Fourth Wall Breach

I’ve just finished binge-watching this for the first time ever, after splurging, getting the HBO Max Prime add-on channel, and seeing it on there.

Not to brag, but…

…And it blew my mind.

The fact this is a three-season show, created by Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (writer of Sex and the City and 2 Broke Girls), with each season filmed 10-years apart from the previous one, makes The Comeback stand out even more. It’s a 20-year journey we’re a part of.

What I was expecting before I knew anything about it was a sitcom on par with Parks and Recreation or Modern Family (both of which I love), but this is more like a dramedy with many an emotional and dramatic scene.

Plus, Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish — wowee!

Valerie is the perfect, multi-layered character that could have easily been played as a caricature for cringe comedy. Instead, Valerie grows over the three-season arc considerably, running the adjective gamut of:

• Desperate for relevance
• Wildly self-unaware
• Emotionally exhausting and egotistical
• Oddly lovable
• Sincerely sweet and vulnerable
• Strong-willed and a force to be reckoned with, demonstrating a clear understanding of the industry she’s in

But from the first season, there are two main nouns that Valerie epitomises: a diva and a ‘has-been.’

She’s trying to get back in the biz by landing a new sitcom, while simultaneously starring in a reality TV series with a camera crew that follows her everywhere to document the comeback journey.

In general, Valerie is a great character and the reality TV-comeback concept is a brilliant way to explore modern marketing with AI… even before we get to the third season, which is specifically about AI use in television.

Why? Because The Comeback is about visibility and how badly people want to be seen, how industries exploit this desire, and how technology can play a key role in this.