‘Hacks’ Is Back: Why Jean Smart’s Health Crisis and a 10-Month Delay Couldn’t Slow Down TV’s Edgiest Comedy

Two years ago, in the Season 2 finale of “Hacks,” it appeared that Deborah Vance and her protégé Ava Daniels had reached the end of the road. Deborah (Jean Smart), a jaded Las Vegas comic, and Ava (Hannah Einbinder), the young and eager joke writer she’d hired, had together crafted a TV special that showcased Deborah’s wit and her willingness to change with the times. It was a perfect merging of what Deborah brought to the table and what she’d learned, at times unwillingly, from her young partner — and, having decided they’d done all they could together, Deborah fired Ava.

What a surprising place to arrive, after the rollicking two-year journey these characters had undergone! But there was a problem with a finale this satisfying. “People are like, ‘It felt like it could have been the end,’” recalls co-creator Jen Statsky. “And you’re like, ‘No! No!’”

“Hacks” has had no shortage of fan love and industry attention — among 32 total Emmy nominations, it’s been a winner for its writing and directing, as well as garnering two trophies for Smart, a beloved character actress who in Deborah has finally been given the opportunity to play the lead. But its third season, premiering on Max on May 2, is the show’s biggest swing yet. Creators Statsky, Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs always had a plan for where Deborah, a shark who must keep moving, would go next. To get there, though, “Hacks” would have to navigate challenging real-world events, losing nearly a year as a result: first as Smart, now 72, underwent heart surgery, and then as both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA went on strike.

The final product, at long last, depicts a Deborah who’s as dissatisfied with wild success as she was with mid-tier striving; the time has come for her to pursue a new goal. She decides to campaign, both in public and in Hollywood back rooms, for a newly open late-night hosting chair. A late-night franchise, which Deborah had the chance to host earlier in her career but missed out on, “had always been something that stoked her bitterness,” Smart says. “But when the opportunity comes again, it’s instantaneous — she’s back! And what really fuels her fire is that she knows this is the last shot ever, ever, ever.”

If this new mission feels like a left turn for a show whose sort-of-antiheroine has finally achieved the comforts of real fame, it shouldn’t: It’s been the plan all along. “It was baked into the pitch that this is her white whale, this is her primary trauma — I’m revealing that I go to too much therapy,” Statsky says with a laugh. “We knew she would be trying to get her white whale once again.”

Landing that whale will require teamwork: The show must first reunite its central duo, and Deborah and Ava then must work together to convince the world to give Deborah Vance her greatest star turn yet. “As Ava says, Deborah is shameless,” Aniello says. “So if she is shameless, and she’s willing to sell herself — let’s watch her do that!”

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There’s a scene midway through the season that has new resonance now, though it was written before Smart’s surgery. During a hike Ava has forced the pair to take, Deborah falls and gets injured, and then insists on pressing forward, hobbling if she has to. Deborah Vance is a hardened road warrior, after all. And Smart doesn’t lack for gumption either. “It’s very true to the character to just keep going and push ahead,” Downs says. “And it’s true to Jean as well.” The production had paused for nine weeks for her to recover. “She wanted to be back in two.”

“That was real shit. That was real life,” Einbinder says, sounding stricken at the memory. “This was terrifying at first, because she is so precious. But she’s the most physically durable person I’ve ever met. She’s titanium — it’s insane.”

Smart may project an indefatigable image. But the break, and the return to work, were fraught. “I just was overwhelmed with guilt for a lot of reasons,” Smart says. “Thinking about putting everybody out of work — I just couldn’t stand that. I wanted to come back as soon as I could. It turned into three months, and then we came back for five days, and then the strike started.” Smart says the writers strike was aptly timed, since she needed more time to recuperate than she’d realized, but was painful for the production: “Except for five days, we were down for 10 months.”

“Hacks,” the production, has been particularly subject to its creative team’s well-being. The first season was shot in the early COVID era, with Smart, “a woman in her late 60s who’s also diabetic, as the lead, with no vaccines,” as Downs puts it. (Any positive test removed both the patient and anyone they’d come in contact with from set for two weeks, resulting in a constantly shifting schedule.) And Aniello directed much of the second season while expecting her and Downs’ first child, and was finishing up an episode having gone into labor.

“Looking at her on set with her huge belly sticking out, running that set like a champ, in complete command,” Smart recalls. “In the middle of the last day, she had to go home because she was in labor, and they sent a feed to the house. She directed us from home, before she went to the hospital, between contractions.” (Aniello once again directs five of the season’s nine episodes this time around.)

When it came to the shutdowns, “we were so prepared for it, in that this is so par for the course for this show,” Downs says. “We’ve done this a few times — had a crazy derailment and then got back on track to finish the show.”

And the creators have a handle on every moving part. “The joke with Paul and Jen and Lucia is that they live for tiny,” says Sarah Aubrey, Max’s head of originals. “No detail is too small for them to have their eye on.”

The story of “Hacks” plays, crucially, as a duet. Deborah’s coming into her own as a comedian, and the show’s finding its voice, originated in the tricky, self-serious, righteously indignant Ava. And while Einbinder has twice been nominated for an Emmy in the supporting category, Statsky refers to the show as “a true two-hander.” It’s Ava whose ideas, and whose readiness to frustrate or offend her boss, generate creative energy. “Without Ava pushing her,” Statsky says, “Deborah would probably be complacent.”

Which made bringing the pair back together from where they begin the third season — Deborah as a newly world-beating comedian operating solo, Ava staffed on a “Last Week Tonight”-style news-comedy digest — a challenge. As the season begins, Ava is licking her wounds over having been fired; for there to be a show at all, Ava needs to return to the fold with a woman who’s hurt her deeply.

Why go back at all, or even consider it? “For funny people, and two people in the moderate-to-unhealthy area, which Ava and Deborah are, you justify any behavior if somebody makes you laugh,” Einbinder says. “You can slap me in the face, you can fire me, you can do whatever the fuck you want. But if we’re sitting there, reaching into each other’s souls and making light of the horrors alongside each other, that is a deep, unbreakable bond you will justify any behavior to maintain.”

If Deborah is the show’s say-everything id, Ava, trying to push her boss toward a new kind of humor, is its skewed conscience. But she needs Deborah’s teachings as much as Deborah needs hers. Ava’s shortcomings — and her spiky presence on a show initially perceived as Smart’s solo vehicle — led some viewers to outright dislike the character. “She comes in pretty hot,” Einbinder says of Ava. “I remember reading things, people saying, ‘I hate this girl!’ I believe that you have to love and understand who you’re playing, unless you’re playing Eva Braun. But you’ve got to have compassion and understanding. And Deborah and Ava have softened each other.”

The show, too, leans into Ava’s flaws in order to reveal how she gets past them; even her haters will acknowledge that Ava’s come a long way. “I think in Season 1, people didn’t realize what a difficult needle that was to thread for her,” Statsky says of Einbinder’s nuanced performance. “Playing someone who is unlikable and has to grow is one of the hardest things to do.”

The show’s relationships have deepened across the board — Deborah’s daughter, DJ (Kaitlin Olson), gets a spotlight episode emphasizing the tragedy of her life as a neglected celebrity’s kid. (“We really wanted to explore her sobriety and her addiction,” Aniello says. “And for her to understand her own issues through the lens of her mother’s issues gives her this intense catharsis and peacefulness.”) And even perpetually thwarted talent managers Jimmy and Kayla (Downs and Megan Stalter) have scenes that cut closer to the bone, examining what both truly want to achieve. “That’s the storyline that has been mostly comedic as the show’s gone on,” Aniello says. “So it made sense for us to start to delve into some of the more dramatic parts of their relationship. What do they mean to each other? Does that ‘crazy girl’ and ‘eye roll’ [dynamic] get stale?” The rule of “Hacks,” perhaps, is that just like its central characters, it can’t help reinventing.

The show already did that for Smart: An ensemble player on “Designing Women” and a favorite in shows as disparate as “Frasier” (as Dr. Crane’s bawdiest girlfriend) and “24” (as a mentally ill first lady), Smart then enjoyed a renaissance in dramas as TV peaked, earning supporting actress Emmy nominations for “Fargo,” “Watchmen” and “Mare of Easttown.” But it was “Hacks” that paired her ravenous hunt for the punchline and her ability to hairpin-turn from ingratiation to rage with this juicily complex leading-lady material. We’ve seen Smart achieve stardom at this stage of her career. No wonder we want the same for Deborah.

And it’s Deborah’s quest, with Ava along for the ride, alternately acting as mastermind, cheerleader and occasional best frenemy, that gives this season its crackle and verve, and brings new life into a show that’s been off the air for two years. (And its best days may yet lie ahead: While Max generally doesn’t renew shows before they begin airing their latest season, Aubrey, the streamer’s boss, says, “I would be surprised if we didn’t do more of it.”)

Deborah and Ava’s quest for fulfillment isn’t happening in a linear way, of course — these are stunted and often difficult characters we’re talking about. (Worse, perhaps: They’re comedians.) “We always talked about their relationship being one step forward and two steps back,” Downs says. “They’re going to backslide. People can evolve and make incremental change, but don’t completely change who they are.” Deborah will always be persnickety; Ava will always think she knows best, even if she’s right only about half the time.

And Deborah, too, will always be tempted by the comfort of staying in the same place. “It’s always been Ava pushing her to do the scarier thing,” Statsky says, “and failure is the risk.” The same is true for a show that could have ended on a high — or constructed a story that kept its two friends in safe harbor, rather than blowing up its premise and going on a whole new adventure. Now, Deborah’s living like she understands, in a whole new way, the value of her time. It’s one more reason that Smart’s real-life health journey lends the show a sweet and painful new note to play.

But even taken on its own terms, “Hacks” has a point to make: Taking a chance is more fun. Just ask Deborah Vance, who torches her steady professional life in order to campaign for a job no one in Hollywood thinks she should get.

“She suddenly finds herself without a Plan B of any kind,” Smart says. “She’s all in. She’s at the poker table. And she’s pushed all of her chips in.”