What to Remember About ‘The Comeback’ Before Final Season Premieres

Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) is back for one last grab at the spotlight in The Comeback Season 3. The third and final season of the HBO comedy premieres this Sunday, March 22, and this time, Valerie is staging an AI-generated comeback.

The third and final season of The Comeback will debut on Sunday, March 22, at 10:30/9:30c on HBO and HBO Max. New episodes of the eight-episode season will debut weekly leading up to the series finale on Sunday, May 10. It’s been 20 years since The Comeback Season 1 and 10 years since Season 2, so we’re here to refresh your memory on what happened leading up to Season 3.

What happened in The Comeback Season 1?

Season 1 introduced the world to Valerie Cherish, a middle-aged ingenue who was the star of a hit multi-cam sitcom from the ’90s, I’m It!, for four seasons. The first season was filmed like a reality TV show, with a small camera crew led by Jane Benson (Laura Silverman) following Valerie around as she prepared for a callback for a new sitcom, Room and Bored.

The sitcom wanted a comedy vet to stage a comeback through the show so they could make a reality series about said comeback. What Valerie didn’t know was that she wasn’t the only person up for the role, but she booked it anyway. Cue the “Well, I got it!” scene that the internet loves (see below).

Room and Bored was about four hot singles living together in a new condo, and Valerie thought she was playing one of those four until she realized she was playing the oddball older roommate. Her role was then switched to “Aunt Sassy,” the owner of the condo building. What was supposed to be her big comeback turned into an experience of lacking creative control and desperately trying to get some.

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Her reality series showed the everyday happenings of Valerie’s life on set and home life with husband, Mark Berman (Damian Young). The episodes took viewers through every step of the making of a TV show, from the read-through and costume fittings to the pilot filming and upfront presentations to advertisers in New York and more.

In the penultimate episode, Valerie was fighting for more lines on Room and Bored and ended up in a fight with writer Paulie G (Lance Barber). She punched him in the stomach in the heat of the moment, and they both threw up.

Valerie eventually reclaimed her fame, but at a high emotional cost. In The Comeback Season 1 finale, Valerie learned during her premiere watch party that her reality show was edited to portray her in an unfavorable light. She quit the show after a fight with Jane, but then she made a memorable appearance on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno that shot her back into stardom. She agreed to return to The Comeback to hold onto the fame after the show got good ratings and audience response.

What happened in The Comeback Season 2?

Season 2 picked up nine years after the events of Season 1, when Valerie had hired a group of college students to film a reality TV pilot that she wanted to pitch to Andy Cohen. Her Season 1 adversary, Paulie G, was developing an HBO show about his life and career, which, as one of the writers on Room and Bored, included time spent with Valerie. Instead of going through with the cease and desist against him, she auditioned for the part of her fictionalized self instead and got it.

The Valerie-Paulie rivalry continued throughout the production of Seeing Red. They had creative differences about the character’s plot, to say the least, but then the tide started turning in Valerie’s favor when her acting performance got early critical praise while Paulie’s writing didn’t get as glowing reviews. While that was being filmed, Jane made another documentary about Valerie that was eventually called The Assassination of Valerie Cherish.

Valerie and her husband, Mark, separated in Season 2, but reconciled by the end of the season. Valerie’s hair stylist, Mickey (the late Robert Michael Morris), was hospitalized at the end of the season but ended up OK. Valerie visited him in the hospital in the season finale during the Emmy Awards broadcast. There, with Mickey and Mark, she found out through the live telecast that she won an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for Seeing Red.

What happens in The Comeback Season 3?

In The Comeback Season 3, set 10 years after the events of Season 2, social media has stepped in for the documentary cameras, and AI is an existential threat to the industry. Valerie gets an offer to star in the first sitcom ever written by AI, How’s That?!, and at the advice of her manager, Billy Stanton (Dan Bucatinsky), she takes it. How will her union feel about that?

At the end of the day, Valerie is always desperate to stay relevant, and she’ll try just about any method the modern world “demands.” Check out the trailer for The Comeback Season 3 above.

“Valerie Cherish has found her way back to the current television landscape. Neither of us are surprised she did,” The Comeback creator Michael Patrick King (And Just Like That…) and Kudrow said in a statement when Season 3 was announced last year.

The Comeback Season 3 stars Lisa Kudrow, Dan Bucatinsky, Laura Silverman, Damian Young, and Tim Bagley. Additional cast members are Andrew Scott, Matt Cook, Jack O’Brien, Ella Stiller, John Early, Barry Shabaka Henley, Abbi Jacobson, Tony Macht, Brittany O’Grady, Zane Phillips, and Julian Stern.

The Comeback, Season 3 Premiere, Sunday, March 22, 10:30/9:30c, HBO

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