‘The Comeback’ Returns With Lisa Kudrow Flawlessly Capturing Modern Hollywood Angst 

Alci Rengifo

Particularly for actors, time is the great enemy. Lisa Kudrow evoked this so well in the first two seasons of HBO’s “The Comeback,” that the series was almost too ahead of its time when it first premiered in 2005 before being abruptly cancelled. The studio gave it another shot in 2014 with a second season. Twelve years later we are catching up for a final round with Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish, the aging sitcom star who keeps being the subject of her own mockumentary. The latter is another groundbreaking touch from co-creators Kudrow and Michael Patrick King (best known for creating the HBO classic “Sex and the City”). In this case, waiting provided a boost in relevant material. Valerie’s plight makes even more sense now in the age of social media and AI making the industry quake.

So what has been going on with Valerie Cherish over the last decade or so? The season opens in 2023 during the SAG and WGA strikes. To keep working, she has taken on the role of Roxie in a hilariously catty production of “Chicago.” Unaccustomed to the rigors of the theater world, she quits before previews. Cut to 2026 and her husband, Mark (Damian Young), has been laid off but is now part of the cast of a show called “Finance Guys.” Valerie’s publicist and manager, Billy (Dan Bucatinsky), is still working hard at getting his client fresh gigs while commissioning his own projects to stay in the game. Some of the parts he gets Valerie are not satisfying to say the least, like a first-time director’s nostalgia project set in a retirement home. A new opportunity arises when Valerie is offered the lead role in “How’s That?,” a multi-cam sitcom. It sounds like the chance for a, yes, comeback, but the problem is the series is mostly written by AI. 

Kudrow and King have designed this last season of “The Comeback” almost like a loving postcard to their industry and the whole Los Angeles entertainment scene as it stands in 2026. There is not much bitterness in the writing, so there aren’t long arias about the terrors of ageism. Kudrow brilliantly takes on the subject with stride, laughing at the very experience of realizing how everything is changing for yourself and the craft. Multiple cameos bring in big names to join the party, even Jane Fonda shows up at a restaurant. Valerie insists on taking a photo and including Fonda in her documentary, only for the legend to look at the camera and simply say, “go vote.” What makes Valerie’s journey in a sense more comforting than in the last two seasons, is the reality that everyone in Hollywood is now in her shoes. Whether you’re in your 20s or middle-aged, you can stand firmly against AI and streaming, at the peril of losing your place in the entertainment job market. Jane (Laura Silverman), the Oscar-winning director who helmed Valerie’s reality show last time, is now working at Trader Joe’s. Of course, she agrees to get behind the camera again for the comic would-be diva. A casting director trips while approaching Valerie at a restaurant to basically ask for work. If you live in Los Angeles among the industry crowd, none of these moments will shock.

While there is a running plot thread, “The Comeback” has the same breezy charm of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” with its series of vignettes and side jokes. Valerie gets stuck in an auteur’s feature debut thinking it’s an ‘80s period piece, only for the director to say, “no, your character is stuck in the ‘80s.” Valerie and Billy attend a meeting for “How’s That?” and are startled to enter a minimalist office to face a giant screen where the studio head (played with great industry blandness by Andrew Scott) joins with countless other team members. Valerie goes to visit veteran showrunner Jack Stevens (Bradley Whitford) at a lavish Beverly Hills home that’s “just a rental,” only to hear Jack lament that Hollywood is currently undergoing an “extinction event” with the rise of artificial intelligence. The writing supports the struggle of those who went on strike in 2023, while acknowledging that the aftershocks are not quite what they envisioned at the time. The writing team “working” with AI for “How’s That?” is a married couple, Mary (Abbi Jacobson) and Josh (John Early), who admit to the actor that they hope to leave Los Angeles soon before everything implodes.

As Valerie journeys through a business feeling the ground beneath its feet slip, there are also wonderful nods at the last two seasons. Robert Michael Morris, who played Mickey, Valerie’s hairdresser and voice of support in the last seasons, died in 2017. We are informed that Covid took Mickey in the world of the show. Then there is Lisa Kudrow, a master of her craft going back to those famous days on “Friends.” She makes Valerie likable with all of her built up vanity and ego. Now she symbolizes a particular generation of performers trying to balance the industry as they always knew it with the one emerging. She hugs SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher at the picket lines, taking selfies to show solidarity, which makes her even more nervous about later taking on a show written by AI. Never say never. Maybe in 10 years we can catch up with Valerie again, since surely nothing will look the same. “The Comeback” is true to its title. It returns after a long absence not only better, but in its best shape by accepting that change is inevitable even if, like age, it can feel scary.

“The Comeback” season three premieres March 22 and airs Sundays at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO and MBO Max.