Hacks: Disgraced comedian decides to turn lesbian, gay leather guy spirals, and there are some jokes. With bonus Devon Sawa

  

 

I've been avoiding the recommendation of Hacks, on MAX, because the icon shows two ladies in bikinis, and who wants to watch a tv show about computer hackers in bikinis?  But yesterday I casually looked through the episode list, and saw what looked like a black guy at a gay leather bar.  

Not many black guys into leather -- in years of going to the Faultline in West Hollywood, I only met one.  So maybe this show is worth checking out after all.

Turns out that the title is a misdirection. Hacks is an obsolete term for writers who churn out incompetent but popular trash,  In this case, the hack is Deb Vance (Jean Smart), a Vegas lounge lizard trying to revise her snarky 80s-style standup for a more sensitive generation.  Her head writer and confidant, Ava, had her own standup career cancelled after an insensitive tweet.  I'm reviewing the gay leather bar episode, 2.4, "The Captain's Wife."

Scene 1: At a dusty farm, Deb is filming an infomercial, selling strange-looking socks. Her bus driver, Weed, keeps turning on the air conditioning. Her photographer, Damien, notes that she forgot the American flag print. "Stupid f*king American flag."  Lots of presumably gay characters here: Weed is played by a very butch Laurie Mecalf, and Damien by Mark Indelicato.

Head writer Ava wants to stay behind during Deb's upcoming gig on a gay cruise, because she's afraid of water, and can't swim.   "You're going. Wear a life jacket."

And forget all the sensitive nonsense: Deb's going to do her old stuff, the classics.  "The gays get me." 

Scene 2: Swishy guys in a club bathroom gossipping and snorting cocaine. Marcus  (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, below) puts on a business suit: it's 7:00 am, and he has a breakfast meeting across town.  I remember staying at a sex club all night.  They put out a breakfast buffet at 6:00 am.  They ask him to stick around for his mental health.  He refuses, but he lets them score some of his addies (Adderall, a stimulant used to treat ADHD).

Scene 3: Boarding the cruise ship, Deb wonders why there are so many ladies in line. Famous comedian Margaret Cho, the last cruise's headliner, is just leaving. She tells Deb that the audience was mediocre, but the gay sex was great.

"Wait -- I thought this was a gay cruise."

"It is.  A lesbian cruise."

Uh-oh.  Gay men love Deb, but lesbians hate her.  She doesn't understand why. Ava suggests "the hundreds of thousands of jokes at their expense that you've told over the years."

Scene 4: At the cruise ship bar, Ava is approached by a grabby, hand-kissing, way over-eager lady horndog. She's not actually freaked out.  I wonder if she is a lesbian, too? Wikipedia lists a girlfriend and a boyfriend. 

Meanwhile, Deb calls her agent, Jimmy (Paul W. Downs), to complain about booking her on a lesbian cruise.   He's busy working on a residency -- a permanent casino gig.  "How about Terrible's Casino?"  "No way -- too far from the Strip."  

There actually was a Terrible's Casino, though I can't imagine why someone would choose that name.  It closed in 2020.

Next Deb chides Ava for having fun instead of writing some lesbian jokes.  "You speak lesbian, right?  Cause you're half?"  I don't know what that means. Maybe a lesbian mother and a straight father? 

Scene 5: Back in Vegas, Marcus, the gay leather bar guy, gets home to find two middle aged ladies on his couch. One is his mother.  "What are you doing here?" he asks angrily. "I told you I needed to get work done today." They came to pet his dog and upbraid him for spending all night at the club. He yells at them for trying to control his life.  

Scene 6: Ava is trying to dump someone's ashes into the ocean, when a lady approaches to flirt and ask her to the "She-ano Bar."   Cut to Ava getting ready, telling Deb about the Olympic athlete on board. Girlfriend going to get her some lady jocks.  She invites Deb to come along as her wing-person.  Nope, but Deb is willing to fix her outfit.

As they are bonding, Ava wants to know: with all her jokes about how terrible sex with men is, has Deb ever considered being with a woman?  "Nope.  I like men.  I wish I was gay, because it would be a hell of a lot easier."  Are you crazy, lady?  Let's start with your Sunday school teacher telling you that God hates you, and work our way forward.

Ava calls her out on her straight entitlement, and Deb agrees that it might not have been easier to like girls -- back when she was a kid in the 1960s. But she got a crush on John Lennon of The Beatles and never looked back.

"But why do you like men?"  I was asked that a lot, back when coming out meant a barrage of stupid questions. You like who you like, idjit. You don't have any control over it.

Ava concedes that "your sexuality is not a choice," but Deb still should try to figure out why she is straight.  "Maybe you aren't really attracted to men, you're attracted to their power." 

Scene 7: Convinced to try it out, Deb goes to the She-ano bar and cruises some lesbians.  The next morning, everyone at the breakfast buffet is friendly, and she has embraced lesbians as a potential audience: "They love women, and I'm a fabulous woman." 

Left: Former teen heartthrob Devon Sawa, whom Deb has sex with in another episode. 

Scene 8: Marcus at the club, dancing his butt off with his swishy friends He's dressed as a BDSM bottom, but it's not a leather bar, it's an old-style gay disco. 

He runs into Wilson -- according to wikipedia, his ex-boyfriend.  The breakup has resulted in his downward spiral.  He wanted to call and say "I love you," but he's blocked all of Wilson's social media profiles and deleted his number.  Wilson is concerned about his drug use, but doesn't want to get back together.

More Deb and a lot of Devon after the break

Scene 9: Deb's performance on the lesbian cruise. She doesn't use any of the jokes that Ava wrote for her. Instead, she is rude and abrasive, assuming that everyone in the audience wants to have sex with her, and insulting them when they disagree. She insults a woman who turns out to be the captain's wife, then asks to meet "him."  Ulp, the captain is a woman! How ridiculous!  "I hope we don't have to parallel park." The audience boos and throws things, and she throws things back. 

Left: Devon Sawa, teen idol

Scene 10: After a night of dancing and drugs with his swishy friends, Marcus goes home to discover that his puppy got into his Adderall!  He rushes it to the emergency veternarian.  Harming an animal is a major trigger, so I fast-forwarded through this part.

Don't worry, the puppy is fine, but the veterinarian won't release it to an owner who is a danger.  He starts yelling that he's the CEO of a multimillion dollar business -- he can take care of a dog.  Everyone stares. Marcus has hit rock bottom.

I thought he was lying about being the CEO of a multimillion dollar company, but it turns out that he runs Deb's management company. 

Meanwhile, on the ship, the passengers held a meeting, and they want Deb out. Not fired -- thrown off the ship!  A dinghy arrives to take Deb and Ava to shore.

Scene 11: Back on the bus, Deb fires her driver and calls Marcus, who apologizes for not doing his job lately: he's been going through some things, and his dog is sick.  Deb invites him to join her on the road.  The end.

Left: Devon Sawa in Slackers

Beefcake: It's a lesbian cruise, so..

Gay Characters: It's a lesbian cruise, so...

Why not decide to like women: In the post-show discussion, everyone loved the "Decide to like women" discussion.  They pointed out that neither Deb nor Ava was totally right; they both had misconceptions.  They were learning to be patient with each other.  

I still cringe at the idea that you have to go through this excruciating self-examination.  "Do I actually like men?  Maybe I really like women, but don't know it." Back when coming out resulted in a barrage of stupid questions, I was often asked "How do you know you're into men?  How do you know you're not into women?"  Um...by looking?

My Grade: This is definitely not a comedy, but maybe I stumbled upon the nadir of a plot arc about Marcus and Deb in self-destructive spirals.There was a lot of LGBT representation, but the "decide to like women!" discussion brought back too many bad memories. B-

A lot of naked Devon Sawa on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends.