Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King's cult comedy gem The Comeback has always been a frighteningly prescient satire of Hollywood.
Season 1, which aired in 2005, was ahead of its time in its portrayal of the manipulative tactics that power reality TV. Season 2, coming almost a decade later in 2014, poked fun at prestige antihero dramedies. Now, The Comeback makes its second (and supposedly final) comeback with a third season that's all about Hollywood's hottest topic: AI.
That AI focus lends The Comeback Season 3 an urgency that sets it apart from its prior two outings. Yes, it's still hilarious, cynical, and a remarkable showcase for Kudrow in her best role. But on top of all that, it's also something else: a warning.
What's The Comeback Season 3 about?
The warning signs begin early, as The Comeback Season 3 picks up during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
"AI is coming after all of us," then-SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher (in one of The Comeback's many celebrity cameos) tells a crowd of striking actors and writers.
The Comeback's embattled sitcom star Valerie Cherish (Kudrow) nods along, but in true Valerie fashion, she's more focused on the optics of her presence at the strike than the strike itself. Now trying to master the social media game to stay relevant, she's too busy directing her Gen Z social manager Patience (Ella Stiller) to truly take in the gravity of the situation. (Kudrow is already on Emmy watch for Valerie's posing with the picket sign alone.)
Flash forward to 2026: Valerie is struggling to get a podcast (Cherish the Time) off the ground, and she's taking bit roles in the lowest of low budget films. But her luck is set to change when she's offered the lead of new multi-cam sitcom How's That?!. It's everything she's ever wanted, with one huge catch: It's completely written by AI.
The Comeback Season 3 examines the role of AI in show business.
On paper, How's That?!'s showrunners are two humans, Mary and Josh (Abbi Jacobson and John Early). But in reality, their only job is to babysit the AI program that's actually churning out the show's scripts, sending the two of them down a disillusioned spiral.
Part of that comes from the fact that The Comeback initially approaches AI writing as somewhat competent. It churns out tens of alternate lines before Mary and Josh can think of one. Its jokes resonate more with How's That?!'s live studio audience than the one or two gags Mary and Josh manage to sneak in themselves. In terms of speed and sheer writing volume, it's impressive, and Valerie certainly seems to agree. That she has to deal less with difficult writer types like her past antagonist Paulie G. (Lance Barber) also seems to sweeten the deal.
However, as Season 3 continues, How's That?!'s shiny new tool begins to lose its sheen. AI hallucinations turn scripts incomprehensible, and the program's hastily-produced alts prove unsurprising and dull. Of course they would — they're just scraping other writers' work for inspiration.
That's what The Comeback Season 3 hammers home. AI can crank out script after script, but it's completely soulless. It has no sense of what will truly resonate with an audience. That, The Comeback says, can only come from writers pitching in the crucible of production, grinding it out until they find the perfect one-liner.
According to How's That?!'s network's CEO (played to skeezy perfection by Andrew Scott), the use of AI will help cut costs and optimize the show for maximum audience enjoyment. (Or really, just throwing it on in the background.) Ironically, he asks Valerie to keep it a secret from the cast and crew, a process that requires more effort than simply bringing more human writers onboard.
Valerie has never been great at keeping things to herself, which is why she lets How's That?!'s AI use slip to The Comeback documentarian Jane (Laura Silverman). The slip brings Jane back into the fold for a new documentary project: exploring the making of the first-ever AI-written show.
It's clear from the start that Jane understands the existential threat AI poses to the entertainment industry. Things are already awful for the majority of workers in the field. Now an Academy Award winner, Jane's main job isn't filmmaking, but rather working as a cashier at Trader Joe's. Crew members on How's That?! have worked on films whose production has been drastically shortened due to AI, robbing them of over 10 weeks of pay. Elsewhere, The Comeback populates entire coffee shops with talented writers who have to pivot because the industry is a mess. As one writer notes in the show, the normalization of AI in TV won't just be an evolution of the form, it'll be "an extinction event."
Yet somehow, Valerie is the rare example of someone in the entertainment industry benefitting from AI. It's given her the job of a lifetime, and in her mind, she's willing to set aside a lot of her misgivings in exchange for a lead role and a shiny executive producer credit. But really, Valerie is the proverbial frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. She doesn't realize that the danger is coming for her too, even as The Comeback works its way up towards a Black Mirror-esque conclusion.
The Comeback Season 3 isn't all AI doom and gloom, though. It's full of standout running gags, including Valerie's obsession with her under-viewed show Mrs. Hatt. (Nobody watched it because it was on Epix, a cutting jab at the sheer amount of streaming shows.) It also provides a touching send-off to Valerie's hair stylists and closest friend Mickey, whose actor Robert Michael Morris passed away in 2017. Trust The Comeback to make me tear up and belly laugh all at once.
Kudrow's performance remains pure comedic excellence, managing to make even Valerie's most selfish moments endearing. That The Comeback plays more loosely with its documentary format helps here as well: We tend to see Valerie through the lens of Jane's camera, Patience's phone, or security footage in her and Mark's (Damian Young) apartment. Often, though, The Comeback Season 3 allows us to see parts of Valerie's life that the cameras don't capture, a tactic that closed out its touching Season 2 finale. In keeping it up, Season 3 offers up the most humanized view of Valerie yet, and Kudrow is spectacular through each high and low.
Of course, much of those lows revolve around AI. The Comeback can occasionally get uncharacteristically heavy-handed about the subject matter, but then again, in a world where entertainment giants like Disney are investing in OpenAI, it's not wrong to sound the alarm about something that could so thoroughly decimate the industry.
In The Comeback's eyes, bringing AI into TV will result in nothing but lowest common denominator "content," and that's about as far from the show's sharp, superb swan song as you can get.
The Comeback Season 3 premieres March 22 at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max.
