Last I heard, HBO hasn't decided if The Comback will come back. I have to admit I was apprehensive about watching Lisa Kudrow playing Valerie Cherish, a has-been sit-com star whose attempt to resurrect her career is being televised as a reality show. A show within a show. It sounded too much like Kirsty Alley's "Fat," which I found tawdry and pathetic and unnecessarily vulgar.
And I wasn't sure I could make the transition from Kudrow as ditzy Phoebe in "Friends," or that she could sustain a half-hour show without Monica, Ross, Rachel, Joey, and Chandler.
Kudrow shines as Valerie. I find her captivatingly, aned sometimes painfully real, believable, nuanced. She is wistful and funny, hopeful--almost desperate--that this sit-com will earn her another "People's Choice" award; pretending not to care that she is being given fewer and fewer scenes in each episode, that the scenes in which she does appear strip her of dignity and make her the butt of peurile humor; ignoring the insufferable cruelty of Paulie G, one of the sit-com writers, who enjoys humiliating Valerie (in last Sunday's episode, she finally has enough of Paulie); bravely--and, genuinely I think--congratulating her ingenue co-star, Juna (Malin Akerman) when Juna makes the cover of a national magazine, and again when she's nominated for Best New Actress. (Kudos to the Comeback writers, by the way, for not making Juna a stereotypical All-About-Evish manipulator.)
Maybe I find the show so watchable because I relate to Valerie's insecurities, her dreams, her disappointments.
Thirty minutes go by too quickly. So has the television season.
Comments