HBO Max's Hacks recently wrapped up its fifth season, but not before receiving more than 20 Emmy nominations. The dark comedy's final season comes in the aftermath of mistaken and unflattering news reports that comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) has passed away, leading her and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) to return to Las Vegas with more determination than ever.
Carlos Rafael Rivera and David Stal are nominated for Emmys in the Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics category, specifically for their work on “Mis Figuritas.” The duo's responsibilities for the series included shaping the show’s musical language across the score and, when the story called for it, original songs.
"We collaborate on both, and David also serves as scoring mixer, preparing and delivering the score for the final dub," Rivera explains. "The assignment can be as small as a :05 transition or as large as a fully-produced song or orchestral set piece. The challenge is knowing how much the scene actually needs."
The comedy on Hacks is already very precise, so the music rarely needs to underline the joke. Instead, the composers are listening for what the characters are not saying.
"When Ava and Deborah try to regain the rights to 'Who’s Making Dinner,' - Deborah’s old hit show - we get out of the way and allow the writing and performances to do most of the work, adding only a simple drum groove and a few chords," they share. "Elsewhere, the music has to create sustained tension. When Deborah asks Jimmy to stop the livestream so she can speak candidly to the audience, the percussion builds beneath her anger and Jimmy’s growing panic without getting in the way of either performance."
The team's Emmy-nominated song, “Mis Figuritas," presented a different sort of challenge. The creators wanted the situation to be funny, but the song itself needed to feel completely legitimate - something Deborah believed could win her a Grammy. The comedy had to come from the song's absolute sincerity, not from making the music itself a joke.
Jean Smart performs the song entirely in Spanish and commits to it completely. Stylistically, the composers made sure it belonged in the intended Grammy category, and wrote a contemporary ranchera, working with Grammy-winning producer Áureo Baqueiro to ensure it was authentic and respectful of the category.
The lyrical inspiration for “Mis Figuritas” came from Deborah Vance’s obsessive salt-and-pepper shaker collection, a running part of the show that, beneath the comedy, reveals something unexpectedly vulnerable about her.
The composers use Mac-based rigs that are centered on Logic Pro, with Native Instruments and other sample libraries available for composing, arranging and creating detailed mockups. This season, they also recorded guitar, bass, trumpet and vocals in their own studios.
David Stal’s setup includes a Neve 1073 preamp, a Fender Telecaster, a Tokai Hard Puncher bass and an assortment of microphones. Carlos Rafael Rivera records through a Universal Audio Apollo Twin X, using Fender and Gibson guitars and an MXL 770 microphone that has remained in his setup for 12 years. For the Emmy-nominated episode “The Garden,” as well as the series finale, the cues eventually outgrew what samples could provide. Instead, they recorded the orchestra at the historic Eastwood Scoring Stage on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.
Both point to Deborah’s Central Park performance in “The Garden” as a musical highlight, as the song grew from a cue originally written in Season 2 for her motivational speech at a UFC event.
"For the Central Park sequence, we extended and reshaped it as Deborah moved toward the stage," the composers recall. "The showrunners kept asking for more until we realized that the answer was not more samples from our computers, but rather the expressivity that can only come from real musicians. Recording a full orchestra allowed us to build toward the largest statement of Deborah’s theme in the series."
In the final mix, the orchestra had to retain its power while leaving room for Jean’s voice, the crowd and the laughter. The cue needed to feel enormous without making the scene feel heavy. They were able to take a musical idea that had followed Deborah for several seasons and arrive with her at the biggest moment of her career.