What Do Women Really Want? HBO Max’s ‘Hacks’ Has Some Ideas (and Nine Emmy Nominations)

Season 4 of Hacks blends sharp comedy with real questions about women’s lives and choices. The result resonated with audiences and Emmy voters alike.

Spoiler alert: This article discusses key plot points from Season 4 of Hacks.

Voting for the 2025 Emmy Awards began this week, and Season 4 of the award-winning series Hacks on Max is once again in contention—nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Lead Actress (Jean Smart), Outstanding Supporting Actress (Hannah Einbinder), Outstanding Guest Actress (Julianne Nicholson as “Dance Mom”), as well as several creative and technical categories.

At a time in our country when women’s identities, interests, dignity and autonomy are top of mind, recognition for Hacks is a bright spot. More than any other show on the air, the current season of Hacks asked, “What do women want?” It searches for—and ultimately provides—an answer: authenticity, voice and agency. It recognizes women’s intelligence, voice and delivers both entertainment and validation.

One of the show’s main story arcs is focused on attracting women viewers to the show-within-a-show, Late Night With Deborah Vance, the first late night show hosted by a woman.

Midway through the season, in “Clickable Face” (Episode 5), the talk show is successful, but not number one. It overperforms with male viewers, but the most sought-after demographic, women ages 25 to 45, do not like Deborah, and moms in particular are not watching. 

While Deborah (Jean Smart) says she is fine writing off women viewers (“Who cares about stressed out moms?” she asks), the network producing team establishes that attracting moms as viewers is important, if for no other reason than they make 80 percent of household purchasing decisions. 

For head writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) the challenge runs deeper: What can Late Night With Deborah Vance do to attract women and moms as loyal fans in ways that feel true to what women are searching for in entertainment? Do women want a sarcastic take on hard truths, jokes that invoke stereotypes, pure escapism or authenticity? 

In real life, a new survey data of TV and film streaming viewers released this summer by New America’s entertainment initiative, provides an answer: Women, moms and all parents want to see their lives reflected authentically on screen. They are drawn to stories and characters that center people navigating work, family and caregiving challenges, tackling workplace dynamics and providing solutions-oriented stories.

As one younger millennial woman told researchers, “I’d be interested in seeing characters navigate work-life balance struggles, like managing parenting while meeting job demands, and financial stress within families, such as budgeting, job loss, or career changes: real, relatable challenges many face daily.”

Realism and relatability are more appealing than escapism to the scientific sample of viewers in this survey, and shows with work, family and care themes have social impact: 87 percent of viewers say that a show with a work, family, or care theme helped them feel seen, offered them an understanding of others, or encouraged them to take action. 

Alas, at first, the Hacks characters take a different approach. Ava—who Deborah accuses of wanting to make Late Night With Deborah Vance too highbrow—advocates for sarcasm. She wants Deborah to tell a joke about Sweden increasing its parental leave to 500 days, because “who cares more about parental leave than moms?” 

Deborah rejects the Sweden joke as “too depressing” (ostensibly because American parents have zero guaranteed days of paid parental leave) and instead pivots to stereotypes and tropes. She invokes a tired joke about “wine o’clock” and “wine moms”—and completely flubs it. The show draws more viewers with a multi-episode arc featuring a TikTok influencer known as “Dance Mom” (Outstanding Guest Actress nominee, Julianne Nicholson) but this programming choice still doesn’t catapult the show to number one. 

Deborah might as well have gone with the parental leave joke, as there’s good reason to believe it would be a hit: More than eight in 10 viewers surveyed—a cross-section of Democrats, Independents and Republicans—agreed that the economy, families and communities would be more stable if the country offered national policies like national paid leave, childcare and elder care. 

The second half of the season gets to the heart of the question, answering what women want by delivering relatable stories about the show’s main characters and Late Night With Deborah Vance’s viewers.

It explores how Ava and Deborah, Ava’s mother Nina (Jane Adams) and Deborah’s daughter DJ (Kaitlin Olson) crave authenticity, care and understanding when grappling with hard truths about the challenges of work and parenting, the baggage we bring to parent-child relationships, and the validity of a decision not to become a parent at all. Viewers see the characters ultimately finding authenticity in their relationships and when using their voices to speak truth to power.

At long last, Deborah Vance’s late-night show does achieve #1 status, but only when it treats viewers as participants in its success. Deborah and Ava—not the corporate marketing team associated with the show—propose a plan to tease the show’s content online in the hours that lead up to its late-night air time and include guests who are fresh to viewers. 

But Deborah and Ava don’t get an easy victory lap. When the network makes demands that would compromise the integrity of the show, Deborah uses her seniority and gravitas to defend her younger colleague and to impugn the corporate structure of media that puts profits first—demonstrating another element that viewers in our research said they want to see: people standing up for others in their workplaces. 

The evolution of Deborah’s character in Season 4—from Ava’s adversary, ready to please network brass at all costs; to achieve late-night success, to Ava’s Thelma and Louise-like partner standing against corporate greed with sisterhood at the core—is borne of self-reflection about her prior shortcomings at motherhood, mentorship and leadership in an industry that has never taken her as seriously as she deserved. 

Hacks’ Season 4 ending isn’t necessarily a happy one, but it is hopeful. Viewers responded to the finale by making Hacks the streaming platform’s most-watched show the week the episode aired, and the Television Academy has honored the show with nine total Emmy nominations.

For creatives and studio executives seeking to attract new and more diverse audiences in a time where cultural divisions mean a temptation to dumb down and simplify programming, the lessons of Hacks are key: Treat women viewers with respect. Tell compelling stories that reflect their complex work experiences, relationships and other lived realities. And, most of all, understand that they are often seeking validation and understanding as a core components entertainment.