Did Hacks just invent a new romance trope?
Hacks is officially back—and Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) have never been more viciously intertwined. The season picks up in the immediate aftermath of last year’s bombshell: Ava blackmailing her way into the head writer role on Deborah’s new late-night show.
In the first scene of the new season, Deborah storms into Ava’s office, eyes blazing.
“Well, aren’t you a big brave girl,” she sneers, while getting up in her face.
“I guess I am,” Ava fires back, stepping even closer to Deborah.
Right off the bat, the tension between the two is blistering hot. It’s so hot, in fact, that after the first two episodes aired some viewers began to claim that the show just laid down the blueprint for a new romance trope: “toxic workplace age-gap yuri.”
For those unfamiliar with the term, “yuri” is a genre of Japanese media about romantic and intimate relationships between women, but the internet often uses it to refer to any media featuring romantic relationships or what they perceive to be romantic tension between women in general.
But what evidence does the internet have for their theory?
Well, as the saying goes, there is a fine line between love and hate, and no one does vicious haterism quite like these two co-workers (this is where the “toxic” part of the romance trope comes in).
First, there’s the nasty one-liners they throw at each other.
Then, there is a little bit of physical violence (again, this is a toxic workplace romance). After Deborah has an uncomfortable run-in with the head of the television network at a party, she finds Ava in the crowd, puts her arm around her, and then begins digging her nails into her skin.
And finally, there is the “you broke my heart” confession at the end of Episode 1, which sounds like a true moment of vulnerability between the two women, except, unfortunately, it’s not; it’s actually a power move from Deborah (very toxic of her).
The hate-love dynamic between the two women is so intense that some viewers are even claiming that the relationship between Deborah and Ava is the “greatest love story ever told in a comedy series.”
“Finally watched Hacks, and I can see why the lesbians are ignoring climate change,” one person wrote on X yesterday.
With an entire season ahead of them, Deborah and Ava shippers will be thrilled to know that it looks like their toxic workplace dynamic isn’t going away anytime soon.
