There are one or two things out things week—like Steven Soderbergh’s The Christophers—that I have not yet had a chance to see (blame Moses and Jesus, destroyers of April weekends) but I can at least confidently recommend the last season of a lauded series and tentatively point you toward the directorial debut of Charles Xavier himself. Happy viewing!

Hacks (HBO Max) 

The typical season of this awards bedecked comedy, from the husband and wife duo Paul Downs and Lucia Ainello (recently kinda parodied on The Comeback maybe?) and married-to-someone-else Jen Statsky, involves vain and demanding mega-comedian Deborah (Jean Smart) having some kind of episode-spanning clash with her assistant/frenemy/sapphic complement Ava (Hannah Einbinder). But for the final season, Hacks keeps the two mostly in amicable cahoots, finally accepting their codependence and choosing to tackle career hurdles together. It’s a nice reprieve, but also adds some perhaps only semi-intentional suspense: I kept anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop. But if it ever does, it lands with the lightest of thuds. 

Perhaps Deborah and Ava couldn’t be at odds for this final run of episodes, because a much larger villainy looms over them. Tony Goldwyn’s smoothly nefarious studio executive has used legal maneuvers to bar Deborah from performing in any manner, preventing her from speaking out about her dramatic departure from her long-coveted late night hosting gig—and about the pair’s brief affair. The season tracks Deborah’s suffering under those constraints as she plans a big, maybe impossible comeback: she wants to sell out Madison Square Garden, which very few comedians in history ever have. 

And thus the season rollicks along, knocked around by setbacks, propelled forward by dumb or miraculous luck. The season is bouncy, often sweet, occasionally silly enough to push it toward the showbiz absurdism of 30 Rock. Those tonal veers have always been a hallmark of the show; I’ve never been quite sure how funny I think it is, or what kind of funny it’s even trying to be. Hacks has always wiggled around somewhere in between high farce and workplace dramedy, which sometimes seems a little greedy, like the creators are desperately trying to check as many stylistic boxes as they can rather than focusing on one definable modus operandi. 

The show’s cynical edge can clang against its glossy, optimistic fantasy, making the show appear a little naive to itself. At times, one version of Hacks does something that the other version of Hacks would make fun of. That’s never more glaring than in Deborah’s comedy, which is kind of supposed to be, y’know, hacky, but is also meant to be bold and groundbreaking, I think? The series is coy about what we’re meant to think about the work at its center, which can be a bit frustrating. The final season tests patience in exactly that way, swinging wildly from corny sentiment and yuk yuk jokes on one side to shrewder, more offbeat comedy and pathos on the other. 

But, like all of Hacks before it, the fifth season is also blissfully entertaining, a fun, dishy, cameo-stuffed parade of single-episode sitcom setups, each taking us on a little trip somewhere interesting. There’s a sexually charged Montecito weekend featuring Cherry Jones and Leslie Bibb (an episode that will delight some Deborah-Ava shippers and enrage others). There’s a loony reality-competition episode which proves a grand send-off for Emmy nominated recurring player Kaitlin Olson, who has become a network TV star. We journey to New York, have a dalliance with a Harry Styles-ish pop star, and finally are brought to a conclusion that acknowledges the finality of all things—friendship, career, life itself—with a comma rather than a period. 

Praising Smart’s performance is coals to Newcastle at this point, but she is sly and limber as ever. Paul Downs and Meg Stalter, perhaps overly relied on as mere slapstick sideshow in past seasons, lace their antics with something more meaningful this time around. The comedian Robby Hoffman is given more to do and proves a welcome addition to Deborah’s troupe of lackeys. Meanwhile, longtime guest player Lauren Weedman, as the perhaps insane mayor of Las Vegas, gets a few showcase scenes to remind us of her specific gifts. 

The performance I’ve become most invested in, though, is Einbinder’s, an evolving piece of work that has been satisfyingly fleshed out over the years. In these closing episodes, Einbinder deftly handles the drastic tonal shifts; she expertly lands little sideways jokes and, in the finale episode, brings the series to its most supple emotional clarity. She has become a really fine actor, her naturalism providing crucial ballast for the more high-comedy stuff surrounding her. I will miss Jean Smart, of course, but for me Einbinder’s progression was the true thrill of the series. I can’t wait to see her in Jane Schoenbrun’s upcoming film; I suspect Einbinder on her way to a flourishing career that, like Hacks at its best, balances pert comedy with the heavier stuff of life. It probably was time for her to finally leave Las Vegas, and she does so in stirring fashion. 

California Schemin’ (in limited theaters April 10)

James McAvoy’s directorial debut premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September, one of many smaller films at that massive event that come and go mostly unremarked upon. I can see why: it’s by no means a perfect film, often succumbing to the cliché pitfalls of its genre (music biopic) and not always persuasive in mapping the psychology of the two hustling heroes at its center. 

But there is enough there to at least mildly recommend it. Compared to other actor-turned-director fiascos that have stunk up Toronto—Chris Pine’s Poolman comes horribly to mind—California Schemin’ is a confident, worthy first feature. McAvoy proves especially adept at filming concert scenes, in which two Scottish lads and aspiring rappers pretend to be Americans from a hard scrabble background more suited to the tastes of hip-hop fans of the early 2000s. We can feel the kinetic excitement of new talent discovered, all compromised by the lie undergirding their overnight success. 

It’s an interesting true story, one occupying a more innocent time of Total Request Live and a far simpler internet. Sure, a lot of the trappings now seem pretty goofy, but McAvoy also fondly remembers them just as anyone of our age cohort would. Nostalgia commingles with stress and dread as Gavin and Billy from Dundee sell record executives on a cynical fantasy, one made believable by the contemporaneous dominance of Eminem. It’s very much the “He’s white??” bit from Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis: suits stumbling all over themselves to find a rap group that is edgy but, y’know, accessible for one reason they don’t want to speak aloud. 

I do wish the film further explored that racial dynamic, though, and that the live-wire young actor Séamus McLean Ross, who plays the more determined and reckless scammer of the duo, was directed toward a more emotionally coherent performance. Still, there’s a compelling energy to California Schemin’, and I respect that McAvoy made his first foray behind the camera so modestly, and without any auteurish self-referencing (outside of the whole, y’know, being Scottish thing). It’s such a relief that someone as ugly as James McAvoy has finally found his place in the film industry. I was beginning to worry about him.