In this season’s penultimate episode, Hacks takes on cancel culture. But unlike most of its peers, the series offers a genuinely nuanced, thoughtful breakdown, in which Deborah is confronted with offensive past material at a college and weighs whether to lean into it or atone for it. Hannah Einbinder’s Ava compels Deborah to consider the backlash as a teaching moment. But Deborah isn’t merely taught a lesson; she brings wisdom in experience too. “I was canceled before there was even a name for it—they only gave it a name after it started happening to powerful men,” Deborah says in the episode. “The problem is, I don’t have the time to go to Europe and wait it out…. I don’t have any time.”
I thought of Hacks and that episode during the fallout of Jerry Seinfeld’s viral comments about political correctness and how the “extreme left” is allegedly making TV less funny. Having gotten to know Downs as a deliberate communicator, I acknowledge that this might be a tricky topic to navigate. “Not tricky at all,” he says quickly. “As long as you’re not doing harm and you’re not punching down, I think there’s nothing that’s really off limits—you just have to execute what you’re saying in a way that’s thoughtful and not harmful. I’m like, ‘I think you can do it, Jerry. You have a comedian brain.’ If you write comedy, it’s your job. And if it’s getting a little harder, that’s okay. The job has never been easy.”
But Downs will also argue that if Hacks were being pitched today, it might not get a pickup at all. Though he may not agree with Seinfeld’s perspective, he acknowledges that this is a “weird time” for TV comedy. “Because everything is about shareholder value and about driving up a stock price. To do that you need a huge hit,” Downs says. “It’s harder to take a risk on something less safe.”
His show’s success hinges entirely on its execution, as a character-driven half hour that weaves the emotional beats of a drama with the fast pacing and dialogue of a comedy. For Hacks’ trio of creators, awards success is the only way they’ve been able to gauge how many people are actually watching their show. (Hacks has won an Emmys for writing, directing, and acting, and Downs is seeking his first personal acting nod this year.) Max does not give them viewership numbers, even privately.
The day of our chat, Statsky texted Downs and Aniello an article from Media Play News highlighting Hacks’ high placement on the Whip Media chart of streaming TV. Downs takes out his phone and shows me the article. I confess that I don’t understand what the chart means, beyond the fact that it sounds like good news. He nods in agreement: “We were like, ‘I don’t know what Whip means. I have no idea.’”