“Hacks” reveals ruthlessness as the key ingredient in Hollywood success.

TFD – The Hacks Season 3 finale delivers a poignant reflection on Hollywood’s timeless pursuit of success. Deborah Vance’s late-night show ambitions bring to light the industry’s blend of narcissism and resilience, ensuring the series remains relevant and compelling.

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the May 30 debut of “Bulletproof,” the “Hacks” Season 3 finale.

The third season of “Hacks,” the Emmy-nominated Max comedy series, has in one respect felt strangely dated, with veteran comic Deborah Vance pursuing a late-night TV show as a capper to her career, at a time when those series have lost much luster from their heyday. However, the program also includes what seems to be a timeless lesson about Hollywood and going above and beyond to succeed.

After Deborah (Jean Smart) misled her writer/confidant Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and said that the network had stopped her from appointing Ava as the chief writer on her show, the finale made that very evident.

By coincidence, Ava met with Helen Hunt, the head of the network, who made it obvious that Deborah had the last say. Deborah later acknowledged as much, stating she didn’t want to take any chances that would cause her to lose her late-night opportunity to become famous.

She warned Ava, “You have to be selfish. This show needs to work and it has to be bulletproof. I’ve suffered far too much loss for it not to.

Despite Ava’s initial desire to resign due to Deborah’s deceit, the last scene saw a reversal of events as Ava used extortion to force Deborah to give her the post of chief writer. Deborah asks if Ava would be willing to employ that strategy to achieve her goals, to which Ava sharply replies, “I would. Would you not?

It remains to be seen what that implies for their tense partnership moving forward, but after enough highs and lows, they don’t appear to be able to part ways, good or bad.

But what “Hacks” has done a great job of capturing is the combination of narcissism and self-absorption that frequently seem like prerequisites to success in show business. In fact, the most recent season of the show somewhat mimics another late-night TV series called “The Larry Sanders Show,” whose late Garry Shandling played the titular host who had a lot of power but barely concealed his neuroses—descriptions that also applied to those around him.

The irony is that the late-night comedy industry evolved during a totally different period when Johnny Carson’s reputation as the industry’s comedic kingmaker still hung over it. “Larry Sanders” debuted in 1992 on HBO, while “Hacks” is available on its streaming service, Max. A few months after Carson’s last program, the show debuted, coinciding with the ongoing “late-night wars” that became well-known.

Even though celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert still carry a lot of weight and respect today, their audiences are becoming increasingly fragmented, and other late-night programs with stars like James Corden and Samantha Bee have vanished due to unfavorable economic conditions. The current hosts also have a collegiality that is very different from the well-known rivalry between David Letterman and Jay Leno—the two even teamed up during the writers’ strike.

Deborah might seem to be living in the past, but “Hacks” hasn’t, as shown by the show’s penultimate episode, which dealt with the fallout from the comic having to deal with old jokes that had resurfaced and hadn’t aged well. It was a situation akin to the one that made Kevin Hart decide not to host the Oscars.

But maybe it makes sense that “Hacks” would figure out a means to exist in the past, present, and, to the degree that these dynamics hold true, the future, following the Christmas episode of the show.