The Comeback Season 3: Review

Putting Phoebe Buffay firmly behind her, though not quite leaving her behind thanks to some savvy Friends nods throughout, Lisa Kudrow returns as Valerie Cherish for the final season of the beloved meta-Hollywood show The Comeback.

Beginning with Kudrow's chipper Cherish taking on the role of Roxie Hart in Chicago just before Covid-19 and the Writers' Strike hits Hollywood, the latest season sees a jump of a few years into the world inhabited by AI and infiltrating the art of movie and TV-making.

When Valerie's offered the lead of a new sitcom on a streaming channel, she leaps at the chance to get back into the spotlight. Entitled "How's That?", Valerie believes this is her latest opportunity to regain fame. However, when she discovers the sitcom is written entirely by AI and fed only by a couple of writers, she finds herself torn - seize the chance to achieve her dream or sell her soul for Hollywood's biggest ethical dilemma.

The Comeback Season 3 takes a while to find its groove, particularly if you're not au fait with Kudrow's grating Cherish, whose nasal whine and over-pronunciation of words can annoy. But once the series finds its groove after a clutch of episodes, it delivers a demonstrably devastating look at what AI could do to the industry and how far some are willing to go down the rabbit hole to support it.

What's fascinating about the laughs here isn't that they're riotous belly ones, they're more intellectually driven moments that elevate the series from a cringe-comedy about a deluded individual a la The Office.

From offering insights that machines can turn up more one-liners in a fraction of the time writers can create to the reaction the blindingly obvious sitcom show generates from its audience, The Comeback season 3 is more about the extinction level event facing an industry that's been built on creativity.

That's not to say the Kudrow and Michael Patrick King created piece doesn't delve into farce, but there's actually more heart here throughout. Though, you'd be hard-pressed to side with Cherish's own incompetence when a digital version of herself pops up later on echoing Robin Wright's The Congress.

The mockumentary style suits The Comeback's rhythms and Kudrow's own performance here is excellent, on par with what the writing affords her. Admittedly, the one-handed approach to the AI situation is one that grates a little, but The Comeback's swansong is a timely look at what the creative world faces - and how complicit we're willing to be in its demise.

All eight episodes of The Comeback Season 3 were screened for the purposes of this review.