![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/2b147cf8b7e3a46abe3e25f2b91db30e99-hacks-ep4-s4.rsquare.w400.jpg\")
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Hacks<\/a><\/p>\n Who\u2019s Making Dinner?<\/p>\n \n Season 5<\/p>\n Episode 4\n <\/p>\n \n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n 4 stars<\/p>\n ****\n <\/p>\n \n Photo: HBO Max\n <\/p>\n Remember in the mid-2010s, when we were having a whole cultural thing about whether comedy actually needed to be funny or if it just needed to say something<\/a>? The Nanette news cycle<\/a>, which (sorry to rudely bring up the passage of time; I know most of us don\u2019t want to count pandemic years) took place almost ten years ago, but this episode takes Deborah on a similar journey to what feels like the only, obvious outcome: Yes, comedy has to be funny! In fact, if it isn\u2019t funny, no one is going to listen to or care about the big something you have to say.<\/p>\n I would add a corollary to this: you can let anger fuel your comedy, but it can\u2019t crowd out your comedy. But Deborah\u2019s bitterness is eclipsing everything. Her new material, wherein she is atop the \u201cpersecution pyramid,\u201d is not landing with anyone. Despite Deborah\u2019s insistence that comedy is supposed to \u201cmake people uncomfortable,\u201d Ava pushes back that it is also, would you believe, supposed to make people laugh.<\/p>\n The gang is headed to the Paley Center for a 50th anniversary celebration of Who\u2019s Making Dinner? In the world of Hacks, this is the groundbreaking sitcom Deborah created with her late husband, Frank, who swindled her out of a creator credit by sweet-talking her into letting him have the solo writing credit on the premiere (\u201cyou take the second one!\u201d), which cut her out of the founding narrative entirely. Deborah\u2019s relationship \u2014 with Frank, with the series, with her own legacy \u2014 is a volatile, unsteady thing, where pride and resentment, gratitude and hunger, are always battling it out.<\/p>\n With the gag order in place, Deborah can only attend the event as a beautiful, silent guest of honor. She\u2019s doing what she can to let pictures speak louder than words by photoshopping their old pictures, with Josefina\u2019s help, to yassify herself and make Frank look worse. And just in case you need the stakes of the season spelled out for you one more time, she tells Ava that Bob is just like Frank, another man trying to \u201cerase\u201d her: \u201cThat is why the Madison Square Garden show has to be historic!\u201d<\/p>\n Good news for Ava: An exec, Jessica Duncan, looooved her Mall Girl script! Ava goes to the meeting full of optimism, only for Jessica (Caitlin Reilly, a.k.a. Girl Who Is \u201cGoing To Be Okay\u201d<\/a>) to follow up her gushing praise of Mall Girl with the caveat that, because it\u2019s \u201cso original and specific, obviously, we can never make it.\u201d Ah, well, it\u2019s taste clusters all over again<\/a>! Nice to see they can still get their swings in on David Zaslow\u2019s HBONowGoMax. Jessica will buy whatever TV show Ava wants to make, with the standard parameters, a list that feels very The Other Two<\/a>-coded. \u201cDiverse \u2014 queer counts! But NO limited series.\u201d Ava spends much of the episode doing something that will make all writers think I\u2019m in this picture and I don\u2019t like it: pointing at random objects and people and asking, \u201cHuh, is this a show?\u201d<\/p>\n At the Paley Center \u2014 the site of Kayla\u2019s bat mitzvah; no, she isn\u2019t Jewish, but her theme was \u201cAnna Faris\u201d \u2014 Jimmy has an overly-friendly greeting from Beth (PEN15<\/a>\u2019s Anna Konkle<\/a>), which Randi and Kayla immediately clock as (per Kayla) \u201cbeing sexual at work.\u201d Jimmy\u2019s attempts to keep things professional only arouse Beth further, until he attempts to clarify that his interest is strictly business and antagonizes her instead.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Deborah wanders through the exhibit, having flashbacks to the complicated, validating, infuriating, special experience of making this show with the man she thought she loved, who told her she was brilliant and funny, who was always flirting with other women on set right in front of her. She shakes herself out of it to introduce Ava to Eddie, who in the Hacks-verse was the director of the Who\u2019s Making Dinner? pilot and who is so glad to see Deborah still has a sense of humor despite her widely-reported \u201cmental troubles.\u201d<\/p>\n Through him, Deborah learns that an unaired interview with Frank is airing tonight. Once the special begins, she finds out that the stage on the WB lot where the show was filmed will be renamed \u201cthe Frank Vance Stage.\u201d Again, for everyone who is not paying attention, this means \u201cFrank Vance will be forever enshrined in Hollywood history.\u201d<\/p>\n Deborah is SPINNING OUT. Can they turn off the livestream so she can speak?! Evidently not, but speak she does, and her bits that did not land in the living room bomb before this audience. Everyone is very uncomfortable. At least they all think she had a menty b and are maybe just happy to see her out and about? While the Who\u2019s Making Dinner clip rolls, Ava finally gets a good idea: A reboot of this very show, built around the grandkid of the central couple, who inherits the single-family home but has to live with roommates. \u201cDownward mobility,\u201d she says, \u201cbut funny!\u201d (I feel like this is kind of the premise of Adults<\/a>, except that it has no IP? But whatever, it\u2019s not supposed to be original! If it were original, Jessica wouldn\u2019t be able to buy it!) Deborah doesn\u2019t have the rights, but Jimmy is looking into it. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n While Deborah licks her wounds from bombing very, very hard, the Frank interview plays. He says what Ava has been saying all along, but it hits harder from him because Deborah is sexist (sorry, I kid, I kid): \u201cWe weren\u2019t trying to be groundbreaking. We were making a show about our relationship. And the only reason people even paid attention to it was because it was funny.\u201d And why was this show funny, Frank? Deborah! \u201cShe was always the funniest person in any room.\u201d<\/p>\n I love how Deborah is leveled by this praise. It\u2019s worse, really, than an insult would be, because that would give her something to push back against. Instead, she is left feeling like something is wrong with her for still needing to hear that compliment from that man. Ava gets it: \u201cSometimes there\u2019s just one person you want to impress.\u201d Before Deborah can let that sink in, she is taken away by the cops for violating her restraining order \u2014 despite Ava\u2019s insistence that Deborah\u2019s speech wasn\u2019t funny enough to count as comedy.<\/p>\n In her cell, surrounded by her fellow rabble-rousing women, Deborah works the room. Her bits about what everyone is in for wins all the girls over in what almost feels like a fantasy sequence \u2014 the people yearn so hard for third spaces that we\u2019re romanticizing\u2026 jail?? \u2014 but also makes me wonder if Deborah\u2019s next move is a Johnny Cash-style tour of state penitentiaries. By the time she makes bail, she\u2019s won a room full of fans, including that girl who punched a police horse. Deborah pays everyone\u2019s bail, and I would love to see someone do the math on how much money she would need to have in order to live as she does in the show. How rich is she?<\/p>\n Together with her girls in lock-up, Deborah has learned a valuable lesson that Ava has been trying to teach her for the duration of this episode: People will remember her if she makes them laugh. Yes, duh! Well, at least now we know what we\u2019re doing!<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Vulture Newsletter<\/p>\n Entertainment news, for the pop-culture obsessed.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n