The Emmy-winning Max comedy series Hacks recently concluded its third season. As the series evolves, the comedic gifts of its stars Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder become all the more apparent. The same is true for creators and showrunners Jen Statsky, Lucia Aniello, and Paul W. Downs. Emmy-winner Statsky’s previous credits include many beloved comedies like The Good Place, Parks and Recreation, and Broad City.
For her Treat, Statsky points to the 1970 pilot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show as the best of the best, saying it set up the rest of the show’s dynamic and longevity. She shares two scenes in particular from the show — one purely comedic, and one with moments of real feeling — that became a guiding influence when she and her team created Hacks. Statsky highlights the chance to evoke deep emotions within the confines of a 30-minute container — while it may sound small, it can hold a tremendous amount of emotion, heart, and feeling.
More: Writer Jen Statsky shares the secrets to her Hacks comedy success (The Treatment, 2024)
This segment has been edited and condensed for clarity.
[The Mary Tyler Moore Show] pilot episode was tremendously influential to me in becoming a TV comedy writer because that pilot episode, for my money, is the greatest TV comedy pilot ever made. One reason that it's so good is that the characters are so incredibly well drawn and you instantly feel like you know them. Mary Tyler Moore's character, and Rhoda, and Lou Grant … you just get it immediately.
There's a scene, a very famous scene, of course, where Lou Grant interviews Mary for the job at the news station. It's an incredible comedy scene that also really reveals who these characters are.
And it was very influential to me many years later when we were writing the pilot for Hacks, there was an interview scene between Deborah and Ava. And I thought a lot about that interview scene in The Mary Tyler Moore Show because it is this gold standard of two characters meeting and their dynamic being so clear, and so funny and so instantly addictive. You just watch it, and the reason the pilot works so well is you just want to see Mary and Lou do that for 500 more episodes.
But there's another moment that also made me realize that I wanted to write half-hour sitcoms. [It’s] a scene towards the end when Mary has broken up with her boyfriend at the time because (partially) we get the sense that he hasn't treated her very well, and he hasn't wanted to marry her. He's not as serious as perhaps he should be at this stage in their relationship. He comes back to visit her and sees her in her new apartment.
I remember getting choked up at just this one line that's so well delivered by Mary Tyler Moore. What it made me realize was that a 30-minute container, while it sounds small, can contain a tremendous amount of emotion and heart and feeling. And you can make people laugh so hard in that space, but you can also really make them feel with something as small as two lines. Two lines between two characters can give big feeling and emotion.
That episode of television was, and is, the most influential thing to me in my career and kind of set the benchmark for what I wanted to do going forward.