Review: Hacks, "Heaven"| Season 4, Episodes 10

The penultimate episode emphasized that there is no Late Night with Deborah Vance without Ava Daniels. The finale took a beat before offering reassurance that there is no Hacks without Jean Smart. But for the briefest moment, I shared the same look of confusion and dismay as Ava when she ran from her hotel room to Deborah’s to see if her worst fear had come true. My reason for thinking that Deborah might be dead? TMZ is typically the first to announce a celebrity’s demise (sometimes within an hour of a body being discovered). They are rarely wrong in these particular proclamations.1 Having TMZ as the source of this announcement legitimizes the claim, even though it is impossible to imagine a version of this show without its co-lead. Thankfully, the reports are inaccurate. Even though Deborah isn’t physically dead, for much of the finale, the standup veteran desperately needs resurrection.

How does a legal hawk like Deborah Vance contend with a situation that proves there are no viable loopholes so she can continue performing? This question dominates the first half of the finale. Given how litigious Deborah is, I hardly even considered that she wouldn’t have a trick up her sparkling sleeve to defeat Bob Lipka’s smug threat. My prediction that she could use their brief affair to get him to reneg on the no-performing clause was way off the mark (and as pointed out in the comments, it would ultimately be more harmful to Deborah than Bob if it came out).

Instead, Deborah is back in Las Vegas without a platform or a side hustle to get her through this crisis. Work is Deborah’s salvation during rough experiences, including the aftermath of the interconnected loss of her marriage and her first late-night opportunity more than 30 years earlier. The entertainment industry landscape has shifted since then, but this is also not the first act of Deborah’s career. So, when Ava points out that it is only 18 months, it is notable that Deborah says this is a long time for her.