Faildaughter

Coordinate term: failson

Its project, maybe, is working out what happens when the world says you must strive hard for professional and personal success above all, but offers only the conditions to become a faildaughter. It offers a look at the kind of feminism that is being developed by young women for whom the promise of feminism doesn't seem to be working out — faildaughters, not girl bosses.

Meritocracy is a cruel joke. The real scandal isn't all the unethical shenanigans rich parents will engage in to keep their failsons and faildaughters from tumbling down the socioeconomic ladder — it's that we use adolescents' test scores to ration economic security in the first place.

Keeping failsons and faildaughters like that afloat as they bounce inevitably from project to project, collecting first art, then horses, then launching a pine nut milk startup, whatever—well, it's bound to add up.

The unsung scene-stealer of Hacks is Kaitlin Olson, who plays DJ, Deborah's lovably moronic faildaughter.

With two episodes left, the dice seem loaded for the second outcome: Failsons and a faildaughter lose their company and, oops, bring down the American republic along the way.