Hacks’ finale explained: ‘There wasn’t any other way to go’

This story contains spoilers about the season four finale of Hacks.

When Merrill Markoe was the head writer for NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman in the 1980s, she used to stand by the studio doors to watch the host deliver jokes to the audience. Her heart felt like it was pounding out of her chest.

“Oh my god,” she recalls thinking. “If this doesn’t get a laugh, I’m screwed.”

Merrill Markoe guest stars as a writer on the latest season of Hacks.Credit: Stan

That’s how high the stakes felt writing for late-night television, an unrelenting beast that must be fed daily with heaps of material, much of which could be found wanting and scrapped at any moment.

So when Markoe starred as herself on the comedy Hacks this season as a writer on fictional comedian Deborah Vance’s talk show, that real-life stress came roaring back. In one scene, Ava Daniels – the show’s head writer, played by Hannah Einbinder – nervously confesses to Markoe what an honour it was to work with her, and that she hoped it wasn’t strange for the late-night TV legend to be reporting to someone younger. Markoe assured Ava that she absolutely did not want to be head writer, adding, in an improvised line, “I don’t want to call it hell on earth, but, I mean, it’s a job for a lunatic.”

The “lunatic” line turned into a fan favourite during this fourth season of the Emmy Award-winning Hacks, which recently concluded and centred on the uniquely magical and confounding cultural touchstone of late-night comedy. Markoe didn’t know what she was saying until it was out of her mouth, but she felt it with all her soul.

“Somebody, I can’t remember who it was – it might have been Jay Leno – told me that [executives] broke it down into segments where they showed you what was getting a higher rating and a lower rating,” Markoe said. “Like, if a girl came out in a real short skirt, the rating went a little higher. And then if somebody came on that nobody was particularly interested in, the rating went a little lower. So they just make it so that it’s impossible not to be completely crazy.

Jean Smart stars as comedian Deborah Vance in Hacks.Credit: Stan

“We didn’t discuss ratings so much, although I know Dave took them personally. I mean, how can you not?” she continued. “You have a show that you think went really, really well, but it turns out that the ratings were not that good. But you think, ‘Well, wow, that was really quality stuff we did.’ That’s a very confusing little thing to put yourself in over and over and over and over.”

During season four, Deborah (Jean Smart, who has won three Emmys for the role) becomes the first woman to host an 11.30pm show on one of the big three broadcast networks – something that has yet to happen in the real world. (“One of those mind-boggling things about the United States of America that just makes me want to bang my head into a wall,” Markoe said.) As always, Hacks was anchored this season in the ever-complicated relationship between Deborah and Ava, comedy-writing partners who drive each other insane – and sometimes stab each other in the back – but have ultimately found that they are creative soulmates.

Markoe, who was in a relationship with Letterman for a decade, could relate to the dynamic of a head writer too wrapped up with the emotions of the host. She loved watching Smart and Einbinder’s characters interact and enjoyed the writer’s room scenes, especially when Ava, in a stress-induced meltdown, flung a US$72 fish against a window. Markoe never threw any expensive food while working in late-night, but she understands the difficult journey a talk show takes attempting to find its voice. Letterman went through the same process, she said, before landing on a vibe she described as “surrealist, goofy shit.”

Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels and Jean Smart as Deborah Vance in Hacks.Credit: NBC Universal

“It was really when we started focusing on just ‘What does he do and what can he do well?’ – and just zeroing in on that and expanding it – that everything took off,” said Markoe, who was behind famous Letterman segments such as Stupid Pet Tricks and Small Town News. “That is what you have to do.”

“We have so much respect for people who work in late-night because it’s such a grind.”

Jen Statsky, Hacks co-creator and former writer on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

The showrunners and executive producers of Hacks (Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, who also plays Jimmy, Deborah’s loyal manager) originally asked Markoe to serve as a consultant as they mapped out season four. Months later, Markoe offered to help write the episodes. The scripts were finished, but they offered her the role and were delighted that she accepted.

The producers saw it as a way to pay tribute to the glory days of late-night TV. Hacks has not flinched from suggesting those days are gone, portraying Deborah’s struggles to keep her show relevant at a time when television is grappling with a fragmented audience and competition from the internet.

“You constantly are keeping up on the news and having to see what the angles are … like, ‘We can’t do this joke, 45 people on Twitter already made it’,” said Statsky, who was a writer on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon as social media was taking off, forever changing how comedy writers do their jobs. “We have so much respect for people who work in late-night because it’s such a grind, and we wanted to correctly honour how difficult it is.”

Hannah Einbinder in Hacks.Credit: Stan

Hacks also poked fun at how late-night shows try so hard to juice the ratings with gimmicks they hope will go viral. (“I nominate Barry Keoghan to do the Chicken Dance Challenge.”) But the season’s drama focused around the tension between Deborah and Ava, after Ava blackmailed her way into the head writer gig. Deborah was infuriated by numerous slights, including a New York Times Magazine cover story she felt gave Ava too much credit for revitalising her career. (Deborah threatened to cancel her Times subscription until her employee reminded her that The Post’s arts and culture section would never “scratch the surface.” And yes, the showrunners confirmed to us that joke was aimed at the New York Post.)

Eventually, Deborah and Ava made up, combining their own comedic powers and instincts to produce, at last, a highly successful show. The victory was short-lived: in the penultimate episode, the top studio executive tried to force Deborah to fire Ava, and in a shocking move, Deborah quit her dream job in protest with a dramatic on-air speech.

“She had an idea her whole life of what that chair would feel like. And then at the end of the day, it wasn’t what she imagined,” Aniello said. “There is a bit of a relief of she doesn’t have to make the show that isn’t the pure version of what she wanted to make.”

Eric Balfour (left) stars as Ethan Sommers, a controversial guest on Late Night with Deborah Vance.Credit: Stan

During the finale, the series took another unexpected turn when Deborah – confronted with an ironclad non-compete clause that barred her from performing for 18 months – tricks Ava into travelling with her to a Singapore casino, where a loophole allows her to do her stand-up act through an interpreter. Ava tries to convince her that she can’t hide out forever, but it’s only after TMZ accidentally publishes her obituary – which blames her for killing the late-night franchise she longed for years to inherit and humiliatingly describes her as “retired” – that Deborah agrees to go home.

Hacks has been renewed for a fifth season – so presumably Deborah will return to America with Ava by her side to cement her legacy. Downs said he and his fellow producers found Deborah’s job-quitting monologue especially cathartic at a time when showbusiness makes it difficult for artists to break through if they don’t line up with corporate interests.

“There’s not a lot of investment in new voices or comedy or letting people find an audience,” Downs said. “The disruptions are very real to us. So for us, there wasn’t any other way to go.”

This story was originally published on The Washington Post.

Hacks is streaming on Stan, which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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