If Tonight’s ‘Hacks’ Doesn’t Win Kaitlin Olson An Emmy, Then It’s Time to Start Spitting
In the first of the two Kaitlin Olson made such a strong case for Emmy gold that her fans will be huffing silver paint if her trophy case doesn’t fill up this September.
Through four seasons of the critically adored HBO series about hilarious yet damaged women taking what’s theirs in show business, Olson has shown a preternatural ability to balance pathos with pure comedy in her performance as Deborah “DJ” Vance Jr., the troubled only child of a famous and funny mother. After spending her formative years in green rooms across the country snorting cocaine when she should have been attending middle school, DJ entered the world of Hacks in Season One as a resentful, insecure and downright radioactive presence in Deborah Vance’s complicated personal and commercial ecosystem.
Flash forward to tonight’s Season Four episode “D’Christening,” and Olson’s Hacks character has blossomed into a loving mother, a devoted wife, a savvy businesswoman and a eucharistic minister. And, tonight, as the christening of DJ’s son went down with quite a hitch, Olson captured the heartbreaking complexity of her character’s fraught relationship with her selfish, irresponsible, ruthless and loving mother as she delivered a monologue that even sured her performance in last season’s “The Roast of Deborah Vance,” a turn that earned the TV superstar a nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in A Comedy Series at the 2024 Emmy Awards.
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So, when the Television Academy casts their votes for this year’s Emmys, I have just three little words to describe anyone who doesn’t have Kaitlin Olson at the top of their ballot.
In “D’Christening,” Deborah and DJ’s latest public skirmish is over the younger Vance’s decision to have her infant son baptized, as her MMA-fighter husband Aidan comes from a Catholic family and the Papists are fantastic patrons of her jewelry business. Thanks to her long career of iconoclastic comedy, Deborah Vance has an acrimonious relationship with the religious organization, and she makes sure to litter the day of her grandson’s christening with as many child molestation jokes as she could sneak in.
Ava, meanwhile, has to come to with her new obligation to DJ as she accepts the honor of becoming the godmother of DJ’s son, a responsibility that drives Ava to panic in a church-side smoke session with Marcus. A stoned Ava stumbles back into the baptism after DJ and Deborah’s conflict culminates in them accidentally drenching the priest in communion wine, and she tells DJ that she isn’t fit to be the backup guardian for the baby of the hour. DJ assuages Ava’s concerns by telling her that, in the event of her and her husband’s untimely demise, their son will go to Aidan’s family.
Then, in a teary monologue that brought together four seasons of character and relationship development, DJ explained to Ava that she wants her son to see his famous, narcissistic and complicated grandmother for all the good qualities that Ava brings out of her boss, as DJ doesn’t want the decades of her troubled mother-daughter relationship to poison her child’s sense of family.
In one scene, Olson touched on a deep truth about family and parenthood in the face of trauma and a lifetime of hurt feelings. A mother of two herself, Olson’s expression of DJ’s desperate desire for hope and healing as she starts her own family comes from a place of such tender honesty that her speech is as hard to watch without choking up as it was for Olson to deliver.
So take note, Television Academy — if “D’Christening” didn’t earn Olson your respect as well as your vote, come this year’s Emmy Awards, you’ll have to face the music:
