And Another Thing: Appreciating the Women of Hacks and The Upshaws

Ashley Spurgeon is a lifelong TV fan — nay, expert — and with her recurring television and pop-culture column "And Another Thing," she'll tell you what to watch, what to skip, and what's worth thinking more about. 

Women — believe it or not, they’re everywhere! We’ve all seen them, from our parks and streets to our places of business and houses of worship. They’re even, get this, on television. Is it tenable? We’ll dive right into this hot topic by discussing, obviously, Jean Smart — a woman and powerful fellow Virgo — for she is deep in the midst of a major career renaissance. (I guess she decided over lockdown she may as well fuck around and win some Emmys?) She’s in Mare of Easttown, an official HBO series about murders and whatnot that I haven’t started yet. But more importantly, she’s starring in Hacks, an HBO Max original I’ve watched the first few episodes of and greatly enjoyed.

To me, Smart will always be associated with the name Charlene because of her role on Designing Women and, to a lesser extent, the boozy neighbor in The Brady Bunch Movie. Here, she plays Deborah Vance, a longtime stand-up comic being gracelessly pushed out of her Vegas residency nights in favor of a capella groups and DJs. A young writer from L.A., Ava (Hannah Einbinder), is thrust upon Deborah by management to help slap together some new jokes about, presumably, MDMA and MDMA-adjacent topics. (Oh no, now I’m suddenly very wistful for the long-lost Bonnarroo comedy big top ... so many MDMA joke variants born in that tent.) 

But ah! Young Ava is just as reluctant and unhappy as Deborah about this employment situation. However, Ava’s in desperate need of the work due to having been recently “canceled” for a not-even-very-good joke about gay conversion therapy. I am obligated by the laws of Western Civilization to note that Smart — a woman —  is 69 years old (nice). So you can imagine the kind of struggles Vance likely had in her fictional career, even if Ava doesn’t. The old/young, push/pull, online/reality dynamic works well in just these early episodes, my favorite moments so far being a quick punch-up session on that conversion therapy joke, and a dressing-down from Deborah to Ava about how “good” is the absolute bare minimum in the entertainment industry. 

In spite of Ava doing no research about her new writing partner, we’re slowly learning Deborah Vance was one of the few successful women in the boys' club, a trailblazer. But trailblazers usually get torn to bits by thorns and brambles as they try to make their way through, either through deft slices or — I guess in the case of this show — hack-hack-hacking away. And Hacks doesn’t forget the collateral damage on this journey: Kaitlin Olsen plays Deborah’s daughter, a middle-aged female fuckup played not so much for laughs, but bleak pathos.

Hacks is a thoroughly modern dark comedy — like I said, bleak pathos. But not all sitcoms have to act this way. As a longtime advocate of the “old-timey”-style sitcom, such as the (very good) Facts of Life reboot or the (dumbly funny) The Cool Kids, I’m happy to introduce another brand-new old-school comedy, Netflix’s The Upshaws. (It feels nice to have not one, but two good options for sitcoms these days.)

Starring Mike Epps, Kim Fields and Wanda Sykes, The Upshaws already feels like a cozy, comfy reboot of a long-lost Black sitcom from the 1990s. Believe me when I tell you it took a scene or two before I could discern if The Upshaws was set in the present day or in the past; it took a smartphone spotting before I decided it wasn’t 1995. 

I grew up with Black sitcoms from childhood on: Family Matters, Sister Sister, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Moesha and, when I was older, The Bernie Mac Show. Mike Epps is a man, and therefore not a part of my thesis. Kim Fields, of course, was a child star on The Facts of Life, but that was a little before my time. I’ve been trying to figure out how long Wanda Sykes has been in my consciousness — it feels like forever, but it was probably first via The Chris Rock Show; presumably she had stand-up specials I watched. Sykes (who co-created) is what drew me into The Upshaws: Her character is the auntie with a cane, your typical beloved lady curmudgeon, which is one of Sykes’ comedy tricks. It’s why she fits in so well on Curb Your Enthusiasm, for example.

But the throwback vibes of the ’90s sitcoms I grew up loving are what’s going to keep it in the queue — it lands somewhere between One Day at a Time and The Cool Kids, mostly endearing, a little bit dumb. And that’s exactly what I need it to be, the gentle yin of The Upshaws (the theme song is just the line “Solid as a rock” from the Ashford & Simpson classic) to the grimacing yang of Hacks. Women — is there anything they can’t do??