Neither indignity is too extreme for the protagonists of these darkly humorous series as they chase a comeback at any price.
In the fifth and concluding season of the sitcom Hacks, the iconic comedian Deborah Vance finds herself in crisis once more. Following a controversial exit from America’s top late-night talk show, a spiteful non-compete clause prevents her from performing new material. The fourth season of the Emmy-winning comedy concluded with a cliffhanger: TMZ erroneously reported Deborah’s (Jean Smart) death. Now resurrected for season five, the celebrated mother of comedy fears her entire career will be defined by her premature departure from late-night television. To safeguard her legacy, she aims to stage a grand comeback show at Madison Square Garden—and she’s determined to achieve it by any means necessary.
It’s no coincidence that the final season of The Comeback opens with a comparable sense of desperation. Valerie Cherish, the cringe-inducing sitcom star portrayed by a red-haired Lisa Kudrow, is offered a career saving opportunity when she lands the leading role in a new sitcom. The catch? The script has been generated by AI, a secret Valerie is explicitly forbidden from disclosing. This is precisely the kind of mortifying situation that could only emerge from Kudrow and her collaborator, Michael Patrick King, who has returned to form after his work on And Just Like That.