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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
100
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
May 13, 2022
Apr 10, 2025
Season 4 Review:
“Hacks” remains strongest when it delves into the prickly bond between Ava and Deborah, even if it’s starting to feel like the writers are trying to find reasons to keep the two apart. .... Where it struggles is in building compelling narratives around them, and the season loses some momentum as it resolves its conflicts.
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May 17, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Hacks” is all about Jean Smart, and if you don’t enjoy her dry, direct delivery and her tough-broad demeanor, you have no business here. The HBO Max comedy is first and foremost a vehicle for her, one that starts off shakily but gets sturdier with each new half-hour.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“Hacks” is more or less doing variations on the same story each season, but it’s doing it in interesting ways, and the brass ring of a late-night talk show gig is a juicy arc onto which this toxic pattern can play out once again. Nobody self-sabotages their way to success like these two. Wariness gives way to trust. And then inevitably the entire floor gives way, every time.
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Jul 14, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The show itself can sometimes feel as lost as the women at its center. It’s also tonally unsteady, with a delicious, slightly heightened sense of humor driving early episodes (at one point you can literally hear Ava gulp when caught in a lie) that’s noticeably abandoned as the season progresses. ... The performances, though, are consistently good throughout.
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ColliderApr 7, 2026
ColliderApr 3, 2025
Season 4 Review:
For the first time, Hacks can’t quite manage to stick the landing, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s still undeniably one of the best things on television. The relationship between Deborah and Ava has never been more intriguing, and Smart and Einbinder have never been better.
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May 3, 2021EmpireMar 23, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Smart has rightly been winning awards left, right and centre for her performance, but Einbinder brings a nervy energy to Ava that perfectly complements her. Deeper than the ironic name suggests, Hacks digs into vulnerability, self-image, and gender politics in refreshing ways.
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May 6, 2022
Season 2 Review:
It's an extreme relief to report that the new season displays no sign of the dreaded sophomore slump. The six episodes made available for review deliver another superb showcase for Smart and Einbinder while also providing the standout-packed ensemble players amplified opportunities to shine.
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IndieWireApr 10, 2025
IndieWireMay 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“Hacks” excels at giving the audience what they want, even mid-reinvention, and the series continues to exemplify the upsides of excellent episodic structure with half-hours built around Deborah’s roast, a Christmas special and, if you can believe it, a hike in the woods.
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Apr 10, 2026
Season 5 Review:
The ends always justify the means. Even a stand-up act can be praxis. How compelling you find that suggestion will depend on how much you jibe with Hacks’s combination of teasing and endorsement, and how quickly you might tire of how heroic everyone has become. (By now, the characters’ edges have been so sanded down that it’s shocking when it’s revealed that Deb once made a slightly homophobic joke about a lesbian comedian.) But the series throws itself into portraying how Deb’s galvanization activates those around her, and into positioning their transformations as persuasive devices.
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May 12, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Hacks is at its best in moments like that, when it highlights life at its most simultaneously hilarious and wrenching. It just takes a little while for it to reach those scenes this time around. ... Season two is much looser and, like a stand-up tour, jumps from place to place without clearly addressing its broader ideas.
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May 6, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The first six episodes of Hacks’ second season are very much a middle act, with plenty going on, but no concrete resolutions. And that’s perfectly okay; these characters are well-established and enjoyable enough that it’s fun to simply hit the road with Deborah, Ava, and Marcus.
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May 14, 2021
Season 1 Review:
After a slow start (honestly, though, how many shows nail their beginnings?), the series moves at full tilt as the writers explore dark and unexpected places. With a strong cast and some stellar directorial choices, Hacks is a necessary addition to your summer watch list.
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RogerEbert.comApr 7, 2026
RogerEbert.comApr 3, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Still the best comedy on television. .... This season reminds you how easily this character could have been a stereotype—just another Joan Rivers impression of an over-the-hill comedienne—and how Smart has imbued her with enough humanity that the actress fades into the character. For Einbinder, this is her best season, holding onto the head writer job with a tenacity that she’s learned from the woman who’s trying to make her let go.
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RogerEbert.comApr 29, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The third season of “Hacks” is funny, unpredictable, and even moving. It’s a show that almost deliberately avoids the traps of its premise, walking up to clichés about age and gender in Hollywood—even cancel culture in a brilliant late-season episode—and then taking a sharp turn away from them.
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RogerEbert.comMay 12, 2022
Season 2 Review:
It’s good for a show like “Hacks” to be silly every now and then, but those [sitcomish] moments stand out this season more against a backdrop that takes the show’s ideas more seriously. Still, “Hacks” overcomes these set-ups to remain a remarkably smart comedy, one that understands human behavior and how it’s warped by show business.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
In chronicling Deborah’s quest for her professional holy grail, Hacks finds some interesting and entertaining new dynamics between the duo at the heart of the series. .... The interplay between the characters, and between Smart and Einbinder, remains so strong that it casts a huge shadow over everyone else.
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May 12, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Hacks really sings when it puts its two leads together to annoy, insult, and occasionally learn from each other. Would it help if the jokes the two work on were stronger? Sure, but Hacks also talks a lot about how hard good joke-writing is. It gets everything else right, so it deserves the extra time to figure that last part out.
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Apr 11, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Stalter’s performance has also matured, but not enough to prevent Kayla from being one of the funniest things about TV’s best comedy. The pointed humor and soulful asides that make “Hacks” addictive remain largely undiluted four seasons in. .... Where past seasons favored Smart's emotional dexterity, the fourth provides ample opportunities for Einbinder to travel new highs and lows.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“Hacks” returns on a new creative high, one that positions itself to keep going as long as its pins can support it. .... As ever, “Hacks” episodes hum along with a fine-tuned comic cadence, buoyed by the stars’ performances along with that of Downs and Stalter. Season 3 affords Jimmy and Kayla a more extensively developed B-plot, albeit one spun out of sugar and about as substantial.
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May 13, 2022
Season 2 Review:
These new episodes reaffirm why Smart's Emmy win for her first season performance was incontestable and make a strong case for a repeat. But Statsky and Downs deepen the stalwart character profile Einbinder established, allowing her performance to expand upon her comedy writer's vulnerability without losing the too-cool-for-this entitlement that keeps getting Ava in trouble.
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May 14, 2021
Season 1 Review:
"Hacks" writes a surfeit of generosity into everyone, especially Deborah, whose vulnerability Smart readily accesses. ... Through it all "Hacks" steadily builds a real respect and friendship between these two women, expanding our view of what it means to secure and defend a throne at the banquet table, while appreciating the enormous struggle it takes to even get on the wait list. Watching and enjoying it is enough, but Smart and Einbinder make us want to sit with these two, Smart especially, as Deborah and Ava enrich each other's existence.
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May 11, 2021
Season 1 Review:
For all its gut-punch humor, ‘’Hacks’’ is dead serious about how show business treats women. You might be laughing too hard to hear it, but there’s a low frequency scream running just beneath the comedy. This show makes a rich contribution to the buddy comedy tradition, never superficial or skin deep and always very, very funny.
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Screen RantApr 8, 2026
Season 5 Review:
Season 5 never forgets to have fun with these two characters, and it's just as enjoyable watching them squeal with glee over potential new romantic partners as it is watching them workshop jokes. With their undeniable chemistry, Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder have delivered one of the best female friendships in television history.
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Screen RantAug 28, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Hacks season 4 made me laugh a lot, but I also got choked up a few times, too. Amidst all the tensions and bickering between Deborah and Ava, the series makes sure to fit in a couple of heartwarming little moments to show that, deep down, they still love each other. Most TV shows are dying at this point in their lifetime, but Hacks continues to thrive.
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Apr 29, 2024
Season 3 Review:
While “Hacks” isn’t as ruthless as it was in its infancy, it does have moments where Smart can bear her claws. .... When Deborah gets a guest spot, “Hacks” hits its apex and puts everyone on alert. It’s the season’s best episode and yet another reason Smart is the best female in a comedy series, hands-down.
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May 12, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Hacks” is her [Jean Smart's] master class – a series that showcases just how much she can add to anyone’s work. ... “Hacks” nicely fills the void left by “VEEP.” It, too, is acerbic and on point. ... While “Hacks” may be a harsh title for something this deliciously good, it captures the price some are willing to pay for celebrity.
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Apr 11, 2025
Season 4 Review:
This new tense dynamic between the two leads is a terrific reset in their relationship that provides a wealth of both conflict and comedy. .... Each both respects and fears the other, and recognizes in them a true soulmate, which is what makes their work product so ingenious and their partnership so profound. It’s also what makes the show so magical.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
The series has never been better. Rather than feeling lazy or bloated, it has found exciting stakes and challenges for its characters that span the professional and the personal. .... Hacks also remains—mercifully—one of the funniest shows on television. Although it’s not a sitcom, it almost competes with 30 Rock for the sheer number of jokes per scene, yet it still manages to remain smart and create a deep sense of pathos.
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Apr 18, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Season 4, as a result, feels markedly introspective. As it dials up the absurdity of its version of Hollywood—“Dance Mom,” played by the always great Julianne Nicholson, is an especially memorable recurring character—Hacks grounds its wildest moments in the question of whether Deborah and Ava can remain themselves.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
“They only gave it a name,” she [Deborah Vance (Jean Smart)] fumes, “after it started happening to powerful men.” The line underscores the particular brilliance of Hacks, created by the Broad City alums Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky—its holistic view of comedy, the way it truly understands all the layers of history that have shaped its central character. .... The show’s analysis of Hollywood dynamics is also rigorous, even down to its guest casting.
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The Daily BeastApr 8, 2026
Season 5 Review:
We can imagine a world in which the show will always go on, even though we’ve paused the TV and see there’s only five (beautiful, brilliant) minutes left in one of—if not the greatest—shows about comedy ever made. The final curtain does fall on Hacks, and the last moments are simultaneously surprising and perfectly suited to the show as a whole—a miracle for a series finale. While each episode offers up different iterations of everything wrong with Hollywood, Hacks never loses the love of the game.
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The Daily BeastMay 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
Hacks’ third season, which drops its first two episodes on Max May 2, is punchy and lithe, bringing beloved comic Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her socially conscious co-writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) back for a season that tightens the show’s focus, but keeps its ambitions broad. It’s a major triumph in an increasingly dreary streaming landscape.
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The GuardianApr 10, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Season four of Hacks is very funny. But what makes it really special is just how raw it is, too, ready to hit you in the feels when you least expect it (there’s one hug, in particular, that left me questioning everything). Even when these two hate each other’s guts – which is most of the time – this truly is one of TV’s best love stories.
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Apr 7, 2026
Season 5 Review:
There are enough big names here to make the season feel like a well-earned celebration of its place in pop culture. But ironically for a season that spends so much of its time concerned with the question of legacy, Hacks stumbles at crafting its own. In elevating its brighter, softer elements at the expense of its darker, sharper edges, it becomes a sugarcoated obituary version of itself.
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May 10, 2022
Season 2 Review:
It isn’t just the Jean Smart show and it isn’t just an examination of cancel culture or a portrait of a Joan Rivers avatar. There are plenty of little reasons why the second season of Hacks doesn’t take a leap from very good-ness to greatness, but plenty of big reasons why that isn’t really a problem.
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May 12, 2021
Season 1 Review:
There’s a schematic quality to the series’ foundation that Hacks mostly fails to outgrow in the first six of its 10 episodes. Deborah and Ava’s boomer-versus-millennial, heartland-versus-the-coasts, experience-versus-innovation tensions are constantly telegraphed without becoming organic to the characters. Occasionally, their differences can lead to interesting discussions.
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Jun 7, 2021
Season 1 Review:
“Hacks” is not a joke machine; the later episodes are downright melancholic. ... It’s not convincing that this person would force an awakening in someone like Deborah. But Einbinder works hard to match Smart, and, at moments, seeing them get into grooves of compassion, I felt myself flush. The rest of the cast, by the way, also kills.
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The PlaylistApr 7, 2026
Season 5 Review:
Does “Hacks” come to an end with one of the greatest season finale episodes of all time? No, but that’s O.K. Really. It’s more than satisfying enough. The last episode will make you cackle, tug at your heartstrings, and, yes, make you wish Deborah and Ava stuck around a little bit longer.
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The PlaylistApr 10, 2025
Season 4 Review:
“Hacks” has always been through Ava’s eyes, and Einbinder makes sure this is the first season where every pitfall Ava endures stings like a knife to the heart. The plan has been for “Hacks” to end with its fifth season. Season four has proven we’ll miss seeing Deborah on our screens, but eventually having to say goodbye to Ava may hurt the most.
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The PlaylistMay 6, 2022
Season 2 Review:
“Hacks” aims to examine the brutal side of the entertainment world it inhabits but fails to fully commit to a deeper criticism of it. Although there is still a real pleasure in seeing an actress as accomplished as Jean Smart getting a meaty role, this latest season of “Hacks” does not live up to the bar set by its superior debut season.
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The Travers TakeApr 10, 2026
Apr 7, 2026
Season 5 Review:
It’s a proper finale for a series that never stopped being funny, never punched below the belt, and always continued to evolve past its own perceived wokeness … a joke within a joke the show has consistently loved to highlight. The characters are all treated with respect right up until the very end, though the final episode grounds reality into a series hellbent on commenting on Hollywood’s flaws and great fortunes.
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Sep 4, 2025
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 shows absolutely no signs of slowing down as the comedic punches still hit hard while the drama behind Deborah and Ava’s fractured working and personal relationship is further examined. .... “Hacks” triumphantly evolves to meet the moment of its characters.
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May 3, 2024
Season 3 Review:
Creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky have crafted Hacks’ best season yet, one that allows the characters to grow without killing their spiky, push-pull bond. Smart and Einbinder further elevate that story arc with a rapport that feels more natural and intimate than ever.
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May 12, 2021
Season 1 Review:
Throughout the six episodes I screened, the core of the show is Smart’s performance, which brings the perfect balance of steeliness and vulnerability. ... The pithy, insightful Hacks offers further confirmation that Smart is living through a career renaissance of her own.
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TV Guide MagazineMay 9, 2024
Season 3 Review:
A great buddy comedy that bridges its generation gap with smart show business satire, Hacks' third season finds new purpose in the undying ambitions of its leading lady. .... Nothing about Hacks feels tired. [13 May - 2 Jun 2024, p.4]
TV Guide MagazineMay 19, 2022
Season 2 Review:
Smart tackles every aspect of Deborah's complicated personality - her vanity, insecurity, sexuality and unquestionable talent - with passion and wit. Einbinder also shines, now written less a pretentious foil than as a willing apprentice whose dues-paying verges on the slapstick. [23 May - 12 Jun 2022, p.6]
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TV Guide MagazineMay 21, 2021
Season 1 Review:
The imbalance in Hacks' odd-couple premise is that while every quip out of Deborah's mouth is a hoot, nothing about whiny Ava suggests she's comedically worthy of laundering her boss' caftans. [24 May - 6 Jun 2021, p.9]
TV InsiderApr 7, 2026
Season 5 Review:
Stay with the twists and turns, even the occasional groaners, for a satisfying finish, providing a fairy-tale happy ending for some and for others a bittersweet reckoning that whatever hurdles life throws at you, nothing is as important as friendship — and perfecting the next joke.
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May 2, 2024
Season 3 Review:
What’s always been good about the series is still happily intact. .... But the season also requires some padding, which is where it runs into trouble. A few episodes, particularly one that has Deborah and Ava pointlessly lost in the woods while on a hike, play like wheel-spinning.
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May 11, 2022
Season 2 Review:
The sharp HBO Max comedy isn’t content to coast. The new season, for anyone concerned that it wouldn’t live up to the first, aims higher and deeper, expanding the dynamic between Ava and Deborah while keeping both the wit and pathos largely intact. ... The show’s excellent supporting cast also remains in top form.
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May 6, 2022
Season 2 Review:
If this all sounds a bit heavier than expected, don’t worry: The beauty of “Hacks” has always been its ability to thread even its darkest material with self-assured jokes that cut right through. In that respect, it’s a joy (and relief) to report that Season 2 doesn’t miss a beat.
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