TV Academy Voters, Take Note! Kaitlin Olson of ‘Hacks’ Is a Mixed Bag of Funny and Ferocious 

It takes a very special acting skill to match Jean Smart’s snarkiness as Deborah Vance on “Hacks” — and Kaitlin Olson is just that kind of talent. She vividly exposes the connective tissue between Olson’s D.J. and her comic mom’s complicated parenting. She’s a regular chip off the ol’ damaged, humorously sarcastic, cynical block.

Season 3, episode 3 of the Max comedy was Olson’s time to shine, and that she did. It’s not like she hasn’t previously flaunted her power to ride that fine line between playing real, escalating emotion and shamelessly stealing scenes. She has repeatedly proven she’s got the chops. That’s the magic spell that Olson casts.

The “Hacks” episode, “The Roast of Deborah Vance,” which landed Olson a guest acting Emmy nom, starts off calmly with Deborah asking D.J. to join the dais of people poking fun of the comedian at a big Vegas event. D.J. thinks it over and negotiates a deal: She will roast Deborah if Deborah attends one of D.J.’s Narcotics Anonymous meetings. She agrees. Once at the gathering, Deborah starts off with a sweet tribute, applauding D.J. for five years of sobriety — but then her speech quickly goes south when the stand-up realizes she has an attentive audience and starts cracking jokes. Afterwards, D.J. lays into her mother.

Are you fucking kidding me? All you had to do is focus on me for a few minutes,” she snaps. And then she throws a curve ball, announcing she is pregnant. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anybody because of the anatomy scan because, technically … it’s a geriatric pregnancy.” Immediately assuming Deborah has a joke on the tip of her tongue, D.J. adds, shaking her finger, “Don’t you dare say a goddamn word!”

Days later, when D.J. takes the podium at the roast, she has index cards in hand with prepared jokes. Without looking up, she awkwardly reads one joke, throwing away the catch phrase at the end: “What a cunt.” The audience goes nuts. D.J. looks up. She likes that reaction. She reads each joke, each building with more confidence than the previous and each ending with the phrase, “What a cunt!” Amazingly, Olson delivers those three little words four times, each utterance different than the last. Cheers and standing ovation!

At the roast afterparty, D.J. is still riding the high of that applause. When Deborah approaches her with praise, D.J. realizes for the first time that she understands her mother. “That was amazing,” she says. “I finally get it — why comedy was always the most important thing to you. I spent my whole life thinking you were a narcissist but turns out you’re actually an addict like me. You’re addicted to getting laughs … I can go to group to stay sober, but you can’t — your addiction is the group. There’s no hope for you.”

This is not Olson’s first rodeo; she has perfected the art of comedy over several decades. But her work on “Hacks” takes her skill set to another level. She has such command and control over every syllable. She knows the nuances of rhythm and tone and volume. This lady is no hack.

Series creator Paul W. Downs tells of one of Olson’s first days on set with Smart, before they had been introduced: “Jean would do a little scene with Kaitlyn and exit, and then Kaitlyn continued the scene and Jean would run around the set to get behind us and watch. That is not something that she does a lot.” Smart sees something special in Olson; TV Academy, isn’t about time you did too?