At the core of Valerie Cherish’s entire being is a persistence to never give up. The terminally effervescent actress has never accepted what the world gives her as the ceiling. She aims higher, goes bigger and wants to be better — even when everyone else around her happily settles for mediocrity. So the idea of any sort of finality in her world is, frankly, antithetical to who she is.
And yet, HBO seems adamant to suggest that the third season of her undying star vehicle, “The Comeback,” will be its last. Thankfully, the show and its driving forces, co-creators/writers Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, are very aware of the eternal durability of their crimson-haired hero. In the eight-episode new season, which arrives nearly 12 years after an equally unexpected sophomore run, Valerie (Kudrow) stands valiantly on the bow of yet another sea change in the industry. The network behind her original resurrection series “Room and Bored,” now rebranded as NuNet, brings her a sitcom that is all hers. She is the star, the selling point and, for the first time, an executive producer — a title she reluctantly shares with her ego-driven manager, Billy (Dan Bucatinsky).
But there is a catch. Valerie’s chipper personality and thousand-watt smile — not to mention, the industry-standard belief that she is an aloof actor that can be easily manipulated — are weaponized by the network’s president (guest star Andrew Scott). The new show, “How’s That?,” is written by AI, with two beaten-down writers (Abby Jacobson and John Early) standing in as the human faces for what the network is all but saying is a dying artform. With Valerie’s Emmy-winning energy at the helm, they hope the series can ease audiences into the idea of a digitally written project and prove to the industry that automation is not the enemy.
AI is a timely and sticky topic to wade into any series, but Valerie Cherish stumbling into it just feels disastrously right.
Ever the professional, she swallows her hesitations, signs an NDA to not talk about the digital pen behind the scripts and forges ahead as any good No. 1 on the call sheet would — knowing her compliance helps keep hundreds of people employed. But after weathering the cruel prism of reality TV and the double-edged sword of getting everything you’ve ever wanted (aka the Emmy she won at the end of Season 2), Valerie is not the same person she was when mousy-but-defiant documentarian Jane (Laura Silverman) first started capturing her fight to reclaim her “it” status in 2005. Twenty years later, Valerie knows the snake pit she works in, and uses her own image and reputation to wield more power than even she realizes –– to varying degrees of success.
It’s why “The Comeback” works astoundingly well for a third time. Valerie is not a character that has let the industry use her and spit her out without taking setbacks on the chin. She’s learned, she’s grown and she’s survived when so many talents, trends and tired ideas haven’t. This is evident in an early scene, when Scott’s character tells Valerie that she knows more about sitcoms than he, the network or really anyone else still standing. For Valerie, it is an empowering if not liberating sentiment, even if it is said to placate her. But it is also stunning to recognize, after decades of hustling, that she is now a torch bearer for her industry –– left to fuel the flame or snuff it out when she leaves.
Kudrow and King relish giving Valerie the keys to a wobbly kingdom in this final chapter. With each of their decade-later checkins, they have adapted their biting satire on show business and the foolhardy facade that is stardom for the moment. For better or worse, their hero is now the institutional knowledge that she once felt privileged to stand in the spotlight of. It gives Season 3 new insight into the rooms her cameras didn’t previously see, and an earned perspective shift that reflects how far she has come.
For Season 3, Kudrow outdoes herself as the keeper of Valerie’s legend. While the frantic, wide-eyed person is still front and center, she also carries a swagger — for lack of a classier term — that comes from her persistence and belief that any humiliation intended to harm her can’t do so without her consent. What some have often read as desperation has evolved into a confidence, sometimes blindly so, in knowing she does have a place in this industry. Kudrow is a showstopper as Valerie, as she has always been. But there’s something about the way she wears Valerie’s ascendancy, almost like tailor armor into the battle for respect. She is just extraordinary in this role, and this victory lap only solidifies Valerie is one of the greatest pieces of full-bodied comedy creation in TV history.
She also gets to tune Valerie into the times, as the series amusingly puts her in the recognizable media rotation that every actor of their moment tends to make. Valerie gets a vanity podcast called “Cherish the Time,” appears on “The Traitors” alongside Trixie Mattel and even makes a sweaty stop on “Hot Ones.” One can only hope HBO is holding back more footage from the latter two stops because their fleeting appearances only tease the comedic potential.
All the while, Jane remains the somber anchor that grounds Valerie from lifting too far from reality. Forever diametrically opposed yet supportive, Valerie’s exuberance can’t exist without Jane’s practicality. They are the Joy and Sadness combo from “Inside Out,” bound together through the trial by fire that is life in Hollywood. To great effect, Silverman is more present than ever in Season 3, thanks to the show breaking its own format. After Season 2 ended with Valerie fleeing the grainy multi-cam reality TV box imposed by the show’s conceit, the new season lets her and her dutiful husband Mark (Damian Young) — and by extension, the ever-present Jane — exist in a true single-camera world at times. It deepens the Valerie we get to see. At times, that freedom also muddies up the tone more than expected, even though the series has always had a way with its emotions.
But to the bitter end, “The Comeback” still makes Valerie sweat for her success. This season, it poses some big questions about AI’s infiltration of Hollywood. How effectively the series comments on that looming cloud with comedy and candor — and some pretty famous faces — is a conversation for another day, once the season concludes. But “The Comeback” being a vessel for that conversation, period, is surreal. It lets the series leave behind what may be its strongest message to date: AI could never make Valerie Cherish.
Armed with Kudrow and King’s cutting wit, and the former’s brilliant performance, this complicated, contradictory character exits stage left leaving that irrefutable truth as a parting gift.
“The Comeback” premieres Sunday on HBO and HBO Max.