Going home: ‘Hacks’ bids its 5-year run goodbye

“We wanted this season to feel like this group (of characters was) coming together,” says Executive Producer Jen Statsky.

Yet — shades of “Wicked” — co-star Hannah Einbinder says it was more than that. Her character, Ava Daniels, “has been changed and been affected for good.”

Star Jean Smart agrees. Both her character, comedian Deborah Vance, and Einbinder’s have become more nuanced “and they’ve changed each other. From Day One, Deborah was on the page and I totally got her.”

In the series, Vance is an aging standup comedian looking for a way to become more relevant. She hires a young writer (Daniels) and the two have a love/hate relationship as they maneuver the landmines of comedy, late-night television and cancellation.

In the fifth season, they try to figure out how to get back in front of audiences after a network executive essentially forbids Deborah from working anywhere. The ban brings the two closer together and takes them around the world and into a variety of unlikely situations.

“There are so many episodes we’ve been wanting to do for a very long time, and it was kind of like, well, here’s your last chance to do it,” says Executive Producer Lucia Aniello. Fans, for example, will be surprised to see Ava dating a magician/sex worker.

Other ideas are just as unlikely, but there’s a point to the journey and an ending that already prompts tears. 

“I had a series of moments throughout the season where it dawned on me that it was the end,” Einbinder says. 

Smart started lamenting the finale when they were shooting in Deborah’s house and staffers said, “OK, that’s a series wrap on Deborah’s bedroom” and “I was like, ‘We’re never going to sleep in this bedroom again?’ And then it was the wrap on the kitchen. I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ They let me sneak little souvenirs from each set.”

A scene in Deborah’s living room was particularly moving because it was the place where the two characters first met. “It’s the foundation of their connection,” Einbinder says. “To walk away from that place is so crazy. You know my freakin’ (expletive) was shedding a tear.”

Deborah’s agents, Jimmy and Kayla, got a bigger presence in the final season and had their moments, too. Megan Stalter, who plays Kayla, started screaming and crying during a crowd scene in Las Vegas. It was her last scene “and it was scaring everybody. I took myself home and stayed up all night. I wasn’t doing well for 24 hours.

“Leaving the show was like having a golden fork ripped from my hands and now I have a stupid plastic fork.” 

Luckily, the cast has been able to process what the series has meant in the weeks since filming ended. 

“I’m eternally grateful for the kind of roles I’ve had in the last decade,” Smart says. “Men are still dominant in every movie you see, but it used to be they only wrote stories about men because men were the ones who were out in the world doing things. Soon people started to realize that some women had always been out there doing things and started writing about women.” Deborah Vance became one of those characters and Smart knew it could work. 

“I’m going to miss Deborah,” she says. “It’s been such a joy.”

Einbinder says she learned plenty during the five seasons.

“I’m always just so excited about the opportunities and challenges they present dramatically and comedically,” she explains. “I always know that I’m going to be pushed to a new height.” 

From the start of the series, producers knew how they wanted to end it. Smart, however, didn’t want to know.

“I wanted to be surprised,” she says. When she got the storyline, “I was not sure I was real happy about it but I said, ‘I trust you guys. I always have and it always turns out great.’ And it did. And now I think it’s kind of perfect and truly great.”

No place like “Hacks”? Indeed.