I will never hesitate to declare that the most important show in the modern age of television, and one of the best in its entire history, is “The Larry Sanders Show,” Garry Shandling’s 1990s HBO series about a neurotic talk-show host, his support staff and guests — real-world celebrities playing versions of themselves, a new idea — who came and went out of his life. It brought new depth and possibilities to situation comedy, and paved the way for shows that operated at the intersection of the fictional and the real.
“One thing Garry used to say that had a big impact on me,” Judd Apatow, who wrote, produced and directed on “Sanders,” once told me, “was that the show was about people who loved each other but show business got in the way.” According to Shandling, speaking in 2010, the real subject of the show was “the human qualities that have brought us to where we are now in the world: the addiction to needing more and wanting more and talking more. We were examining the labels put on success — is it successful to be on TV every day, to be famous, to have a paycheck? And you see what’s missing is love and heart.”
Something of the same is being asked in the current, fourth season of the Max series “Hacks.” Venerable stand-up comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) has finally landed her dream job, hosting her own late-night network talk show, following a pilot canceled years before amid tabloid rumors that Deborah had burned down her husband’s house. Young modern comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), with whom she has been locked in a generational, quasi-familial, mutually beneficial, mutually frustrating, codependent love-hate relationship since the series debuted in 2021, has blackmailed her way into the position of head writer, launching the enterprise on a sea of tension. (The network has assigned Deborah and Ava a full-time HR chaperone.)
Within the context of the series, Deborah’s hiring as the first female late-night show is historic — Joan Rivers, who chaired Fox’s “The Late Show” from 1986 to 1988, does not exist in this universe; neither does “The Faye Emerson Show” (CBS, 1949-1951), nor Cynthia Garrett (the first African American woman in late-night), who hosted NBC’s “Later” from 2000 to 2001.
“This network has never hired a woman for 11:30,” Deborah says. “Or anyone as old as me. Or, let’s be honest, a blond. It’d be easier to get elected president.” Notwithstanding the cable shows of Chelsea Handler, Samantha Bee, Sarah Silverman and Busy Phillips or Taylor Tomlinson, working for CBS on “After Midnight” until her contract runs out in June and she goes back to stand-up — her choice, with the show canceled in its wake — this has been and remains substantially true. It didn’t matter that these women were younger than Deborah, or, some of them, as blond. The long-term late-night hosts are now, and have always been, dudes.
But even as Deborah’s dream comes true, in the real world, late-night is troubled. Ratings are falling. “I don’t know if there will be any late-night television shows on network TV in 10 years,” Jimmy Kimmel said last summer on Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s “Politckin’” podcast. “Maybe there’ll be one, but there won’t be a lot of them.” (Kimmel made a cameo appearance on “Hacks”’ most recent episode, angrily confronting Deborah after she tried to poach Kristen Bell as a guest: “Everyone knows that when she has a new project she does my show first — I got full custody when Conan died.”) As Helen Hunt’s Winnie, the network executive overseeing “Late Night,” tells Deborah, the choice was not between her and a different host, but between her and canceling the franchise. Her hiring, on the basis of massive success in Season 3, represents a sort of “Hail Deborah” play.
Like most everything in our confusing century, post-prime-time television has been reshaped and undercut by the internet. Late night TV, which once had to be watched, well, late at night — it had a sort of circadian component — has been atomized into clips to watch when you like. And the competition has become fierce: Never in human history have there been so many people talking to so many other people for public consumption, entertainment or education, on podcasts and panels and personal appearances. Not every big or baby star who’d appear opposite Jimmy Fallon or Kimmel or Stephen Colbert or even at 12:30 a.m. with Seth Meyers, whose “Late Night” is the last talk show standing in that time slot — “After Midnight” is a game show in which comedians riff off pop culture and social media — is going to show up on YouTube. But many will, in situations where they’re allowed to stretch out, go deep, get silly, or eat hot wings while trying to answer questions.
Into this space in time streams “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney,” a sort of sequel to “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A.,” which ran for six weeks last year as part of the Netflix Is a Joke Festival, and is now two-thirds of the way through its 12-week run. Episodes premiere Wednesdays, airing live at 10 p.m. on the East Coast and 7 p.m. on the West (Mulaney announces the time and temperature in L.A. at the start of each), so it’s not technically a late-night show. Neither is it any kind of competition with network late-night series, living, as it does, on Netflix time.
But it’s built like one, more or less, featuring a monologue, banter with sidekick Richard Kind — in full Richard Kind effect — brief filmed sketches, interviews and a musical guest. Each episode features a theme in the form of a question — “Should I Lend People Money?”; “What’s the Best Way to Fire Someone?”; “Can Major Surgery Be Fun?” — discussed by a motley panel of celebrities and a relevant expert. (Guests have included David Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Tina Fey, Quinta Brunson, Bill Hader, Joan Baez, Fred Armisen, John Waters and Ayo Edebiri, none of them promoting a project.) There are also phone-in callers, possibly to reinforce the show’s liveness; but these segments have not been particularly successful — or rather, they have been particularly unsuccessful. The callers often seem confused; there is dead air, and Mulaney, who does not hold the tightest rein over the show, will summarily end a conversation by asking what kind of car they drive.
Mulaney is one of the funniest comics working, and a great talk-show guest. The best parts of the show, where he seems most present, in control and at ease, are when his monologues eschew jokes for stories; he’s hilarious talking about a botched booking for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, or a trip to the doctor, or teaching his son about urination. “Everybody’s Live” can come off a little unfocused; the weekly themes rarely develop into anything significant, conversations can be lopsided and, professional production values notwithstanding, there is something sort of … public access cable about it all.
This is not exactly in the show’s disfavor. Its looseness is appealing, if you don’t expect more than a pleasant time. In any case, its departure is already scheduled. The fate of Deborah Vance’s late-night show — which, in the snippets shown, is getting good — is known only to its showrunners, depending, of course, ironically, on whether Max renews “Hacks.” (It seems a safe bet.)
That series’ arguments about art versus “selling soap” aren’t raised in order for the show to express an opinion — “Hacks” itself is a popular entertainment, serious about its characters, or most of them, but out for laughs — but because they’re banners for the war that Ava and Deborah have been waging from the beginning. It’s only in their periods of truce, when their differing ambitions conjoin, that things move forward. Both need their show to thrive; they’re insecure, if opinionated people, who crave approval and ultimately make each other better, though they’ll only occasionally admit it. We want their show to live because we’re invested in their relationship, though the real possibility of a fifth season of “Hacks” — reportedly designed with a five-season arc — means that, for their near future, it will be a bumpy late-night.
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