What the hell happened to "Hack"?

Cafe Society
1

I haven’t seen it for a while, but generally I’m pretty impressed with Hack.

Tonight’s episode, though… Suffering Christ!

It seemed like a very poor imitation of a Raymond Chandler story-- Cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue, bad lighting passed of as noirish, crappy uninspired jazz soundtrack… uggh.

This episode was unusual (apart from sucking so damned much) in that it’s not clear if the events were actually supposed to have happened. (Mike relates the story, about a femme fatale with a husband who has apparently hired a hit-man to do himself in, to one of his fares.)

Can this be written off as a gimmicky one-shot, and an elaborate joke based on the premise that, while O’Shansky kicks ass on the street, he’s a piss-poor storyteller, and that he’d just pulled it out of his butt to head off his fare, who’d launched into a tedious and whiny personal story with no more prompting than “What time does your train leave?”

Or is there a chance that it’s going to suck this much again if I tune in next week?

2

So this wasn’t a typical episode? Good to know.

A friend has been after me to watch this show. I’ve been reluctant, as she and I don’t generally like the same shows. But I dutifully turned it on tonight…and concluded that my friend must be clinically insane.

3

Ay chihuahua! Don’t judge Hack by that episode!

Usually, it’s a show that stands out for its well-developed characters and affecting writing.

(So you can imagine my hurt and confusion at whatever the hell that mess was.) :smiley:

4

All the Raymond Chandler shtick was intentional. In the first scene, when a fare jumps into his cab he puts down the book he was reading. It was a Raymond Chandler novel.

Jane Krakowski was hot, if a little too obvious. But the smoking (expected in the film noir genre, I guess) was a little off-puting to me.

5

I used to like the older version of Hack with the priest friend… and wasn’t it on Fridays too?

I also kinda liked the new hipper upgrade with the kid and olshansky moving, but it hasn’t hooked me to watch religiously. Hack is good, but sooner or later it’s gonna be off the air. It needs a better time slot to garner a bigger following, but alas, it won’t.

Good thing I didn’t watch this episode. It would’ve turned me off for good.

6

I thought Hack was renamed Nethack in the early 1990s. :wink:

7

Tune in next week, where we see Olshansky reaching for a road map and picking up a scroll of punishment instead. He spends the rest of the episode trying to find a way to get the boot off of his wheel…