Warning! This article contains spoilers for Hacks season 5, episode 7.

For the past five years, Hacks has been one of the most consistently great shows on the air. Other contemporary hits like The Bear and The Last of Us and Yellowjackets have gotten wildly hit-and-miss in their subsequent seasons, but Hacks has been delivering banger after banger for five seasons straight. The series isn’t quite over yet, but the final season has been a slam dunk so far.

Hacks is a rare show that has never had a bad episode. Every episode of Hacks is at least really good, a lot of them are great, and a select few are standout masterpieces. The very best Hacks episodes put the focus squarely on Deborah and Ava’s relationship. Season 3’s “One Day,” for example, forces them to bear their souls to each other and interrogate their deepest, darkest fears as they spend the day stranded in a forest.

We’re still a couple of weeks away from the end, but Hacks is on track to stick the landing with its series finale. The show’s latest episode — season 5, episode 7, “Montecito” — might be its greatest installment yet. It might be remembered as Hacks’ “Ozymandias.” It’s the half-hour of comedy that the entire series has been building to, and it’s one big nod to the fans.

Deborah & Ava’s Fake Courtship Was An Episode-Long Wink To Their Shippers

As Deborah prepares for her Madison Square Garden show, she becomes fixated on a very specific outfit worn by Carol Burnett. In order to get her hands on the ‘fit, she has to schmooze comedian Kelly Kilpatrick, played by guest star Cherry Jones. But Kelly only starts to warm up to Deborah when she mistakes Ava for Deborah’s lover. Believing Deborah to be a long-closeted fellow lesbian, Kelly invites her and Ava to spend a couples’ weekend with herself and her wife, Monica, played by The White Lotus’ Leslie Bibb.

Desperate to get her hands on the outfit, Deborah drags Ava to Kelly and Monica’s house so they can pose as a married couple. Hacks fans have been shipping Deborah and Ava from the very beginning, and while the show has occasionally flirted with the idea, it was unlikely to ever come to fruition. Ava identifies as queer, but Deborah has always been depicted as staunchly heterosexual (which led some people to theorize that she doth protest too much).

The show was never going to actually have Deborah and Ava get together, but the age-old sitcom trope of pretending to be a couple was a great way to imagine what Deborah and Ava would be like as a couple without actually committing to it. We got to see how clingy Ava would be, how much she would embarrass Deborah with P.D.A., how hilarious their pillow talk would be. Anyone who’s ever wanted to see Deborah and Ava get together had their prayers answered in “Montecito.” They even had a hilariously elongated makeout session in front of Kelly and Monica.

Deborah & Ava Do Love Each Other (It’s Just Not Romantic)

When the jig is up and the ruse is revealed, the brilliant punchline of the episode is that Kelly and Monica refuse to believe Deborah and Ava aren’t a couple. They were more convinced by the lie than the truth. Kelly has a great line — delivered perfectly by Jones — about relinquishing the outfit to Deborah just so “at least one thing is coming out of the closet this weekend.” It’s a great ironic twist, but it’s also a meta nod to audiences who refuse to accept that Deborah and Ava aren’t in love and destined to be together.

It points to a core tenet that Hacks’ shippers need to wrap their heads around. Deborah and Ava do love each other — their deep-rooted love for each other is undeniable — but it’s not the romantic kind; they’re comedy soulmates.

Release Date

2021 – 2026-00-00

Network

HBO Max

Showrunner

Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky

Directors

Desiree Akhavan

Writers

Pat Regan, Ariel Karlin, Carol Leifer, Joe Mande, Guy Branum, Andrew Law, Samantha Riley

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