HBO’s The Comeback was the show that shoulda, coulda, woulda—yet it did not get picked up for a second season. Its pedigree was formidable. Network: HBO. Enough said. Star, co-creater, executive producer, writer: Lisa Kudrow, the former Friend with the most formidable acting chops working once again with an outstanding (if now supporting) ensemble. Co-creator and executive producer: Michael Patrick King, formerly of Sex and the City. Genre: An insider look at/reality parody of the entertainment industry. (See, for example, Entourage, 30 Rock, Studio 60 from the Strip.)
So why did Kudrow’s critically praised show survive only a single season? After all, Entourage, which premiered in mid-2004, has built an audience over three seasons and has only just emerged a bona fide hit for HBO—a network in need of new programming to replace retiring and retired classics. The comparison with Entourage suggests a possible answer: while Entourage focuses on the exploits of insecure, often foolish or heedless twenty-something boys, The Comeback focused on the exploits of an insecure, often foolish or heedless forty-something woman.
In a crowded field of faux-reality and comedy shows about the entertainment world, The Comeback is notable as one of the few with a female lead and protagonist. And therein, perhaps, lies the problem. As Valerie Cherish, former sitcom star turned reality show star, Lisa Kudrow flies without a net and—in the opinion of this viewer as well as her peers since she garnered a 2006 Emmy nomination—crafts a remarkable, savage, and brilliantly unflattering persona of an “actress of a certain age” (which sadly means in Hollywood [past and present] the early 40s). The B-list Cherish, as played by Kudrow, is a sometimes well-intentioned, kind-hearted, spotlight-loving egomaniac and fool. She pulls no punches in exposing all of her character’s many vulnerabilities and blindspots. The result is both brilliant and oftentimes almost too painful to watch as Cherish is slighted, humiliated, overlooked, and made a fool of time and again. But make no mistake, Kudrow’s Cherish is most often a willing and smiling-through-her-tears victim of her hunger for the spotlight and validation she can only seem to find in the applause and approval of others: audience, fans, co-workers.
