Season 3, Episode 3: ‘Valerie Faces Reality’
Ever heard of an “aww-ick?” According to Josh Abrams — one of the credited human screenwriters on the mostly A.I.-written sitcom “How’s That?!” — aww-ick is a term for a scene on a sitcom that makes the audience go “aww” and the writers go “ick.” He’s talking about the kind of saccharine moments that were common in TV comedy for decades, before “Seinfeld” came along in the 1990s with its “no hugging, no learning” policy. Josh considers himself and his wife, Mary, to be sophisticated artists, so he wants to keep any aww-ick far away from “How’s That?!”
But Valerie Cherish loves that stuff. So does Jimmy Burrows, her director of choice for “How’s That?!” And so — maybe — do Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King? At the very least, judging by this week’s episode, “The Comeback” creators don’t mind mixing in a little sentiment with their satire.
In “Valerie Faces Reality,” Valerie finally gets to start making her new show. Right away, she can see the pluses in having Al, the A.I. assistant, always on-call. During rehearsals, Jimmy tells Valerie that he thinks the script could use some punching up (before saying, conspiratorially, “Is the studio afraid to say that to the Matrix?”). The first episode is too slapstick-y, he thinks. From his decades of Emmy-winning experience, he can sense when a show could use some heart.
So Jimmy has Marco (Tony Macht), a production assistant hovering nearby, tell Al what the episode needs. Minutes later, Valerie has fresh script pages in her hand. It’s so easy! After all, “How’s That?!” isn’t meant to be original. It’s meant to remind the NuNet audience of every sitcom they watched in syndication when they were kids. Artificial Intelligence is very good at generating something formulaic. But more to the point: Jimmy knows how to direct it, and Valerie knows how to play it. They’re skilled craftspeople who know how to make something that — at the very least — is functional.
But not everybody on this production is as accommodating as Al, alas. There are humans everywhere, with egos and complaints. Josh, for example, hears about the new scene and drops what he was supposed to be doing (walking the dog, according to an annoyed Mary) to see what the computer spit out. He thinks the addition is awful — an aww-ick — and that it doesn’t properly represent him as “the voice of women of a certain age.”
One of the elements of “The Comeback” that makes the show so complex is that the non-Valerie characters are always going to remain somewhat opaque to us, because we only see them in passing, when they happen to be in the same space as her. Given the clues that we have so far about Josh and Mary — including a mysterious comment from Mary that “we’re not doing that on this show,” after Josh throws a tantrum — it seems likely that they’ve had trouble finding work since the end of their dog park sitcom, and that they’re allowing their names to go on “How’s That?!” strictly for the money. At any rate, Mary would rather they not get creatively invested. She suggests to Josh that they should let the old pros handle things, gesturing at Jimmy and Valerie. “He’s a genius,” Mary says. “And she’s … an executive producer.”
Josh’s frustration is one of the first big blowups that Valerie faces in her new position as a boss. Her next crisis is trickier to navigate. The show’s costume designer, Carter (Benito Skinner), is excited about his vision for Beth, Valerie’s character on “How’s That!?,” picturing her in baggy, body-covering clothes like Katharine Hepburn in “On Golden Pond.” Valerie immediately has flashbacks to the goofy tracksuit the producers of “Room and Bored” stuck her in 20 years ago. She wonders why Beth can’t just wear the kind of normal outfits Valerie would wear, as an actual 60-ish woman. Carter overreacts to the pushback, accusing Valerie of being difficult, dismissive and possibly ageist against young people.
The ripples from this confrontation are fascinating, because they speak both to how Valerie thinks of herself and how she’s adjusting to having actual power on a sitcom set. Jane, who watched her get steamrolled by writers and producers (and even crew members) on “Room and Bored” and “Seeing Red,” is proud of the way she stands up to Carter. But Valerie doesn’t like being bossy, so she follows some advice Jimmy gave back in Season 1: Play along with other people’s bad ideas so that everyone can see how they fail. She wears Carter’s terrible costume and lets Jimmy be the one to nix it. She also lets Carter costume her younger colleague, Gabrielle Boden (Brittany O’Grady), in a snazzy outfit that ignores the way the Abrams’s script describes her character — which causes Josh to go ballistic and storm off to fire Carter.
In addition to Gabrielle, we meet the rest of the “How’s That?!” cast this week, including Frank Flynn (Tim Bagley), an old acquaintance of Valerie’s who plays Beth’s “longtime unrequited love interest.” The veteran character actor Walter Andrews (Barry Shabaka Henley) plays a local sheriff. Peter David Prince, a.k.a. P.D.P. (Matt Cook), plays kooky triplets — which is ironic, given that he has an actual twin brother who died of a drug overdose. (“He Heath Ledger-ed out,” P.D.P. says, trying to prove that he can still be funny even when his heart is broken.) Dean Ferris (Zane Phillips) plays Beth’s nephew, Bo, who runs the B&B with her and is in love with Gabrielle’s snippy character, Lori.
This is a solid cast, making “How’s That?!” feel more like a real show … maybe. On the one hand, this cast and the characters they’re playing do feel algorithmically generated. “How’s That?!” already has “Newhart” vibes, and now it has its own trio of eccentric brothers? And a kindly sheriff, just like in “The Andy Griffith Show?” And a sexy, self-absorbed young woman, just like in Valerie’s “Room and Bored?” There’s a creepily manufactured quality to this series — the kind of uncanny valley effect you might expect from a simulation of a classic sitcom.
But it does take real people to pull off the fakery. Maybe they can bring some authenticity?
The point is that humans can surprise us. That’s certainly true in one of the running subplots this week, involving Valerie’s new hairdresser.
Sure, Tommy Tomlin isn’t as predictable or reliable as Valerie’s beloved Mickey. He doesn’t anticipate her needs. He’s friendly, but not a friend. He’s there to do a job. It is Tommy, though, who suggests that Valerie may have unprocessed feelings about Mickey’s death, given that she couldn’t be by his side when he passed because of Covid protocols. Making matters worse, she can’t find her box containing Mickey’s ashes, which seems to have gone missing during her move to Culver City.
Tommy eventually finds the box stored with Valerie’s best wigs. It is lovely, too: shiny and black, inlaid with pieces of Mickey’s favorite jewelry. Jane and Tommy, who both knew Mickey, are moved when they see it. The warm feelings continue when Valerie decides to scatter Mickey’s ashes by Stage 24, where “How’s That?!” is being shot. It’s also where “Now, Voyager” — a movie Mickey loved — was filmed. As she lays her pal to rest, she paraphrases his favorite line from that picture: “Why ask for the moon when we had the stars?”
Aww-ick? Maybe. But again: Sometimes even the silliest TV show needs a little heart.
To be real
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Valerie has a wonderful way of delivering insults while trying to sound like she’s having a wonderful time. A case-in-point this week is her comment on her sputtering podcast: “They’re supposed to be sloppy and unprofessional, that’s the charm.”
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Valerie’s producing partner Billy arrives late to the set because the Warner Bros. gate security routed him to a parking structure, which he fought against because, “Once you say yes to the structure, you never get out.” This leads to some panicked conversation among the cast about who got stuck in the structure and who got a space outside the soundstage. There is already some social stratification in play in this production.
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Before we enter Stage 24 for the first time, Jane’s camera zooms in on a plaque listing some of the most famous movies and TV shows that shot there. One of them is “Friends,” which apparently exists in this universe. Has anyone ever noticed how much Valerie Cherish looks like Lisa Kudrow?
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