The glamor but also the nasty underbelly of Hollywood have always loomed large in the imagination. You’d think the great destabilization that’s hit the TV and film industry would have led to all kinds of showbiz satires excavating the anxieties and disruptions brought on by streaming and, more recently, artificial intelligence. And yet the latest entry in this genre, HBO’s “The Franchise” — about the absurdity of superhero moviemaking — has nothing to say about any of it. Worse, it’s not even funny.
Perhaps it’s fitting that in such an uninspired era of commercial entertainment, not even a satire of this moment can muster up an original idea.
That got me thinking about better, more thoughtful attempts in the past, which prompted me to revisit “The Comeback.” I haven’t watched the show since it originally aired (on HBO, ironically enough) nearly 20 years ago.
Created by Michael Patrick King (“Sex and the City”) and Lisa Kudrow (who also stars), the series is equal parts comedy and tragedy, following the travails of a middling sitcom actress named Valerie Cherish. After being out of work for a few years, she’s asked to audition for a new series, but it comes with an awkward stipulation: If she’s cast, a reality TV crew will follow her around during the process to capture her “comeback.”
She’s often accompanied by her doting hairdresser (a hilarious Robert Michael Morris). “I pray you get this sitcom, because I’m two years from retiring and I need those health benefits,” he tells her. “They found two more questionable melanomas — don’t cry for me, Argentina!”
“Well, here we are,” she interrupts as they arrive at the network. “I’m sorry, darlin’, just put a pin in that.” Just put a pin in that revelation you have skin cancer, no big deal!
Kudrow was coming off her 10-year run on “Friends” when the first season of “The Comeback” premiered in 2005. It wasn’t meant to be a commentary on the show that made her famous. Even so, it’s a savage behind-the-scenes depiction of sitcom life. A second season aired in 2014, which was a meta turn of events — a comeback for “The Comeback,” a decade later. (Both seasons are available to stream on Max.)
The series portrays an era when pilot season and the network sitcom still were dominant. Watching it now, I expected “The Comeback” to feel dated. And yet the show’s observations are still so on point about Hollywood itself. King and Kudrow capture a searing but also empathetic look at the way show business can make a person deranged. Through it all, Valerie keeps a smile on her face because she has an old-school approach to stardom: Never let them see you sweat (or cry or fall apart).
We’re witnessing the raw footage of Valerie’s reality show as it’s being shot and she’s a wonderful amalgam of ridiculous but also professional. Her standard greeting upon walking into any room: “Hello, hello, hello!” When she thinks a moment is unflattering and shouldn’t be filmed, she makes a time-out motion while her director (Lauren Silverman) consistently ignores her pleas. This makes Valerie frantic and vulnerable, forever trying to maintain her composure in the face of humiliation. She also has plenty of self-sabotaging tendencies. She’s terrible at reading the room or knowing when to let things go. The more she feels minimized, the worse she gets. She has no chill, and yet you feel deep wells of sympathy for her.
That sympathy only goes so far. “Oh, there’s that girl writer,” she says of the lone woman who’s been added to the sitcom’s writing staff. Valerie can’t be bothered to learn her name because she’s only interested in people who have power.
Veteran sitcom director James Burrows plays himself, and he is a very funny and grounding presence as he tries (in vain) to give Valerie a reality check. Her mere presence has become an annoyance to her sitcom bosses and Burrows takes her aside. “Why are you so worried about this show?” he asks and then points to the reality crew filming: “That’s your show.” He’s the voice of reason, but it’s a harsh truth that she is not prepared to accept, and the genius of “The Comeback” is that Valerie is usually some combination of wrong and right at any given moment.
Her nemesis is one of the sitcom’s creators, a hateful and obnoxious person known as Paulie G (a terrifying Lance Barber, who more recently played the dad for seven seasons on “Young Sheldon”). In “The Comeback’s” long-belated second season, we learn that Paulie G was a heroin addict when he and Valerie first worked together. Now he’s clean and making a prestige series about his time working on that sitcom. Valerie is cast to play herself, and she takes the role because her consuming hunger for fame means she’ll put up with all manner of insults. You can practically see the rage shooting out like laser beams from Paulie G’s eyes. He is Valerie’s worst nightmare — and she his.
More than a stock villain, Paulie G is a miserable, complicated man. Several years ago, when I interviewed Kudrow, she said the show’s various writers had encountered a similar personality type at some point in their careers.
“When we were interviewing people to write for the show, they all thought they knew who Paulie G was based on, and everyone had a different person in mind. So there are a lot of those guys out there, that’s what that said to me.”
Despite the many shifts that have reshaped Hollywood in recent years, I suspect this aspect hasn’t changed much at all.
“The Comeback” makes fun of, but also has so much compassion for, an actor’s self-involved absorption and desperation. Valerie is just trying to retain some dignity in a business that’s doing everything to demolish it. Aren’t we all.
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.