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No matter what you tell me, I refuse to believe that Deborah Vance did not exist before 2021. That was the year that “Hacks” premièred, on HBO Max, introducing the world to Deborah, a fictitious standup legend with a blond updo, a closet full of caftans, and a mansion paid for by a residency in Las Vegas and copious appearances on QVC. She may have been a concoction, invented by the series’ creators—Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky—but it seemed as if she had been here all along, a real-life comedy diva we had somehow missed. Sure, she had elements of Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, with their tireless work ethic, loud wardrobes, and bawdy one-liners. But Deborah wasn’t quite like either of those ladies. As played by Jean Smart, who, at sixty-nine, had landed the defining role of her career, she was silkier than Rivers, drier than Diller. Smart gave the character a delivery all her own—deadpan, droll, and fabulous. She sank into the part like it was a velvet settee.
When we met Deborah, she was living large but stuck on autopilot, rehashing the same dated material on the casino stage, night after night. In other words, she was a hack. In the pilot episode, Deborah’s manager, Jimmy (played by Downs) pairs her up with another one of his clients, a younger comedy writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), whose career has stalled after an ill-advised tweet about a right-wing senator. (Cancelled on Twitter? So 2021.) The two women, working to revive Deborah’s set, form an indelible odd couple: Deborah is a glam, politically incorrect boomer with old-school comedy chops; Ava is a bisexual, eco-conscious Zillennial who doesn’t believe in punch lines because “traditional joke structure is very male.” Reviewing the show for The New Yorker, Doreen St. Félix wrote that the pilot “gets its source material from the culture war,” with Deborah and Ava hashing out a generational feud, one joke at a time.