The Cube
Season 5
Episode 8
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
It’s starting to feel like we’re killing time until Deborah can get to Madison Square Garden.
Photo: HBO Max
In the Hacks-verse, there must be balance, so while Deborah and Ava are ascendant, Jimmy, Kayla, and Randi find themselves hitting a heartbreaking low. The result is an episode that is a little tonally zig-zaggy: half hijinks-of-the-week, half big-emotional-swing.
Now that she’s got her outfit down, Deborah has moved on to planning her grand entrance to MSG, which involves rising from a large sequin coffin, carried out by Knicks dancers (they MUST be short brunettes) in a custom Schiaparelli ball-gag and straitjacket. (Accidentally interesting moment to make a Schiaparelli reference!) Amanda arrives to remind everyone that it doesn’t really matter if Deborah is safe during her wild stunt — foreshadowing! — if she doesn’t have an audience. Even though the Madison Square standard is a press conference, Deborah can’t appear publicly. Time to find a workaround! (Loved the joke about Billy Joel promoting his show by taking his boat around Manhattan: “Turns out you can get pulled over in the sea.”)
I thought her first idea was very clever — a Deborah drag queen played by Katya Zamolodchikova — but it goes to pieces when the performer is too Method to be modern. “I’m nineties Deborah. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to be a contemporary Deborah.” I looooved when she blurted out “if I’m not you, then WHY am I on the Atkins diet?!” Things escalate to Deborah on Deborah violence, and alas, the only recourse left is… magic :(.
I will confess that at first my reaction to this was okay enough with the magic, we have squeezed all the juice out of that joke, can we please move on? But they sort of won me back when Ava’s card was in the Gatorade at the end. But I am getting ahead of myself! Let’s meet the Amazing Steven (kind of an underwhelming name for a magician… the Amazing Steven? No offense). He is going to pick Deborah out of the audience as a random volunteer, hoist her up 100 feet in the air in his giant glass cube, where she will remain for an hour and then disappear and then her hologram will appear at the Bellagio fountain, wearing a T-shirt with a QR code for a link that goes live at midnight, and if just reading that sentence made you think Jesus Christ that sounds a little involved, you and I are on the SAME page. How are we pulling off a Prestige without Christopher Nolan? Would you believe that it does not, in fact, work? For no sooner is Deborah, who gets claustrophobic in condos, lifted skyward by the crane holding the Cube, than the power goes out, trapping her aloft.
Speaking of darkness: Kayla, Jimmy, and Randi are packing up the offices they worked so hard to earn. They simply can’t afford it; they don’t even have Lassie’s fees, because those were garnished by her victims… woof (sorry). It’s time to cut frivolous expenses, including the $5,000/month (!!!!) pickleball membership they got to get close to Winnie (RIP). Both Kayla and Jimmy take their Hannah Montana-style farewell looks at the office (an homage to their Hannah Montana reference from two episodes ago??). For some reason, Kayla is carrying a single roller skate. Jimmy then struggles mightily to cancel the pickleball account. And it is hard to cancel a gym membership, but I would love to know if any of you know about the bougie obstacle course presented here, which requires endorsements and a passport renewal, which did not make me laugh and only stressed me out! And speaking of stress: The gang has barely assembled at their new home office (Jimmy’s kitchen) before bad news arrives: Kayla’s dad is suing them for $30 million because of the whole Bruno Fox manslaughter situation.
I do feel like this might have hit harder if it came earlier in the season. I found this arc to be a bit rushed, and we could’ve had it as a parallel to the Bob/Deborah situation this whole time. We already know Kayla’s dad is a one-note asshole, as are all his colleagues and underlings, so it’s no surprise that he would happily destroy his daughter through whatever means are most expedient, either by suing her or by undermining her hard-won independence by absorbing her agency into Latitude, allegedly for the crime of “embarrassing” him. Kayla is adamant that they stick it out, but Jimmy is a pragmatist: They really have no other options.
Let’s leave behind our figuratively-trapped characters and visit the literally-trapped one: Deborah is so high that even the fire department ladder can’t reach her. And even if they could, she is not injured and therefore is not a priority. Ava — who, sidebar, is finally in a really good outfit — soothes her boss via walkie-talkie (“You’re looking skinny though, up there!”). As people are wont to do in a crisis, Deborah starts making grand promises, such as an actual vacation after MSG; she gets desperate and pees in her shoe (I guess it’s too dark for anyone to see her do that?!). Is this karma for those Baby Jessica jokes, or is this climate change? No way to ever know for sure!
I am sorry to say that this plotline started to drag for me. We know Deborah will not die in the Cube! The episode just treads water until she is set free, as Deborah and Ava have yet another emotionally vulnerable moment where they bond over being crazy for their work. Just feels a little like… yeah, we know! It’s very final-season-filler.
Fortunately, things pick up with the arrival of one of my Hacks faves: Mayor Jo! Deborah realizes that she can get that sweet, sweet earned media if people think she’s in danger. Thus, swarms of news cameras are summoned along with Mayor Jo, who reports to the people that if Deborah is stuck in the Cube until morning, then the sun would sizzle her alive — so Jo is prepared (here she waves her pink camo gun around) to shoot Deborah before she hits the ground. I love her!!!
In lipstick, Deborah frantically writes on the wall of the Cube: HELP ME [long pause] SELL TIX! Deborah does her happy dance as the media sells her show. (Mayor Jo’s “I’m fairly certain that’s a Mexican clown dance” took me OUT.)
Meanwhile, Jimmy and Kayla are also struggling with a lack-of-power situation, both symbolically (they are helpless in the face of Kayla’s dad’s assault on their autonomy) and actually (Kayla forgot to charge her battery-powered car). Jimmy’s sense of purpose as an agent is almost too earnest to bear, but I was moved by Kayla’s explanation for why she got into the business in the first place: Just to hang out with Jimmy. Together, they agree to do what’s best for their talent and let Kayla’s dad win this round. By the end of the episode, Jimmy will be back in the mailroom, despite also technically still being Ava’s manager.
They do eventually make it to the Cube; as they arrive, the power comes back on, and as the sun rises over the Sphere, Deborah, wrapped in her tinfoil blanket like a little burrito, gets a call from Amanda: She sold out Madison Square Garden in TEN MINUTES. Wait, really? That feels… improbable to me. Even in the wish-fulfillment home-stretch of the season. Will Deborah fall flat on her face in front of an audience of, like, bots? (I did a little recon and some fun facts for context: As of 2024, the fastest seller-outer of MSG to date was Justin Bieber, whose two 2012 shows sold out in thirty seconds; according to MSG via Billboard, only 15 comedians have ever sold out the venue.)
No one in the show shares my suspicions. Maybe I’m cynical and paranoid! Instead, Amanda muses on this success: “I guess the only thing that sells better than sex is watching a multimillionaire almost die.” Deborah refuses a Gatorade despite allegedly needing electrolytes; she is off sugar, so she can be bikini-ready for the vacation she heat-of-the-moment promised Ava they would take!
I do like the choice of ending the episode not on that triumph but on Jimmy’s defeat. Although I doubt the show will let him stay that down for too long, this close to the end, I appreciate the verisimilitude of the loss, even though Deborah was able to pull a proverbial rabbit out of a hat. Sorry, the magic is getting to me, too!
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