Full disclosure: a friend of mine was in this series and another friend of a friend wrote it. So, naturally, I was curious to take a 2nd look at a show that I'd seen only a few episodes of when it first aired on HBO. When my b.f. gave me the DVD as a gift, we seized the opportunity to watch the entire series -- the lone single season -- start to finish.
Frequent readers of this blog may recall my waxing hyperbolic about the unparalleled level of subtlety in the writing for Matthew Weiner's Mad Men on AMC. So, it came as a wonderful surprise to encounter equally subtle directing and acting on the short-lived Lisa Kudrow vehicle, The Comeback.
And Lisa Kudrow's acting on this show is some of the best work I've seen on television in years! The character of Valerie Cherish -- a sitcom star from decades gone by making a pathetic attempt at a comeback on a new sitcom while simultaneously subjecting herself to the indignities of being the center of a reality TV show -- is familiar to anyone who's worked in show-business. She's desperate to be loved by everyone. And, unfortunately for her, in Hollywood, that kind of desperation generally inspires vague disdain.
Kudrow does an astonishing job at making this character uncomfortably cloying and the experience for me was one of both cringing and laughing (in uncomfortable recognition) all at once. It's not hard to imagine why the show failed though; the awkward and pathetic antics of an attention-starved product of television may have hit a little too close to home. Personally, I found myself seeing many of my own annoying habits of insecure neediness in Valerie's behavior and I wondered if the show may one day serve as empowerment therapy for the most insecure among us.
The scathing comment it makes week after week on the indecency of the entertainment industry in which what's hot is hot and what's not is ignored also surely must not have won too many fans in So Cal.
I'd be curious to hear what other folks thought of the show. In addition to Kudrow's top-notch performance, the other members of the ensemble are all uniformly convincing and, at times, heartbreaking in their portrayals of showbiz folk of all stripes.
[pictured above, L to R: Robert Michael Morris, Lisa Kudrow & Malin Akerman]
