There is something about common human traits embodied by a young person that seems to rankle viewers. This is surprising to a viewer who sees the show as a well-balanced depiction of two complicated people, and should have been expected by anyone who recalls the strangely intense pitch of conversation around “Girls” and its protagonist, Hannah Horvath.
Both Deborah Vance ( Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels ( Hannah Einbinder) are carefully-written, elegantly played characters each one fuels the show’s action through stubborn commitment to her own perspective, along with, gradually, some growth.īut while Smart has, justly, been hailed for her work on the series, Einbinder’s work, like her character, feels relatively unheralded. “ Hacks” is as pure a two-hander as I’ve seen on television in recent years - a comedy buoyed by the prickly, slow-to-develop relationship between two characters with utterly different approaches to comedy, but similar stumbling blocks.
