I recently began catch up on Hacks, a comedy series on HBO Max about the relationship between a young comedy writer and a legendary stand-up comedienne.
Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) is a legendary Las Vegas stand-up comedy diva on the verge of losing her long time residency at the Palmetto Casino.
Vance is a veritable fly caught in amber, her act and her jokes a callback to a world decades past. It's an act that has made her exceedingly wealthy and very much locked into outdated attitudes.
Vance is a strong personality, a force of nature if you will, unapologetically crude and blunt. Vance is a success and sees no reason to change who she is. Older visitors to Vegas still flock to her sell out shows and still laugh at her well worn and comfortable material.
The Palmetto, however, is looking to the future and wants to replace her with a younger act to bring in a younger sort of clientele.
Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) is a young comedy writer who is unable to find work due to an insensitive tweet and her reputation for being self-centered and arrogant. Ava is a full on Gen Z person with zero tolerance for people like Deborah Vance, rooted in the past, taking all the money and leaving nothing for those who come after.
So naturally Ava gets paired with Deborah in a perhaps futile bid to make the great Deborah Vance remain great and more relevant to modern audiences.
It does not go well. But the real story here is what Ava and Deborah discover interacting with each other. Yes, Deborah Vance is a rich privileged bitch but damn it, she fought hard to get to where she is, sacrificed so much.
While digging through archives of Vance's material, Ava finds a long lost copy of the pilot Deborah Vance shot as the host of her own late night talk show. Ava catches herself actually laughing at Deborah jokes and enjoying the show. Deborah Vance was once on the cusp of breaking through the all men's club of late night TV talk show hosts but the pilot never aired, the show never went to series, brought low by the short sighted sexism of network executives.
It makes Ava realize Deborah's role as trailblazer and her genuine talents as a humorous storyteller. And Deborah in turn acknowledges that Ava has something to teach her.
The relationship between these two very different women is frequently contentious, confusing and complex which is what makes Hacks such compelling television.
What We Do In the Shadows is back for it's 4th season. The blow up of the status quo at the end of season 3 is quickly resolved with a one year later time jump. Lazlo is still at the vampire residence (which has fallen into a state of disrepair) taking care of Baby Colin Robinson (or as Lazlo is frequently ready to correct, "the baby that came out of the corpse of the late Colin Robinson"). Lazlo is determined that this baby will grow into a interesting person and not the dull uninteresting person Colin Robinson used to be. It's clear however as the baby rapidly ages into a young boy that he's just going to be Colin Robinson 2.0.
Nadja and Guillermo are back from England and Nandor is back from his world travels.
Nadja opens a vampire nightclub to make money to effect repairs on the vampire residence. Not knowing Nandor returned from his travels with a shit ton of treasure which could more than net the funds to fix the residence.
But Nandor is holding the treasure as a dowry for a future bride. Among the treasure is a magic lamp that produces a djinn who is granting Nandor's wishes including bringing back his 37 ex-wives and then disposing of the 36 who really annoy him and over the course of one episode, negotiates with the djinn a wish to give Nandor a bigger penis.
Basically the vampire gang of What We Do In the Shadows is back to their self absorbed ways.
And as always Guillermo is holding shit together.
We're off for the second season of Only Murders In the Building with Mabel (Selena Gomez), Charles (Steve Martin) and Oliver (Martin Short) in the cross hairs of suspicion over the murder of Bunny Folger. Our trio launches a 2nd season of their podcast to get to the bottom of who murdered the tough as nails board president of the Arconia who spend most of season 1 trying to evict Oliver.
The 3rd episode of season 2, "The Last Day of Bunny Folger", makes us care about Bunny. And we don't want to. She was a mean old bitch to everyone she met. And yet, we find out she could be kind and generous and sadly, very lonely. Damn it, we wanted to hate Bunny and be glad she's dead and now we can't.
Mabel gets a girlfriend, Alice (Cara Delevingne) who works in an art gallery. Oliver and Charles greet the arrival of Alice in Mabel's life as too much of a coincidence and regard Alice with suspicion.
Oliver discovers Teddy Dimas (Nathan Lane) is back in Arconia and Teddy is quietly processing his rage at Oliver for his role is exposing Teddy's smuggling scheme last season and threatens Oliver that some how, sometime, he's going to fuck him and fuck him hard.
He may have already when Oliver discovers that his son may be the product of an affair between Oliver's late wife and Teddy Dimas.
Charles has quite a bit going on. His old 1990's TV cop show "Brazzos" is being rebooted with a new lead but Charles has been cast as "Uncle Brazzos", confined to a wheelchair and with a hint of dementia which does not sit well with Charles.
Charles is in contact with Jan, his season 1 girlfriend and the revealed secret killer of season 1. Charles and Jan chat on the phone and she helps with the current murder case. Being a murderer herself, well, she has some insights.
Lucy, the teenage daughter of Charles' ex-girlfriend, pops up in season 2. She has kind of sort of father-daughter relationship with Charles. Lucy's teen speak leaves Charles baffled and Mabel is lost as well trying to understand her. Lucy is instrumental in helping our trio of podcast detectives discover the secret passages that honeycomb through the interior walls of the Arconia.
And we find out that at the height of his "Brazzos" fame, Charles cut an album of songs including his big hit, "Angel In Flip Flops".
My biggest complaint with season 2 is this year's celebrity residence of the Arconia. Last season it was Sting who was sublime and silly in his role as a potential suspect.
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