Welcome to a new Wildcard Wednesday! This week, I’m studying and sharing picks for the best episodic samples of HBO’s The Comeback — specifically, the 13-episode first season that aired in 2005 and is now on DVD and MAX. The show stars Lisa Kudrow, along with Robert Michael Morris, Damian Young, Laura Silverman, Malin Akerman, Robert Bagnell, and Lance Barber.

Although The Comeback got a mixed reception upon its debut, it soon became something of a cult classic, boasting sophisticated levels of meta and a prescient look at the reality TV business that made it naturally conducive to a more favorable response upon its 2014 return, which I will discuss in a separate post. Comeback enthusiasts have often opined that the show was simply “ahead of its time” in 2005 – an expression intended to suggest that it existed prior to a shift in popular tastes that would have later been more welcoming. But while that is likely true, I think both seasons – right in the middle of two different decades – are reflective of their specific moments (like everything, they’re of their time) – and I believe The Comeback was always going to be a strange, niche enjoyment at first, given the complex structural conceits that inform its style and, of course, situation. Now, if you’ve never seen the show, I’ll explain it to you: Friends alum Lisa Kudrow plays Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom star who had one big hit in the early 1990s and is now looking to reignite her career by booking another sitcom, “Room And Bored” – which comes with a reality show about the process of her returning to TV that will also air on the same network. What we’re seeing, as HBO’s The Comeback, is “footage” for this reality show called “The Comeback” about a former sitcom star now appearing on a new sitcom. This, needless to say, is sophisticated – for 2005, yes, but any time – because there are layers of meta. We’re watching a former sitcom star (Kudrow) play a former sitcom star (Cherish) who’s now once again on a sitcom (“Room And Bored”) and also filming a reality show (“The Comeback”) about filming that sitcom… only we’re not actually watching that edited reality show, we’re watching raw footage. So, this isn’t just a typical single-cam comedy starring a person in showbiz playing a person in showbiz making a show (like Larry Sanders), nor is it the kind of reality TV-esque mockumentary evidenced by Arrested Development or The Office. It’s a single-camera sitcom starring a person in showbiz who’s playing a person in showbiz making a show about making a show, and we’re privy to the process – for she, and everyone else, break the fourth wall by acknowledging the cameras, the presence of which informs the situation as well. Got it?

This metatheatricality starts with the casting of former Friends star Lisa Kudrow. She’s not playing a same-name version of herself, as Larry David does on Curb or Kirstie Alley did on Fat Actress – the latter also arising, like The Comeback, inside a glut of 2004-2005 single-cams set in/around the entertainment industry with an “insider” perspective – but she is a former sitcom star playing a former sitcom star. That’s close to home. Although Kudrow is far more famous and successful than the C-list Cherish, the audience’s awareness of her own history adds a wink (heck, The Comeback title can also be seen in reference to Kudrow, the first “Friend” to come back to TV in a different role), and indeed, the new multi-cam on which her character, Valerie, is starring has elements of Friends within it, as it’s a hangout comedy about roommates. The show, “Room And Bored,” also seems to have elements of Three’s Company, and, according to co-creator Michael Patrick King, a proto-Friends sitcom that I’ve previously covered called Down The Shore. King, who developed and spearheaded The Comeback with Kudrow after he was inspired by a character she had created back in The Groundlings, also brings a lot of his own influences as well – both for her character and the fictitious “Room And Bored.” Best known as the guiding force of HBO’s mega-hit Sex And The City, an unconventional single-cam rom-com also about complicated women, King had notable experience on multi-cams, too: Murphy Brown, another sitcom about a multi-dimensional woman working in TV, and Cybill, in which its star also played a less successful version of herself – a middle-aged actress looking to retain her grip in the industry. So, King like Kudrow, knew his way around a multi-cam, and several of his credits gave him special exposure to both TV-about-TV and, crucially, emotional sitcom divas. In fact, more than just the star of Cybill, many speculate that Valerie Cherish, as written (and let’s note that The Comeback was tightly scripted), has some Shelley Long in her, with whom King worked on Good Advice, Long’s short-lived sitcom “comeback” following her failed movie career.

Together, Kudrow and King’s experiences yield one of the most blisteringly honest satires of life on a network multi-camera sitcom – directly inspired by real-life occurrences (such as the scene where Valerie sees her writer nemesis pretending to rape her, which was based on an incident from Friends). Cameo appearances by folks like James Burrows and Marilu Henner as themselves further suggest a greater degree of mimetic realism – enhancing the idea that we’re getting a privileged view into a specific world. Now, I can certainly understand how, in an era where so many shows were about showbiz, like Entourage and Unscripted and Extras, this would seem unoriginal, but, to me, The Comeback justifies its value by being superior at how it depicts, specifically, its backstage antics — with more credibility and a fuller sense of situation. Not since Larry Sanders has any showbiz comedy been as individualized for character, and that was another show that drew a stylistic contrast within its own contours, enhancing its premised meta. Speaking of meta, the multi-camera show that exists within this situation — “Room And Bored” — is key to this series’ identity. “Room And Bored” is occasionally depicted as a merely mediocre example of the genre, but most of the time we’re meant to find it obviously awful — representing a form that is being critiqued for its artifice and indulgence of clichés. This critique isn’t exactly clever, and it’s more self-serving than it’ll admit, for in the mid-2000s — following the demise of several big multi-cams that had premiered the previous decade (like Friends) and had now been replaced by lesser fare (such as Two And A Half Men) — the single-cam was already emerging as a supposedly smarter, less conventionally false alternative, with many, like Curb and Scrubs, deliberately defining themselves in contrast. Despite its more nuanced look, The Comeback is the same — it’s another example of a mid-2000s single cam celebrating its own smarts in relation, and its contained lampoon of the multi-cam isn’t just overly familiar, it’s rhetorically tactical. Perhaps I’m sensitive because I am a lover of multi-cams (there are good and bad examples of both setups), but I don’t think you need to love them to recognize that the depiction of “Room And Bored” makes for some of The Comeback’s easiest laughs — the satire is familiar and it’s a lot less comedically fertile than the rest of the situation.

In that regard, I’m not surprised that this important aspect of the premise was not as lauded in 2005 – its multi-cam commentary wasn’t novel, and its backstage hijinks, though actually more freshly applied than they got credit for being, added to the malaise, feeling like trend-hopping overkill in the post-Curb onslaught of showbiz single-cams with varying degrees of internal fourth walls… However, that’s not all. There’s another layer of meta here – and it’s a layer that is indisputably fresh: the whole notion of Valerie shooting a simultaneous reality show about her experience with this sitcom “comeback.” Remember, one of the reasons people say The Comeback was “ahead of its time” is that reality TV continued its proliferation in the years after 2005, such that by 2014, more viewers came to understand what it is and how it’s made. Sure, reality was already a major part of our media landscape by that point, and its influences had been felt within the sitcom via the mockumentary format. But 2005 is the year that the U.S. version of The Office premiered – in fact, Michael Schur, who later wrote for The Office and then created Parks & Rec (among others), was on staff for this first season of The Comeback, which popped up still fairly early in this trend that would soon explode. So, while a reality TV-inspired look was not new for scripted in 2005, it was much less common and therefore more unique than the backstager showbiz situation. What’s more, calling attention to the produced nature of reality TV – a product just as “made” as multi-camera sitcoms – was definitely a new(er) idea, especially within the context of a single-camera setup that was otherwise used to presenting itself as a cleverer, more truthful counter to the multi-cam. In other words, by displaying just as much artifice in the documentary-based single-cam as in other forms that most people agreed were obviously produced (like network multi-cams), The Comeback was expanding its critique and considering all types of product made for television as venues for performance. That point couldn’t have been made as well if we were just watching the reality show – as in a mockumentary. No, we had to have this extra layer, the extra complication, of seeing the footage shot for it, of seeing these people produce and perform a multi-camera sitcom while also producing and performing a reality show: two forms of television with their own fakery and B.S.

Again, I think this perspective on reality TV became easier to accept in the 2010s once more viewers understood the genre, helping this show go down smoother. Additionally, the concept of us not seeing Valerie’s reality show but seeing her make the reality show – through the lens of the reality cameras, as if this was all potentially usable footage not edited together like it would be in a final product – is complicated, and perhaps too clever, for the vantage point is not typical, adding an extra dose of meta with a woman trying to make so-called reality in front of us, not from the authoritative, more distant angle a normal single-camera backstager would offer, even as a mockumentary. To that point, it’s hard to deny that The Comeback is a complex show as a result of these different layers – one that was always going to be difficult in its first season to grasp and like, since its literal perspective was so unusual. I think if a second season came around in 2006 or 2007, it would have already played better simply because this would have been explained through practice… although, only to those willing to embrace its overarching conceptual gimmick. Without that “buy in,” it’s a no-go, for The Comeback is just an idea-driven sitcom glorifying its unique framing as we witness the making of a show about the making of a show – with so much meta (itself a gimmick) that even critics who typically love such winking, aren’t we smart? entertainment were tired. Personally, I don’t appreciate such idea-led gimmickry by itself — I only like it for its new ways to explore character, and while its easy critique of multi-cams is hackneyed, I reiterate that I enjoy the “backstage” situational aspects because its insight into network sitcom life is razor sharp and credibly personalized. Also, its utilization of the reality show earns commentary on the form that’s novel and astute, providing yet another avenue to develop both its central thesis and the main character, Valerie Cherish. Her exploration is the primary reason The Comeback, this lofty gimmick of a sitcom with a lumbering amount of meta in every aspect of its premise, ultimately emerges as a great entry in the genre and, to me, one of the best from 2004-2005’s developmental slate.

All these levels of metatheatricality provide extra opportunities to fully display the vulnerable, complex, neurotic egotism of its lead, a once-star now nervously attempting to resurrect her career. We see her anxieties manifest on the multi-camera sitcom, behind the scenes of the multi-camera sitcom, behind the scenes of this reality show, and in the footage she’s providing for the reality show, which also gives us a view of her home, where there are surveillance cameras – that’s how much access she foolishly grants to “The Comeback,” as she’s so naïve about how she looks and/or will be made to look. This is why we laugh – the disconnect between what she wants us to see and what we do see, which makes for a cringe-inducing kind of humor that would later grow in popularity post-Office. And while some of the resulting marital drama is trite (it’s as much a cliché of single-camera dramedies as anything used to typify the multi-cam), it is necessary for exploring how not just fame, but the desire for love via fame, and all the insecurities associated with it, can corrupt a human’s perspective and her world. That’s the idea of the Valerie character – she seeks validation through others — and it’s a potent one for the 21st century, where social media has allowed us all to become public figures in our own little microcosms, eager to present a curated “reality.” The Comeback works best then, naturally, when it’s pondering Valerie, as portrayed by Lisa Kudrow, who brings nuance, and most importantly, great humor, justifying the gimmicky concept by anchoring it to something emotionally tangible and narratively propulsive. As for the storytelling, generic plots about Valerie scheming to stay relevant in an industry determined to humiliate someone like her feel like variations on Cybill or 2005’s new winking reality TV version, Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List, and they’re not as well rooted in the series’ particulars. In contrast, episodic ideas more directly set in the backstage constructs that The Comeback has created with either its multi-camera sitcom or the concurrent reality show, using its specific lens to aid the storytelling and the comedy, are most ideal, for they utilize the entire situation. Those distinctions are what you’ll see reflected below in my picks for the best from this first season – a terrific collection of sophisticated ideas hinged around a unique, hilarious character in a one-of-a-kind framework.

 

01) Episode 5: “Valerie Demands Dignity” (Aired: 07/10/05)

Valerie worries about the integrity of her reality show. 

Written by Linda Wallem | Directed by Greg Mottola

Most stories direct their satire at “Room And Bored” and the backstage multi-cam spoof — the “TV about TV makers” that annoyed critics at the time. But this is one of the few entries that considers the more interesting and innovative meta of reality TV, as a major aspect of Valerie’s situation — that she’s shooting a reality show — becomes part of the narrative when she’s worried about how she’s going to be depicted on “The Comeback,” especially as the network is turning to gimmicks, like crossover stunts with a former Amazing Race contestant. This plays to the notion that all TV is a performed product, no matter how someone like Val invites in the cameras, and it’s therefore perhaps the freshest, most original corroborations of premise.

02) Episode 6: “Valerie Saves The Show” (Aired: 07/17/05)

Valerie tries to boost morale when the sitcom premieres to lackluster ratings.

Written by Michael Schur | Directed by Greg Mottola

There are many seemingly experience-based moments in the show’s depiction of a network multi-cam’s production, and while some of this was once deemed trendy and uninspired, I don’t think the series got enough credit then for being excellent at developing this world and finding fresh satirical story within it. This particular outing includes something referenced above — an incident where Valerie sees her writer nemesis pretending to rape her, an event that was allegedly inspired by a real-life lawsuit about the Friends writers room, which thereby emphasizes the inherent metatheatricality that helps support the premise, reminding us that Lisa Kudrow is also, like Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom star seeking a comeback in a new sitcom.

03) Episode 7: “Valerie Gets A Very Special Episode” (Aired: 07/24/05)

Valerie is excited when her character gets to be the focus of a “Room And Bored” episode.

Written by John Riggi | Directed by Michael Lehmann

In this entry, Valerie is finally thrown a story about her character on “Room And Bored” — an idea that gives this script, credited to former Larry Sanders and future 30 Rock scribe John Riggi, many opportunities to mock both the process of shooting a multi-camera network sitcom and the current quality of multi-camera network sitcoms (which are understandably caricatured in their worst form for easy laughs). What I like best though is the through-line of Valerie hoping to get Tom Selleck to play her love interest, using the fact that she once did a Magnum, P.I. with him two decades prior — it’s a window into the ego-based optimism that separates how she wants to be viewed from our actual view of her, and it’s a great way to examine her character.

04) Episode 8: “Valerie Relaxes In Palm Springs” (Aired: 07/31/05)

When “Room And Bored” goes on hiatus, Valerie and Mark take a vacation.

Written by Linda Wallem & Michael Patrick King | Directed by Michael Lehmann

This installment is special because it sheds the trappings of the backstage setting that initially fatigued some viewers, offering a story that lets us see Valerie in a different context, as she and her husband go on vacation. That setup allows for a terrific display of her character in one of the series’ best half hours, proving both its central characterization and its thesis-providing conceptual gimmick are strong enough to exist independently of the more explicit showbiz elements that nevertheless reinforce them. An example of what makes this episode so revealing is that it features Valerie’s friend giving her advice on not caring so much about her image — which is her problem: she cares too much what others think, so much so that her efforts to control her perception inevitably showcase her insecurities. Valerie then applies this advice not for her own betterment, but for the betterment of the reality show that she’s making, as she repeats this to a hesitant fan who doesn’t want to sign an image release form. It’s a brilliant confirmation of how Val’s desire to be on camera — for the validation of public adoration — usurps everything else and is the crucial element of her being. Illuminating.

05) Episode 9: “Valerie Hangs With The Cool Kids” (Aired: 08/07/05)

Valerie is asked to form a united front with her sitcom cast when new actors are hired.

Written by Michael Schur | Directed by Clark Mathis

Here we find probably the series’ best, most genuine satire about the making of a multi-camera sitcom (or any network TV show, really), as Valerie et al. are subjected to a network-mandated retooling that includes a pair of silly comics who are brought in to “save” the show. This leads to the original cast banding together in protest and planning a strike… only for all of them but Val to cave last minute, leaving her in the lurch. That’s a unique conflict that feels realistic and not overused, and it’s perfect for her character, because she’s so concerned with how she’s perceived that the thought of being on the wrong side of something is painful (given how important this literal comeback is to her — a chance to reclaim the fame she once had). So, this is yet another wonderful display of Valerie Cherish and a key aspect of the series’ situation.

06) Episode 13: “Valerie Does Another Classic Leno” (Aired: 09/04/05)

Valerie prepares for the premiere of her reality show.

Written by Michael Patrick King | Directed by Michael Patrick King

If I were picking an MVE (Most Valuable Episode), it would be the finale, “Valerie Does Another Classic Leno,” which is the culmination of Valerie’s attempted comeback as we witness the lead-up, premiere, and aftermath of her reality TV debut. Now, I must admit that I think the reality TV cameras documenting Valerie’s reaction to the show itself and all the associated build-up feels a little… well, convenient — it’s not typically footage any reality show would capture, rendering this a contrivance for the sake of the storytelling. However, it speaks to the access that Valerie has allowed the cameras to have — she’s overdone it; that’s how much she wants to be loved — and because it’s worth it, we’re willing to make the leap. (Also, it’s less contrived than some of Season Two’s maneuvers about what we’re viewing and the lens through which we’re supposed to view it, but I digress…) And the results do prove worthwhile, because we get to watch Valerie watch her reality show, an overproduced humiliation that’s filled with dumb tropes not dissimilar to those in the other type of show she makes (a multi-camera sitcom), and yet it quintessentially reveals what we’ve known all along: that her efforts to control her image only emphasize the insecurities she seeks to hide. Of course, this incongruity between how she wants to be seen and how she is seen infuriates Val — her ego can’t endure the depiction, regardless of if it’s real or not. That’s why the best part of the entry occurs at the end when she goes on Jay Leno’s show, ready to disparage “The Comeback,” only to realize that she’s now beloved as a self-deprecating goof — thereby getting the renewed adulation she craved. So, this neurotically image-obsessed sitcom actress seeking a comeback really got one (Valerie Cherish, anyway), but she’s just as image-obsessed right until the end, seeking validation through the lens of a camera — no matter the camera, as long as she’s loved… As we’ll see later, The Comeback would return in 2014 to explore the further corruption that this misleading quest for love through fame has on a person’s reality, but never with as many laughs or as much earned narrative support from the situation and all its metatheatrical layers as here, when the show truly has fresh, insightful things to say about the industry, and more importantly, Valerie Cherish.

 

Other notable episodes that merit mention include: “Valerie Triumphs At The Upfronts,” the sophomore entry that creatively reiterates the premise, “Valerie Stands Up For Aunt Sassy,” a solid spoof of the backstage network multi-cam world and the kind of terrible sitcoms that have existed within it, “Valerie Stands Out On The Red Carpet,” where the show gets to broaden its satire by putting Val in another industry contrivance, and “Valerie Shines Under Stress,” which mostly builds to the finale by climaxing Valerie’s feud with head writer Paulie G. in a centerpiece that feels a bit too narratively premeditated and cartoonishly Cybill-esque.

 

 

Stay tuned in a few weeks for Season Two! And come back Tuesday for more Curb!