It’s no coincidence that the strongest episode of the season includes Christina Hendricks.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me, these are the episodes where this season really clicked, even though we were without some of my favorites. (I assume Jimmy and Kayla were off-screen perfecting their pickleball game and cosplaying as a couple to get the discounted rate at the country club.) Perhaps it is not a coincidence that these episodes also did not feature any comedy-within-the-comedy. I really laughed at so many moments in this hour, and none of them involved Deborah or some other comic telling jokes as part of a performance.
For instance, in this opening scene, Deborah removes everything —jewelry, no-show socks, wig — when she gets weighed in at the doctor’s: perfection! Deborah is getting a physical, which is a good sign for her prospects for Late Night if an emotionally fraught one regarding confronting the inevitability of decline with age.
Over at the QVC set, Deborah’s numbers are doing so well — stickers to decorate your microwave, LOL — that Marcus gets approached about being poached. This is a quick, quiet moment in the episode, but I bet we’ll hear more about it by the finale.
Deborah is emceeing a charity golf tournament where attendees will include all the affiliate heads plus the network CEO. She and Ava are trying to work out jokes to charm this crowd, but Deborah is stuck and Ava is depressed (Ruby is getting rid of her stuff). Deborah wants to go for a stroll around a mall, but Ava points out they’re in the middle of the glorious forests of Pennsylvania and should go for a hike! (I love the way she says “Kristen Stewart” when describing this venture as very Twilight-coded.)
As television law requires, two characters who are comically ill-prepared for a hike — Deborah remembered sun-protection gloves, but there’s not a water bottle in sight — who insist the hike is exceptionally straightforward (a 90-minute loop, allegedly) will get lost. But despite this obvious inevitability, I still loved this episode. So many genuine, funny character moments to be had here, my personal favorite being the way Deborah reacts, with horror, to the realization that Ava has never been out of the country (save for Montreal) and therefore has “never had real bread.” Every great television show needs a Pine Barrens moment when its characters are confronted with their truest selves while lost in the wilderness — NOT to be confused with a bottle episode — and I was very excited to see these two women embark on theirs.
Last week, I asked you all if Ava is too hapless for the show’s own good. I think this episode (1) relied on both of the leads’ weaknesses in a way that felt plausible and not absurd, and (2) put Ava and Deborah in a place where they both really needed to hear what the other person had to say. Deborah is right: Ava is young! She should focus more on herself and less on forcing a relationship. And Ava is right: Deborah, whose type is “the work ethic of John Rockefeller in the body of James Gandolfini,” is in denial about her loneliness. (“You can’t re-cork Champagne” really got me!)
As you might expect, Deborah refuses a walking stick and wipes out hard as they head down a ravine; in refusing Ava’s help, she knocks the only phone they have into the water. I absolutely lost it at their back-and-forth about putting the phone in rice (“You’re the one who always has food on her!”) and Deborah’s explanation for why she didn’t bring her phone despite having several visible pockets on her vest (“It ruins my lines”). Before long, Ava is also down for the count — stung by a bee, whose pronouns she MUST get right — and they are struggling to get through this together. Just phenomenal line readings all around.
They also have a conversation about climate change: Deborah doesn’t care about it and thinks it’s all overblown; Ava points out that Deborah is quite the climate criminal, what with flying private all the time. This fight at first seemed a little long to me, but the end payoff was worth it, so I recant my initial assessment. I also loved Ava’s long, winding, no-prepare-for-even-worse-misogyny-than-that explanation for why what you’re really supposed to yell in a crisis is, “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t even know you!”
They are not doing a loop. It is time to settle in for the night. I cannot think of two people less equipped for the situation in which these two find themselves than Deborah and Ava. They are as out of their depths as Lucy and Ethel at the chocolate factory. In this state of total helplessness and despair, Deborah can confess the drive and fear that gives this episode its title: There is no more “one day” still to do this or that. “Anything I want to do, I have to do now, or else I’ll never do it.” Age has crept up on Deborah, who feels young inside but no longer recognizes herself — and not just because, as Ava kindly points out, she redoes her fact a lot.
And then — miracle of miracles! — the girls are SAVED by tweens on motorbikes!! Such a great shot of them riding away on the back of these cool riders. Deborah promises these boys, in a rush of gratitude, all the changes she will make to save the climate. The boys only want Mike’s Hard Lemonade. But Ava is appropriately moved by the gesture.
By the next episode, “Power Play,” the girls are home and the holidays are approaching. And before you say anything, Deborah pays double the SAG rate for the actors she hires to play elves to deliver her Christmas party invitations, okay?? Deborah is pushing through her injury so she can golf and schmooze it up with the affiliate owners at this tournament; they’re the ones with major sway over who gets picked to host Late Night. Deborah is a pro. She has flash cards. She needs ten “tasteful” hole jokes. She is prepared to see Marty, who is among the owners because his wife wanted to be a weather girl.
Before the trip, the whole gang makes a stop at DJ’s gender reveal. Very funny bit where Ava describes gender-reveal parties as “literally disgusting” and then confesses she’s only there because she asked if she could come. DJ punches a dummy hard enough to behead it and BLUE powder comes out. (“Oh God, all of his friends are going to think I’m hot, and that’s going to be so weird for him.”) But the REAL reveal of the party is that DJ wants her aunt Cathy — with whom she is still in touch despite the whole Cathy-had-an-affair-with-Deborah’s-husband history — to be a part of the baby’s life, starting with Christmas. Deborah’s totally measured response to this: “Christmas is MY holiday. She can have 9/11.”
Before the toxic blue dust even settles, Deborah and Ava are off to the golf tournament. Deborah is ready to charm all the rich white guys she can find, and soon enough she spots the most important rich white guy of all: Bob Lipka, CEO of the conglomerate who owns the network. (Tony Goldwyn, of Scandal fame; also: a very under-the-radar nepo baby! SO many blue names in his Wikipedia. His grandfather is literally the G in MGM!) Ava says billionaires shouldn’t exist, and I agree, but I think if they’re going to exist, they could at least be as hot as Tony Goldwyn.
I thoroughly enjoyed the reveal that Deborah knows more about working-class life than Ava does because Ava has never actually worked a service job (she was fired from her only hostessing gig for being too “openly depressed”). To compensate for this, Ava performs solidarity as a caddy, which puts her in the sights of a bombshell cable executive (Christina Hendricks, I know you know why you know her) who gets off on dominating lowly service workers. Ava talks herself out of getting peed on by this woman because, alas, she’s a Republican who funds fracking. (“I would HAPPILY let a socialist pee on me!”) But at least Ava got a solid make-out out of the whole misunderstanding and, even more important, proof of concept about what Deborah told her in the forest: She’s young and should be FREE. There’s so much out there for her besides being Wolfgirl’s plus-one! Imagine if Ava were still with Ruby — she would never have had Christina Hendricks say “get on your knees” to her; does she really want to live in that timeline?
Back to the tournament: Marty is onto Deborah’s schemes, but this makes them no less effective on Bob, who is a fan of (looks Deborah up and down) “your everything.” I believe this is what the kids call “rizz.” While Marty spins out, Deborah pulls out all the stops: Some classic upper-arm touching, begging for pointers when you KNOW she’s actually better at golf than Bob is. She charms the daylights out of everyone on the course, too, even with her edgy Michelin-star-system jokes at the auction. Ava, for her part, quizzes Deborah with flash cards in between holes (“flat earther, loves boats, allegations against the son” KILLED me) and gets hit on by old men who don’t know she’s gay.
It all seems to be going swimmingly, but then: Deborah spots Bob at dinner with JACK FUCKIN’ DANBY. All of Deborah’s efforts were for nothing. I appreciate Hacks’ commitment to realism here; it was always going to be Jack.
Knowing it’s over, Deborah abandons all her charms, plays full out, and swaps her magenta for black. But her abandon is even more attractive to Bob than her earlier efforts were. He likes her better mean! Or maybe he feels freer to like her because no one is performing anymore?
Sidebar: I feel like in a lesser show Marty could be a one-note character — engaged to the “French whore” (Deborah’s words) but still hitting on his ex — but Hacks gives him real depth. I was very into his conversation with Ava at the bar, including his perfect response to Ava’s lament that she may as well go live in the woods. (“On stolen land?”) It’s kind of him to credit Ava with so much of Deborah’s growth.
Meanwhile, Deborah is drinking from the bottle and golfing into the night. Bob arrives, sans security, and things escalate just in time for Marty to have to turn right around and toss one of his martinis. In my notes, I wrote: Well, Marty, you ARE engaged, but later we learn that Bob is actually MARRIED, so, never mind? Deborah knows this, but I’m pretty sure we viewers do not, so for a brief moment, we can simply rejoice in Deborah having the time of her life. In my opinion, she KNEW something was going to happen the moment she left her room. She did not put on that lingerie just to golf and drink alone. Manifesting works!
In the morning, Ava is proud of Deborah’s wild night, but Deborah is hungover and ashamed. She tells Ava that she always swore that was the one thing she’d never do — have sex with a married man — after what happened to her. Ava, fresh off her politically confounding almost-hookup, says that what really matters is that Deborah is trying to be a good person. And maybe this indiscretion could help Deborah move past what happened with Cathy. It would seem Deborah is open to allowing that to be the case, as one of her well-compensated Christmas elves delivers an invitation to Cathy’s door. Hi, J. Smith-Cameron!
