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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
48
Mixed:
18
Negative:
5
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Critic Reviews
Mar 12, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The show truly teeters on wonderful. This is probably TV's most poignant half-hour comedy in years, a masterfully modulated combination of shrewd satire and a tender, even tearful, central story. [5 June 2005, p.N01]
Mar 23, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Of all the many TV series that have taken on AI, from Black Mirror to Westworld to Mrs. Davis, it’s the new season of The Comeback that most trenchantly defines the stakes of letting computers take over the fundamentally human task of storytelling and disrupt the personal relationships that form between longtime collaborators.
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Mar 18, 2026
Season 3 Review:
The new season of “The Comeback” thrives largely on the very human art of casting. Kudrow, of course, is pitch-perfect, as are returning cast members including Damian Young as Valerie’s mopey husband, Mark, and Laura Silverman as her dogged documentarian, Jane. But the bit players are the scene stealers here.
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Mar 13, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The Comeback has its flaws. But this is a moment well beyond the depth of most television comedies. This is the stuff of which plays by David Mamet and Arthur Miller have been writ. This is a sitcom to which some attention should be paid. [4 June 2005, p.1D]
Mar 12, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Sly as "The Larry Sanders Show," keener than "Fat Actress," more sympathetic than "Curb Your Enthusiasm," this new half-hour comedy hits the bull's-eye in every direction. It's funny, sad, smart and immensely appealing. [5 June 2005, p.11]
Mar 12, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The Comeback is closest in tone to Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO's vehicle for Mr. David, the creator of Seinfeld. Valerie is not quite as grating, but like Larry she perseveres. Ms. Kudrow makes you sympathize with Valerie, despite her blindness to the costs of fame. Not bad for a former sitcom star in her comeback role. [5 June 2005, p.8G]
EmpireApr 27, 2026
Season 3 Review:
The Comeback’s final season is an open-hearted valedictory send-off for Valerie Cherish, stumbling into the sunset as she goes. Despite a bit more bluntness than before, Kudrow and King give it everything they’ve got, capping an exquisite series of television. There’s never been anything quite like it.
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Mar 23, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Much of this season is shot as a conventional, non-meta television show, allowing us access to private conversations and meetings without having to account for Jane and her crew, or requiring the players to act as if they’re being watched. Paradoxically, without pretending to reality, it makes some things more real.
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Mar 23, 2026
Mar 20, 2026
Season 3 Review:
Not everything works: The series misses the heart it got from Valerie’s friendship with her stylist, Mickey (Robert Michael Morris, who died in 2017), and the season’s efforts to replace the dynamic fall short. But this season ends up doing something devilishly surprising: It makes you feel almost — almost! — nostalgic for the Hollywood it spoofed in the first two.
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ColliderMar 17, 2026
Season 3 Review:
The show’s approach to AI is not only an excellent source of comedy, but it provokes an essential conversation about the future of television and media in general. It’s always wonderful to have Valerie Cherish make another comeback, but Season 3 makes for a great curtain call.
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Nov 6, 2014
Season 2 Review:
It de-emphasizes what I thought was worst about the original–the shooting-fish-in-an-aquarium reality-TV satire–and builds on what was best: Lisa Kudrow’s microcalibrated performance, and its cringe-making yet sympathetic depiction of an actress, now around 50, trying to make it in an industry that stamps a sell-by date on women.
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Mar 14, 2014
Season 1 Review:
It's funny, but painfully funny, as it skewers the world of banal sitcoms and youth-market mania. It's mean, but touching, too, as Kudrow's Valerie undergoes the humiliations of being a Nixed Big Thing. [3 June 2005, p.D1]
Mar 13, 2014
Season 1 Review:
She's self-flagellating, but in a nuanced, funny-sad and heartbreaking way, mixing slapstick and pathos with intelligence and the sharpest of comic instincts. [4 June 2005, p.C25]
Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Sharply funny without being painful to watch. [3 June 2005, p.E-1]
Nov 6, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Watching [Valerie’s entourage] fawn over stars, such as Seth Rogen playing himself, is still irresistibly painful, like pushing on a sore tooth. But watching Paulie G. puff with deceptive calm on his fat e-cigarette, we see through the smoke, and the laughs, the faint shape of a show going pleasantly darker.
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Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
A worthy new configuration - the side-splittingly sad sitcom. [2 June 2005, p.F-01]
Mar 14, 2014
Season 1 Review:
There's still time for The Comeback to hit its stride. I hope it does. A little less "reality" and a lot more comedy, and Kudrow might deserve another long run. [3 June 2005, p.55]
Mar 12, 2014
Season 1 Review:
It doesn’t feel like a comedy - because it’s not funny. [3 June 2005, p.3]
Nov 6, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Ultimately, there’s enough meat here to engender morbid curiosity on where Valerie’s latest journey back into the maw of the beast will lead. Other than a rarefied slice of media mavens and those few aforementioned devotees, though, to borrow Valerie’s early catchphrase in assessing this latest Comeback, I’m not sure you need to see that.
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Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Clever, if familiar. [2 June 2005, p.8]
Nov 7, 2014
Season 2 Review:
While the first few episodes of the new Comeback make stingingly accurate points about the sexism and ageism Valerie has to contend with, The Comeback has its own problems. As in the first go-round, Valerie comes off as cartoonish, a caricature of a so-so celebrity.
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Mar 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
The comedy equivalent of low-hanging fruit. [3 June 2005, p.E1]
Mar 14, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Good for Kudrow for taking on something so different. You can't accuse her of trading on her Friends familiarity. You can, however, wish that The Comeback, for all the merits of its premise, was more enjoyable to watch. [3 June 2005, p.10]
Mar 14, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Kudrow says she isn't a reality-TV fan and the humiliation of its participants, yet she plays her part as victim. So when she gets sucker-punched, we get sucker-punched. What's so funny about that? [4 June 2005, p.10]
Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
It's one thing to laugh at characters on TV shows who behave foolishly, who deserve to be mocked. Valerie's crimes for the sake of comedy are nothing more than aging with an undiminished Hollywood ego. It's a little funny at first, but it quickly turns sad, something you want to look away from, not laugh about. [2 June 2005, p.WE-37]
Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
A reality/sitcom hybrid. How revolutionary. [3 June 2005, p.E1]
Mar 13, 2014
Season 1 Review:
1) It's not all that funny, which could be a problem considering it's supposed to be a comedy, and 2) It continues a rather arrogant presumption on the part of show-biz types that we're all ceaselessly interested in the inner workings of their industry. [4 June 2005, p.C01]
Mar 15, 2014
Season 1 Review:
A "comedy" that's not funny, original or in the least bit interesting.[3 June 2005]
Mar 16, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Kudrow seems to be aiming for ``The Larry Sanders Show'' or ``Curb Your Enthusiasm'' territory but only gets as far as ``Reba'' with the f-word. [2 June 2005, p.47]
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