Jen Statsky’s collaborative comedy writing is sharpest when an argument about work becomes personal. We rate Hacks highly, though its generational shorthand can make two difficult women sound more predictable than they should.
Fi1m perspective
In Hacks (2021), a discussion about work becomes personal with uncomfortable ease. The writing by Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and others is particularly good at that shift. We laughed because the two women make a difficult job harder through the way they speak to each other. We rate the series highly, even when the writing makes too much of the women’s ages.
Her earlier writing credits include Parks and Recreation (2009), Broad City (2014) and The Good Place (2016). The move to co-creating and co-showrunning Hacks with Aniello and Downs gave her a more defining part in establishing a series. That remains a shared achievement, and assigning every good line to one writer would miss how television comedy gets made. What matters here is how well the writing catches the difficulty of working together without taking everything personally.
Statsky’s interest in dialogue as a private language of jokes finds a useful home in this partnership between women at different career stages. A joke can establish familiarity and cause offence in the same exchange. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder are excellent together, giving those exchanges a reason to matter beyond who gets the better line. Einbinder, especially, gives Ava more life than the scripts always allow her.
The weakness comes when age does too much of the writers’ work. Some exchanges make the disagreement predictable before either woman has finished speaking, and Ava occasionally seems to exist to illustrate a complaint about younger people. We want her to have a less obvious objection, rather than another opportunity to represent her generation. The sharper writing lets a conversation become personal without making either participant so easy to anticipate.
Her directing credit on Hacks gives us less to judge than her writing and producing. We would not infer a distinct visual style from her single episode as director. Her work with Aniello and Downs gives us a stronger reason to follow her than any claim to individual authorship. Start with Hacks for Smart and Einbinder together, and allow for the occasional argument that announces itself too early.
Biography
Jen Statsky is an American television writer and producer. She was born on 19 November 1985 in Milton, Massachusetts.
She has written for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Parks and Recreation (2009), Broad City (2014), The Good Place (2016) and Forever (2018). She is co-creator and co-showrunner of the series Hacks (2021), on which she has also written episodes and directed one.
Statsky has received three Primetime Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and multiple Writers Guild of America Awards.
