah is offered the crown jewel: her own late-night talk show (something that has still not transpired in reality in American late-night TV). This is the ultimate symbol of having arrived, of being taken seriously, of finally being “in the room where it happens.” Ava gets her moment—the coveted head writer gig—at only 28 years old, by blackmailing Deborah. Much of their conflict fuels the drama in the first few episodes this season. But ultimately, they reconcile when Deborah declares “You are my voice,” to Ava who is on the verge of quitting.
Together they take the show to the number one spot—a monumental achievement because they do it on their own terms for the most part. But another wrench is thrown in their direction when Deborah is asked to fire Ava after she accidentally breaks the one unspoken rule of being allowed into those spaces—don’t call out the boys’ club, especially when they are trying to help launder the image of a “MeToo” star.
Throughout her life and career, Deborah has been conditioned to believe that sacrifice, especially of other women, is the price of climbing up the ladder, of occupying the few seats reserved for her to begin with. However, Deborah chooses to stop perpetuating the cycle.
This is the heart of Hacks' feminism: it doesn’t confuse visibility with rightful change. It knows that a woman winning in a man’s world by becoming just as ruthless isn’t a revolution but a rerun because the power structures, after all, remain the same. And we’ve seen that show before. What Hacks offers instead is the long, messy, painful work of unlearning. It asks: What does power look like when it’s not rooted in domination, but in building a legacy that pulls others up on your own way to the top? What does the world look like when there is more space created at the top for women who dare to be themselves, radically and softly?
Of course, Hacks isn’t naïve. It’s not pretending that the entertainment industry can suddenly become a utopia because a handful of women got executive producer credits. It shows us the systemic biases underneath that need to be dealt with—the endless meetings with gatekeepers who smile as they say no, the way women are encouraged to turn on each other, the subtle punishments for ageing, disagreeing, for displaying softness or emotional transparency. Hacks exposes how capitalism co-opts feminism to sell empowerment while reinforcing the same old hierarchies. Deborah’s rise to fame didn’t tear down the boys’ club. It just made room for one woman to sit near the edge.
It will be exciting to see how Deborah and Ava both work to redefine power not as something you hold over others, but something you share in the fifth season. In Deborah’s attitude towards Ava, she’s choosing to make room for other women without making herself smaller. She’s wielding her influence to build a future, not just to survive the present. That’s the kind of power that rewrites the rules.
Hacks beautifully complicates the idea of feminism. It isn’t just about women having power; it’s about what they do with it. Like Fleabag (2016–2019), Hacks gives us flawed, funny, often selfish women who aren’t burdened by the need to be feminist ideals. And in all its messy, hilarious brilliance, Hacks reminds us that the best kind of power isn’t inherited, it’s reimagined.
Debiparna Chakraborty is a film, TV, and culture critic dissecting media at the intersection of gender, politics, and power.
