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Critic Reviews
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The Comeback is the same as it ever was, and more highly concentrated. It still out-metas anything else on television. The performances remain stellar all around.
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Kudrow imbues Valerie with a humanity that lets us see something of ourselves in her resilience and her dedication, misguided as it may be. Like the show that inspired her, our Valerie is a survivor. Welcome back.
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The Comeback is as spiny and audacious as the original, but very different, because it isn’t aimed at “celebreality” or network sitcoms, now dated targets.
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It would all be terribly sad it if it weren't so incredibly funny.
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Make no mistake, The Comeback earned its second season and celebrates its triumph, foresight and timing with twice as much depth, humor and awareness.
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The current episodes have more weight and intensity; they come off a shade darker and yet more sympathetic to its cast of co-dependent lost souls.
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The second season of this faux-reality series about the misadventures of sitcom star Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) injects the oft-misapplied adjective “uncompromising” with corrosive new life.
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The first five new episodes sent for preview are excellent--as brilliantly painful as the old ones.
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It’s a dizzying reprise, and also a dazzling one.
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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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The first and second episodes drag a bit, taking a little too long to get to what The Comeback’s fans are here for--it’s more waiting on top of the nine years we’ve already waited. Soon enough, the show recaptures its old rhythm and we are rewarded.
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Valerie remains as indefatigably inane as ever, and so does the show business world around her.
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Kudrow keeps us interested in her vain character by giving her an unflappable optimism that’s more humorous than pathetic. Fun cameos by Andy Cohen, Seth Rogan and RuPaul add to the Hollywood-insider vibe that makes room for a lot of HBO jokes.
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The Comeback" is strictly for Comeback connoisseurs--those who deeply missed this sad/funny mockumentary on the idiocy of show business.
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There are meta layers within layers here (it's almost disappointing HBO's current executives don't play themselves), but the end result is a sequel that feels very true to the spirit and style of the original.
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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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What started as satire now feels like a reheated reality "event" itself.
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While The Comeback is often boisterous and funny, it's the quiet, more poignant moments, which are too few and far between, that resonate the loudest.
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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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The concept is interesting, but it would have been more fun to show Valerie in a less high-stakes setting.
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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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Valerie is still thin-skinned, self-absorbed and occasionally pathetic. Fans wouldn't want her to be any other way, of course, but there's a limit on the variety of ways one can wring comedy from this character premise.
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Kudrow is brilliant at playing self-deluded.... Kudrow’s skill in this area is both a strength and a limiting factor in the success of The Comeback. To put it more simply, a little of an insufferable egomaniac goes a long way.
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Nine years later, The Comeback is back, as unwatchable and unfunny as the first time around.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 26 out of 32
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Mixed: 2 out of 32
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Negative: 4 out of 32
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Dec 27, 2014
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Nov 15, 2014
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Nov 12, 2014