Reinventing the Sitcom for the Me Too Era: Disempowering the Patriarchy by Joking About It in HBO Max’s Hacks (2021-)

Since I Love Lucy (1951-1957), many more American sitcoms about outspoken and passionate women have graced the small screen and they have all challenged what it means to be a woman in the home and in the workforce – from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977) and Roseanne (1988-2018) to Grace and Frankie (2015-2022). However, the latest series to explore the trials and tribulations that American women go through in navigating their personal lives and careers is HBO Max’s Hacks (2021-). The first season follows Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) as she struggles to keep her Las Vegas Residency and modernize her act (with the help of her quirky queer female assistant writer). Like the narrative itself, this series updates the conventions of the sitcom to address women’s issues of today. Consequently, in this paper I argue that Hacks reinvents the sitcom by making light of surviving sexual abuse and violence along with bias in the workplace and ageism in attempt to show how common they all are while also helping the characters (and by the extension the viewer) to cope with the trauma caused by such atrocities. It is important for scholars to recognize how the series adds to the emerging discourses concerning the struggle for women to be equal and free from harassment in patriarchal societies – ushered in by the Me Too movement. I draw on feminist scholarship about sitcoms from previous eras to parse out Hacks specifically innovates the sitcom’s characteristic subversive exploration of gender roles and women’s issues.