{"id":655275,"date":"2026-05-08T04:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655275\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T04:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T04:57:14","slug":"avorah-lives-ai-must-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655275\/","title":{"rendered":"Avorah lives, AI must die"},"content":{"rendered":"

What will we lose when Hacks<\/a> ends? A brilliant, bracing inside look at the costs and gains of artistic creation; a workplace comedy as bold as it is comforting; a chance to watch Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart regularly exchange barbs and admiration<\/a>. All of these things, certainly. But as I watched season five\u2019s second episodic pairing (and, sniff, the last one ever for the series), I found myself thinking about how much I\u2019m going to miss these weekly one-two punches\u2014how watching \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d and chasing it with \u201cQuid Pro Quo\u201d raised my expectations and my blood pressure, and how impressed I was by \u201cJust For Laughs\u201d and \u201cBetter Late<\/a>\u201d working together to defy the hand-wringing after the season-two finale about where Ava and Deborah go from here. All this back-and-forth about binge drops versus weekly episodes, and here Hacks has been saying, \u201cpor qu\u00e9 no los dos?\u201d<\/p>\n

Though the series eased up on the comedic double headers after season three, creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky have deftly deployed the remaining few, starting with last week\u2019s energetic duo<\/a>. This week\u2019s pairing of \u201cQuikScribbl\u201d and \u201cMontecito\u201d similarly offers the best of both worlds\u2014the pathos and the humor\u2014starting with shrewd commentary on The State Of Things followed by a Sapphic detour (we did it, Joe, Avorah shippers). There\u2019s even a moment where a game of \u201cworst thing you\u2019ve ever done\u201d leads to some Drama<\/a>-esque drama. Thursdays nights just won\u2019t be the same after May 28.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s coming\u2026The Diva Hotel & Casino,\u201d declares a banner on the former site of The Paradiso at the beginning of \u201cQuikScribbl\u201d (B+), but to hear the foreman tell it, Deborah and Marcus\u2019 venture into hoteliering might never happen. The renovation is beset by problems, and Deborah\u2019s non-negotiables are proving to be just as difficult to manage as she is. They\u2019re going to need an additional $20 million, especially if they move forward with building the Deborah Vance statue, whose legs will serve as a kind of Arc de Triomphe. (Deborah makes the case for the monument thusly: \u201cHow are people supposed to make an entrance if not between my legs? Where\u2019s the joy, the whimsy?\u201d) This not-so-common problem\u2014needing a multimillion-dollar infusion of cash to convert a chlorine pool to one full of ros\u00e9\u2014calls for what\u2019s becoming an increasingly common solution in the real world: getting venture capitalists involved. Marcus soon has someone on the line, and everyone, including Ava, is prepared to do what it takes to get the investment, including accepting an Indecent Proposal-like offer or a request to eat sushi off her body (she calls dibs on the Philly roll).\u00a0<\/p>\n

What Graham Sweeney (Saturday Night Live<\/a> alum Alex Moffat) wants in exchange for his investment is much more objectionable, though\u2014to Ava, at least. Clad in the stereotypical performance vest, this disruptor of medical tubing invites Deborah and Ava to his home to pitch them the eponymous technology: QuikScribbl, an LLM generative AI model that will help people present \u201cthe most optimized, funniest, smartest versions of themselves\u201d with some help from Deborah and Ava. Graham proposes scraping Deborah\u2019s entire body of work so that everyone\u2014anyone willing to cede their personality to a computer program, that is\u2014can sound like her. Graham appears to know his audience; imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Deborah will take that in all its forms. But Ava, who was so willing to help Deborah that she donned a bandage dress that\u2019s crushing her internal organs, is appalled. She rejects the myth of AI inevitability, and recoils when Graham says QuikScribbl won\u2019t censor any of its users, even if they use the tech to \u201cmake Hitler seem young and funny to red-pilled, dark web gooners.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Deborah is swayed, especially when Graham tells her she has \u201csuch mass appeal,\u201d shouts out her big Late Night ratings, and suggests everyone wishes they could talk straight and be funny like her So, the next day, Ava enumerates the ways in which AI is terrible, including being an ecological disaster and setting up \u201ca cataclysmic reshaping of our society that\u2019s going to doom us.\u201d As a writer, Ava is more vulnerable to AI\u2019s pilfering, but her boss just can\u2019t perceive the threat yet. Deborah acknowledges that others might be replaceable, but she\u2019s dealt with joke theft before, and she\u2019s still standing. Episode writers Joe Mande and Carolyn Lipka signal shifts great and small in the Ava-Deborah dynamic; Deborah\u2019s \u201cEverything\u2019s unethical if you think about it too much\u201d is very much in her voice, but her tone is almost chagrined. Much as she tries to deny it, she has changed as a direct result of Ava\u2019s influence (haranguing).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not long after this fight (it\u2019s hard to tell the passage of time, I\u2019d kill for an expository \u201cwe only have six months until the Garden!\u201d), Deborah meets with Graham, ready to sign away the rights to the work she did before partnering with Ava. Like so many AI proselytizers, though, Graham\u2019s high on his own supply, and he tells her soon she\u2019ll be able to outsource joke creation to QuikScribbl, too. Deborah, looking only slightly insulted, demurs: \u201cI like doing the work.\u201d When she points out that \u201cusing that shortcut makes [a joke] something else, it makes it not art,\u201d Graham loses his patience. He yells that he\u2019s just trying to make her life easier, but she thinks he and his ilk are trying to solve the wrong problems. \u201cWhy are you trying to optimize the creative process?,\u201d an exasperated Deborah asks. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things we\u2019ve actually figured out.\u201d Here, we hear Deborah\u2019s words, but the timbre sounds an awful lot like Ava\u2019s. If the latter half of season three and first half of season four showed what Ava looked like after years of being under Deborah\u2019s influence, \u201cQuikScribbl\u201d demonstrates the effect she\u2019s had on her boss.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hacks makes its statement on AI\u2019s encroachment into the entertainment industry in bold letters. In past seasons, the show\u2019s brain trust might have been more subtle in relaying this message, but final chapters are always an interesting combination of big swings and limitations. Even though it won\u2019t be trained on Deborah\u2019s work, QuikScribbl will still move forward. At least we won\u2019t have to see it, and at least Deborah and Ava are on the same side. In fact, the second course in this week\u2019s offering, \u201cMontecito\u201d (B+), sees them get closer than ever, and the show indulge in some of its most blatant fan service\u2014not that anyone\u2019s complaining.<\/p>\n

The inciting \u201cincident\u201d is both silly and serious, like so many Hacks setups. Deborah is understandably nervous about the Madison Square Garden show\u2014she and Ava still haven\u2019t worked out the opener\u2014and she\u2019s been having classic anxiety nightmares: teeth falling out; realizing you\u2019re naked at an important event; being mocked by an infinite number of J. Smith-Camerons. The decision to opt out of AI training is nothing compared to figuring out what to wear for the Garden show, so Deborah brings in the big gun: her psychic, Diana (Polly Draper), who describes a white outfit that Deborah interprets to be the Bob Mackie jumpsuit Carol Burnett wore in the final episode of her long-running variety show. Mackie himself gives Deborah the bad news: An old rival, power lesbian Kelly Kilpatrick (Cherry Jones, hell yeah), snagged it at a charity auction. Deborah\u2019s going to have to eat crow\u2014with the aid of lunchtime mimosas\u2014to nab her psychic-approved look.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always illuminating to see Deborah with her contemporaries or other women in power. In season two\u2019s \u201cRetired,\u201d we met Susan (Harriet Sansom Harris), whom Deborah screwed out of an opportunity, a betrayal that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Winnie Landell (Helen Hunt) was poised to be a champion, but Deborah saw her as a foe, so she had her fired. When they first meet up for lunch, Kelly has no interest in playing nice. She sees Deborah for who she is\u2014someone who once described her TV show as \u201cThe L Word if it stood for \u2018lame’\u201d \u2014or so she thinks until Ava walks up like a concerned girlfriend, gently chiding Deborah for forgetting her phone and drinking caffeine so late in the day. Kelly misinterprets their familiarity, believing that Deborah is gay and keeping her relationship with Ava under wraps. \u201cNo wonder you\u2019ve been so bitter and frustrated and jealous all these years!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Jen Statsky took the helm for the first time in \u201cQuikScribbl,\u201d but it\u2019s her fellow series creator Paul W. Downs who leads this return to Deborah\u2019s discomfort zone\u2014and I don\u2019t mean that because, for the first time since \u201cThe Captain\u2019s Wife<\/a>,\u201d she\u2019s surrounded by queer women. (And we saw how well that went for her.) Much as she\u2019s made room for others, Deborah still prefers to be at the higher end of a power dynamic, and when she heads to Montecito with Ava as pretend-wives so she can convince Kelly to sell her the Carol Burnett jumpsuit, she knows she\u2019s not in control. It\u2019s Ava who, once again, \u201cspeaks the language,\u201d parsing varieties of lesbians with Kelly\u2019s ballerina-beekeeper wife Monica (Leslie Bibb, having a blast as the wild card in this Sapphic retreat), and easily reframing the story of how she and Deborah met to sound like a meet-angry-turned-meet-cute. She\u2019s having fun at Deborah\u2019s expense and flirting with Kelly\u2019s hot trophy wife (who inspired Black Swan<\/a>, apparently), but Ava is also once again worrying that Deborah\u2019s keeping something from her. Of course, Deborah is withholding something but it\u2019s not what Ava assumes, and Ava and Deborah are both keeping something big from Kelly and Monica, whose combined candor is at odds with all of the lies told by the other \u201ccouple.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Like any good comedy of manners, \u201cMontecito\u201d is rife with sexual tension and misunderstanding, plus a smidge of extortion. It also turns Ava\u2019s dream from \u201cTunnel Of Love\u201d into a reality, if only briefly and under less-than-ideal circumstances, as she and Deborah make out to cheers from Monica and Kelly. Ava, smarting from what she thinks is another betrayal, then goes out of her way to make Deborah uncomfortable around their hosts, cracking jokes about pillow princesses and revealing way too much about their made-up sex life. She momentarily reverts to a past version of herself, mistaking bluntness for vulnerability and questioning her standing in Deborah\u2019s life. Downs and writers Guy Branum, Andrew Law, and Bridget Parker have great fun with this weekend of hidden motives, tracking Ava through Kelly\u2019s mountain hideaway as she, wouldn\u2019t you know it, just keeps bumping into Monica. Deborah has learned a lot from her relationship with Ava, platonic though it might be, and she comes clean after a fraught night of negronis and hot tubbing. The reason she wasn\u2019t able to pick Ava up from urgent care after she was hit by a self-driving car is because she was having a mass removed. Deborah\u2019s got a clean bill of health now, though, so she makes up with Ava and then owns up to her lies, but Kelly isn\u2019t buying it. She parts with the jumpsuit, but as Ava and Deborah walk away, the now true believer sighs, \u201cAt the end of the day, I\u2019m rooting for them.\u201d See, the world\u2019s a big enough place to hold Ava and Deborah\u2019s creative partnership and the much sexier one that comes up in fanfic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stray observations<\/p>\n

\u2022 I promise to give Jimmy and Kayla more of their due next week, but for now, I have to compliment the ongoing complementariness between the A(va and Deborah) story and the B story. Schaefer & Lusaque face an ethical dilemma of their own this week: Sweep a hit-and-run confession from a potential client, Bruno Fox (Sean Patton), under the rug, or get him to own up to it so the family of the deceased can have \u201cclosure.\u201d They make the right decision but it still ends poorly, as Daddy Schaefer cuts Kayla off. We\u2019ve witnessed what Jimmy\u2019s had to endure to work with Kayla, but this is our first time seeing what it costs her to be by his side.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 Bob Mackie designed more than 17,000 looks for Burnett\u2019s show<\/a>, including the white dress, not jumpsuit, she wore in the opener for her big finale.\u00a0
\n\u2022 I obviously recognized the ruby slippers, but I\u2019d love for someone more versed in Hollywood fashion to tag all of the famous clothes and shoes in Kelly\u2019s closet.\u00a0\u00a0
\n\u2022 It\u2019s hard to pick a favorite Ava line this week: Paired with a baseball bat, \u201cI\u2019m a DSA member!\u201d is already an all-timer. But she also resorted to her ongoing medical mysteries\u2014\u201dDid you know that redheads actually need more anesthesia during surgery?\u201d\u2014to flirt with Monica.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Danette Chavez is\u00a0The A.V. Club\u2019s\u00a0editor-in-chief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What will we lose when Hacks ends? A brilliant, bracing inside look at the costs and gains of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-655275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}