Summary
The Comeback Season 3 finally pays proper tribute to Robert Michael Morris in “Valerie Faces Reality”, threading the needle between comedy and drama brilliantly, anchored by a superb Lisa Kudrow performance.
The Comeback is about, among other things, how times change, and a function of the changing times is leaving not only things – trends, ideas, fashions, standards – but also people behind. Season 3 hasn’t ignored the loss of Robert Michael Morris’s Mickey, but it hasn’t dwelt on it, which felt like a calculated decision for a comedy. But Episode 3, “Valerie Faces Reality”, faces the loss head-on, weaves it beautifully into the season’s ongoing plot, and threads the needle between comedy and drama so perfectly that this half-hour alone justifies the final season, however things go from here.
It’s a surprise, too, since as good as The Comeback’s comeback has been, there’s a depth of feeling, an elasticity of performance, and a degree of finely balanced craftsmanship here that has been missing, slightly, from the first two episodes. It’s just a level up across the board, carried so capably by Lisa Kudrow that I’ll be staggered if she isn’t nominated for something on the back of it.
The idea that Mickey has been “replaced” by Tommy isn’t far from the forefront, but the audience has that assumption cleverly acknowledged and then equally cleverly subverted. It starts in a recording of Valerie’s podcast, Cherish the Time, which features Tommy as a guest. Val’s “Mickey, don’t,” to cut Tommy off from his train of thought about Oscar-winning Jane working at Trader Joe’s, is a harbinger of things to come, the first in a flood of memories and complicated emotions that tangle Valerie’s new gig with her mourning of Mickey. When she finally makes it to the How’s That? soundstage, she discovers it’s the same one where Mickey’s favourite movie was shot.
Another reminder: On the set, Petey, one of the actors (played by Matt Cook, who was in Season 2 playing a different character), laments the loss of his twin brother and becomes visibly emotional about it. Valerie, almost playing up to her front-facing persona as a slightly self-obsessed sitcom star, claims to be able to relate on account of her character’s on-screen brother dying, but she’s really talking about Mickey. You can tell because the earnestness bleeds through, even though Valerie is trying her damnedest not to let it. That’d mean acknowledging some authenticity in a world where facile materialism – such as a late-arriving Billy complaining about being told to park in “the structure” – typically wins the day.
Mickey isn’t the only issue that Valerie has to deal with, obviously. She’s still starring in a sitcom that is being at least partially written by AI, and we get to see that in action in The Comeback Season 3, Episode 3, when an episode needs a more “human” scene that is ironically written by the script generator with alarming speed and annoyingly passable quality. This bit isn’t that big of a problem for Valerie, since she has already squared away her ethical concerns, but the human writer, Josh, is wildly disapproving of the new scene and his lack of consultation on its creation. I think it’s a very smart choice here to have the AI be halfway decent, since if it only produced garbage, the conflict would be less interesting.
Not that there isn’t conflict elsewhere, especially with the costumer, Carter, who is needlessly hostile and wants to dress Valerie up in ridiculous old lady attire – using “classic” influences to paper over the obvious sneering – and forces Valerie to pull executive producer rank when she doesn’t immediately roll over for his whining. Again, The Comeback is smart here. Valerie hasn’t gone mad with power; on the contrary, she makes multiple earnest attempts to reason with Carter before eventually losing it and rejecting his caftans outright, though she does try and make amends by sympathetically trying on some suggestions after, even if it isn’t totally clear whether that’s because of all the backstage filming or a bit of existential horror stemming from Jane referring to her as a “boss lady”.
Despite all this, though, it really is Mickey who comes to the forefront once again. After a little disagreement with Tommy about wigs, in which Tommy literally says aloud, “I’m not Mickey. I’ll never be Mickey”, Valerie wakes up in the night in a sudden panic, realising she has misplaced Mickey’s ashes, which are in a nice black lacquered box with turquoise accents. Fearing she might have misplaced them in the move, Valerie starts to come apart at the seams, and I know I’ve mentioned this already, but Kudrow is just magnificent here. She’s even better when the ashes are later discovered with her good wigs, and the look of relief and emotion on Kudrow’s face is chef’s-kiss stuff. The episode ends with Valerie and the crew sneaking up to the scaffolding above Stage 24 to scatter them in a touching final farewell, though they’re ultimately told to get down for their own safety.
This is the emotional core of the episode, then, but I’d be remiss not to mention another scene that has nothing to do with Mickey but will likely form a kernel of real conflict going forward. When Josh discovers that someone has overruled his suggestion that the Lori character wears a Mianus U shirt, instead replacing it with a titillating crop top, he goes absolutely postal, having a gigantic meltdown on set and attempting to get Carter – who Valerie blames for the mishap, even though I’m pretty sure it was her idea – fired. Josh is clearly going to be a major problem going forward. And I’m sure he won’t be the only one.
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