by Linda Holmes

Welcome! It was the week when a concert lineup started to diminish almost as soon as it appeared. It was the week when a reality TV reunion was not warm at all. And it was the week when a horror movie’s box office defied gravity.

The 'Hacks' finale tied an (unnecessarily neat) bow on the series

By Linda Holmes

The truth — my truth — about the fifth and final season of HBO Max's Hacks is that I would have left it at the end of the penultimate episode last week. Deborah's show in Central Park, improvised after she was thwarted in her efforts to play Madison Square Garden, was a triumph. The story has always been, after all, about Deborah and Ava together, outdoing the expectations other people have for them and outfoxing the people who try to thwart them. So being embraced by a huge outdoor crowd, surrounded by people who love them, was just the right ending. Not too heavy for a comedy, not too idealized and neat.

In this week's series finale, you get a much more melodramatic story, one I will not spoil here, but that involves Deborah and Ava traveling to Paris, tasting Parisian bread, shopping for skincare, and shedding tears.

(If you watched it already and are OK with spoilers, here's my full take.)

Jean Smart as Deborah Vance in Hacks / HBO Max

I've always been of two minds about Hacks: the scene-level writing is impeccable, the jokes have a high hit rate, and the performances are utterly singular, but I've always found the plot choices frustrating. By Season 4, the basic story was repeating over and over (they feud; they make up; they feud; they make up). But even then, the jokes were still working, and the performances were exceptional.

Similarly, in this finale, the scenes in Paris are not only great to look at; they are very funny and wildly charming. Even in a short, slapstick bit where Deborah cracks herself up by making Ava try to learn stick shift driving a boxy little rental car through a roundabout, the kicker line from Ava, "Why am I in the rough draft of a car?" is just a straight-up great line. These are gorgeous scenes between the actresses (who are co-leads and always have been; do not let the Emmys deceive you), and they are a great gift to the many people who have loved Hacks over its very successful run. These characters are soul mates, and it is delightful seeing them, once and for all, on the same side.

But the flip side is this: There is plenty of emotional heft in the history of Deborah and Ava, and in the stories of their careers, without the turn this episode took.

It's not that the Hacks finale was bad, not by a longshot. (Though the Jimmy/Kayla triumph when they re-enter Latitude to literal applause was perhaps a bit pat.) It's the capper to a very successful and very good show, which has been richly rewarded with awards and seems highly likely to rack up a few more this fall. But it did, in the end, feel a bit like a hat on a hat, like they didn't quite trust what's been built between those two characters enough to pack a wallop. But perhaps it would not have been a Deborah Vance production if it weren't just a bit over the top.

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We Recommend

Geena Davis in The Boroughs / Netflix

We talked about the Netflix series The Boroughs on Pop Culture Happy Hour this week, but I want to double down on my enthusiasm about it. It has some elements in common with Stranger Things, but I found it far more satisfying emotionally, and that cast — Alfred Molina! Alfre Woodard! Clarke Peters! Geena Davis! Denis O’Hare! — absolutely deserves your attention. Give it a shot.

Coming to HBO starting Monday, the docuseries Bring Me The Beauties is, on the one hand, another series about a cult, this time one that drew in gorgeous people in California in the 1980s. If you, like me, tend to find cult stories interesting, it might be up your alley, and the discussions of sex and beauty are a little different from what you usually get.

If you didn’t watch the Scripps National Spelling Bee this week, make sure you at least check out this wrap-up on Morning Edition. The spellers were all great, winner Shrey Parikh deserves all the congratulations in the world, and everyone (even Shrey!) seems to be in agreement that the “spell-off” ending is not that satisfying. But truly, the Bee is one of the most wholesome things you can watch on TV, and all the spellers deserve to take a bow.

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What's Making Us Happy

Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are:

Kristen Meinzer: The book American Fantasy, by Emma Straub

Cristina Escobar: The book Backtalker, by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw

Aisha Harris: The show Couples Therapy, back for Season 5 on Paramount+

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