We should be tired of ‘hacks’. In this fourth season, the series has evolved as much as the Hacker Chema Alonso dress: nothing. The same narrative dynamics, the same dramatic conflicts and the same ideological debates are repeated. Subtramas matter as little as ever. In the formal, it is still quite flat. And, to finish off, in the last chapter we have a “surprising” plotter plot more free than the nudes of uncover (and that, above, stays at all).
And yet, ‘hacks’ continues to work wonderfully (it has been nominated again in the Emmy, although this year it has it more difficult with the extraordinary ‘The Studio’). The series has a dramatic framework of repetitive frames, foreseeable resolutions and easy turns. Foundations that rest, above all, in the solidity of the protagonist duo. Deborah and Ava are two of the best writings of current television fiction. And those who embody them, Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, form one of the most chemical and talent couples.
The marriage – feeling and creative – formed by Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs (he also acts, is the manager Jimmy), continues to achieve a perfect balance between the comedy and the drama, between the purely comic effect (that lubina commissioned by the scriptwriters to eat in the office!) And the sentimental turn (the scene in the waiting room of the hospital Some issues (corporate protocols, labor relations) and the combative discourse on others (the gender gap in the television industry, the price of success, the dynamics of power among women).
But if there is a paradigmatic example of the ability of these creators to combine emotion and chufla is the end of the sixth episode. A sequence that starts with a dramatic scene to Virginia Woolf, which turns in round with a fabulous gag worthy of a Zucker comedy and turns again until it becomes an emotional talk between two friends full of warmth, sincerity and tenderness. There is no better way to explain what ‘hacks’ is and why we like it so much.
