(Flashback Friday: The danger in writing about something “cutting edge” is that you will soon sound ridiculous. So I’ve learned upon reexamining my old columns, such as this one about the dawning of DVR and how it changed our television viewing processes forever. Of course, this was well before streaming changed the game even further; at this point, it was still rather mesmerizing just to choose when you watched any given program. This piece was first published in INsite Boston in March 2007.)

Architects and screenwriters know equally well: structure is important. Without it, stories come crumbling down.

The same is true in life. Without a schedule, we’re bound to idle away hours chatting online, playing Guitar Hero, contributing nothing to the world at large. To remedy this, many have looked to work or school to dictate how they spend their time.

Me? I looked to television.

See, when you’re a writer, Tuesday might as well be Saturday. Days of the week aren’t that differentiated. But when you’re also a TV viewer, you can recognize Tuesday as the time of week that saucy Olivia Benson solves yet another delectably perplexing sex crime. No matter how I spent the carefree days of my youth, I always knew that on certain choice evenings, I had to be on the couch at a certain time, tuned in to a certain channel.

Alas… that was before I became a grownup.

Then, a couple months ago, I finally caved and took a full-time job in the film industry. (Though at 60 hours a week, I’d say it’s full and a half.) Suddenly confronted with a real world schedule, I could no longer stick to my trusty routine of yesteryear, jumping onto the couch at 8 and sticking around until 11. Sometimes I’m working until 8, and sometimes I need to get to bed before 11. So I decided it was high time to join the so-called “TiVolution,” a switch that would forever cease my mad dashes home at the cusp of primetime, frantically fighting traffic so as not to miss a single frame of televised goodness. Now, I’m no couch potato, but I do have a select few favorites, and therefore am lucky to live in an era when even the busiest bee need not miss his broadcast honey. Viva la TiVolution!

I recall my first run-in with DVR a couple years ago, back when mentioning “TiVo” got you a furrowed brow and head tilt rather than a nod of satisfied recognition. I found it bizarrely humorous that one of the menu options was “Don’t do anything,” as if pushing that button could suck you  into some black hole of nonexistence. Even stranger was the ubercute mascot — which resembles a retarded beetle — and the insanely cheerful chirping that, with every push of a button, makes it sound as if you personally brought joy to a baby chickadee, merely by watching television. I held off on TiVo for so long because I don’t trust the adorable; I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one morning and discover that our seemingly innocuous TiVos have taken over the world while they were supposed to be recording late-night reruns of Mary Tyler Moore. Don’t do anything, my ass. Don’t do anything except kill us in our sleep!!

I suppose they make the TiVo so endearing so you don’t take an axe to it during the unexpectedly grueling set-up process. As the third hour commenced, I cursed my decision to get in league with that chirpy black devil and bemoaned my maturation, all the complications and unnecessary strife that simply don’t exist in our formative years. Adult life is comprised of wires that are supposed to connect but don’t connect, the DVR to the TV and the TV to the cable and the cable to the hip bone and the backbone to the DVR. It’s such a process. However, when the TeVil finally appeared on my screen and started dancing his congratulatory jig, so did I. A new era had dawned. Viva!

Now my favorite shows are right where I want them when I want them, like cheap floozies. It gives me a sense of godlike power having it all at my fingertips — yet it’s made watching TV a little too easy. I rather liked having a set date and time to sit down with my favorite shows; it was nice having a schedule. Now, as with so many things in the grown up world, I’m left to wonder… is that all there is?

I spend my days in an office, dealing with incessantly ringing phones and mischievous copy machines. It’s time-consuming, even annoying, but not difficult. I clock in, my personality clocks out; the days go by quickly and there are a tolerable number of headaches. I can’t complain, really, because being overworked and underpaid is a hallmark of your twenties. My problems are the same as everyone else’s… but my real problem is that I never expected them to be.

In college I was surrounded by uniquely gifted people and wondered, if so many young people have such a surplus of potential, how do most adults come out so ordinary? Now I know. We, the children of the TiVolution, are savvier and more capable than any generation before us, but the world is still operating on the ol’ standby schedule, complete with glass ceiling. Competent, creative individuals are presented with a rather slim menu of options, most of which consist of biding time until we’re allowed to realize our potential. It’s frustrating when we know we’re capable of so much more.

So leave it to TiVo to sum it up in three simple words. Whereas previous technological advancements provided such euphemistic options as “Back to Menu,” “Cancel,” or “Home,” TiVo was innovative enough to tell it like it is: when everything’s downloadable, digital, and portable, our greatest challenge is the lack thereof. When I get home after another mundane, mindless day at work, I have just enough time for one selection from my “Now Playing” list. When it’s over, TiVo tweedles and asks me what I’d like to do with the program next. Typically, I select “Don’t do anything.”

It’s starting to feel like I never will.

*

Comedy is hard. I know that to be true. It’s hard to make, and in the case of network sitcoms, it can also be extremely hard to sit through. There are few things more awkward than watching someone try to be funny and fail miserably at it, especially when a canned laugh track subs in for any actual human amusement.

I don’t generally expect a whole lot out of network comedies these days. Last season brought us The Goldbergs, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and the unjustly canceled Trophy Wife, all of which did the trick for me.

What has this fall added to the mix? This season, I’m basically adding shows to my DVR all willy-nilly and dropping them when I get bored. Occasionally, I give up after one episode, and sometimes it’s hard to even get that far. My second Fall TV Roulette is focusing on the comedies — or at least, the shows that are trying to be funny. (Actual comedy not guaranteed.)

MULANEY

Well, this was just painful. Mulaney is clearly modeled after Seinfeld — a comedian whose show is his last name, who does bits of standup to begin the episode, and who can’t really act whatsoever. And that may have worked out okay for Jerry, but I think things will be different this time.

Since I’m sure this is being covered elsewhere, I’m not going to be the one to claim that the show is passively homophobic and actively misogynistic (as is the standup work of many male comedians). I can’t imagine many women will find this show funny, unless they hate themselves and/or each other. Some men may find it amusing in a brash, fratty sort of way, but anyone with a taste for humor more sophisticated than can be found in an average episode of Family Guy will be sorely disappointed.

What sort of hilarity ensues in the pilot? Well, none, but here are the attempts: a prostrate exam! A crazy ex-girlfriend insisting that she is not crazy! A black man named Motif who refers to women as “bitches”! Martin Short as a delusional, washed up TV star! Whereas most shows seem to bend over backwards to feel fresh, it’s kind of like this show was conceived specifically to play with the most cliche stereotypes available. None of this would be so bad if the show were actually funny, but… no.A TO Z

A To Z is a lot like Manhattan Love Story, but not as charming. I have nothing against the leads, except that Christina Milioti is exactly like Jennifer Love Hewitt in every way, and that’s rarely a good thing (unless you’re watching I Know What You Did Last Summer or Heartbreakers). The high concept of the show is maybe a little too high concept, as we are explicitly informed exactly how long these two will be together (in true rip-off-of-500-Days-Of-Summer fashion), and presumably will follow them through 26 episodes until they get to their breakup at Z. (Every episode is titled after a letter, which makes me wonder what “Z” word goes along with breakups.) However, I also doubt the show will leave us on such a sour note, so they’ll probably get back together in episode AA, or whatever. (Maybe in an episode titled “AA Is For Alcoholics Anonymous” after both have turned to drinking to cope with their grief? I’m overthinking it and I should be paid for this.)

Too much in A To Z is just too hard to buy. The leads have middling chemistry, the supporting cast is cartoonish, and it’s trying too hard to incorporate online dating and social media. A few moments amused me mildly, but I’m not at all invested in this couple, nor do they have any real obstacles in their way when it comes to getting together, which makes me think this show will have trouble even getting from A To D and holding our interest. Literally, the show could end after they kiss in the first episode. (I guess a show called From A To A isn’t quite as marketable.)

A To Z is not an aggressively bad show, and not one I wish to meet a swift cancellation, because it’s not as misbegottenly grating as Selfie or Mulaney. However, I am skeptical that A To Z will ever actually make it to Z, which seems a looong time from now for a show with so little going on. It’s more like from A To Zzzzzz... (I can’t be the first to make that joke… can I?) There’s some chatter on the internet that A To Z trumps Manhattan Love Story, but take it from me — that is blatantly wrong.

MARRY ME

Casey Wilson is funny. Ken Marino is funny. David Caspe, who created Happy Endings and then Marry Me, is funny. And Marry Me is sort of funny. The pilot follows Annie and Jake, a couple that experience a series of mishaps while attempting to get engaged — his proposal results in Annie accidentally insulting their friends and loved ones to their faces, her proposal results in Jake getting fired, and so on. In addition to the winning leads, there are some talented supporting players including John Gemberling and Sarah Wright doing riffs on the standard his-and-hers BFF, plus Tim Meadows and Dan Bucatinsky as Annie’s gay dads (diversity!).

None of that can save this show from a stereotype so well-worn it’s all but completely eroded. How many shrill, desperate-to-marry romcom heroines must we suffer through? Isn’t it time to put this archetype to bed for a little while? Weddings are a very tired romantic comedy cliche, so it’s rather difficult to imagine what ABC was thinking when they greenlit a whole show leading up to the big event. I doubt there’s much comedy to be mined from such staples as cake-tasting and flower-choosing anymore, and it’s a little sad to watch Marino and Wilson pan for gold in this way. Marry Me isn’t a bad show, but the subject matter feels beneath the smart writing and talented performers.

JANE THE VIRGIN

Jane The Virgin has an original and rather wacky premise, thanks in large part because it’s based on a telenovela. It’s not technically a sitcom, given that it’s an hour long rather than a swift half-hour, but it definitely plays up the comedy and tamps down the drama of Jane’s precarious predicament, which is that she is accidentally inseminated by a gynecologist when getting a pap smear. As you may have guessed from the title, Jane is a virgin, so this is particularly problematic for her — as well as her boyfriend and her religious grandmother, who sees this as a second coming of the immaculate conception.

Jane The Virgin has a lot going for it. As crazy as the central premise is, as it unfolds here, it’s actually fairly believable, and the characters similarly react in relatable ways. It’s particularly interesting to see how Jane’s boyfriend Michael reacts to this unconventional news. Gina Rodriguez is completely charming in the lead role, and there’s a lot going on with the supporting players (in true soap opera fashion) that suggests fun to come. I’m not sure Jane The Virgin has me hooked yet, but it’s nice to see the CW getting in on 2014’s diversity action, and yet in this show, the mostly Latino cast feels incidental rather than crucial to the premise.

MANHATTAN LOVE STORY

I praised this one in my first Fall TV Roulette. In fact, I called it my favorite new show of the bunch. I still like it, but I have to say that the premise is stretching itself a little thin. Analeigh Tipton and Jake McDorman are still talented leads with solid chemistry, but what’s with all the romantic comedy shows this season that have just waiting for the inevitable conclusion? Marry Me strings us along to prepare for nuptials, A To Z shows us every step on the road from meet-cute to breakup, and Manhattan Love Story pretty much guarantees that its leads will get together, and they already are sort of together, but they can’t be too together or there wouldn’t be a show, would there?

Episode 3 had Dana unwittingly bringing a gay man as her date to a dinner party, while Episode 4 saw bad oysters ruining a night of potential sexytime. Neither of these storylines felt particularly novel, and I’m not sure the series has quite figured out how to integrate its supporting actors, either. (In particular, the talented Chloe Wepper as Peter’s sister feels particularly underused.) I’m sticking with Manhattan Love Story, for now, but I do hope that the writing freshens up a bit.  CRISTELA

And the winner for “Most Improved” in the field of Diversity is… ABC! The network that brought us thae likable African-American family in Blackish has a different sitcom aiming, this time, for the Latino audience, and the formula is pretty similar. A crusty grandparent who constantly tries to get the younger generation to remember their roots heads up a colorful multigenerational household, with a spicy comedian mugging at the center. In this case, the mugging comes from the affable Cristela Alonzo, a welcome comedic presence on the fall lineup. Alonzo brings an energy and enthusiasm to the sitcom format that you’ll rarely see from more seasoned comedians — she looks really happy to be here.

Cristela features its star as a sassy law student crashing with her sister’s family while she slaves away at a no-pay internship, a strong and believable concept that makes a rare move: a realistic economic situation on a sitcom. The working-class angle of Cristela reminds me most of Roseanne, which is never a bad thing. There are many well-worn sitcom staples invoked here — the annoying neighbor with a crush on the lead, the disapproving mother, the jerky boss. Most of these are handled with just the right dose of ingenuity so that they don’t feel too stale. Cristela’s possible romance, possible just-friendship with co-intern Josh (Andrew Leeds) is, surprisingly, one of the strong suits thanks to their chemistry, and Cristela doesn’t overplay the comparisons between its star and the over-privileged white boss’ daughter (Justine Lupe).

Cristela is perhaps a touch too sitcommy for some, and it does take a bit of patience to suffer through the laugh track, but I have to say the appealing cast and overall goodwill of seeing something like this on network primetime makes it a hopeful in my book. I’m giving it a few more episodes.BLACKISH

And speaking of Blackish. The winner for “Most Improved Show After One Week” is… this one.

Do the writers of Blackish read my blog? No. But it kind of seems like they did, since the second episode was so much better than the first. In my initial review, I asked for more from Rainbow (Tracee Ellis Ross) and less from Anthony Anderson’s Andre, and in the series’ second installment, Rainbow gets a big, hilarious subplot in which she is so caught up in her own head about being the perfect mom, she completely tunes out what her kids are saying. The episode’s A story is about Andre walking in on his young son masturbating and the uncomfortable father-son bond that ensues, a storyline not predicated on the family’s race. The third episode struck a cleaner balance between the two, with just enough race-related humor and just enough that wasn’t.

Blackish is going strong, though Laurence Fishburne has yet to do much (maybe he’s just collecting an easy paycheck and prefers to sit in the background reading the newspaper). Tracee Ellis Ross is still the series’ MVP, and fortunately has been allowed to get as wild and wacky as Anthony Anderson, rather than relegated to the usual naggy sitcom wife role. The show’s race-specific humor now feels sprinkled in when appropriate rather than forced down our throats, as it was in the pilot. Blackish is a good reason to give a show at least one post-pilot viewing, just to be sure. As of now, it’s my favorite new sitcom of the fall (sorry, Manhattan Love Story, but you’re lagging).

*

(Throwback Thursday: A version of the following first appeared in INsite Boston in 2006. Forgive the dated references — including the very notion of sweeps overall, which is all but dead thanks to year-round programming and the diminishing importance of live ratings. The overall content here is still relevant! In fact, it’s interesting that many of the new shows I discussed became TV behemoths that are still discussed to this day. This is sort of a fun look back at a moment in time that may or may not have been a milestone.)

Life for a person with high-quality tastes can be hard. Because high quality isn’t always available! With the silver screen tarnished by an abnormally high suck factor this year, I recently found myself in need of an alternative to the late-summer doldrums of September and the horror schlock of October. I turned to television — that handy box that plays my DVDs for me, and is rumored to show live programming.

It had been a good long while since I caught up with TV. Perhaps the biggest losers and extreme makeovers of reality television scared me off… but never mind. All it took was one primetime gander and I was back like the skinny black pant — though in my absence, things have changed. Whereas TV was once a simple, even mindless medium, the stakes have been raised thanks to TiVo, iTunes, the rise of original cable programming, and possibly the lunar cycle. How else to explain the state of chaos on the tube these days?

Take a tally of the madness this season alone:

ABC scheduled The Nine at 10. NBC shows Friday Night Lights on Tuesday. CBS placed The Amazing Race, Cold Case, and Without A Trace on the same night and begat Must Rhyme TV. The WB and UPN birthed their lovechild The CW, which resuscitated 7th Heaven in spite of last May’s series finale. (I guess Somebody up there likes it!) And hark! What’s that sound o’er yonder? Why, it’s the good people at Fox drumming their fingers on their desks, killing time until the next American Idol. (Some things haven’t changed.) Now the networks gear up for November sweeps — luring viewers with stunts, guest stars, long-awaited couplings, and perhaps the demise of a beloved supporting player or two — all to woo advertisers, as if there were any shortage of commercials as is. (Is anyone else about to throttle poor, exploited Audrey Hepburn?) Yet I have to wonder how networks plan to top themselves in a season that has already held so many pleasant surprises.

The season’s champ in Best New Content Overall comes as a partial revelation — NBC has been in desperate need of buzz that rivals ABC’s (which itself was flailing just a few seasons back). The overbearing, pretentious promotion of Heroes would almost surely herald a belly-flop — so self-gratifying, you’d think the network had assembled an actual clan of superhumans — but the enthralling, exhilarating Heroes actually lives up to the hype. Kudos! Everybody’s watching your show! Now please shut up about it.

Perhaps to counterbalance the pomposity of Heroes, the Peacock mocked itself outright by gobbling up not one, but two heaping helpings of humble pie. I once thought The West Wing was so frenzied ‘cause it took place at the White House. Now, I’m pretty sure Aaron Sorkin would make shoe shopping look as stressful as imminent nuclear attack. For comedians, the folks at Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip are curiously gallant and tightly wound, marching in and out of scenes. Never before has “the huff” been such a popular mode of transportation. Even the skits center around controversies in politics and religion! As good as he is with drama, poor Sorkin is incapable of dumbing himself down enough to write what passes for sketch comedy these days.Happily, Tina Fey isn’t. Thus, 30 Rock feels more at peace with its SNL-inspired roots. The show is wildly uneven but certainly funny, making 30 Rock a perfect network-skewering supplement to Studio 60. And lest you forget which is the sitcom and which is the drama, remember each show contains its running time in the title. (Like I said — madness!)

On the off chance I find myself at a water cooler, I deemed it best to check out the ABC shows everyone’s nattering on about. Desperate Housewives remains an amusing trifle, but I found mega-hit Grey’s Anatomy overwrought and uninspired. At this point, I think shows are set in hospitals just to save on the wardrobe budget. I must also confess that, despite my best efforts, I don’t get Lost, which ironically puts me on an island with about thirteen other people in the world in terms of my pop culture relevance. The unlikely breakout hit Ugly Betty, on the other hand, managed to charm me even though it is often as awkward and mismatched as the Latina fea herself.

But nothing could have prepared me for the jolt I got upon viewing CBS’ Monday night sitcoms. I found them disturbingly watchable… funny, even. How I Met Your Mother pairs witty one-liners with quasi-believable characters worth investing in — no small feat in the same genre that produces Two And A Half Men (a CBS comedy I don’t recommend). The same can’t be said for The Class, which is as staged as they come. Maybe the producers are trapped in a hatch somewhere, forced to push the laugh track button every ten seconds whether the gags are funny or not. That said, approximately one in three jokes amuses, resulting in a respectable two chuckles per minute, or roughly 44 titters per half-hour episode.

Of course, TV’s biggest bombshells are too outrageous to find anywhere but cable. After an over-the-top third season, Nip/Tuck has undergone a much-needed facelift, retaining its trademark shock value while ensuring that this year, everyone who should have genitals does have genitals. (Presumably.) And if that doesn’t quite blow you away, would you believe a show called Battlestar Galactica on the Sci Fi network is brilliantly written, superbly acted, and one of TV’s finest?

You may not. But in this day and age, when even the exhumed corpse of Audrey Hepburn can be called upon to siren the return of 50s fashion… isn’t anything possible?

*

“Well, I’m mad. And this is about to get messy.”

Hello, hello, hello!

Note to everyone: The Comeback came back.

In 2005, The Comeback was ahead of its time. So ahead of its time, in fact, that no one in the present watched it. It took me only a matter of months to discover Valerie Cherish, but by then the series had already been unjustly canceled following its debut and final season.

The Comeback is the smartest TV series ever made about the entertainment industry. It gets every detail just right, even though those details are comically exaggerated. Room And Bored isn’t that much more awful than a real sitcom, reality TV isn’t that much more shameless than it really was in that era, and we all know plenty of real-life celebs who are as starved for attention as Valerie Cherish. The cancellation was a lame move on HBO’s part, severely lacking foresight, because in the coming months and years, so many of us discovered and adored Valerie Cherish. (Let’s face it: the gays especially.) She paved the way for awkward, borderline abrasive sitcom heroines like 30 Rock‘s Liz Lemon and Parks And Recreation’s Leslie Knope. When sprinkled into the right conversation, her catchphrases are still funny.

That’s why Valerie Cherish is coming back to TV in 2014, nearly a decade after she was given the axe. HBO is correcting a nine-year-old mistake and we, the Cherished, can finally reunite with Red and the gang. This kind of thing was practically unheard of back in 2005, but now we live in a world that occasionally resurrects the long-dead corpses of our old favorites — Arrested Development, Veronica Mars, and now The Comeback. The risk, of course, is that some of the magic will be gone. The new material won’t hold up to the old stuff, and furthermore, we like that old stuff so much that it’s impossible for the new stuff to come close. Is that the case with The Comeback?

I think my feelings about the all-new second season of The Comeback are best expressed in the following GIF.

Yep, The Comeback has still got it. I’m not sure yet if The Comeback is just as good as it ever was, because I’ve found that Season One only got better on subsequent viewings, and I only had time to watch this episode twice. (Yep, twice. And it was better the second time around.) Valerie’s schtick becomes funnier the more you see her resort to the same desperate maneuvers over and over — repetition is how so many of her signature lines became modern comedy classics. (Saying “Jane! “Jane!” while making your hands into a “T” is never not funny.) Will Season Two’s “Valerie Makes A Pilot” be as amusing with repeat viewings? Who can be sure?

What I do know is that the season premiere satisfied me, a longtime fan, and I’m not an easy critic. Valerie has evolved (slightly), now taking the reigns and filming a reality show of her own. (Actually, it’s a pilot presentation.) In the lengthy opening scene, we get a glimpse at what Val has been up to in the decade since The Comeback debuted. (I’m referring here to the show-within-a-show Comeback, not the HBO series, but I suppose either works.) She guest starred on a medical procedural, got bloodied in a low-quality student film, endorsed her own line of redhead hair products (because “why should blondes and brunettes get all the attention?”), and tried to warn a Real Housewife about the booby-trapped world of reality TV. In the Season One finale, Val learned that being a reality star meant sacrificing her dignity and laughing at herself, and in the years since, plenty of stars, on Bravo and elsewhere, have laughed all the way to the bank on such a philosophy.

As usual, a scene that might seem like a throwaway pseudo-celebrity cameo (Lisa Vanderpump) is actually a sly meta commentary thanks to The Comeback‘s shrewd writing. Valerie Cherish was a (fake) version of a Real Housewife before the housewives were (slightly less fake) versions of themselves. (Valerie supposedly walks off the set of the first season of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, though I am now salivating over an alternate reality where she was one of those crazy Bravo bitches.) Yet they, like the rest of the world, must not have been watching, or else they just don’t care. That’s the reality Valerie Cherish faces in 2014: looking like a vain, pompous asshole on television isn’t embarrassing anymore. It’s expected. In fact, it’s totally en vogue.

In the new season of The Comeback, many of our favorites are back, with more on the horizon. Marky-Mark (Damian Young) is still ever-so-patiently putting up with his wife’s shenanigans, and Mickey is of course always by her side (or running after her, panting, comb and hairspray at the ready). Season One surprised us by making the hot blonde starlet Juna a sweet and genuine person, one of Val’s few true allies, and just when it seems that Juna has become too big a star to hobknob with Val anymore, the episode’s sweetest scene arrives when Juna has her driver stop and rushes out of the limo to give her old co-star a big hug. (Meta alert: Malin Akerman is now the star of her own failed one-season wonder,  Trophy Wife, which also deserved a kinder fate.) Yes, I did get a little emotional at this moment.

The 2005 Comeback was meta in that it starred an actress known for a wacky supporting turn on a network sitcom (Friends) as the washed-up star of a network sitcom (I’m It). Valerie Cherish was never a doppelganger of Lisa Kudrow, because everyone knows Kudrow is one of the sharpest comediennes in the business, probably the most respectable of the Friends sextet. (That’s debatable, but she’avoided the pitfalls most of her co-stars fell into, and is there anyone out there who doesn’t like her?) But the 2014 Comeback is even more meta, as the two Room And Bored stars who went on to be stars really did go on to be stars (Malin Akerman and Kellen Lutz), while Valerie Cherish finds herself desired by, of all the unlikely brands in the industry… HBO. Not bad, for an actress whose two claims to fame are a monkey shitting on her head and vomiting in a cupcake costume. “It’s a dramedy. That’s a comedy without the laughs,” is one of this episode’s pointed meta quotes. (The Comeback certainly has laughs, but it’s not an out-and-out comedy, and the humor proved to be too uncomfortable for many viewers back when it debuted.)

(Also: there’s nothing more meta than the comeback of a show called The Comeback, but if I think too hard about it, my brain may explode.)

As in the Season One finale, Val tries to take a stand for herself and ends up getting lured back into the limelight instead. She walks into HBO, all huffy because Paulie G (Lance Barber) has written an unflattering script called Seeing Red about their inharmonious time together. (Technically, it’s about another writer’s inharmonious time on a sitcom with “Mallory Church,” but even Valerie isn’t fooled.) Valerie has a bone to pick with HBO just like Lisa Kudrow does (they cancelled her show!), but all is forgiven in “Valerie Makes A Pilot” when Valerie reads for the part and knocks it out of the park (Just as I assume all is forgiven now that The Comeback is back.)

Smartly, Paulie G’s script doesn’t sound at all like anything we heard behind the scenes of Room And Bored, because his point of view wouldn’t be anything like what we saw on The Comeback. And Paulie G has turned a new leaf, no longer the pompous writer asshole he used to be, instead a more “enlightened” (and sober) individual who constantly sucks on an e-cigarette. It would be easy fan service to make Paulie G the same jerk-off he was in Season One, and allow us to love to hate him again. But The Comeback doesn’t do that. It’s smarter than that, and it’s moving forward.

The Comeback is still The Comeback, updated for 2014 by having Val take a DIY approach to her own image rather than waiting for a network to package her themselves. (One of her crew is a USC student majoring in… Urban Planning.) That’s what’s happening with celebrities nowadays — many of them take their brand into their own hands, for better or worse. Otherwise, we’ve got cameos from reality TV stars (RuPaul, Andy Cohen), physical comedy (Val getting punched in the stomach by Chateau Marmont staff), and moments that blend awkward humor with pathos (Valerie auditioning to play herself, Valerie desperately joining the paparazzi shouting at Juna). As before, the show’s best lines are often so off-the-cuff, it’ll take a few viewings to really pick up on all the comedy. (“That’s right. Privacy’s gone, yeah,” is one of my new faves.) Val has (unfortunately) lost her annoying ringtone but is otherwise the same as ever.

I expect The Comeback to reach even higher heights as this season unfolds. The devil is in the details, and the details are spot on. Valerie Cherish has both evolved and stayed exactly the same, and that is also true of The Comeback. It’s a spoof of life in Hollywood, of the scripted TV business and the unscripted TV business (which are two different beasts entirely). It holds a mirror up to itself first and foremost, and in so doing, holds a mirror up to the rest of us. Most of us will never audition to play ourselves in an HBO project, but now more than ever we can relate to a thirst for approval from the masses. For every moment that Valerie is rubbing elbows with RuPaul, there’s an equally relatable moment when she’s fighting with an unintelligible voice in a parking garage, having lost her validated ticket. I’m not sure how this plays outside of Los Angeles, but if you live here, it’s basically a documentary.

I’m 100% on board with the new Comeback. It’s already hilarious, heartbreaking, and quotable, everything we could ask for. I’ll be back with further thoughts next week. But for now, I’ll leave you with one of this episode’s most memorable lines:

“I’m not just a real person. I’m an actress!”

Welcome back, Val.

“Valerie Makes A Pilot” A-

*

“Nice to meet you, Jane Benson, Jewish lesbian with an Oscar!”

If you want to quote The Comeback, you have an arsenal at your disposal. Chances are you’ll go with, “I don’t need to see that!”, or perhaps a simple “Hello, hello, hello!”

But nothing is more signature Valerie Cherish than crossing your hands into a “T” and protesting: “Jane! Jane!” (Best followed by a “We’re not going to be able to use that!”)

Episode Two of The Comeback‘s new season brings Laura Silverman’s Jane back into the fold in a big way, as someone at HBO suggests that she be asked to return to produce… whatever Val is filmng. (Val calls it “BTS for SR,” meaning behind-the-scenes for Seeing Red, though she was filming that even before she knew about Paulie G’s HBO series.) Jane isn’t interested, but that doesn’t stop Val from relentlessly pursuing her, because as Jane herself puts it: “You never give up.” (Val’s response: “You do.”)

But Valerie’s right. Jane has changed. When we met her, she was young and ambitious and determined to get the most demeaning footage of Val at any cost. She wasn’t a malicious person, but she knew that the success of her reality show rested on Val going down on the Room & Bored ship. (Of course, the fact that we knew so little about her reflected how often self-involved Valerie thought about Jane’s personal life — never.)

When we meet her in “Valerie Tries To Get Yesterday Back,” Jane is a wealthy but bitter lesbian who lives in isolation making goat butter, trying to finance issue-driven documentaries, finding little success or satisfaction despite the fact that she’s an Academy Award winner. She’s also, not so surprisingly, a big pothead. Season One’s Jane was always in the background, but she played a relatively small part in the action until the final episode when Val finally confronted her (dubbing her “spider-eyes” and showing up at Jane’s pad with the camera crew, trying to give her a taste of her own medicine). By the end of this episode, Jane is back behind the camera, mostly invisible but steering the ship when needed.HBO also gets a chance to poke itself in the ribs as Valerie visits the offices and declares that Sex & The City started it all… then declaring that The Sopranos also started it all… then looking at a poster for The Wire and declaring that she’s never heard of it. It’s a series of in-jokes about the network’s legacy (as chronicled by the book Difficult Men, which I just finished, which focuses extensively on The Sopranos and The Wire, only fleetingly mentions Sex & The City, and does not even mention The Comeback). Val also mistakes Mad Men for an HBO show, as many do; these are jokes that many people outside of the TV business might miss out on, but that’s how The Comeback has always worked. General audiences could miss about 50% of the humor; luckily, there’s such a high humor quota that they’ll still get plenty. Valerie’s so very excited to be a part of HBO’s prestige, and yet clearly is only glancingly familiar with their properties. (Anyone who thinks I’m It was a television classic is bound to have a lower threshold for quality.)

“Valerie Tries To Get Yesterday Back” also sees Val meeting with Brad Goreski, a fellow reality TV personality, to dress for the Golden Globes, which she intends to attend with her husband, her hairdresser, and her publicist. Instead, she and Mark end up with Jane and the camera in tow at a mere “HBO viewing party” (a room full of women who may or may not be Russian hookers), where they have an awkward run-in with Paulie G.

“Valerie Tries To Get Yesterday Back” is a bit scattered in its focus compared to other Comeback episodes. The HBO stuff is savvy and hilarious, and seeing Valerie share a doobie with Jane is sort of like Season One fan fiction come to life. (There’s got to be some Val/Jane slash fiction out there somewhere on the internet, right?) From there, though, Jane disappears behind the cameras again and the focus is on the Golden Globes visit, which is played a shade darker than The Comeback usually is, as Paulie G apologizes to Valerie while still clearly wanting to see as little of her as possible.

The episode’s funniest moments are the throwaway gags, like Val’s housekeeper realizing that Val is about to ditch Mickey and Billy to have her cameras with her at the Globes, or Val stating that she’s “hogging the Bogart” by taking too long with the joint at Jane’s place. I watched this episode several times, and it did indeed get funnier upon each viewing, as this show tends to do. The humor is so subtle at times that I don’t pick up on a joke until the third viewing.

While Season Two of The Comeback still mostly feels like Season One, there is one crucial difference thus far — Valerie is less desperate for her comeback. She still wants to be on top of the world, but she doesn’t really need this the same way she used to. The show-within-the-show Comeback earned her that validation. And now, with Val in charge of her own crew, she’s much less worried about the cameras picking up her most awkward and vulnerable moments. There’s less looking at the camera, wondering how all this will be perceived. There are no “Jane! Jane!” time-outs, because Valerie is (sort of) in control of her own destiny this time around.

It’s an interesting switch, but it does deflate the momentum a bit. Season One episodes tended to revolve around a clear goal for Val. This episode didn’t so much have that. Valerie tries on a somewhat outrageous dress, but she isn’t talked into actually wearing it to the Globes; she’s disappointed that she ends up at a viewing party, but she and Mark leave without much of a fuss. “Valerie Tries To Get Yesterday Back” sure has its highlights, but hopefully the second coming continues to move forward in addition to revisiting comedic high points from the first season. Is it too much to ask for a new character for Season Two as dynamic as Mickey, or Juna, or Gigi? What is Val really up against this season?

I’m satisfied enough for the time being, but I hope the next episode sees the resurgence of something we need even more than the return of Jane the Jewish lesbian. This time, it’s Val’s dire desperation that needs a comeback.

“Valerie Tries To Get Yesterday Back”: B

*

“I got you, Gingersnaps.”

“Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” introduces us to “Mallory,” the not-so-thinly veiled character Valerie is playing “loosely” based on her time on Room & Bored. She’s got a stinky trailer Mickey can’t stop talking about and can’t remember the first AD’s name because there “no reference point.” She spars with the line producer over the $7,000 wig that looks identical to her actual hair and the fact that she needs an extra hair person (Marianina!) just to place it on her head properly. And her nephew Tyler is such a bad PA that he doesn’t even know what a PA is, and Jane refuses to acknowledge him as part of the crew.

And then Valerie meets Seth Rogen, her co-star, and sets to work trying to make him her new BFF.

As usual, Val has a bad habit of over-gifting. She not only buys flowers for Seth (“MacFarlane,” as she calls him, not long after spilling water all over him), but also gifts him with a ham based on an off-the-cuff joke he barely even remembers. And she gets an awkwardly sweet gift for Paulie G that causes one of the episode’s most uncomfortable moments. Lots of shows these days do awkward comedy, but it’s rarely as painful as this. Val has made a nice gesture, but probably the wrong gesture, and she discovers it at an opportune moment as Paulie G just stares at her in befuddled silence. Fortunately, Seth Rogen jumps in to make a joke of it and lighten the tension, but if ever we needed confirmation, here it is: Paulie G is still a jerk. Case in point: he has written a fantasy scene in which Valerie blows him, for no good reason except to literally bring the redhead comedienne to her knees. That’s the major focus of this episode (and the title’s inspiration), which takes the gag to an extreme by quite rightly pointing out how exploitative Hollywood is of women. In the truly unsettling fantasy sequence, Val has to stand still between two buck naked, fully-shaved porn stars who are moaning in orgasmic ecstasy, and just to add insult to injury, she’s back in Aunt Sassy’s running suit during the whole thing. The fact that Paulie G would even write such a thing tells us everything we need to know about how much he hasn’t evolved in his sobriety, yet there are plenty of writers just like Paulie G out there who would write the exact same thing.

It’s also another token of HBO’s willingness to take jabs at itself. We, like Jane, feel uncomfortable about how the women in this episode are treated, but it’s not a lot different from the double standard we see on so much of HBO’s programming, from The Sopranos to Game Of Thrones. Leave it to The Comeback, one of the network’s most frivolous and least lauded shows, to finally stick it to ‘em. That’s why I love The Comeback — because between the laughs, it aims for the bull’s eye with deadly precision. It’s merciless, biting the hand that feeds it with tongue-in-cheek. (30 Rock similarly lambasted NBC. May I suggest Season Three centers on Tina Fey creating a network sitcom for Valerie Cherish?) It’s somewhat predictable that Seth Rogen would be the one to suggest to Paulie G that Val discreetly duck out of the frame rather than exaggeratedly mime fellatio — Seth Rogen is playing himself, and Seth Rogen probably does not want to tarnish himself by looking like a jerk on The Comeback. But when he tosses it aside with an, “I got you, Gingersnaps,” it’s a genuinely touching moment that truly does endear us to him. Because any show can do awkward comedy, but not many pull off the rare triumphant moments when Valerie really does rise above the Hollywood muck she’s wading in. This is one of the most blatantly demeaning positions Val’s been in, and therefore, she’s earned the tiny vindication that comes at the end of the episode, even if it somewhat bucks The Comeback‘s tradition of not providing any easy outs or out-and-out happy endings.

“Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” is the new season’s strongest episode yet, because it is the first episode more concerned with moving the story forward rather than taking a nostalgic look back at Season One highlights. I like looking back, too, but I also want The Comeback to tackle new territories, and “Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” does it. I can’t think of any TV show that has made a sharper or more direct critique of the way women are objectified in TV and film (especially on premium cable). There is a maybe-unnecessary (but totally in character) moment in which Jane tries to stop filming because she feels this wrong, but otherwise, no one needs to come out and say that Paulie G’s script is pretty fucked up. It’s obvious. This episode also features fewer callbacks to old jokes and instead brings us all new ones, which somehow made me feel like I was watching classic Season One Comeback than either of the previous episodes. It’s odd to see someone as famous as Seth Rogen on The Comeback playing himself. I’m not sure that Rogen’s Apatowian comedic universe quite aligns with the awkward orbit of Valerie Cherish, who exists on a planet of her own most of the time. Rogen has practically made a career out of playing himself at this point, often quite literally, and his presence naturally requires a certain pull of focus away from Valerie. (You don’t hire Seth Rogen to not do Seth Rogen.) But Rogen’s This Is The End self-referential comedic stylings aren’t of quite the same brand as Lisa Kudrow’s meta-comedy. Ultimately, it works, though I hope Rogen is used sparingly from here on out, merely because The Comeback is The Valerie Cherish Show, and having a good-natured movie star there to bail Red out of jams isn’t how this show operates.

I’d rather see more of Valerie’s interactions with the vapid bimbo who plays Juna (or April, based on Juna), who is exactly the sort of snob ingenue we thought Juna would be in the first season. More of Jane, now an Oscar winner who feels less of a need to hold her tongue and stay out of it. And more of Paulie G, who thinks he has written a soul-baring confessional that is probably just misogynist tripe like his sitcom. (We get some pretty awesome barely-bad dialogue from Seeing Red, like “Why don’t you put up a sign that says, ‘Watch out for falling lamps!'” His writing has evolved, but barely.)Valerie is still a pest in this episode, which is how we can’t totally fault Paulie G for mocking her when she insists on reminding everyone that she did not actually blow Paulie G. She tries her best to keep up with Seth Rogen’s “network jizz” improv. (Meanwhile, the script supervisor needs to make sure Val knows that she switched the interchangeable “keep out” and “stay out” in her own dialogue.) At one point, she reverts back to her sitcom roots by playing directly to the camera. Valerie has come a long way since the first season, yet that “long way” has brought her literally to her knees to perform oral sex on Seth Rogen. (Her previous attempts at stepping out of her comfort zone had her making out with Alan Thicke and playing a brunette with migraines.)

The episode is full of priceless moments, from Val doing her trademark schtick (“Hi, Simpsons? We want to shoot drugs in front of your characters!”) to Mickey defiantly telling the props guy that Val doesn’t need knee pads. Val’s straight-to-camera “Walk? It’s been a long day! Why don’t you just rape me?” is like her HBO version of a Room & Bored blow, and it fails spectacularly.

As much as I loved getting reacquainted with Jane, Mickey, Juna, and yes, even Paulie G in the first two episodes, this is the one that gives me full confidence in The Comeback‘s new season. I hope HBO has the good sense (and sense of humor) to keep it running longer than just this second season, but even if not, this episode alone has made its resurrection worth the effort. Valerie Cherish is back in full glory, everyone — which, in her case, is a lot more shameful and embarrassing than glorious.

“Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees”: A

*

“I don’t know what kind of candy you’re making, but I’m a coal miner!”

As comedies go, The Comeback rides a fine line between the light and the dark. The breezy tone suggests screwball comedy, yet the way it skewers every facet of Hollywood is so biting and dead-on that it really does, at times, feel like a docudrama. The way we squirm and cringe through each awkward day in the life of a C-list actress makes viewing as uncomfortable as it is hilarious. Yet even in its darkest moments, like Paulie G’s drug use or last week’s battle with misogyny, The Comeback has eschewed truly grim material.

Until Season Two’s fourth episode, “Valerie Saves The Show,” which tackles an entirely new subject for the series — death.

Things start off light enough. In “Valerie Saves The Show,” the cruelties of the television industry continue to plague Valerie Cherish, beginning with some fairly mundane ones — budgetary restrictions — which means her character Mallory (who she still constantly confuses with herself) will be drastically cut back and thus rendered less sympathetic to the audience. (Seeing Red contains some crucial drinking alone, crying in the tub, finding a stray cat scenes, apparently, which sounds exactly like the kind of hack work Paulie G would insert into this story.) Apparently, HBO didn’t feel the urge to bless Seeing Red with the same production value afforded to, say, Game Of Thrones.

Val’s creative solution: to allow the production to use her own home as Mallory’s, further blurring the line between fact and fiction.

This is, of course, a major imposition on Val’s loveball, Marky-Mark, who finds his home overrun by strangers, his precious espresso maker moved out of reach. “It’s not a crime scene!” Val explains of his reluctance to interfere, a prophetic foreshadowing of things to come later in the episode. But first? A trip to the the Groundlings, where Valerie can hone her improvisational skills (actually: show off how little she knows about improv).

Last week, Val made a pretty killer direct-to-camera improv involving rape that was entirely inappropriate for the moment; this week, she tries to mine some humor out of cancer, and fails yet again. She also tries to mine some humor out of actual mining, as she stiffly plays a coal miner opposite a taffy-maker and then asks the instructor: “Now what?” Improv is all about teamwork, so it comes as no shocker that Valerie Cherish is lousy at it. She can’t lose herself in the moment or consider a scene partner her equal. She assumes the Groundlings will be intimidated by her because “I’m a professional” — but yeah, no, they are not.

Unfortunately, during the break, Val gets some disturbing news from her loyal sidekick. Mickey may have cancer. And while Val ordinarily tends to shrug off or completely ignore Mickey’s feelings, especially when they might drag down the mood of her reality show, this time she’s truly rattled by the thought of losing her faithful companion, which is how this line creeps into her improv: “Only two reasons to be out of work: bad economy or cancer. Do you have cancer?”

This brings us right to the heart of Valerie and Mickey’s curious friendship, which has always been one of the show’s strongest yet subtlest anchors. Mickey is more than just Val’s hairdresser — most of the time, he’s treated like a glorified assistant. (At times, not even so glorified.) His true role in her life, of course, is that he’s her biggest fan. Notice how he’s the only one laughing during her terrible improv? And yet it doesn’t seem like a courtesy laugh. He really does think she’s funny.

Mickey must love Valerie in order to put up with her for all these years, getting so little in return. He must believe in her talent. He seems totally content playing second-fiddle to her at every turn. What’s not so readily apparent is how Valerie feels about Mickey — we know she depends on him, but is this because she truly enjoys his company, or because he’s the only person in her life willing to put up with all her shit?

People get exasperated to varying degrees with Valerie Cherish. Not all of them call her out on it, but even those on Team Valerie defect every so often, as Mark does in this episode. (And not without reason.) Mickey is the only one who has never turned his back on Red, not even for an instant — though some telling looks to camera let us know he’s hip to Val’s least likable moments. Mickey is an essential part of Valerie’s life because he sees her the way she wants to be seen, allowing her to buy into all those delusions she carries around about her own importance. Without Mickey, Val wouldn’t have the validation she needs to invest as strongly as she does in her own brand. Mickey is constantly selling her on the story she wants to believe, the one she is trying (and failing) to tell via reality TV. Is this a true friendship, or just a narcissist’s gross misuse of a doting fan? I think the jury’s still out on that.

No matter the reason, Val is visibly shaken up by Mickey’s possible bout with cancer, which is how the Big C continually creeps up in her improv (and causes her to drop her fictional baby). Val is told by her instructor that cancer is not funny, and tellingly, “Valerie Saves The Show” takes on a heavier tone than usual once that topic is broached, even if the C-word is mostly absent from the rest of the episode. Val’s nephew Tyler is starting to “go Hollywood,” mouthing off to his boss and deciding he’d be just as good a star as Seth Rogen. (Probably false, buddy.) Val’s selfishness takes a holiday when she decides to use Tyler as Mickey’s gopher, a nice reversal of the way she usually has Mickey fetch for her. (In Valerie’s universe, there’s always someone who has nothing better to do than cater to her every whim — though she’s right that it’s in Tyler’s job description.)

Mark gets star-struck by Seth Rogen and makes a Valerie-like snafu in front of the wheelchair-bound line producer Ron. (Rogen is wisely underused in the episode, following a big role in last week’s episode.) TV production is depicted as the headache-inducing nightmare it usually is, rather than something that tends to bring Valerie joy. Even she is more pessimistic than usual. Valerie goes on a rant about Tyler’s self-congratulatory generation and explains how Ron got injured; paired with Mark’s foul attitude and Mickey’s medical diagnosis, this whole episode feels almost oppressive in its cynicism and gloominess, despite the levity offered by Val’s stabs at improv.

And that’s before someone commits suicide.

“Valerie Saves The Show” first introduces the very real possibility that Mickey could be facing death in the near future, then ends up somewhere darker as Val and Mark stop by their property to stay the night (because of Seeing Red‘s takeover of their own home). Jane is up to her old wily tricks, spying on Val after she’s asked them to turn the cameras off, and just when filming is about to wrap for the night, a gunshot startles the crew. A man has killed himself in the next apartment.

This isn’t a character we’ve met before, but it’s still the darkest moment of the series thus far, and it doesn’t seem accidental that it comes in an episode that already has us thinking about our beloved Mickey’s mortality. This gives Valerie a chance to call upon her vast CSI knowledge (she once had a guest spot) and to coin her new version of “Jane! Jane!” time-out hands: “N.G.,” which stands for “no good.”

Ironic: Val and Mark are refugees of a production about a drug addict, and go to stay in a place where a real drug addict has just offed himself. One of the cops who responds to the scene offers an unknowing warning to Val about drug users who turn their lives around — that tends to be when they snap, bringing the people around them down, too. Is this a harbinger of an even darker turn from Paulie G? Will his villainy resurface? I’d say that’s a safe bet.

We’re midway through The Comeback‘s (criminally short) Season Two now, and I’d also wager that this is likely the darkest the series will get. I don’t anticipate a wrenching chemo arc for Mickey or any more gunplay, though there’s still a feeling of dread created by what happens here. Nothing goes according to plan, everything falls apart, everyone is cranky (except, ironically, Mickey), and though Valerie tries to save the show, her fix is just a Band-Aid on a production with much larger problems.

To sum it up, basically everything that happens in “Valerie Saves The Show” is N.G., a somewhat sour half-hour with a few comedic high points. (Curiously, even the title is a mystery, since “Valerie Saves The Show” was also the title of a Season One episode. Is this an oversight, or an intentional callback?) Perhaps the death of a stranger is meant to put the stresses of production into perspective — though in this episode, for once, it’s Valerie who is concerned about real-world problems while everyone else is freaking out about more superficial concerns.

When revisited, this episode takes on a sweetness that offsets the bitter visit by the Grim Reaper. This is maybe the most we’ve ever seen Valerie care about anybody. For once, there’s nothing in it for her, unless you believe that she only cares about Mickey as her one-man fan club and not as a human being. Last week’s “Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” was the high point of the season, the sharpest of the new episodes. This one is the most subtle and character-driven, from the genuinely empathetic look on Jane’s face when Mickey delivers troubling news to Val chewing out Tyler for not respectfully grabbing his elder a snack when he needs one.

The Comeback is all about Valerie Cherish, but in this episode, we are forced to take a moment to truly consider the little people. Valerie fails to disappear into character during her improv, but all around her, real feelings are felt, from Mark’s anger to Mickey’s optimistic joy and a solitary drug addict’s wish to die. Even Valerie connects with her humanity more than usual. Cancer may not be funny, but it can bring out an unexpected poignancy where you’d least expect, which is a curious but not entirely unwelcome turn for The Comeback.

“Valerie Saves The Show”: B+

*

“I don’t care if you’re available or unavailable. I don’t care if you just found out that you have have herpes or hepatitis C from one of those whores that you pay to come to your room on show nights. I’ve been in this business a lot longer than you have, and I will be in this business long after they take you out in a body bag, because you are gonna OD on some shit that you pump into your veins because you hate yourself. And guess what? I’m your way out. And you’re too fucking stupid to even know it.”

There’s a lot of danger in reviving a dormant TV series. These days, more than ever before, it is possible to resurrect a show that left us too soon, which is how we got movie version of series like Firefly and Veronica Mars and witnessed the return of Arrested Development and 24.

But the results are spotty. It’s all but unheard of for the revival to match the quality of the original in such cases, because if it was beloved enough to have fans clamoring for more, the reason is probably that it was really good. Reception of Arrested Development‘s fourth season on Netflix was mixed, but I don’t think anyone would claim that the latest season outdid the first two. It had been off the air for seven years, and in those years Arrested Development was hailed as one of the great TV comedies of all time. That’s a lot to live up to. A hit TV show arrives at a moment, and it is exceedingly difficult to recapture that moment two or seven or nine years later.

Exceedingly difficult, but not impossible.

As a major fan of Valerie Cherish, I was looking forward to — but in a way, almost dreading — the comeback of The Comeback. For years I proclaimed that it was the sharpest skewering of the entertainment industry I’d ever seen, that it was pretty much my favorite TV comedy — ever. (Alongside a series about the desperate and degrading shenanigans of another showbiz-mad redhead, I Love Lucy.) Following such hype, it seemed likely (and almost inevitable) that Season Two of The Comeback would fail to fly at such high heights, and might turn out to be merely adequate, good enough but not brilliant. I had faith in Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King and everyone else returning in front of and behind the cameras, but I am also a realist, and after talking up The Comeback for the past nine years, I didn’t want it to come back and be fine and make me look like a dumbass.

Season Two’s third episode, “Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees,” justified the return of Valerie Cherish by matching the quality of Season One’s best episodes. It was fresh and smart and incisive and most of all, it was fucking funny. But what we really want when a show returns to our TV screens nine years after its cancellation is not just for it to be as funny as it was previously, but for it to evolve into something else — its own thing, a series that acknowledges the decade that has passed in the interim. While watching Season Two’s fifth episode, “Valerie Is Taken Seriously,” I suddenly had the feeling that I wasn’t watching my old favorite comedy from nine years ago, but another show entirely. A series that was made in 2014, not a series that was dressing up 2014 like 2005 and hoping no one noticed.

We still have a handful of episodes left before we can judge Season Two in it entirety, to really see how it measures up against the first season, but “Valerie Is Taken Seriously” might as well be titled “The Comeback Is Taken Seriously” because it is the first episode to make it explicitly clear that Season Two has an entirely separate agenda. All of the old stuff still applies; yes, Valerie Cherish is still an oblivious narcissist who can’t get out of her own way, but the relationships are different now, in a way I wasn’t expecting. Maybe things will take a turn, and the next three episodes will have Valerie again facing humiliation after humiliation and everyone else faring better… but I don’t think so. I think I’m onto what The Comeback is really doing in its second season, and I’m loving it. But more on that in a moment.

“Valerie Is Taken Seriously” first gives us some bickering between Valerie Cherish and Jane the producer (and Academy Award-winning Jewish lesbian). It’s reminiscent of several scenes from the first season (most memorably: “Well, I got it!!”), except the power dynamic in this relationship has shifted and Valerie is more argumentative than she ever would have been nine years ago. In the end, she does end up caving to Jane’s demand that Val arbitrarily make up which episode of Seeing Red she’s shooting, which seems like a mere comedic beat when it happens (but ends up being crucial later).

Next, Val heads to set, where she’s filming what she thinks will be a return to her Room And Bored roots. Instead, she’s working entirely without props or other actors to bounce off of, and the “studio audience” is about twenty hired actors who laugh when they’re told to, not when they actually think Valerie is funny. (That’s not all that different from a real studio audience, but Val isn’t happy.) HBO’s Rada and Connor return to explain as kindly as possible that Paulie G is falling behind on his writing duties and will be temporarily replaced by Andie, a female director who in so many ways is the anti-Paulie. For one, she doesn’t hate Valerie on sight, and she’s only mildly miffed when Val steps on her toes to tell her that the “studio audience” will be too jealous of her to chuckle appropriately. (Once they start laughing on command at everything Mallory says, Val’s tune changes.)

Andie is a dancer in addition to a director, so she occasionally busts a move on set, creating a goofy vibe that Valerie tries half-successfully to imitate. Valerie is a little awkward here, but so is Andie, and the two have a funny rapport together. (Are Andie’s dance moves any less embarrassing than Val’s Annie Hall? Not really.) We don’t often see Valerie interact with women who have power over her in the same way we’ve seen her constantly undermined by guys like Tom, Paulie G, and James Burrows in Season One. Val and Andie have a fun chemistry that’s unlike anything we’ve seen on the show before, and though there’s no reason to think that we’ll see Andie in the future (she’s only directing two Seeing Red episodes), she’s probably the best new character we’ve gotten this season. (Possible exception: Seth Rogen, who doesn’t count because he’s playing Seth Rogen.) We can probably bet that the blow job in “Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” would’ve played out a lot differently had Andie been in charge; as in that episode, there’s some interesting stuff about women’s roles in Hollywood happening here. (More on that later, too.)

This is the densest of The Comeback‘s new episodes, which also has the production of Seeing Red overseen by The New York Times, which pisses off publicist Billy because his own stabs at interviews have been nixed for this “classy” exclusive. This causes temperamental Billy to have a total meltdown, going all Russell Crowe and throwing his phone at one of our little-seen cameramen, then firing himself as Val’s publicist. This is not long before Paulie G explodes when he learns Valerie has seen seen the dailies and she again tries to backseat direct by suggesting he light her scenes differently. At this, Paulie G’s biggest freakout yet, Valerie becomes so concerned with his well-being (and moreso, the well-being of her bid at being a serious actress on a serious premium cable network) that she hunts down a showrunner who hates her a little less. And this is where things get really interesting.

(For me, it was the turning point of this entire season.)

I’d been hoping Tom would return in Season Two. As far as I can remember, his character has gone unmentioned, which made some sense because Paulie G was a much more formidable villain, and his return to The Comeback was absolutely essential — more essential than any other character besides Valerie. (On a story level, at least — though I have a hard time imagining any of this working without Mickey constantly peering over Val’s shoulder, fussing with her hair at inopportune moments. As last week’s episode proved, Valerie can’t function without her best gay, and not just because he’s the only guy who can get her hair to look so very 80s.) It seemed plausible that if Robert Bagnell wasn’t readily available to reprise the Tom role, The Comeback would easily move forward without him — or even that they wouldn’t have reached out to him at all. These eight episodes are already stuffed with returning favorites like Jane and Juna, and a handful of new characters. Tom didn’t have to come back, but I was really hoping he would, because he was such an essential part of the first season. We see him squirming to keep it together every time Val makes an obnoxious request. Though he’s never outright unkind, it’s written all over his face in every moment of Season One what he thinks of her.

And poor, poor Tom — he is now on his fifth season executive producing a pretty wretched Nickelodeon show while his ex-partner is creating a series for HBO. Paulie G was a total dick back in the day, and he’s gotten only marginally better. He may be a halfway decent comedy writer (according to this show’s standards), but now that we know he was shooting heroin all through Room And Bored‘s production, we have even more reason to believe that it was Tom holding that show together all along, and how is he thanked for it? Fate is cruel, and nowhere is it crueler than in Los Angeles.

We learn more about Tom in this one scene than we learned about him all last season, and though he once played the peacekeeper, he’s now much too miserable to hold those emotions in when Val comes traipsing onto his candy-colored Nicky Nicky Nack Nack set. “You’re the monster!” Paulie G announces to Val earlier in the episode, pointedly and probably unfairly; he’s talking about Mallory becoming a CGI creature in a fucked up Seeing Red fantasy sequence, but he’s really talking about the way he’s brainwashed himself into seeing Valerie Cherish as the devil, to such an extent that he had to write a whole series about it. But when Valerie confronts Tom with her well-meaning request to bail Paulie G out of an impending relapse, Tom looks like he wants to dive under a table, like he really has seen a monster. At first, Paulie G telling Val that she’s a monster seems like just another way that he’s a pompous asshole, but Tom’s similar sentiment forces us to really consider: is she?

Season One of The Comeback was all about Valerie Cherish’s degradation. We caught little snippets of what was going on with everyone else, but ultimately, it was all about Valerie. She was the victim and her own worst enemy, and we mainly saw things from the point of view of how they affected Valerie. She was at the lowest point on the totem pole, so painfully unaware of how she was being perceived. Everyone else had this power over her: they knew she was making an ass of herself long before she did, and so, of course, did we.

Season Two still has plenty of that flavor, but it’s added a flip-side. Seeing Red is all about what Paulie G went through, a dark addiction that neither we nor Valerie were privy to. It’s somewhat comical that Paulie G thinks Valerie was such a thorn in his side, when we saw pretty clearly that he was a big fat jerk to her from the get-go. Of course a guy like that would paint the annoying but harmless actress as the bad guy. Of course he would write a self-aggrandizing series that degrades her again and again and colors himself the victim. But adding the more reliable Tom to the mix makes this all more complex.

A decade ago, Tom was a pretty level-headed and reasonable guy. Now he’s a live-wire who will push a man in a worm costume without much provocation. He’s kind of turned into a Paulie G (copping to his own issues with substance abuse). Both Tom and Paulie G are utterly traumatized by their time on Room And Bored, and while Tom paints Paulie G as the Big Bad in his version of the story, we are now forced to consider Valerie’s role in that sitcom in a whole new light. I don’t think it’s fair to say that she drove either Paulie G or Tom to madness — Paulie G would’ve been a heroin-shooting jackass regardless. But Valerie came out of that moment with a hit show (the reality show The Comeback, not Room And Bored) and has gone on to star opposite Seth Rogen on an HBO series.

When Season One ended, Val’s success seemed more like a compromise than a triumph, but in Tom and Paulie G’s eyes, she got the better deal and they got rehab and Nickelodeon. Juna became a movie star, Jane won an Oscar, and none of these people are as happy as they should be, but this isn’t just about Valerie Cherish looking foolish while everyone else winces anymore. In some ways, Valerie actually has the power here — the mere sight of her can make grown men regress into tantrum-throwing children. This season, there are many ways in which Valerie Cherish is really, truly winning, and that’s not something I expected from The Comeback. It’s a totally different M.O., and maybe it’ll change in the next episode. For now, Valerie Cherish is kinda fucking crushing it, and I’m very excited.

Thanks to a little visit from the Grim Reaper, last week’s “Valerie Saves The Show” was The Comeback‘s darkest episode yet, but “Valerie Is Taken Seriously” is also pretty menacing. Shayna the First AD wears a shirt that says “City of Angels,” and that’s no accident — this episode is all about how merciless Hollywood is. A once-promising comedy writer and Emmy winner is barely holding on as the producer of a kids’ show he can’t stand, and the cast of that series isn’t any happier, as evidenced by Gary the fury-filled worm. Tom hates his former partner, also an Emmy winner, who cleaned up his heroin habit and got a show on the most prestigious network around and is utterly joyless. A publicist flies into a rage at the drop of a hat, throwing a hissy fit and quitting his job because he’s been upstaged by the network publicist.

These are funny moments, but they’re sad, too — Billy cries! And while his rant is, on the one hand, rather infantile, it’s also heartfelt and raises a solid point. People like Billy and Tom and Paulie G made sacrifices that allowed Valerie to get where she is, and now it’s not just Red who has fallen prey to the monster that is Hollywood — they’re all in the same boat. In fact, her delusions of grandeur might be the very thing that is saving her from being as despondent as the rest of these people. (Remember: Jane is pretty down on herself, too.) Val’s still the same character, but Season Two has found a new spin on Valerie Cherish’s oblivious optimism. Rather than using it to make her the butt of every joke, this time she may be the luckiest out of any of these characters. (Seth Rogen seems pretty chipper, but again: that’s because he’s just Seth Rogen.)

Interestingly, “Valerie Is Taken Seriously” pretty squarely focuses the onus of its misery on the men. Paulie G, Tom, and Billy fly into major rages, while Mark (in his brief appearance) is also pretty cantankerous, and even Mickey seems a little pissier than usual. (Who would have guessed he’d have such beef with The New York Times crossword puzzle?) In contrast, Jane remains pretty level-headed when she and Val spar, and Andie either genuinely likes Valerie Cherish or at least does a better job of hiding her annoyance than Tom and Paulie G ever did. “Valerie Is Brought To Her Knees” had some pretty on-point criticism of how Hollywood’s boys’ club treats women, but in this episode, the ladies get the last laugh while the men are off sulking. It’s not coincidental that the critic character is also a woman — the sisters are all Team Valerie in this one, while none of the boys do her any favors. (Assuming we can safely count Mickey amongst the sisters.)

Also of note: here Valerie is obsessively worried about her appearance (even moreso than usual). She covers up that awful green body suit with a robe, she battles Paulie G over the unflattering dramatic lighting in Seeing Red, then refuses to let Jane shoot the behind-the-scenes footage with the docu-like lack of luminescence HBO prefers. (And this time, she puts her foot down.) When the New York Times critic refers to her portrayal of Mallory as “brave,” Valerie assumes it is a backhanded compliment that is somehow judging the way she looks. (Which, again, astutely highlights the double standard actresses face in this business. Men who look unattractive in movies are never called “brave.”) It turns out that this woman is giving her an actual compliment, something Valerie Cherish isn’t used to (and probably doesn’t often deserve). That’s why it takes her so long to catch on, worried about how she looks physically when she’s never come off looking better. Valerie is so used to spinning everything she hears into a compliment that she’s become totally deaf to genuine praise. After all her ego trips, what a twist for Valerie to be in denial of her talent, deflecting in the one moment she earns kudos.

Valerie watches the dailies with her “It wall” in the background, a reminder of all the fluffy vanilla material she’s known for. She thinks the scene is too dark, and no one — not even Mickey — agrees with her. Is this a meta-commentary, a way of staving off naysayers who might wish that The Comeback was more goofy fun, less biting and incisive? Maybe, maybe not, but it is telling of Valerie’s character that the first thing she sees when she watches her own tour-de-force performance is that the lighting isn’t flattering, and her I’m It fans don’t want to see her that way. This is the diametric opposite of almost every other episode of the series, where Valerie thinks she’s great and others have a different take on the matter. The script has been flipped, people.

The debate over the lighting is an on-the-nose but apt metaphor for what this episode is about: light-as-a-feather Valerie afraid of going “too dark,” of straying from her sitcom roots, when ironically, everyone else thinks she’s never been better. She’s actually good. (See above, re: Valerie Cherish crushing it.) The whole episode is full of contrasts between light and dark — like when a silly kiddie program takes on a very profane and adult tone, revealing the crushed dreams of its producer. “Valerie Is Taken Seriously” begins with Val bathed in the garish, cheesy reality lights she’s always reveled in; a multicamera sitcom, too, by necessity, has very bland and direct lighting. That’s the world Valerie knows, but she’s moving into darker, more serious territory. And so is The Comeback.

I’m not sure what lesson, if any, Val will take from all this, but it seems like another turning point for this series. If The New York Times genuinely thinks Valerie Cherish has given a raw, revealing performance, then there’s no reason to think the rest of the world won’t agree. We could see Valerie Cherish as a sought-after hot commodity in serious dramatic roles. We could see Valerie Cherish win an Emmy.

Would that ruin the delicious dynamic The Comeback has cooked up thus far, with Val dwindling down on the D list? I don’t think so. I see no reason the show couldn’t be just as funny if Valerie Cherish was working opposite Matthew McConaughey in a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I think that’s a natural evolution, a smart way for The Comeback to do more than just replay Valerie Cherish’s Greatest Hits from Season One. It would be a nice echo of the way Season One spent thirteen episodes preparing us for the humiliating debut of her reality series, only to surprise us at the very end and turn Valerie’s degradation into her salvation.

But I don’t think The Comeback has to go this route. Maybe Paulie G’s shortcomings are a sign that Seeing Red is going to flop. Valerie’s small victories in this episode could be a blip on the radar. I’m on board regardless. “Valerie Is Taken Seriously” truly surprised me, and though I’ve often said that The Comeback is the smartest and most (unfortunately) accurate dissection of Hollywood I’ve seen, this episode widened the scope in a way I’d never considered. True to its title, it made me take Valerie Cherish seriously. For all the comedy we get from Valerie’s miming of child-dismemberment in a hilariously hideous motion capture suit, this is a serious episode — even more serious than last week’s. There’s a lot of drama here.

My days of fearing that Season Two of The Comeback would be but a pale imitation of its glory days are long gone. The Comeback is doing what it has always done: taking risks and taking no prisoners, while still presenting a deceptively light tone overall. Here Valerie Cherish is asked to portray a monster that eats Paulie G’s inner child, but we all know that the monster is really the profession he’s chosen — the same monster that devoured Billy and Tom’s inner children, and who knows how many others? I feel bad for Tom and Billy and maybe even Paulie G, but it’s also nice to see Red on top of the world by episode’s end for a change. She gets a sweet gift from Seth Rogen and proclaims that it’s a good day, and for Valerie Cherish, it is. As dark as this episode goes at times, it also has one of the series’ sunniest endings.

We don’t yet know if Valerie Cherish’s portrayal of Mallory on Seeing Red is Emmy-worthy, but I can say with certainty that this episode of The Comeback is. It’s unlikely that the Hollywood monster really will take this little-watched but much-loved comedy seriously, but I do. This is one of The Comeback‘s very best episodes.

“Valerie Is Taken Seriously”: A

*

“That’s a cautionary tale, huh? That’s what happens, though, you know, when you make show business your whole life, right? You know? Next thing you know, you’re eating kale chips out of a shopping cart.”

The Comeback has had a rather dark streak the past few episodes, touching on misogyny, suicide, cancer, and explosive anger stemming from a deep well of unhappiness in several of these characters who’ve had their showbiz dreams dashed to pieces. “Valerie Cooks In The Desert” lightens up a smidge, although there’s a rather grim interlude in the middle (also involving shattered illusions).

The episode begins with Val glowing from her (first ever?) positive reviews — The New York Times has praised the performances in Seeing Red, though Paulie G’s writing gets disparaged. Marky Mark is less a fan of Valerie Cherish at the moment, since her re-shoots are getting in the way of their dinner at Nobu, not to mention tearing up the floors in their home. As foreshadowed in previous episodes, when Mark got so fed-up with Val’s production(s) that he defected to a rental home, there’s serious trouble in paradise between Mr. and Mrs. Cherish. (Valerie’s maid, Esperanza, on the other hand, is finally easing up in front of the cameras — or at least trying to, doing a stiff variation on the sassy housekeeper stereotype she thinks viewers will buy into. Let’s just say it needs work.)Mark and Val’s home being tarnished by production is an apt metaphor for the damage it’s done to their marriage. Valerie spends this whole episode trying to repair what’s broken, making a big gesture of cooking dinner for her man as an excuse for why she wants to wrap up her portion of production; unfortunately, no one else gets why this is such a big deal, because an average wife would be making meals for her mister on the regular. Paulie G has yet another freakout at Val when she suggests that the reviews for the Seeing Red premiere were mixed, which sends him into retreat mode as he tries to punch up the final episode, leading to further delays. Whereas Val once lived to be in front of the cameras, here she just wants it to be over.

Valerie is beckoned to the desert, where reshoots have her filming an insane kidnapping sequence in the trunk of a car, co-starring a bunch of snakes, with her mouth taped shut (a dream come true for Paulie G, surely). Meanwhile, Paulie G attempts to crank out pages, taking a break for a massage that Val bursts in on in an attempted drug bust, thanks to Tyler’s guess that he’s shooting up in there. (“You’re not a writer!” Val accuses of Tyler’s storytelling.) The heat is getting to everyone, which leads Valerie to display her diva actress side in an interaction with Ron and Shayla that ends with Val on the receiving end of “the middle finger” from the wheelchair-bound line producer. It’s never good to be flipped off by a guy in a wheelchair.Predictably, Valerie doesn’t make it out of the desert until well into the evening, stopping by Mark’s rental house to leave dinner at the door because he’ll be too mad to let her in. (Aww. You can tell Jane really feels for her in this one.) A well-intentioned “pebble” thrown at the bedroom window changes that when it smashes the glass and rouses Mark from bed. (“So cute!” Val says, moments before we hear glass breaking.) Mark lets Val in with her dinner (partially eaten by dogs Valerie mistakes for coyotes), but it’s clear that this relationship is in jeopardy, especially once we learn that Mark has “plans” with the woman he rented the house from. He’s enjoying his bachelor pad a bit too much, it seems, while his wife has forsaken him for the former heroin addict who was at one time her biggest nemesis.

“Valerie Cooks In The Desert” doesn’t introduce any new ideas. It pushes forward storylines that have been simmering for a while now. Mostly, the rockiness of Val and Mark’s marriage now that the cameras are back, but also Mickey’s illness and Paulie G’s continual spiral toward relapse. We already knew that Valerie was getting a good review from the Times. Val’s sparring with Ron and Shayla isn’t new, either — it’s just that here, it reaches a boiling point.

“Valerie Cooks In The Desert” has plenty of amusing throwaway comedy. Mickey has a gross-out moment when Rada stops by and he can’t make it all the way to the outside bathroom — apparently, his medication has led to some rather explosive moments on the toilet (and we have a remix of Season One’s similar gag, when it was Mark on the porcelain throne during one of Val’s confessionals). Valerie riffs on an old Wendy’s commercial, asking “Where’s the meat?” and announcing “Here’s the beef!” (Both wrong.) Mickey makes a rather lewd comment about how much fun one can have with beef (even I’m not sure what exactly he means). Valerie’s quip about the dragons on Game Of Thrones not being real as a live snake is locked in the trunk with her is also a winner, though Billy’s Orange Is The New Black reference goes over her head. (“Now you’re just saying colors!”) Val may be hip to HBO now, but she’s not caught up with Netflix.So it’s official — Valerie has gotten the acclaim she’s always wanted, but it hasn’t really gone to her head because she never noticed that she wasn’t acclaimed before. Sure, Valerie is more uppity here than usual, trying to use her good review to earn her a table at Nobu, but is that really because she’s gotten good notes from The New York Times? Or is it because the demands of the Seeing Red crew are pretty unreasonable? It’s hard to imagine Seth Rogen being asked to wait around in sweltering heat, locked in a trunk with a snake. Val has met success in the entertainment industry at last, but that’s not always all it’s cracked up to be.

As Mickey grows less and less able to keep up with Red’s heavy production schedule, and Mark is less and less willing to let showbiz become the mistress in their marriage, it seems we soon may see Valerie Cherish faced with a choice: her personal life, or her dreams of fame and adulation? This becomes clearest in the episode’s centerpiece scene, when Valerie runs into good ol’ Gigi at the supermarket.

Gigi was one of many highlights in Season One — the lone female writer Valerie took under her wing (for mostly selfish reasons). Gigi had a bad habit of eating her feelings and frequently burst into tears when things didn’t go her way (which was always). In many moments, she was even more pathetic than Valerie. And not much has changed. Gigi has gained a significant amount of weight (even Mickey makes a catty comment about it!). When we re-meet her, she’s munching on a bag of kale chips. She also looks like she’s aged about thirty years.Valerie observes with embarrassed pity as Gigi claims to be living it up as a writer on Pretty Little Liars and expectant (adoptive) mother… before collapsing into sobs as she explains that she owns four empty homes, doesn’t get along with her co-workers, can’t get enough time off work for a root canal, and even hates her bitch of a dog-walker. She, too, had a dream of having a show on HBO, except unlike Val and Paulie G, she never made it. (They picked up Girls instead — ironically, also about a less-than-svelte lady who is fond of snacking.) Gigi’s in the same camp we learned Tom was in last week — technically successful, but hating every minute of it. Once again, Valerie Cherish is one of the unlikely lucky ones to come out of the Room And Bored debacle.

Valerie doesn’t offer to heal Gigi’s wounds this time around — how could she? Gigi’s personal damages may be beyond repair at this point, and Valerie is only one woman. She doesn’t have a lot of pull at HBO. But she does see a lesson about the dark side of success — and the dangers of being a single woman who only has “the business” to keep her warm at night, for Hollywood is a fickle lover. Valerie may be having fifteen more minutes of fame at the moment, but how long will that last? Is it worth sacrificing her marriage for? Aside from sharing some laughs with director Andie (who returns, with more bonkers dance references) and Seth Rogen (absent in this episode), Valerie hasn’t made any new friends despite her newfound success — and as of this episode, she’s clearly made a few enemies.

Valerie now has more or less what she always wanted — but how bad does she really want it? Bad enough to sabotage her own marriage, bad enough to leave Mickey behind in the dust? Stay tuned — there’s just two episodes left of The Comeback‘s second season! (And that just might be all we get, thanks to poor ratings. Television is a cruel mistress, indeed.)

“Valerie Cooks In The Desert”: B+

*

We are officially wrapping up the fall TV season now, as most shows have begun or are about to take a hiatus for the holidays, and others are taking a hiatus for… ever. Farewell, A To Z! Good riddance, Selfie! Manhattan Love Story, we hardly knew ye!

I’m not too broken up about any of this, since the final half of 2014 didn’t give us a whole lot to get excited about, televisually speaking, whereas 2015 brings the winter return of a few things I’m quite looking forward to, such as Girls, True Detective, and Looking on HBO, and AMC’s Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul, which I’m cautiously optimistic about.

It should surprise no one that the comeback of The Comeback was the real bright spot in my fall TV schedule. In the last few weeks, the show h

as proven itself to be freakin’ brilliant all over again, and it remains the ultimate skewering of the television industry. (But you can read more about that here.)

This TV seasons earns a special shout-out for ABC, which far and away had the strongest new schedule. I’ll discuss one of its success stories at length below, but let’s not forget Cristela and Blackish, which earn points both for diversity and practically single-handedly saving the family sitcom from extinction, seeing as its competition is pretty dismal. (Exception: the charming The Goldbergs, also on ABC.)

Now, let’s take a moment to see what else survived on my DVR over these few cruel months… and which shows fell off the radar.

GOTHAM

Since Gotham has been reasonably well-reviewed, I decided to give it another chance after dismissing the laughable, weak pilot.

I got about ten minutes in, then turned it off.

Nope! Still terrible.

Wake me up when they’re in high school.

STATE OF AFFAIRS

When you watch a show with a title as generic as State Of Affairs, you know what you’re getting yourself into. I have to admit the concept of the show sounded mildly appealing, with a CIA officer who was involved with the president’s deceased son doing a bunch of other CIA stuff on a weekly basis. Okay, maybe I just wanted to see a TV world in which Alfre Woodard was the president. Unfortunately, that is the same world where Katherine Heigl is part of the CIA, which is a little bit like when Denise Richards was cast a nuclear physicist in a James Bond movie or Tara Reid was cast as anything in any movie. It’s just not believable! On the one hand, I’m sympathetic to Heigl and all actors who get typecast as one thing, and then can’t break out of that mold. On the other hand, 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth, One For The Money, Life As We Know It, Killers, The Big Wedding, New Year’s Eve. Katherine, you did this to yourself.

In State Of Affairs, Heigl’s character’s name is Charleston Tucker, which I think should mean she has to do the Charleston every time she enters a new location, because that’s what I think of whenever her name is mentioned. Charleston reacts to severe national crises like her sorority pledge drive isn’t going very well, or maybe it just seems that way because the pilot dresses her up like a hipster librarian. (I feel like a real CIA agent would be shot on sight for an outfit like that, but what do I know?) State Of Affairs is a lot like Madam Secretary, especially since it requires the lead actress to do a lot of staring at screens with a furrowed brow — and Tea Leoni pulls that off better than Katherine Heigl ever will. Charleston mostly just looks like like she’s watching her own sex tape go viral. State Of Affairs doesn’t really utilize any of Heigl’s assets, instead trying to make an actress who doesn’t do dour and serious very well do nothing but dour and serious, but without the surrounding skill and gravitas of a show like Homeland. It’s basically Zero Light Thirty, so it’s harmless enough, but if it doesn’t make it past its first season America may be a better place for it.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: FREAK SHOW

Oh, Ryan Murphy. I wish I could quit you.

Popular was fun. For a brief, shining moment, Nip/Tuck was brilliant. I was never a fan of Glee, but now I’m basically watching it anyway, thanks to American Horror Story. Last fall’s Coven derailed mid-season, but remained watchable until the real death knell: when Stevie fucking Nicks dropped by for a series of musical numbers. This was only one in a vast number of problems with the season, which kept killing and resurrecting people until these beloved characters’ deaths felt about as momentous as a trip to the grocery store.

Now in its fourth season, Murphy’s FX anthology is now American Horror Story: Glee, and yes, that is the true extent of the horror. There’s a homicidal clown and his dandy protegee, there are assorted two-headed people and Kathy Bates in her most masculine role to date (and that’s saying something), but what there really is is a lot of singing. Imagine I walked into a network and pitched a story set in 1950s Florida where characters sometimes dropped everything to sing tunes by Lana Del Rey and Fiona Apple. I would be escorted off the studio lot immediately.

But I’m not Ryan Murphy.The anachronistic song choices might work if used sparingly, if they were more than a jukebox gimmick utilized because Ryan Murphy just can’t not have people burst into song. (How much do you want to bet that his American Crime Story, centered on O.J. Simpson, has Nicole Brown Simpson and Kato Kaelin dueting to Rihanna and Eminem’s “Love The Way You Lie,” or something?) Again, Murphy returns to the well of “just joking!” character deaths (this time, in extended lame fantasy sequences rather than lame resurrections) that just make us throw up our hands in frustration. The season began by ripping off Zodiac and Halloween, which was moderately promising, until Murphy decided to kill off the season’s most iconic and creepiest character, Twisty the killer clown played by John Carroll Lynch, in the Halloween two-parter (the best of Freak Show this season).

This season hasn’t recovered from the loss of Twisty. It’s now a black comedy about a bratty serial killer (Finn Wittrock) with dull detours (like a whole bunch of business involving tattoo-faced Grace Gummer) and little continuity from episode to episode. (Not as bad as last season, but that’s a low bar.) Coven had a bevy of bitchy witches that kept things fun even when the plot faltered. This season, Jessica Lange’s legless fame whore Elsa is a repetitive bore; Emma Roberts’ slightly snarky sham fortune teller is no match for last season’s vicious vixen Madison Montgomery; Evan Peters is a suitable enough “hero” as Jimmy the lobster claw man, but maybe they shouldn’t have kicked off the season with him murdering someone if they wanted us to truly root for him.

There’s no real momentum. Dandy has been a wacko since Day One, so we’re basically just cooling our heels until his storyline intersects with Elsa’s freak show in a meaningful way, and there is hardly anyone we even care about surviving there anyway, especially after the demise of Ma Petite (R.I.P.). At this point, the scariest thing about this show is the masochism of continuing to watch it.

HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER

The gayest show on television is not on HBO or Logo. It’s on ABC prime time Thursdays, the network’s hottest night. So I’m sure it’s not a coincidence that How To Get Away With Murder is also one of the campiest, most over-the-top shows on TV. It’s the kind of show where people use the term “slut shaming” in court, where murder convictions are overturned a matter of days after the crime was committed. Or whatever. I can’t really follow How To Get Away With Murder‘s legal maneuvers, and I’ll bet the show’s writers are hoping you can’t, either, because they don’t make a lick of sense. I know that’s true of every legal procedural, from The Practice to Law & Order, but How To Get Away With Murder seems to take a special pleasure in ridiculous courtroom proceedings that make any given episode of Ally McBeal look like an actual courtroom transcript.

If you can set aside the ludicrous misuse of the law — and I’d forgive you if you can’t, because it’s not easy — then what you’ll get is a super-sudsy soap opera unfolding in two time periods: first, on the night of a crime that all of Annalise Keating’s star students are implicated in, and second, some weeks prior, as they are gearing up on the defense of a connected murder. The show’s weekly cases are throwaway at best, so lame that I almost stopped watching, and I wouldn’t be sorry if How To Get Away With Murder jettisoned the procedural element completely.

ABC’s try-hard marketing seems to be paying off in getting plot beats and dialogue snippets (like “Why is your penis on a dead girl’s phone?”) to become semi-water cooler moments, and it could grow stale any minute — especially now that the series has caught up to itself and revealed that Annalise is somehow in on the cover-up involving her husband’s accidental murder. (If you want to get away with murder, it helps to have an infallible attorney who happens to be married to the victim on your side.) The cast is appealing, Viola Davis grounds it in whatever reality she can muster, and the attempts at racial and sexual diversity build up enough goodwill to make this stand out from other completely absurd attempts at representing the legal profession that are not so consistently progressive. If nothing else, How To Get Away With Murder is a good example of what people want to see on TV nowadays, and that’s not always easy to find on network television.

OLIVE KITTERIDGE

One of fall 2014’s most appealing offerings wasn’t exactly a series at all. Or, it was — but it was only four episodes. That’s HBO’s Olive Kitteridge, the adaptation of Elizabeth Strout’s collection of short stories, spanning many decades and starring Frances McDormand as the titular character, a woman who is hard to warm up to in the world of this story but easy to love as a viewer because she’s so feisty.

The series begins when Olive’s husband Henry (Richard Jenkins) takes on a new employee at his pharmacy in small-town Maine. She’s Denise (Zoe Kazan), young, cute, dorky, and married — but not for long, as tragedy soon strikes her handsome husband, also named Henry (Brady Corbet). The still-living Henry, obviously smitten with her from the beginning, now feels the urge to care for her even as Denise gradually moves into a romance with a younger and more eligible coworker (Jesse Plemons).

Olive Kitteridge eventually follows Henry and Olive from middle age to old age, as their son grows from a teenager into a man, gets married and then divorced and married again. Side characters come in and out of their lives, including a severely depressed woman (Rosemarie DeWitt) and, later, her equally depressed son (Cory Michael Smith), as well as a cranky widower with conservative views (Bill Murray). What connects these segments, occurring over so many years, is death — deaths that occur, or almost occur. Some are accidents, some are suicides, some are crimes, and some are just nature. A full life is filled with death, and Olive Kitteridge experiences more than her share of it, but marches forth anyway. Olive Kitteridge is a bittersweet experience with sharp characters and many moments of beauty amidst the tragedy, and it’s probably the best thing I saw on TV in fall 2104 (besides The Comeback).

*

“No one? Really? Not ‘no one,’ Mark, because I believed in me. I’m not no one. That’s not nice. Maybe you don’t think I’m someone, but I have a birth certificate that says I am. Maybe you should talk to the Television Academy, ’cause they think I’m someone. Okay? They think I’m someone!”

Oh dear.

The Comeback was first canceled back in 2005, presumably because many viewers didn’t know what to make of it. Most people I know who watch the show love it, but I have heard some who say they find the perpetual awkwardness off-putting. The Comeback makes them laugh, but it also made them genuinely uncomfortable, and they don’t necessarily enjoy that.

I’m a masochist, so I do.

However, the penultimate episode of Season Two, “Valerie Faces The Critics,” did provoke the most visceral reaction the show has gotten out of me yet. Most shows might “learn their lesson” from Season One’s cancellation and aim for a lighter second season; instead, The Comeback doubled down on darkness. This was most apparent in the season’s fourth episode, “Valerie Saves The Show,” which seemed somewhat uncharacteristically dark until subsequent episodes neglected to lighten up much. Season Two has continued straying down that path, as Mickey’s health deteriorates along with Mark and Valerie’s marriage, and we peer into the many lives that have been soured or altogether ruined by “the business” — Billy’s, Tom’s, Gigi’s, and of course Paulie G’s.After viewing Episode 5 of this season, “Valerie Is Taken Seriously,” I predicted that The Comeback was spinning in a new and entirely different direction than Season One  — instead of making Val the butt of all jokes, a “lonely loser of an actress” (as Julie Chen puts it here), she would instead find some measure of success and deal with the fallout. “Valerie Faces The Critics” confirms that, but pushes it into more complex emotional territory than I anticipated. This season of The Comeback is not afraid to go for the jugular, nor to push Valerie Cherish into a very dicey position in terms of likeability. There’s plenty of comedy in this episode, but there’s also an overwhelmingly gloomy cloud of tragedy that will test even The Comeback‘s most loyal devotees.

I’ve grown so used to Valerie Cherish that I tend to revel in her ineptitude, but in this episode I was truly uncomfortable, to the extent that I almost felt bad. It’s the closest I’ve come to understanding why some people might not want to watch this show, which doesn’t at all mean that I didn’t want to watch it. The Comeback is typically a brilliant comedy, and frequently provides some insightful drama. But for fans of Valerie Cherish — and I think we can all agree that I’m one of the biggest — “Valerie Faces The Critics” is a horror movie.Ironically, the season’s most morally murky episode begins with Valerie Cherish’s greatest triumph to date — an honest-to-God Emmy nomination, something no one saw in her future (except Valerie herself). We find out about it via Val’s appearance on The Talk, and while this is huge for our heroine, we don’t see her discover the news but rather catch up with her in the midst of a flurry of high-profile press appearances. While The Comeback is often anal about showing us each and every excruciating step of the creative process, here we gloss over what may be Valerie Cherish’s biggest turning point this season. It’s not an oversight — we’re meant to be jarred by the “new” Valerie Cherish, which puts us in the position of those who are reacting to her — in this episode, mostly Mark and Mickey.

It’s also not an accident that Val begins this episode by explicitly stating to the ladies of The Talk that Seeing Red is a dark comedy. She may as well be talking about The Comeback: “This is, you know, edgy.” The Talk also brings up the topic of Val’s marriage, breaking out Valerie and Mark’s ski slope wedding photos — which becomes extra poignant upon a second viewing, once we know where this episode is taking us.

Val, Esperanza, and Mickey watch The Talk appearance, and Mickey’s obviously seen better days. (He falls asleep on the sofa, and for a brief terrifying moment I thought he might be dead — and that’s not the only time that happened in this episode.) Jane and Val have an amusing exchange equating Jane’s vegetarianism with her disdain for other forms of meat that might enter her body, then Billy drops by with some good news about a cushy Entertainment Tonight stint that forces Jane to pull her HBO documentarian trump card and rain all over the parade. Often, Jane’s instincts for incisive storytelling are spot on, even if they are at odds with Val’s dignity, but this time she might be pulling rank just because she can. Is there really any harm in letting Entertainment Tonight follow Val around for one lousy day? It’s not the last time this episode made me wonder if deep down, Jane Benson the Jewish Academy Award-winning lesbian might not be just a heartless bitch.Later, a phone call confirms just how bad Val’s marriage is at the moment — Valerie and Mark are officially separated and seeing a marriage counselor. We hear only Valerie’s end of this conversation, as she sits alone on the former marriage bed — where we saw many of Mark and Valerie’s most memorable interactions throughout the series — and she does indeed look like a “lonely loser of an actress.” She manages to convince Mark to meet her for a therapist-forbidden “sneak date,” which provides this episode’s riveting, haunting centerpiece.

As Valerie is about to walk in to dinner, she finds her cameras awaiting her (and other cameras awaiting Ryan Seacrest at SoulCycle). Valerie’s saner instincts kick in as she wisely nixes the idea of surreptitiously filming the reconciliation (with one of her trademark “absolutely not”s). Jane, however, assertively states that she needs this scene, knowing Valerie will cave because it makes good TV. It’s absolutely soul-crushing to watch Valerie give in to Jane’s demands here, because while Jane says the audience will want to know how Mark and Valerie mended their marriage, she knows full well that Mark would never tolerate a candid camera in this vulnerable and private moment — and she also knows Valerie isn’t stealthy enough to pull it off without Mark noticing. Jane throws Valerie’s marriage under the bus for her own selfish pursuit of a juicy documentary (which this is sure shaping up to be).

Jane has always been a morally questionable character on The Comeback, obviously complicit in the humiliation Valerie faced on the show-within-the-show Comeback back in Season One. However, we could also often see that Jane was conflicted about what she was doing, and her claims that editing was out of her hands rang at least half-true. But now Jane is not slave to a network. HBO probably doesn’t much care about this documentary, if they even remember it exists in the first place. Jane is a free agent, working solo, going rogue, and this time, her decision to document Valerie’s downfall is all her own. Worse, she’s willing to manipulate Valerie to make it happen, showing no sign of remorse. Valerie is ultimately to blame for allowing it to happen, but she did arrive at this dinner with the best of intentions. She’s just weak. Jane pushed all the right buttons, including a big red one that caused Valerie to self-destruct. If we thought “spider-eyes” Jane was marginally the bad guy in Season One, then Season Two’s Jane is a supervillain. She may think she’s making a feminist documentary about Valerie Cherish being abused and “assassinated” by Hollywood, but guess what, Jane? You’re the assassin now.The dinner does not go well. We know it’ll blow up in her face the moment Valerie agrees to wear a mic — or “a wire,” as Mark more astutely puts it. The blowout that ensues is predictable, at first, because we know Mark will be pissed. Reconciliation is not in the cards tonight. But the way this fight explodes and cuts straight to the heart of this marriage, touching on so many flaws and insecurities in both of these characters — well, it’s a breathtaking scene with some of the best work these actors have ever done on the series (or ever), and while it is very specific to these characters it is also universally about the ways any marriage might crumble.

Valerie and Mark both lay bare their feelings and unsparingly accuse each other of all sorts of love crimes, and as in most actual arguments, they’re both right. Both speak truth, both have demons, and neither one is the bad guy in this scenario. Yes, Valerie’s comeback has probably dealt this marriage its biggest blow, but Valerie’s not wrong when she says that she deserves to enjoy her success just as much as Mark has enjoyed his. Mark admits he isn’t as supportive of a successful Valerie as he thought he’d be. He’d rather have his desperate nobody back.

“Is there any part of you that is real anymore?” Mark asks at the beginning of the row, and at the end: “Are you even in there anymore?” In his eyes, at least, Valerie is now the shell of herself — a famous shell who cares more about her life looking great than actually being great. (She doesn’t know how to explain Mark’s absence at the Emmy’s, which may or may not be why she so desperately wants him to attend.) Mark might be on point with many of his criticisms, but Valerie has also worked extremely hard to get where she is now. She’s waited her whole life for this, and on some level, it’s a little cruel of Mark to want to take that from her just so he can have their simple life back. He feels threatened by the attention his wife is now receiving, threatened by the fact that he is no longer the sole person who loves Valerie Cherish (aside from Mickey). She can now get that love from other sources, and he can’t handle it.

Of course, the “love” one gets from the masses only goes so far and is in no way a suitable replacement for the love of a true partner, and if Valerie doesn’t realize that yet, she will shortly. In her heartbreaking rant, Valerie tells Mark that the Television Academy thinks she’s somebody — and while that is, on the one hand, totally depressing, it also explains why she seeks that approval so cravenly. If Mark doesn’t love who Valerie is right now, perhaps he never really loved her at all. It’s no wonder Valerie seeks adulation from another source, one that has, apparently, noticed and appreciated her hard work. Mark has never understood (or cared to understand) Val’s line of work, but she’s poured everything into it and now, at last, she’s recognized for it. That may not excuse all of Valerie’s questionable behavior in this episode, but it’s a place to start, and Mark can’t see past his annoyance at the constant surveillance long enough to comprehend why Valerie craves this.

Valerie Cherish gets an Emmy nomination for an HBO dark comedy in “Valerie Faces The Critics.” Lisa Kudrow should get one, too — she’s stellar throughout the series, obut her “I’m not nobody!” speech alone should seal the deal. (It likely won’t, though, given the show’s tiny viewership.) Arguably, this scene tells us more about Valerie Cherish than we’ve ever learned before (I was reminded of last season’s episode that gave us a brief, painful glimpse into her past as a high school outcast with scoliosis). The Comeback has never been afraid to get its hands dirty, but with the double-whammy reveals of Mark’s infidelity and Valerie’s abortion? Well, shit just got realer.

And that’s not even the end of the episode.

As edgy as The Comeback gets at times, I was fairly certain it would not go so dark to have Valerie walk in and discover Mickey’s naked dead body, so I wasn’t too surprised when she happily announced that he was breathing. (Funny moment, though.) I was more surprised by the gentleman, several decades Mickey’s junior, unapologetically popping out of the bathroom in his birthday suit. As bad as Val’s fight with Mark was, her invasion of Mickey’s privacy here feels in some ways like an even greater betrayal, as her cameras again capture a moment that would best be left undocumented. Valerie meant well when she stopped to check on Mickey, and again it is Jane who ensures that the cameras are in place before the action happens. (You could make the argument that Valerie just wants her hair done right, but I think it’s obvious that she’s more concerned about Mickey’s well-being than her curls.)For the time being, Mickey isn’t too upset about Val barging in on him (because he’s still drunk, maybe), or even the possibility that his large pasty backside will end up in an HBO documentary alongside his paramour’s dick. It’s shocking enough that he made the rare choice to put himself before Valerie, prioritizing some inebriated hanky-panky over his beloved Red — probably because he senses he doesn’t have a lot more opportunities to cut loose on the horizon. (He has no problem getting it up, though.) Whether or not Mickey succumbs to illness (which might be a shade too dark for this series), Valerie may be losing her biggest fan, and we certainly can’t blame Mickey for realizing he has better ways to spend his old age than constantly fluffing Red’s ‘do.

It has been clear for a few episodes that Val’s two greatest champions, Mark and Mickey, may not be around that much longer, and “Valerie Faces The Critics” brings those losses to a boiling point. As with most Comeback titles, “Valerie Faces The Critics” is both quite literal (as Val does press for Seeing Red) but has a broader meaning. Valerie’s two greatest supporters become her harshest critics. Mickey used to practically live for doing Val’s hair, and now he’s totally forgotten about her, blowing her off for a steamy hookup with a stranger. And of course Mark had some extremely harsh criticism in the earlier confrontation, most of which was accurate. Just as the rest of the world is finally beginning to cherish Valerie, those who really love her are pulling away. It’s sad stuff.

By the time Valerie actually faces “the critics” (mostly some freaky bloggers, ahem), there isn’t much criticism she hasn’t already heard, and she deflects it well. Bob (of the Paulie G-maligned BobTV.com) insinuates that laugh tracks are fake, which Valerie doesn’t take kindly to, while a nerdy blogger named Daphne reveals a rather embarrassing curiosity about fellating Seth Rogen — and questions the role of women on Seeing Red. After brushing off a lipstick-wearing male who deserves to be brushed off, Valerie gets her most insightful comment from a blogger who reads (too?) deeply into meanings of metaphors on a seemingly facile show. (Okay, I’ll say it: this character reminded me of me.) What this blogger doesn’t know is that Valerie herself needs to stop playing a version of herself if she wants to save her friendships and marriage.

“Valerie Faces The Critics” ends in an elevator, as Paulie G asks Valerie if he can tag along with her to Juna’s party. (Yay: more Juna!) She declines, maybe because she legitimately can’t get him in or maybe because she just doesn’t want to. The tables have turned — in terms of the elevator metaphor, Valerie is going up and Paulie G is going down, but there’s something sad and empty about this little victory over her nemesis. Back in Season One, we would have relished a chance to see Valerie rub her stardom in Paulie G’s face, but The Comeback isn’t interested in such easy wins.

And speaking of roles for women, here’s another non-accident: this episode features Valerie and Jane at their least likeable, boldly going where few other series do — difficult men are all over TV, but hard-to-like females are much rarer. Here we learn that the “working title” of Jane’s HBO documentary is The Assassination Of Valerie Cherish, which is also a fitting title for this episode.

This is Valerie Cherish at her least likeable — and, not coincidentally, her most successful. If many viewers found Val narcissistic and hard to warm up to before, they’ll be truly put off by her here. I am one of Valerie Cherish’s biggest fans, and even I was uneasy with what transpired in this episode. Valerie should know better than to wear a mic to dinner with her husband when their marriage is on the rocks; she should know better than to let Jane provoke her into dramatic confrontations all over again. At heart, I don’t believe Valerie Cherish is a bad person — she’s certainly self-involved, but I don’t think she’s truly selfish.

In this episode, she is, though. Up until this point, I would have said Valerie was a better person than in the first season, but “Valerie Faces The Critics” challenges that, essentially “assassinating” what we love about Valerie and turning her into a deceitful, shallow stereotype. TV shows tend to maintain a status quo — especially comedies — but this episode threatens much of what we hold dear. Mark and Valerie might very well be done, Mickey’s health and behavior are changing their relationship, and Valerie herself becomes the very sort of person who tormented her all these years. Just another famous bitch.

This episode proves that Jane doesn’t care about Valerie’s well-being, and we can probably guess that Billy is a fair-weather friend. It’s disheartening to see Valerie surrounded mostly by people who just want to leech off her success, as the people who are truly there for her are… well, not there, anymore. It’s actually quite painful to sit through this episode, because if you love the show as I do, you are deeply invested in these relationships that are imploding right before our eyes, and all because Valerie is making all the wrong choices. Valerie and Mark? Boom. Valerie and Mickey? Boom. Valerie and Jane? Boom.

With the way “Valerie Faces The Critics” tests us, perhaps we are the titular critics, challenged with the question of whether or not we still love Valerie Cherish after all this. Next week is the season finale, and quite possibly the series finale if HBO doesn’t bring Val back for a round three. (It’s hard to imagine what direction this show would head in a third season, having seemingly exhausted Valerie’s arc from nobody to somebody as well as all the meta fun of Seeing Red.) It wouldn’t be uncharacteristic of The Comeback to end cynically, with Valerie losing Mark and Mickey and becoming a “lonely loser of an actress” like Mallory Church.

But I don’t think this show is truly going to “assassinate” Valerie like that. Its creators, like its audience, love Valerie too much to leave her in such a lurch and let her become the monster that Paulie G thought she was. The Comeback may be dark, but it’s never truly bleak. If I had to guess, I’d wager that this is just a low point before Valerie wises up (to an extent). I don’t know that she can save her marriage, but I do believe that she will save her soul from the muck its currently caught in.

Mark and Mickey are all but done fighting for her, and the rest of Team Val only has their own selfish pursuits in mind. At this point, only Valerie Cherish can prevent her own assassination by Hollywood. I expect she will, but The Comeback being The Comeback, anything could happen. I anticipate a bittersweet ending, but which parts will be bitter and which will be sweet? We know how Seeing Red was received, but what about Jane’s documentary? Valerie may be somebody now, but is it enough to ensure that she’ll never be a nobody again? If Valerie Cherish can win a fictional Emmy, why can’t The Comeback win a real one?

“Valerie Faces The Critics”: A     

*

“It’s HBO. Not that many people are gonna see it.”

But what does Valerie Cherish really want?

The Comeback‘s Season Two finale answers that question once and for all. “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is all about the price of fame, and whether or not Valerie is willing to pay that price when fame is available to her. It begins with Valerie showing up to a hot Hollywood party thrown by Juna Millken, her former co-star who is now a mega-star but still retains the same sweetness — so unlikely in a beautiful blonde starlet. Her sincerity is proven as Juna displays great concern both for poor ailing Mickey as well as Valerie’s troubled marriage, warning Valerie that she isn’t seeing clearly at this moment in time. It’s the first of many mirrors held up to Season One, when it was Valerie mentoring Juna on how to cope with fame (even though Juna was already more famous than Valerie). Juna seems to have maintained a level head despite her stardom — thanks to Val’s counsel, perhaps? Now, it’s Valerie who needs a few lessons from the people who knew her way back when, starting with Juna Millken.

Valerie Cherish is having a moment: nominated for an Emmy, acclaimed for her work on Seeing Red, and actually recognized by people (some, not all). Here, Val must confront her apparent new catchphrase, “old woman’s pussy,” which she clearly isn’t as keen on as “I don’t need to see that!” Now when she walks into a hot Hollywood party, everyone claps for her. But she also has to deal with the price of all that success, which includes apologizing for Juna’s hurt feelings over how she was portrayed in Seeing Red. Of course Valerie didn’t write the thing, but now that she’s reaping the benefits of the show being a hit, it looks like an endorsement of Paulie G’s version of how things went down. After years of talking up her forgotten role on I’m It, Valerie Cherish really is it. Who’d have guessed?Juna’s party also reunites Val with Chris MacNess, who like Juna has become a major movie star since slumming it on Room And Bored. Chris is a lot more excited to see Val than we might think a hunky action hero type would be, and Jane is equally excited (because it’s a great get for her documentary, though Chris’ masculine charms are clearly wasted on her). Chris pulls Val into the bathroom for some privacy (plus cameras) and then puts the moves on her in a major way at Val’s doorstep. It’s the kind of shenanigans Aunt Sassy would never have dreamed of.

It seems Chris has harbored a crush on Valerie since Room And Bored, which is surprising but not totally unlikely, and the harder he tries to get into Valerie’s bedroom in this episode, the more we buy that he really wants it. It could be because he’s a movie star, and he’s not used to women saying no, and maybe he’s bored with the picture-taking bimbo types who normally throw themselves at him. Maybe Val’s maternal behavior on Room And Bored really did get him going all along. Regardless, a night of passion with Valerie Cherish would almost certainly be just another notch in the MacNess bedpost, and would certainly do nothing to salvage Val’s marriage. This is probably the most surprising development to emerge from the Season One revivals, and I have to say, it’s kind of awesome. Sure, it plays a little bit more like fantasy wish fulfillment than the hard-edged reality we usually get from The Comeback, but also: lots of movie stars are fucked up. It makes a weird kind of sense that a guy like Chris MacNess might find himself at the top of the world and suddenly start jerking off to Aunt Sassy’s track suit. Stranger kinks have happened. And while a part of me really did want to see what would happen if Chris went in, a larger part of me was squirming, hoping this wasn’t some weird Carrie moment where the hot guy hits on the nerdy girl only to humiliate her in the end, and also realizing that Valerie sexing it up with Chris MacNess would basically have been the final nail in the coffin for Valerie’s character assassination. Instead, Valerie is flattered and somewhat tempted, but also dismisses the handsome, horny heartthrob without much deliberation: “Movie star with a mommy complex. Next!”

Next, The Comeback makes a callback to the pilot episode as Valerie practices her Emmy speech while snacking in the kitchen, reminiscent of the obsessive practice of her signature “I don’t need to see that!” line. As in that episode, Valerie also ignores some water-related warnings from Esperanza that then have greater repercussions — in this case, an explosion of sewage from her garage. It’s all a result of Valerie’s decision to let HBO shoot part of Seeing Red in her own house, which was also the major factor in Mark’s departure. Now Valerie’s success has literally created a shitstorm in her domestic situation.Everything is going wrong on what might be the biggest night of Val’s life. Mickey has a cancer-related nosebleed and is unable to attend, Brad Goreski face-plants in feces in front of Entertainment Tonight, Val is dateless because Mark still won’t answer her calls, and it looks like rain. Valerie meets Sean Hayes, who will present the Best Supporting Actress category, and then James Burrows gives her some tough love just as he always did back on Room And Bored, explaining that her marriage is more important than a trophy. That may sound obvious, but it’s news to Valerie Cherish.

Then, at last, Valerie is all set to enjoy her big night, when a text message from Mark changes everything: Mickey is in the hospital.

Billy and Jane are both adamant that Valerie set the bad news aside and enjoy the moment, but it doesn’t take Val long to decide what she needs to do.

She leaves her cameras behind.Then The Comeback breaks with the format it has utilized since day one, in the pilot way back in 2005 — we’ve always seen the raw footage that will later be manipulated by Jane, “the network,” HBO, or whoever else gets their hands on it. The Comeback suddenly becomes very cinematic as Valerie dashes to the hospital in the rain (thanks to Uber!), ruining her Emmy dress on the way. (I couldn’t help but be reminded of both Carrie Bradshaw and Buffy Summers, who also wore fancy dresses in dire moments during season finales of their respective shows.)

Fortunately, Mickey is fine, and better yet: his tumor is shrinking. Mark arrives and sees that Valerie has chosen her personal life over her fleeting stardom, allowing him to sweep any former grievances under the rug and return to her. The trio watches the Emmys in Mickey’s hospital room, celebrating Val’s win. Valerie has what she’s always wanted — the highest accolades a TV actress can get. But more importantly, she has what she really needs — her best friend and her husband.

And that’s the end.The Comeback‘s final episode of Season Two is bittersweet, because it is quite likely the final episode ever. It gives Valerie Cherish a happy ending that will be hard to come back from (though Michael Patrick King did it with relative success when he revived Sex And The City for the big screen), and now the series has broken form in a way that feels permanent. Valerie walked away from her cameras, and it would be off-putting to go right back to that raw footage format after the way this episode ends.

“Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” takes its time, letting scenes play out longer than they really need to. It dabbles in nostalgia for many of our favorite characters and recreates beloved moments from Season One. In other words, it feels as much like a series finale as it possibly could, wrapping up most (but not all) loose ends and providing an honest-to-god happy ending, something I didn’t necessarily expect from a show as biting as this one. This season of The Comeback got quite dark at times, dragging Valerie Cherish (and its audience) through the sludge, but ultimately chose not to leave us there. Whereas the Season One finale was both cheery and cynical, there’s no such blend here. “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is a logical end for the televised journey of Valerie Cherish, which makes me suspect that it will remain as such. It’s not impossible to bring The Comeback back for a Season Three, but it’s not a natural fit, either. This story is essentially over.So, as a series finale, “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” held a few surprises for me. First and foremost, Paulie G’s near-absence from this episode — he almost accepts Valerie’s Emmy for her, which is a brilliant slice of comedy that says so much about Seeing Red. Because of course Paulie G thinks he should take credit for Valerie’s Emmy, just like he thinks she was the villain behind the scenes of Room And Bored. Seeing Paulie G so easily dismissed and discarded is a great “fuck you” to his character, but certainly not what I anticipated given previous epic showdowns between these two. This season seemed to be building toward some sort of relapse or meltdown as Paulie’s shortcomings as a writer and director clashed with Valerie’s newfound success as an actress.

It is perhaps one of this episode’s savviest commentaries on the industry — as much as Paulie G has been a monster to Valerie, no one else knows who he is. Even with Seth Rogen playing a thinly-veiled version of him, it is always ultimately the actors who get the brunt of the stardom from a hit series. Paulie G is just a blip on the radar in the minds of most television viewers, while pictures of Valerie Cherish will be in magazines. Can we assume that Paulie G will spend the rest of his days toiling in relative obscurity? Sure. (Somewhat less surprising: Paulie G’s Seeing Red doppelganger, Seth Rogen, is also a no-show here.)Another loose thread is Jane’s documentary on Valerie, which was meant to culminate at the Emmys. Sure, maybe the whole point is that Val doesn’t care about that anymore, but it seemed like Jane was cooking up something pretty potent with The Assassination Of Valerie Cherish, and I still want to know what it is. Was Jane going to bat for Val, trying to depict her in a favorable light after throwing her to the wolves a decade ago? Was it meant to be Jane’s redemption? Was Jane’s feminist statement about the way women are treated in TV going to meet the same acclaim as her documentary? Or were Jane’s manipulative ways rearing their ugly little heads again, and would The Assassination Of Valerie Cherish again misconstrue the truth about a struggling TV actress who just wants everybody to like her? Jane was, at best, Val’s frenemy, constantly pushing her to make career-beneficial but self-destructive decisions. It feels appropriate that Val would leave Jane behind, but what’s next?

As a fan of Valerie Cherish, I can’t be too upset at seeing her triumph in this finale. After all she’s been through, she’s earned it. Last week’s “Valerie Faces The Critics” brought the character to her lowest point, sabotaging her marriage and invading Mickey’s privacy to get better footage for her documentary. Valerie was really just the puppet, with Jane’s hand up her ass telling Val what to do and not taking no for an answer. In contrast, this episode is determined to make Valerie as likable as possible. It’s the Redemption of Valerie Cherish, everybody! The cost of stardom ends up being too high for Valerie Cherish this time around, and she ultimately decides not to pay. I didn’t want to see Val heartbroken and alone, coming back from Mickey’s funeral to an empty house and crying onto her Emmy. But up to this point, The Comeback has been so merciless about the cruelties of the television industry, and I’m not sure that this happy-go-lucky finale doesn’t undo some of that acerbic commentary by suggesting it’s so easy to just walk away.

Valerie Cherish has grown as a character — learned her lesson, done the right thing, and all that jazz. Valerie got what she really wants. Good for her. But what about us? “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is, technically, a happy ending, though so many characters who didn’t fare so well are left in the lurch. (Poor Tom! Poor Gigi!) Do we want Valerie Cherish to grow up, or did we want her to remain a fame-hungry, oblivious narcissist? We clamored for The Comeback to come back once, because we sensed that Valerie had more degradation and embarrassment ahead of her. She’d learned a lesson, but not that much. She was still Valerie Cherish. Now, she’s an Emmy winner who walked away from a career high to cheer up her best friend and save her marriage. That’s a nice ending, but it doesn’t hit the same ironic note that Season One’s finale did. Maybe it’s good that The Comeback didn’t go back to that well again… or maybe it’s a cop-out.

When Breaking Bad ended last year, it gave us a trio of final episodes that satisfied its fans in different ways. Those who wanted a tidy, reasonably upbeat ending got one in “Felina,” and those who wanted Walter to suffer in lonely, miserable isolation for his sins saw that in “Granite State.” Those of us who wanted a lot of fucked up shit to go down preferred the jaw-dropping chaos in “Ozymandias,” as I did. “Valerie Faces The Critics” was the “Ozymandias” of The Comeback, “assassinating” Valerie’s character as both Mickey and Mark seemed poised to exit her life for good. It was about as dark and upsetting as a TV comedy like this could be and still bounce back from the next week, and bounce back it did.

“Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is the “Felina.” It is a satisfying finale, but only because I was already satisfied before it came along. Everything else was just the cherry on top of that cake. Both seasons of The Comeback made for spectacular television — Season One winning as a vicious comedy, and Season Two satisfying on a deeper, more dramatic and thoughtful level. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a single show where two consecutive seasons felt so different from each other, but still felt like pieces of a whole. (Though the nine-year gap probably has a lot to do with that.)“Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is a fantastic episode of television and a worthy series finale, and while I might have preferred a little more of that jagged edge The Comeback does so well, I also loved every minute of the softer, cuddly version of The Comeback, which literally ends with smiles and holding hands. Only a show that had cut so deep could get away with this kind of sappy ending and not come off feeling trite. With everything Valerie Cherish was put through to get to this point, she fucking earned it. I may admire her choices in this episode — I’m glad she saved her marriage, I’m glad she stuck by Mickey’s side in what might have been the end — I also really wanted to see her step onto that stage and hold up that gold trophy and yell, “Suck it, Paulie G!” Or whatever version of that would have happened. I think we all did.

And that’s the point. Valerie Cherish wanted that moment more than anything, until she realized that moment would be just a moment, and she had the whole rest of her life to live. We care so deeply about Valerie at this point that we are equally invested in seeing her win, though “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” surprises us by letting her win by not winning — or at least, not being there to celebrate her big win. She’s not even sad about it. Valerie’s not such a vain actress after all.

Perhaps the real irony in the otherwise saccharine-sweet “Valerie Gets What She Really Wants” is a meta-irony. Valerie is now an Emmy winner for a not-terribly-great HBO series, while Lisa Kudrow is Emmy-free as far as The Comeback goes. Season Two of the The Comeback is one of the best seasons of a TV comedy I’ve ever seen, yet it will almost certainly go unrecognized because so few have been watching. (This episode gets in a nice dig about that.) It is probably the reason Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow decided to wrap things up so neatly, in a way that feels like a complete ending even if we never see Valerie, Mickey, Mark, Jane, Paulie, Juna, Chris, or even Esperanza again. I am not certain that the show won’t be back for a third season, but I wouldn’t bet on it. (In another nine years? Perhaps.)

Like most aging comediennes, Valerie Cherish was lucky enough to get one comeback, let alone two. And so were we. In the likely event that this is really, truly the end of the road for Cherish and company, I will say my fond farewells now — and thanks for the hilarious, heartbreaking, awkward-as-hell, button-pushing, spot-on memories.

Goodbye, Valerie.

“Valerie Gets What She Really Wants”: A (Find reviews and recaps for the rest of the season here.) 

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It’s been nearly a year since Patrick, Dom, and Augustin signed off on us, and now they’re back, taking a relaxing weekend getaway to the woods.

But watch out, boys! These woods are full of bears!

And no, I do not mean the traditional Goldilocks, Berenstein, Winnie-the-Pooh variety. Portly, hairy gay men are on the prowl — beware!

Yes, Patrick, Dom, and Augustin have ventured out into the forest, but no — they’re hardly roughing it, since they’re staying at Lynn’s cushy cabin (sans Lynn). Dom and Lynn are officially an item now, Patrick is still mooning over the loss of Richie, and Augustin is still an insufferable asshat. Patrick and Dom call Augustin out on being an insufferable asshat now, at least. But still. Patrick wants this to be a sober weekend of male bonding, even though he’s secretly chatting with his lover-boss Kevin when he thinks no one’s watching. Dom and Augustin grumble a bit but go along with Patrick’s itinerary of cherry-eating, redwood-gawking, and Monopoly-playing; that is, until Doris shows up, feeling frisky.

(Rest assured: Doris remains the highlight of this series.)It turns out that the boys’ retreat is not so remote. There’s a whole bevy of gays in the woods looking to party, essentially turning an ancient forest of sequoia trees into a rave scenario as only gays can do. The foursome decides to do molly, which has Patrick sucking face with a Richie lookalike (a neat little fakeout moment that makes us think it really is Richie, the one truly great moment in this episode) while Dom has his first infidelity in his open relationship with Lynn. Augustin (slightly) surprises us by running off with Damian from Mean Girls, who remains too gay to function. He’s a big ol’ hairy bear now and goes by the name Eddie, and he is also in possession of a House In Virginia (Augustin’s code for HIV). This could be an intriguing development for Augustin… or just something else for him to whine about. We’ll see.

As per usual, what little “plot” there ever is on Looking only inches forward here. I’m not sure how long has passed since last season (it would be rather odd if it were actually a year, considering that these characters are acting like it’s been a matter of weeks), but Richie is physically out of the picture while still present in spirit while Patrick has sex in the woods with Kevin, embracing the naughty side he fought against (somewhat) last season. This vacation episode is a little like Girls‘ “Beach House” episode from last season, right down to Patrick’s Marnie-like overplanning and the skinny-dipping gays, but minus all the drama (naturally — Looking doesn’t do drama).Patrick wanted this weekend to be about the three of them, and I was on board for that. As it turns out, this mandate was hypocritical, since he invites Kevin out for a secret fuck in the woods while Dom and Augustin have also run off with strangers. It’s an apt metaphor for the show, which is almost never about these guys’ relationships with each other. I still find Patrick, Dom, and Augustin a weird and unlikely trio, and the little shading of history we’ve gotten from them in past episodes has not cemented the bond. I don’t see any reason why they’d actually enjoy each other’s company — especially since all Augustin can do in this episode is complain about how he’d rather be off getting drunk and laid. (And, ironically, is the only one who does not get laid in this episode.) What happens here is just fine, I suppose, but might this premiere have been better if it really had stuck these three guys alone together in a cabin for the weekend, and seen what developed? Surely something more interesting than Patrick taking Atlantic Avenue would have transpired. (Then again, this is Looking, the anti-drama.)

Call me crazy, but I wouldn’t mind some conflict.

“Looking For The Promised” proves, at least, that it is self-aware, by making its characters self-aware. Patrick feels guilty enough about his trysts with Kevin to not tell Dom and Augustin (until he does, in the end). Augustin says that he deals with feeling like a shitty person by behaving badly. Patrick has optimistic ideas about this trip in the beginning, whereas by the end he only wants to watch the sunrise and “pretend that everything’s going to be fine.” Perhaps this setting is intentional — are Patrick, Dom, and Augustin lost in the deep, dark, metaphorical forest, so that they may emerge later this season into the light? They head into the woods to be together, isolated from the San Francisco scene, and end up separated with the same problems they face in the city. Patrick literally beckons his problems out to their retreat while Dom has pictures of his man-friend everywhere during his first sexual rendezvous and Augustin is spilling his woes to a stray bear. This is hardly an escape.

But here’s the real news. In Season Two, Looking has only gotten hairier. Augustin’s beard is fuller and we’ve now added a real-deal bear to the mix. By season’s end, I fully expect the entire cast to look like three Cousin Itts (which most of the extras already do anyway). “Looking For The Promised Land” is a perfectly acceptable season premiere, one that continues the show’s sometimes frustrating lack of narrative momentum but relocates it to a forest populated by bearded drag fairies. I don’t dispute that this is a reasonably accurate look at a particular segment of San Francisco’s gay scene, but I still wonder why it’s on television. That is not to say that it shouldn’t be on television, but Looking has yet to wholly justify its existence to me, and maybe it shouldn’t have to, and probably it doesn’t want to, but how am I supposed to feel about any of this?

Patrick is hooking up with his boss, who is in a committed relationship. Dom is in some version of a sugar daddy open relationship. Augustin is an insufferable asshat. Sure, these are things that people do. But I’m not sure that merely watching Patrick, Dom, and Augustin blindly navigate their ways through problematic relationship is much more entertaining than watching real people do it. If these were my friends… well, they probably wouldn’t be, for much longer.So I’m conflicted. I’ve had a whole year to get used to the idea that Looking is not the gay series many of us expected it would be. It is shaggy, meandering, and oddly depressing, given that we are seldom given anything of substance to invest in. Girls is like that, too, in ways, but with more humor and originality.

My jury is still in deliberation on Looking, which improved throughout its first season and has begun its second season troubling me all over again. Creator Michael Lannan had all this time to respond to critical and fan reaction to the series, and his answer was: this. Maybe we should admire him for sticking to his guns. Maybe Looking is the medicine we should take while craving a spoonful of sugar instead. Maybe this is going somewhere good. Maybe Damian from Mean Girls and Doris should run away together and do a spin-off called Too Doris To Function.

I’ll give Looking a few more episodes to play its hand, but for now?

Looking, you still haven’t found me.*

“I didn’t know she had a pony! How was I to know she had a pony? Who figures an immigrant’s going to have a pony? Do you know what the odds are on that? I mean, in all the pictures I saw of immigrants on boats coming into New York Harbor, I never saw one of them sitting on a pony! Why would anybody come here if they had a pony? Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country? It doesn’t make sense! Am I wrong?”

Seinfeld is the most successful — and arguably the most beloved — sitcom of all time. But how do the antics of TV’s favorite self-absorbed foursome hold up today? In When We Were Young’s latest episode, we take a look back at all nine seasons of the hit 90s series to see how it stands nearly two decades after its polarizing finale. Are the show’s views on sexuality, gender, and race antiquated, or was Seinfeld ahead of its time?

And, most importantly, is Seinfeld still funny? Grab your Junior Mints, throw on your puffy shirt, and GET OUT, because we’ve got a whole lot to say about the “show about nothing.” Listen here and subscribe here, and please leave us a kind review!

Reviews of Seinfeld‘s early seasons:

Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly. “Seinfeld isn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it’s one of the most amiable shows on the air.”

Richard Hack, The Hollywood Reporter: “What remains is a group of terrifically talented people (with Alexander and Louis-Dreyfus stand-outs) who mix but never really mesh. Seinfeld, which had a trial one-shot last year as The Seinfeld Chronicles, is slated to run for three more weeks on NBC. That should be enough.”

Seinfeld has been massively influential — there are few comedies on TV these days that weren’t in some way shaped by it. TV comedy is enjoying an era in which it feels like more characters are self-absorbed than not, and that wouldn’t have happened without the colossal success of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld’s seminal series. And yet the show doesn’t feel stale — with some exceptions, it’s as fresh as anything that’s currently airing. Seinfeld was also a pioneer in self-reference — not just the Season Four arc in which Jerry and George pitch a “show about nothing” to NBC, but also in bizarre moments like Kramer’s

Personally, my experience with Seinfeld in the late 90s revolves almost entirely around its ending. I can’t recall watching the show before the crazy hype surrounding its final season, though it’s possible I did catch it sometimes. I know I caught some of it in syndication around that time, and later, which is where I got a special affinity for stray episodes like “The Big Salad” and “The English Patient,” which aren’t necessarily fan favorites but strike my particular funny bone. Shortly before starting the podcast, I decided to revisit several of Seinfeld‘s best seasons because I was working a lot and stressed out and didn’t want to have to watch anything that required any effort. I knew Seinfeld would do the trick, and it did.

The show is at its worst when it tackles strangely dark and outlandish violence, like Kramer’s mistaken identity as a killer in the oddball Los Angeles arc, and at its best when it satirizes the most mundane aspects of human existence, like “The Airport,” which contrasts Elaine’s misery in coach with Jerry first class delights. Our episode also delves into Seinfeld‘s controversial treatment of gays and various races, which may not be super progressive but still stands above most of its peers from that era (ahem, Friends). Personally, I was surprised I didn’t find anything to get very worked up about from this Clinton-era sitcom, since the jokes are ultimately always at our central foursome’s expense. When George is desperate to show off a black friend or Jerry’s meddling gets a kindly restaurant owner deported, our sympathies lie with the guest stars rather than our self-absorbed main cast. That’s rare.On the other hand, watching Seinfeld can be a little dismaying. Here’s a show about four white people in New York City without any significant problems — and the problems they do have are generally created by themselves. Seinfeld aired between 1989 and 1998, which was a relatively peaceful and prosperous time, a handful of years before 9/11 ushered in a sobering awareness of global turmoil. In light of the recent election, it’s hard not to see Seinfeld as indicative of that era so much of America wants to return to (and make “great again”), when white people could behave boorishly and laugh off the struggles of minorities. What makes it still work is that the show doesn’t ultimately condone this behavior, given its punishing final episode. Spoiled white Americans get their comeuppance in Seinfeld, but as has been proven all too true, life doesn’t imitate art nearly as much as it should.

At least Seinfeld is still good for laughs…

When We Were Young is a new podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

You can follow us on Twitter at @WWWYshow, on Facebook at @WWWYShow, you can Email us at wwwyshow@gmail.com, and don’t forget to subscribe on iTunes!

You can help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include purchasing movies/shows/etc to review, imbibing enough sedatives to take down an elephant, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio Studio in Los Angeles CA, by donating to our Patreon.

*

“Think I’ll go for a walk outside now,
The summer sun’s calling my name…”

In the latest episode of When We Were Young, Seth, Becky, and Chris discuss what made us laugh the most growing up. If you thought The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) and A Very Brady Sequel (1996) were the funniest (and most quotable) movies ever made, you’re in good company (with two of our hosts, at least)!Twenty years later, do either of these satirical sitcom adaptations stand the test of time and still make us laugh? Or are they as stale and unfunny as the TV show they’re based on?

Throw on your Sunday best, kids, we’re talking the Brady Brunch movies!

(Listen here or subscribe on iTunes.)

“Search for the Stars is looking for fresh young musical acts. First prize is exactly twenty thousand dollars. Hmm… too bad I’m not a musical act.”

The Brady Bunch Movie
Released: February 17, 1995
Budget: $14 million
Box Office: $54.1 million
Tagline: “They’re back to save America from the 90s.”

So, yes. In junior high I did have a shameless obsession with The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel, the fish-out-of-water sitcom adaptations from the mid 90s. It would not surprise me if I’ve seen these movies more than any single other film ever made. Seriously.

Fortunately, I am not alone in my Brady nerdiness, for my co-host Becky shared my nostalgia for all things Brady. (Okay, not all things. It’s not like we got that into the original TV show — except to go back and laugh at all the scenes they mocked in the movies.)

I remember seeing The Brady Bunch Movie in theaters with my mom and sister. (At least, I think I remember this — my caveat for this and every episode of the podcast is that I might be recalling some of the those hazy 80s and 90s memories slightly wrong.) I believe the time-warp of the very 70s Bradys popping up in the 90s particularly appealed to me. I still love a good fish-out-of-water comedy, particularly when there’s a time travel-ish element involved. (I can’t remember the last time I saw a decent movie that actually had such a premise. They’re mostly a relic from the 90s.)

Of course, at the time I wasn’t even quite a teenager yet, which meant that a lot of the movie’s more mature gags went over my head. Still, this was one of the first more “sophisticated” comedies I latched onto — “sophisticated” may seem like a strange word to apply to the spoofy Brady Bunch Movie, but I do think this brand of comedy operates at a fairly high level. (Aside from the Home Alone style physical violence gags I reference in the podcast.)

It would take a while to go over everything I adored about this film — we didn’t even get to everything in the podcast — but in particular, I’ve always enjoyed the hilarious relationship between Marcia and Jan. Their sibling rivalry is relatable, even if exaggerated, and one of the easiest targets to lampoon from the original sitcom. As much as I had a thing for Christine Taylor at this time, Jennifer Elise Cox is the standout comedienne in the cast — her Jan is one of the best comic characters of the 90s, holding her own against any character Chris Farley or Adam Sandler played. She’s both the goofiest Brady character and the soul of the story. Jan is the protagonist of the movie, made clear when the climax hinges on her brief stint as an Afroed teen runaway. (“The new Jan Brady” is, apparently, black.)

But back to Marcia. (Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!) I love that Marcia is both the butt of so many jokes — “she’s harder to get into than a Pearl Jam concert” — and genuinely popular, in her own way. It’s totally believable that she would have a shot with the “big man on campus,” and yet still be as wholesome and naive as the rest of the Brady clan. That brings me to what I truly love about these films, and other favorite mid-90s comedies of mine, including Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion and Clueless. The characters are ridiculous — we’re laughing at them, and the world at large is making fun of them in the film — and yet they exist in a happy bubble, blissfully unaware of how absurd they are. The Brady Bunch may not fit in very well with grungy, mean-spirited 90s Los Angeles, but it’s actually the world around them that needs an attitude adjustment. They’re doing just fine on their own.

A lesser comedy wouldn’t have been able to pull that off. It would have made it seem like there’s something wrong with the Bradys, not something wrong with us. As warped as they seem, the Brady’s loyalty and family values are sort of nice. Maybe we don’t aspire to be exactly like them, but wouldn’t it be nice to have five brothers and sisters, two devoted parents, and even a kindly maid who all have your back?

“Oh my God… I’m tripping with the Bradys.”

A Very Brady Sequel
Released: August 23, 1996
Budget: $12 million
Box Office: $21.4 million
Tagline: “The more everything changes, the more they stay the same.”

I went into the first Brady Bunch Movie merely hoping to enjoy it, and came out a Brady maniac. After the film was released on VHS, I’m pretty sure my sister and I watched it nearly every day one summer. (That was probably the summer of 1996, leading up the release of A Very Brady Sequel.) We also rewound the tape constantly to catch little gags we missed. In retrospect, it’s kind of a marvel no one smothered us in our sleep.

A number of my friends at the time also got into the Brady Bunch movies. Eventually, we’d move on to (slightly) more mature offerings, but this was a nice gateway drug into “adult” humor. A Very Brady Sequel pushes this even further than the original, particularly with the Greg-and-Marcia pseudo-incest plotline. (“Yes, Greg?”) Some small part of me wanted to lip sync one of the Brady songs with 5 friends at a school talent show, even though the rest of me definitely knew I’d be beaten up for it.

“Sunshine Day” and “Keep On” are two delightful numbers from the first movie, but I have to say, A Very Brady Sequel‘s musical moments just barely top them. “Time to Change” is an absurd romp through Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, which is even better than the whole gaggle of Bradys bopping down the escalator at Sears. The real highlight is “Good Time Music,” though, with the Bradys amusing themselves by performing a full on song and dance on an airplane bound for Hawaii. This is the best fish-out-of-water moment in the sequel, which (as pointed out by co-hosts in the podcast) is not as much a feature of the sequel as it was in the original.

Yes, The Brady Bunch Movie is a stronger film overall, while A Very Brady Sequel often feels like a very long episode of an actual sitcom. But it also gives us more of everything that was right in the first film, with less of the physical violence gags that take its predecessor down a notch. That includes Marcia’s ever-more-inflated ego (“I’ll go first ’cause I’m the prettiest”) and Jan’s fake boyfriend, George Glass. (Marcia thinking to herself, “This is all Jan’s fault” is also the perfect summation of their relationship, as is her plea to their faux father: “Take Jan!”)

Everything I loved in The Brady Bunch Movie is repeated and/or turned up a notch, from the music to the RuPaul cameo to the spoofing of ridiculous storylines from the sitcom. Also, it’s notable that both of these films were directed by women (Betty Thomas and Arlene Sanford, respectively), which is pretty rare in 90s comedy.

These remain some of my favorite and most quoted comedies, even though loving them now is slightly embarrassing. The less said about The Brady Bunch In The White House and Growing Up Brady, the better (except in the podcast that I mistakenly said Adrien Brody played Barry Williams/Greg Brady in the latter, when I meant Adam Brody. I would definitely have kept watching if it was Adrien.) Finally, I will direct you to “A House To Die For”, the only episode of Wings I bothered to watch (thanks to some very Brady cameos), and this truly baffling piece of pop culture, which I don’t trust myself to even describe.

Now, if you’ll excuse me… something suddenly came up.When We Were Young is a podcast devoted to the most beloved pop culture of our formative years (roughly 1980-2000). Join us for a look back to the past with a critical eye on how these movies, songs, shows, and more hold up now.

You can help us defray the costs of creating this show, which include purchasing movies/shows/etc to review, imbibing enough sedatives to take down an elephant, and producing & editing in-house at the MFP Studio Studio in Los Angeles CA, by donating to our Patreon account, and don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes!

“No weapons… no friends… no hope. Take all that away, and what’s left?”

“Me.”

In every generation, there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the podcasts. She is the slayer.

In When We Were Young’s 12th episode, Chris shares his teenage infatuation with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Buffy The Vampire Slayer. (The TV show, not the movie. Obviously.) He also brings in the podcast’s very first guest host, Kevin Murray, Buffy fan extraordinaire, to help him slay the apocalyptic criticisms rising from Seth and Becky’s Hellmouths.

We know Joss Whedon fans still love Buffy, but how does it hold up for newbies to the Scooby gang? In honor of the show’s 20th anniversary, we look at episodes from each of the show’s first five seasons, including standout classics like “Hush” and “The Body” and the phenomenal musical “Once More, With Feeling,” to see what made the series such a groundbreaking cult hit. Grab your crossbow, get your vamp face on, and be prepared to die a couple of times (at least), because we’re off to Sunnydale!

Listen here and subscribe here.

My affinity for Buffy The Vampire Slayer has hardly been a secret, least of all on this blog, where I ranked my Top 25 episodes.

So I needn’t go too far into the weeds to sing my praises of Joss Whedon and Sarah Michelle Gellar and all the rest. Doing a podcast on this series was daunting, because I knew I’d never be able to cover everything that made this show so meaningful for so many, and I knew I’d never be able to catch my co-hosts completely up to speed in only a handful of episodes.

In the end, I decided to give them a sampling of Buffy‘s first five seasons on the WB, which nicely coincided with my high school years. There’s so much about Buffy that matters, I distilled it down to one quality per season that particularly stood out (and the podcast still came in at over two hours).

Extra thanks to my friend Kevin Murray, the Faith to Buffy for this episode, for helping me fight back as a knowledgeable Whedon fan.

“Welcome To The Hellmouth” & “Prophecy Girl”
Aired: March 10 & June 2, 1997
Focusing On: The Talent (The Writing & The Cast)
My Ranking: #12 (Prophecy Girl)

The show’s first season is considered by few, if any, to rank as Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘s best. It’s always a conundrum, trying to hook new fans into the show with the proper background and context, without allowing the campy tone, so-so special effects, and uneven writing of Season One to turn them off completely.

Despite these factors, Buffy made its mark when it debuted as a mid-season replacement on Mondays at 9 PM on The WB, following (yes) the squeaky-clean 7th Heaven. Two things stood out above all else: the performances of the cast, and Joss Whedon’s writing.

The acting in Season One is the show at its most iffy, I’ll admit. Anthony Stewart Head was solid from moment one, and Alyson Hannigan rarely takes a misstep as the smart but shy Willow. The rest of the supporting cast can be hit or miss, and the guest stars are more often than not unremarkable. The show rests on Sarah Michelle Gellar’s shoulders, of course, and it’s not an easy job. She has to convincingly sell snarky quips, fight scenes, heavy drama, horror sequences, and plenty more. She has to believably embody a capable superhero and a vulnerable teen girl. Few actresses are ever called upon to show such range in a single role. Many don’t display this much range across their entire careers.

As a longtime fan, it’s difficult or impossible to step aside and look at Gellar with fresh eyes. As our guest Kevin said in the podcast, she is Buffy, plain and simple, and having watched her entire performance as the character (many times), she is absolutely the most powerful and meaningful character in all of pop culture for me.

As for the writing, Whedon’s style is distinct and polarizing. Along with Kevin Williamson, he ushered in the self-conscious teenspeak of the late 90s, a reaction against less self-aware teen characters we saw in horror and elsewhere. Obviously, I love this, and I love it the most in Buffy and Scream, when it was fresh and new. (I’m the first to admit that it got stale when too many pale imitators jumped on the bandwagon.) I’m not one to blindly worship at the altar of Whedon, though I greatly admire the originality of what he brought to television. I still believe Buffy The Vampire Slayer is far and away his best work. Feminism is far from a solved problem two decades later, and you can nit-pick Whedon’s portrayal of women as filtered through a straight white male perspective, but Buffy broke new ground in portraying a female hero who was layered, vulnerable, and truly admirable, who was neither stripped of sexuality nor oozing with it, who did not exist primarily to be ogled, who did not need to be raped or brutalized by men in order to be a strong woman. Plus, with Willow and Tara, he’s still responsible for one of the best gay relationships on television to date. Even considering Season One’s many shortcomings, these talents are evident and, I believe, what kept fans like me on board for greater things on the horizon.

“Passion”
Aired: February 24, 1998
Focusing on: The Romance / Soapiness
My Ranking: #8

Despite Season One’s bumpy beginnings, Buffy The Vampire Slayer took a fairly big bite out of the pop culture landscape during 1997, if not exactly the ratings. Not every critic was a fan from moment one, but a lot of them were (including my Bible at the time, Entertainment Weekly).

Here’s what the critics had to say during the show’s first season:

Todd Everett at Variety: “Buffy the Vampire Slayer plays like an uneasy cross between The X-Files and Clueless.”

John Levesque at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: “Sarah Michelle Gellar plays Buffy to perfection in this witty, intelligent and thoroughly entertaining series based loosely on the 1992 film, and if she isn’t the next closet-door poster queen — or the Internet-shrine equivalent — I’ll be stunned.”

By Season 2, Buffy was a veritable phenom. Gellar was one of the hottest teen stars around, appearing on the cover of every teen rag and in hit horror films like I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2. It was a heavenly time to be alive for a Buffy fan.

Many episodes in Season Two have the same flaws as the worst hours in Season One — “Inca Mummy Girl,” “Some Assembly Required,” and the dismaying “Go Fish” adding insult to injury by popping up right before the season finale. Depending on which episodes you tuned in to, you could be forgiven for dismissing Season Two as more of the same.

But Season Two also kicked off Buffy as a truly serialized show, and its best episodes capitalize on that rather than the monster-of-the-week-ness of Season One. There’s lots of various pairing off, in true teen soap fashion, with Xander and Cordelia beginning an unlikely love affair and new character Oz’s courtship of Willow. Of course, this is also when the romance between Buffy and Angel hits a peak, resulting in maybe the series’ most potent storyline ever: sex with Buffy releases Angel’s soul, causing him to revert back to the evil Angelus.

This is what cemented Buffy as a landmark in teen culture of the 90s. Even if the show had been canceled after Season Two (God forbid!), it would have gone down as a classic. Many of us can relate to opening ourselves up to someone we have feelings for, only to see that person “change” the moment we do so. It all boils down to a spectacular showdown in the season finale, “Becoming,” which I still vividly remember being floored by when it first aired.

“Earshot”
Set To Air: April 26, 1999 / Actually Aired: September 21, 1999
Focusing On: “High School As Hell”
My Ranking: #14

Season Three is Buffy at its most classic. The most egregious flaws found in the series’ first two seasons were (mostly) gone. Most Season Three episodes hold up pretty well, and some are flat-out stellar. The cast had also found its rhythm at this point. There isn’t really a weak link here.

It also introduces Eliza Dushku as Faith, the “bad” slayer, and one of the most compelling season-long arcs — the Mayor’s Ascension. As storytelling goes, it’s pretty punchy stuff.

One of my favorite “introductory” Buffy episodes has always been “Earshot,” because you don’t need much context to connect to it. It is also perhaps the very best example of the show’s central metaphor, “High School As Hell,” which worked quite well at times and also led to a few of the show’s most legendarily clunky moments.

I articulated my thoughts on this well enough in the podcast, but “Earshot” is a wildly entertaining hour of television that also has a powerful message, one that more people could stand to learn — especially those who feel so marginalized and ignored they turn to violence to get a point across. It’s shocking that this episode was set to air less than a week after the Columbine shootings, before it was delayed several months as the media grappled with its depictions of gun violence (a rather short-lived moral examination, if you ask me). At its best, Buffy tackled teen issues that really mattered and found a way to make the emotions of young people understandable through supernatural metaphor. Nearly anyone can find an episode of Buffy that speaks to their high school experience. With humor and pathos, this one explores what happens in American high schools when that “Hell” is actually unleashed.

“Hush”
Aired: December 14, 1999
Focusing On: The Cinematic Quality / Inventiveness / Genre
My Ranking: #10

Buffy is now known as one of the most inventive television series of the 90s, and of all time. It had a silent episode, a musical episode, a dream episode, and plenty more. Some also credit it as an important milestone in ushering in the second “Golden Age of Television” that The Sopranos is largely affiliated with.

TV is still flush with creativity, thanks to streaming. We tend to see more inventiveness on the small screen than on the big screen these days. Buffy was one of the first shows to make TV feel truly cinematic, and this is the first episode that did so in a major way. “Hush” is essentially a mini-movie — it helps that we know these characters already, but it would work just as well if we didn’t. It’s one of few episodes of Buffy that is truly scary, though it also contains some of the series’ comedic high points. This was also the series’ only nomination for an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. (It deserved a few more.)

At this point, Whedon established himself as more than a mere showrunner, but a real auteur. I don’t know that you could name another serialized TV show that changed genre as nimbly as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and did so to such great effect. The musical episode is a great musical, and “Hush” is a truly effective horror show.

“Fool For Love”
Aired: November 14, 2000
Focusing on: The Mythology / Complexity of Character
My Ranking: #9

As classic as its high school years were, there were some things Buffy did even better in its later seasons. The characters became more complex and adult, which is perhaps most evident in the relationship between Buffy and Spike, and Spike’s transformation from (mostly) monster to (mostly) man.

Spike was a true villain in Season Two. Granted, he was a villain we liked, and he often served as comic relief once the more straightforwardly evil Angelus became a part of the Big Bad team. He even teamed up with Buffy in “Becoming” to try and save the world.

A certain degree of goodness was always present in Spike, but he killed people. Lots of people. And would’ve killed a lot more if Buffy hadn’t stopped him. So the character’s transformation over the course of Seasons Four through Seven, mostly, was as gradual as it had to be to be convincing. First, Spike couldn’t do evil because of the chip in his head. Then, over time, he just didn’t want to. This was largely due to his growing feelings for Buffy, but this was hardly a cure-all for the vampire inside him. Season Six contains some fascinating wrestling with Spike’s inner demons, particularly in “Seeing Red,” but “Fool For Love” is the real turning point from Spike as a bad boy to someone we are actually kind of rooting for. The moment he lowers his rifle and decides to sit next to Buffy and comfort her instead is to die for.

“Fool For Love” also delves into the Anne Rice-y vampire mythology, as was often done here and on Angel. I always enjoyed seeing where these evil creatures had come from, and Spike’s is the best origin story of all. We also get a rarer glimpse at past slayers, one Chinese, one African-American, that adds some welcome diversity to the mythos. (Where’s my Nikki The Vampire Slayer spin-off?)

Buffy progressed many of its characters in fascinating ways — most strikingly, Willow and her dalliance with villainy in Season Six. Buffy herself went through a hell of a lot over those seven seasons. The show just got richer and richer over time — which is impossible to convey in a small handful of episodes. But the fans know what I mean.

“The Best Of Buffy” — Episodes #1-5

“The Best Of Buffy” — Episodes #6-10

“The Best Of Buffy” — Episodes #11-15

“The Best Of Buffy” — Episodes #16-20

“The Best Of Buffy” — Episodes #25-21

A handful of episodes standout in a “very special episode” kind of way, but they’re done with finesse and avoid the cheese factor that usually accompanies sitcoms when they broach a serious subject. When Saved By The Bell tackled caffeine pill addiction, it became the show’s mocking calling card. The equivalent Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air episode, “Just Say Yo,” isn’t perfect, but it isn’t pat, either. I remember the “shocking” moment when Full House tackled the taboo topic of teen smoking through the Gina character. The episode made it feel as if Gina had pulled a gun on Stephanie. Ultimately, sitcoms rarely let their protagonists do anything truly “naughty;” at best, it’s the mischievous new friend who misbehaves in order to teach us a moral lesson. The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air is unique among sitcoms for not always sweeping controversy under the rug by episode’s end. There are hugs and lessons, but there are also lingering questions that go unresolved.A few exemplary episodes of the show deal explicitly with hot button issues like racial profiling, while others that speak to less touted aspects of black American life. “Mistaken Identity” is a brilliant episode of television, hilarious and heartbreaking. It concludes with a gut-punch moment, as Carlton tries to make sense of his arrest in a way that doesn’t have to do with his race. Ultimately, Will and Uncle Phil know better, and the episode ends with the ominous sense that Carlton is going to have to learn this lesson again and again before it truly sinks in.

Another standout is Season Four’s “Papa’s Got A Brand New Excuse,” in which Will’s father returns to the picture just long enough to get his hopes up, then promptly bails on the plans they’ve made. This is a plot we’ve seen on TV and in movies often — the deadbeat biological parent stepping in to shake things up, only to leave their offspring crushed by disappointment. This episode culminates in a raw, explosive monologue from Will that showcases some of the star’s best acting (ever). The episode both follows sitcom formula and, ultimately, defies it. The same story could be — and has been — told about a white father and a white child, but The Fresh Prince knows which nuances make it specific to Will’s experience, and that specificity pays off.

Looking back, it’s surprising that The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air tackles race head-on so often. (I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s how the show is remembered by most.) Will Smith is about a raceless as a major movie star can be — he has generally avoided roles that explicitly call for African-American actors, except when he’s playing a real-life person (as in Ali, The Pursuit Of Happyness, and Concussion). Even in these films, race is more of a background issue than it is in The Fresh Prince.

In most ways, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air adheres to sitcom formulas (including a lot of pretty terrible clips episodes). Few, if any, of its storylines couldn’t be done on a sitcom with a primarily Caucasian cast (though I shudder to think of a white sitcom attempting a story like Carlton’s visit to Compton in “72 Hours”). But so many episodes resonate more because of the insight the writers and actors bring to how these comedic setups reflect racial issues across the spectrum. Will and Carlton going to jail for a false-alarm car theft could happen on any show, but the concluding moments, as Carlton grapples with new realizations about racial injustice, have the power they do because they reveal such a dark truth about racism in America. Most sitcoms would laugh it off anyway. The Fresh Prince doesn’t.

There are also episodes like “Mud Is Thicker Than Blood” which deal with racial issues between African-American characters. The basic setup — Will and Carlton rush a fraternity, and Carlton is too nerdy to get a bid — is, again, something you’d find on any sitcom. But the way it plays out is singular to these characters and this experience. At its best, The Fresh Prince manages to satisfy the punchline quotient required of a sitcom and shed a surprising light on underdiscussed social issues. The show’s class contrast is fairly jokey — the Banks family is absurdly wealthy, and Will’s “rough” upbringing tends to gloss over some harsher points — but it is satisfying to see so many different black characters dealing with black issues in different ways. As was the creators’ mantra, The Fresh Prince says there’s no right or wrong way to be black. It backs that up constantly, showing how each character responds to challenges in their own specific way.

Though only a handful of episodes take deep dives into racial issues, this is the feature that sets The Fresh Prince apart from other cheesy 90s sitcoms. It’s amazing — and a little disheartening — that every issue the show tackles feels just as fresh today (if not moreso). Though there are plenty of mediocre moments, overall The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air boasts hilarious and heartfelt performances, strong writing, and clever fourth-wall-breaking gags, plus a few episodes per season that go above and beyond what a 90s sitcom is expected to.

 

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“Now, repeat after me: ‘Yo!'”

“Yo!”

“Hot damn!”

“Hot damn!”

“What a fabulous window treatment!”

“What a fabulou—”

“That was a trick!”

Come one, come all, and come out already for When We Were Young’s most same-sex-loving episode yet! In honor of Coming Out Day on October 11, Episode 26 takes a furtive glance back at the gay 90s, which marked a sea change in pop culture’s depictions of people who are — yep! — gay.

First, our hosts coop up in The Birdcage, Mike Nichols’ 1996 comedy that pushes Robin Williams and Nathan Lane back in the closet to appease Ally McBeal’s right-wing parents. Next, we touch on Ellen DeGeneres’ game-changing “Puppy Episode,” the coming out party heard ’round the world. And finally, we celebrate the 20th out-iversary of In & Out, starring Kevin Kline as a small-town teacher outed at the Oscars, and Joan Cusack as his increasingly desperate bride-to-be.

Plenty of social progress has been made in the days since Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA, so how do these mid-90s gay characters hold up in 2017? Practice your John Wayne walk, book some therapy with Oprah, and stop dancing to “I Will Survive,” because our hosts’ opinions of these films are definitely not homogeneous.

THE BIRDCAGE
March 8, 1996

Budget: $31 million
Opening Weekend: $18.3 million
Domestic Total Gross: $124.1 million
Worldwide Total Gross: $185.3 million
Metacritic Score: 72

Prior to The Birdcage, the biggest gay-centric films of the 90s included 1993’s Philadelphia, 1994’s The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, and 1995’s Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar. Angels In America debuted in the early 90s, too.

That was essentially what gay life was to most moviegoers — either a fabulous, feminine party, filled with bright colors and outrageous costumes and plenty of cross-dressing, or bleak and tragic, haunted by the spectre of certain death.

Obviously, AIDS was on a lot of people’s minds at this time, a fresh wound and a looming threat. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense Of Marriage Act were the government’s response to gay efforts for equal rights. Gay people were to be pitied or ridiculed — maybe not cruelly, but the joke always seemed to be at how silly it was to see men dressed as women. This was just about the only way audiences could see gay people in mainstream entertainment — dressed as women, or dying. There wasn’t much nuance.

The Birdcage was a massive hit and signaled that there was an appetite for stories that fell somewhere in between — even if it still has one foot in the drag queen’s closet. Director Mike Nichols does make room for tender scenes between Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, as well as plenty of lively banter. The dialogue is sharp and the performances are incredibly fun, and it all works pretty well if you don’t think too hard about it.This time around, though, The Birdcage rubbed me the wrong way in a few critical areas. My main concern is that the plot doesn’t make a bit of sense. Gene Hackman’s conservative senator gets caught up in a scandal involving an underage black prostitute, but it’s not his scandal. It’s his newly deceased colleague’s. It’s easy enough to imagine how that might put Senator Keeley in some hot water; it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine that the media would be sated by Keeley’s 19-year-old daughter getting married, no matter who it’s with. It’s just plain ridiculous that the media follows Keeley to Miami… for what reason, exactly? As far as they know, there isn’t even a story. (They also zoom in on a videotape to hear it better. Um, that’s not how anything works.)

The media subplot is dumb. Fine. Whatever. That would be fine as long as the principle characters’ actions made some sense… but do they? Val and Barbara lie to the Keeleys, both about Val’s Jewishness and his parents’ queerness. They even lie about his last name. Is Barbara keeping her maiden name? Are we supposed to believe that the Keeleys will never stumble upon this information? None of these questions are even asked.

Val wants Armand to pretend to be straight, and Albert to disappear while they meet the parents. That’s great… but there is going to be a wedding, right? Armand and Albert are entrenched in Miami’s decadent gay drag scene, so none of their friends will be at the wedding. Armand might pull off his straight man act, and fool the Keeleys into thinking he’s still with Katherine. And then what? They’re just never going to get together again, for the rest of their lives? What if they have kids?

Val and Barbara’s foresight is lacking, and their plan is stupid. They’re not the main characters, though. It would be nice if Armand was smart enough to bring up some of these points, and maybe find clever solutions to them. Instead, the screenplay just sweeps them under the rug. Even that might be forgivable if what actually happened followed any sense of logic. But what the hell is Albert doing in this movie? He’s hurt that Armand and Val are ashamed of him… so he dresses as a woman and poses as Val’s biological mother. What is he trying to accomplish? It’s unclear how Albert thinks this will solve any of these problems. Clearly, it’s just adding to the mess.

If you can buy that Albert would be so selfish and reckless to potentially ruin Val’s engagement with his theatrics, then the point where Armand calls the ruse off comes out of nowhere, and we see very little of the Keeleys’ reaction. Instead, the bad media plot resurfaces, forcing the Keeleys to dress in drag and sneak their way out of the club. Why? Because if the media sees them associating with gay people, it will make them look bad. Next scene? A huge wedding, with lots of flamboyant gay attendees. The secret’s out. Yes, the secret that the entire plot of the movie bent over backward to contain is apparently just… not important anymore? What the fuck, Mike Nichols?

The Birdcage lacks a resolution of any of the conflicts it has addressed. We have no reason to believe that Keeley would suddenly accept Armand and Albert’s “lifestyle,” let alone embrace it. We’ve been told that Keeley being seen with Albert and Armand will ruin his political career… so, uhh, does it? The Birdcage has asked me to follow a handful of characters who do everything in their power not to let Keeley be associated with the outrageous gays from Miami, and then in its final scene, asks me to just… not care anymore, I guess? From a story perspective, that’s pretty wretched screenwriting.

I don’t begrudge anyone who enjoys The Birdcage. I enjoy it too, to an extent. The actors have incredible comic timing, and they’re given fun, snappy dialogue. But the only characters who make any sense are the Keeleys, and even that’s a stretch. Armand should think ahead about his son’s lame plan and come up with something better. Albert should have a reason why he thinks dressing in drag for the Keeleys is the best solution to Val’s problem. Val and Barbara should probably just not get married. No one here is acting with any remotely plausible intentions.

Comedy has to be grounded in some reality to be really funny. Nonsense wackiness doesn’t cut it. To an extent, this is a matter of taste — but The Birdcage wouldn’t have had to do that much work to come up with a coherent twist on this story. It’s just too lazy.

The Birdcage is practically a shot-for-shot remake of La Cage Aux Folles, a French farce from 1979, complete with the same plot beats and punchlines and everything. The Birdcage made zero attempt to update its views of gay life for 1996, and I find that sad. Albert behaves like a child throughout the entire film, throwing tantrums and overreacting. This might be interesting, if the film had something to say about why some gay men infantilize themselves this way, why they disappear into a diva persona as an escape from reality. (To be clear, I’m not suggesting that cross-dressing or doing drag is inherently infantilizing. But that seems to be the case with Albert.) And it all ends with the concerns of these gay characters unresolved, but all’s well that ends with a heterosexual union.

I can’t connect to The Birdcage, as no one in it acts like a sensible human being whose actions are actually going to take them where they want to go. (That’s probably its French roots, in large part.) It feels a bit too much like a minstrel show — straight (or, in 1996, presumably straight) men dressed up in “silly” costumes, acting ridiculous for a mostly straight audience. The Birdcage could be a lot worse, in this way — its depiction of gay men doesn’t bother me, I just wish there were a little more to it. I knew I was in trouble when the film began on the most obvious choice for an opening musical number — “We Are Family.”

The Birdcage is the reason a movie like My Best Friend’s Wedding was retroactively important to me. Rupert Everett’s George was a joyful scene-stealer, like Nathan Lane’s Albert — but no one needed to teach him how to walk, or dress, or put butter on toast. He’s a grownup.

There’s nothing wrong with gay men (or straight men, for that matter) dressing as women, but by 1996, I was pretty sick of that… without even knowing it. Get AIDS or dress as a woman… these were essentially the two options mainstream pop culture was offering gay people. George in My Best Friend’s Wedding was a supporting character, but he was something different, someone who said that gay men can be suave, confident, hilarious, the life of the party… even when dressed as men! The movie was a hit, and George was what everyone was talking about, even though he’s not one of the three primary characters.

A few months earlier, Ellen DeGeneres did this in an event more visible way — her “Yep, I’m Gay!” Time magazine cover wasn’t exactly subtle. But most gay people don’t actually want their coming out to be headline-worthy. It was everybody else who thought it was their business… and in 2017, still does, too often.

Of being gay, Ellen said in her infamous interview: “I ignored it because I didn’t really know what it was until I was 18 years old. I dated guys. I liked guys. But I knew that I liked girls too. I just didn’t know what to do with that. I thought, “If I were a guy I’d go out with her.” And then I thought, ‘Well, I don’t want to be a guy, really.’ So I went, ‘Oh, well,’ and just went on with my life.”

I’m pretty sure I didn’t read that at the time, but if I had, it might have sounded familiar. I didn’t want to dress like a woman, and I didn’t want AIDS, and I liked girls well enough, and that was enough evidence for me to believe that I was straight. Pop culture didn’t give me anything to aspire to — at least, not anywhere I looked. That started to shift in 1997, first with Ellen’s “The Puppy Episode,” which aired on April 30. I was still several years away from realizing it had anything to do with me, but I appreciated it as a momentous media event, and it’s a great episode. The public and the media was clamoring for that “one moment” when Ellen finally tells us she’s gay, as if we have a right to that information. There is such a moment — accidentally blurted into an intercom at the airport. (That’s exactly how coming out feels, by the way. Like you have literally announced something private and uncomfortable to the whole world… which DeGeneres really did.)

But “The Puppy Episode” is also peppered with slow and steady revelations. Ellen first realizes she’s gay when she most staunchly denies it, upon her attraction to Laura Dern’s wonderful Susan. Here, she won’t even come out to herself. Then she allows herself that realization, and tells one trusted confidante — who just happens to be Oprah. (Life would be a lot easier if every gay man and woman could test it out with Oprah first.) Then Ellen tells Susan, and her friends, and her parents, and her boss… it’s a long process that takes us to the end of the season.

IN & OUT
September 19, 1997

Budget: $35 million
Opening Weekend: $15 million
Domestic Total Gross: $63.9 million
Worldwide Total Gross: $63.9. million
Metacritic Score: 70

Like both The Birdcage and Ellen‘s “Puppy Episode,” I saw Frank Oz’s In & Out just once, in the comfort of my own home, and I don’t remember finding it applicable to my own life in any way. (If anything, the scenes about the Academy Awards resonated most.) What I appreciate about the film now is that it also deals with coming out in steps, a series of revelations. It should go without saying, not all gay people have the same coming out experience. Some know that they’re gay early on, almost before they know everything else. For them, coming out is more about “when” and “how,” and less about “if.” (Albert was almost certainly one such case.) Then, there are characters like Ellen Morgan and Howard Brackett, involved in heterosexual romances that are adequate enough. It hasn’t really hit them yet. And then… bam. Everything changes.

That’s a lot more similar to my personal experience, and maybe why I find “The Puppy Episode” and In & Out so satisfying now. The very notion of “coming out” was new to most audiences in 1997, and it was new to these characters. We got to go on that journey with them. Now, these long, deliberate coming out stories are mostly besides the point — we’ve seen so many, let’s see something else. Still, it was refreshing to rewatch two stories that dwelled on a difficult, confusing, and often very painful process, without skipping through it. Coming out in 2017 is easier than it was in 1997, for some, but not for everyone. It still takes the kind of courage Ellen DeGeneres displayed in 1997, to risk flipping your whole world upside down. It’s a bigger shakeup for some than others.

Aside from its witty dialogue and great comedic performances, I was happy to leave characters like Nathan Lane’s Albert in the dust for a while, and examine characters who didn’t have to become brassy women just to be palatable to the mainstream. But my cohosts found plenty to love in Albert, and that’s the point. We now have enough gay characters that most people can find the one that speaks to them. It might be a drag queen, but it might not be. We have that choice.

Oh, and another thing about In & Out — it’s fucking funny. Paul Rudnick’s script is full of great gay one-liners, but the story examines the perspectives of many characters. Howard’s parents are thrown for a loop, but soon his mother (the divine Debbie Reynolds) uses his big revelation as a springboard for her own confessions, and her old lady gal pals follow suit. Howard’s students have to take a decisive stand on how they feel about an issue most of them had never confronted before. Howard’s straight buddies at his bachelor party show that they accept him by breaking out some Barba Streisand movies — womp womp! That’s an easy joke, except In & Out twists it by having these dudes legitimately argue about which films holds up best. (Sound familiar?) Turns out, they love Babs as much as the gay guy. And of course, there’s Joan Cusack’s Oscar-nominated turn as his would-be wife, who also has to confront some sad truths about herself. She “comes out” as desperate, forced to admit that she’s settling for Howard because she never believed anyone could really love her. What’s nifty about In & Out is that Howard’s coming out is just the catalyst for everyone in this town to come out of their shell, one way or another.

In & Out has more going for it than its satiric look at coming out in a small town. It also lampoons Hollywood, and it’s dead on in that respect. (I will happily watch the entire four hour fictional telecast, if it it’s available.) As with The Birdcage, In & Out plays it pretty safe in terms of what is shown, and how much gay sexuality is expressed (almost zero). But we’ve had two decades to make for that. Almost exactly twenty years after Ellen came out, an intimate and briefly erotic film about a closeted gay man won Best Picture. (And thank God it was better than the fake gay movie that wins an Oscar in In & Out.)

It’s hard to know what kind of influence these coming out stories (or, in The Birdcage’s case, “going back in” story) had on what came after. It’s hard to deny that Ellen’s outing was probably the most significant pop culture event in terms of making gays mainstream. In 1998, Will & Grace premiered and dealt much more explicitly (though still quite cartoonishly) with gay life. And then we were just kind of on a roll.

That isn’t to say we don’t have a ways to go. We’re just now getting around to female and black superheroes, after all — it’ll be a spell before Disney grows enough balls for, say, The Beast And The Other Beast. If ever. But change has come pretty quickly, overall, and it’s been fascinating to witness it. We have it pretty good these days, even if we still have to promise that “it gets better.” Thank you to all those who fought to get their stories told when it wasn’t so easy.

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