One of TV's Funniest Shows Is Back for a Third Season. It's Never Been Better.

I was wrong about Hacks.

Specifically, about whether the critically acclaimed series—which premiered in 2021 on the streaming platform formerly known as HBO Max—needed a third season. When, shortly after the release of its second season two years ago, the show was renewed, I found myself bristling. Although the comedy had meandered somewhat in Hacks' amusing but slightly wayward second outing, its finale was a near-perfect episode of television. Legendary Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) had successfully mined her life and trauma for an introspective and celebrated comeback special, while her twentysomething writing partner Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) had herself clawed back to success in the process. There was even a satisfying moment of catharsis as Deborah cut Ava free—well, fired her, technically—so that she could pursue bigger projects and advance her own career. If Hacks was a story about how two very different women in comedy were able to learn from each other and evolve, their arc felt complete. Both of them had grown and changed; now it felt as if it was time for the next thing.

It was fitting, too, that Hacks had also lifted the careers of both its lead actors to new heights. The 72-year-old veteran comic actor Smart, in particular, firmly cemented her Hollywood legend status after her turn as the glittering but jaded Vance earned her two Emmy Awards. I was excited to see what else Smart and Einbinder, as well as the award-winning creative team behind the show, might do with all this new success. To bring the show back after such a triumphant season finale felt tired. To an Australian living in New York, it even felt … American, by which I mean that Yanks have a tendency to never quite know when to quit, as can be illustrated by that old factoid about U.S. shows producing so many more seasons than British ones.

What a surprise, then, to discover, upon watching Hacks' new third season, just how mistaken I was. Much like the careers of Deborah and Ava, the series has never been better. Rather than feeling lazy or bloated, it has found exciting stakes and challenges for its characters that span the professional and the personal, with the latter leading to some truly moving scenes in the relationship between Deborah and her daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson), as well as the long-simmering feud with her sister (who has been recast with a bigger-name actor—one I won't spoil—than when she first appeared briefly in the series). But more than anything, while this new season builds on the story of the first two, it also takes it somewhere new. Just like Deborah, Hacks now asks the question of what to do with success when you have finally achieved it. Turns out there are still places to go at the top.

When the season opens, we find Deborah and Ava enjoying the fruits of their labor—albeit separately, having not really spoken to or seen each other since Deborah's successful special. The comedian is the toast of the town, appearing on the Time 100 list, doing Super Bowl commercials, and modeling for the hypebeast streetwear brand Supreme. She's so successful and adored, she laments, that she can now make an audience laugh merely by stating facts. For a shark like Deborah, it's not enough. She's hungry. "You need a challenge," Ava tells her after they reunite.

Ava, meanwhile, is a different person from the cynical and down-on-her-luck writer we first met when the show premiered. She's back with her girlfriend Ruby (Lorenza Izzo), an actor set to star in a new superhero series, and she's enjoying success writing on a comedy news show in the vein of John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. It's everything she wanted, but she misses the hustle, and it has her looking back differently—nostalgically, even—at the time she spent doing Deborah's grunt work. "It doesn't get better; it just gets harder," she tells an aspiring comedy writer. "But the scratch in the very beginning is the fun part. It's the good part. … Try to enjoy where you're at right now because you'll miss it, and you can never go back."

When the pair bump into each other at Montreal's Just for Laughs comedy festival, it's initially tense. Ava is hurt that Deborah has effectively ceased communicating with her and replaced her with two younger writers. But Deborah was acting not out of malice, just expediency. She's busier than ever and didn't have time to respond to each GIF of Homer Simpson that Ava texts her. Once they're back in each other's lives, however, it's clear to Deborah just how much this new version of her relies on Ava—how much the new version of her is because of Ava. No one else she knows will push her to turn her deepest traumas into material or even be honest with her about whether a gown is ugly. Ava is the most important and influential person in Deborah's life.

It's here that we have the biggest change in Hacks compared to its first two seasons. Once they decide to team up again, Deborah and Ava are coming together with a totally different dynamic. Whereas Ava was once wholly subservient to her boss, she's now got more power. They're not equals, necessarily, but they both fully respect each other, even if Deborah is going to have a tough time ceasing making wisecracks about Ava's appearance. They're friends now, with a deep love for each other, as evidenced by a heartwarming scene at the end of the second episode in which Ava drops everything to appear for Deborah at a time of great professional need: the sudden opportunity to guest host the late night show she lost in the 1970s. When Deborah learns that the show will soon need a new full-time host, she enlists everyone in her life to help her finally achieve the career goal she has always hoped for.

Thanks to this central mission, this season of Hacks feels tighter and more focused. Plotlines about the supporting cast—whether they be the love life of Deborah's chief operating officer Marcus (Carl Clemons-Hopkins) or the professional ambitions of her agent Jimmy (Paul W. Downs, who is also one of the show's creators) and his bumbling assistant Kayla (Megan Stalter)—are mostly scaled back; instead, it's all hands on deck as everyone works to make Deborah's dream a reality. After all, as much as she has evolved and become more mindful of others in her life, Deborah is still the sun around which these other characters all revolve, for better or worse. And for Deborah, there's nothing else beyond her career and the art of making people laugh. "Comedy was always the most important thing to you," daughter DJ tells Deborah after she begins testing material at DJ's Narcotics Anonymous meeting. "I spent my whole life thinking you were a narcissist, but it turns out you're actually an addict like me. You're addicted to getting laughs. I can go to group to stay sober, but you can't. Your addiction is the group."

For a show that interrogates the drive that compels comedians, and that is deeply respectful of the science of comedy (which can sometimes hinge on whether toilet or shitter is a funnier final word for a joke), Hacks also remains—mercifully—one of the funniest shows on television. Although it's not a sitcom, it almost competes with 30 Rock for the sheer number of jokes per scene, yet it still manages to remain smart and create a deep sense of pathos. Critical to this humor is Einbinder, whose dry and deadpan delivery style is even more charming this season now that her character is no longer wallowing in her own cynicism. She's never been funnier. But Smart also finds a new humility and tenderness to Deborah—a willingness to admit that perhaps she hasn't always got things right.

Given the uncertainty of both the streaming environment (Max canceled a bunch of its other beloved original series earlier this year) and Hollywood more broadly (this season was delayed by the actors and writers strikes, as well as Smart's undergoing heart surgery), there's a certain gutsiness in trying to take a top-tier show like Hacks to new heights. You really don't know how much time you have left to experiment or try to improve things even more. But not trying— not throwing everything at the wall to build something even bigger—feels like its own sin. "For me, 'one day' is now," Deborah tells Ava in one particularly moving midseason monologue. "Anything I want to do I have to do now, or else I'll never do it. That's the worst part of getting old."

Since it premiered, Hacks has been showered in critical acclaim and awards, and I doubt that this triumphant new season will be any different. But just like its sequined star, Hacks shows the effort it requires to stay at the front of the pack, an incredibly vulnerable position to be in. Even at the top, not all your victories are inevitable—they require hard work and a team of people to help you along the way. But some of them may even become your friends. And if you're lucky, together you might create something really special.

• Comedy
• HBO
• TV