Drama
Andor
The critically acclaimed Star Wars series ‘Andor’ is back. For fans, it is a return to form. For families, the show is still potentially a ride through an asteroid belt.
Deborah Vance has it all. Back in the day, she was a successful comedian with her own sitcom. Now, she lives in a posh mansion in Las Vegas, has her own staff and has a contract to perform 2,500 shows on one of the city’s biggest stages.
It’s a lucrative life … until it’s not.
Marty, the man who owns the casino where Deborah performs a hundred nights a year, has to appeal to a larger audience, so he’s cutting down the number of shows she does. And while Floridans absolutely love Deborah, families and college students want more from their Vegas vacation than just a tired, has-been comic.
If Deborah wants to remain famous, she can’t keep rehashing the same old jokes: She’ll need a fresh new act.
Luckily, Jimmy (Deborah’s manager) sees a solution to her problem: a Gen-Z writer he represents named Ava.
Ava was almost nominated for an Emmy, and up until recently, she wrote jokes for a hit TV show. But after she tweeted an unsavory joke about a closeted senator sending his son to conversion therapy (which bugged her, since she’s part of the LGBT community herself), nobody wanted to work with her.
While it’s not exactly Ava’s dream to “move to the desert to write some lame jokes for an old hack,” it’s also not Deborah’s deepest desire to work with someone younger than her own daughter. But Ava needs a writing job. And Deborah needs a writer. So somehow, the two find a way to create comedy gold, eventually landing Deborah a coveted position as a late-night television host.
Unfortunately, even as their professional collaboration blooms, these two hacks develop a highly dysfunctional friendship, too. And after one inappropriate mishap too many—among other things, Deborah slapped Ava across the face, and Ava is currently blackmailing Deborah for a head writer job—the two have resolved never to speak to one another again.
You know, once their show finally ends.
Ava asks early on where the line is between funny and inappropriate. Deborah responds that “there is no line.” And apparently, that’s where the Hacks writers decided to draw it (or rather, not draw it) as well.
We hear jokes about sex, homosexuality, abortion, suicide and religion—and that’s just in the first episode. The f-word makes a frequent appearance along with a multitude of other profanities and misuses of God’s and Christ’s names.
And while that is quite the onslaught for our ears, our eyes don’t get a break either. We see people getting busy in their underwear. LGBT romances abound—and we see the physical side of those dalliances.
All these factors make for a show that has no boundaries. And it certainly wouldn’t have a problem crossing them if it did.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
When their careers both take a fall, Deborah and Ava are paired together to create a new comedic act in Vegas.
We see people making out in their underwear with the intention of having sex. A girl in a t-shirt uses the bathroom and we see her thighs. A woman sits on the lap of a shirtless man dressed like Santa and makes crude jokes with him. Ava recounts a sexual encounter that took place at her uncle’s funeral. Pictures on a phone show two women together in a seemingly romantic way. We see a woman from the shoulders up in a bathtub. We hear that a senator sent his son to conversion therapy even though the senator himself was caught with a male escort. We hear jokes about sex, human anatomy, homosexuality and abortion.
Someone threatens to kill a woman. A girl jokes about committing suicide. We learn that Deborah burned her ex-husband’s house after he left her for her sister. She later nearly runs Ava off the road. Deborah storms out of a restaurant claiming that she found a cockroach in her salad and steals a fork in the process.
People drink alcohol. A woman vapes. Deborah has her daughter’s bag searched for drugs and questions her about an antibiotics prescription. A woman claims her guilt comes from her Catholic upbringing. People gamble in an airport casino. There is some toilet humor. We hear frequent uses of the f-word and s-word, as well as “b–ch,” “h—,” “a–hole,” “d–k” and “p-ss.” There are also misuses of God’s and Jesus’ names.
Just as Deborah and Ava finally hit it big, they begin trying to sabotage each other’s careers.
Ava, Deborah and other members of their new team attend a sexual harassment seminar after things get out of hand at the office. (Deborah sent their boss a pair of Ava’s underwear, pretending they were from Ava, to get her fired.) There are jokes about preferred pronouns, assumed sexual identities, extramarital affairs and drag queens. A woman inappropriately describes a sexual experience her brother had and another instance where she saw a celebrity’s genitals. She also says a cartoon dog is “hot.” We hear a man’s father was “worried” about his sexual orientation, since he had several female friends growing up.
Ava and Deborah employ intimidation, blackmail and just downright nastiness as each woman tries to get her own way. Jimmy, their manager, tries to mediate the conflict between the two of them, even though it reminds him of his parents’ divorce. Ava and Deborah act inappropriately. They are rude and disrespectful to each other and other colleagues.
We hear Deborah once had someone removed from an organ transplant list—though the patient still survived. A woman sends Deborah a cactus with the note “Sit on this” attached, and someone says it’s the nicest thing that woman has ever said to Deborah. Ava says she had to buy her own clothes back from a charity after Deborah donated them to mess with her. Deborah insults members of the press after they ask her some admittedly sexist and ageist questions.
A man is wrongly accused of disloyalty. There are jokes about depression, insider trading, extortion, menstruation and absent parents. A guy references “bad energy.” People try to play up their support of women’s careers in a way that feels ingenuine.
Deborah smashes up a room with a sledgehammer in anger—though the room was scheduled for demolition already. She leaves nail marks on Ava’s arm after grabbing her harshly. A man with whom Deborah had an affair follows her into a bathroom, threatening her if she reveals the affair to his wife.
We see Ava with her pants down in profile as she uses the toilet. She urinates into a cup for a drug test (after Deborah lied she was using drugs) and spills the contents on herself.
People drink at a party. A woman belches and says she thinks she’s going to vomit after drinking too much.
There are nine uses of the f-word and two uses each of the s- and c-words. We also hear “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ss.” God’s name is abused nine times (thrice paired with “d–n”), and Jesus’ name is abused twice. Someone says Mary Magdalene was a “whore,” and we hear that term used elsewhere, along with “skank.” A woman’s surname sounds like a gay slur.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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