As Lisa Kudrow’s fame-obsessed character prepares to return to HBO , the show illuminates the desperation of today’s real-life celebrity reality TV stars.
Valerie Cherish at the upfronts on The Comeback.
HBO
In 2014, the assertion that reality TV isn't real is less a theory than a statement of fact. Sure, it can't always be proven, but like evolution, the vast majority of educated Americans understand it to be true. We've come to accept bending the truth as an intrinsic part of the genre: Fights are rehearsed, participants are coached, and the villains are victims of the dreaded "bitch edit." Reality television is ultimately a performance.
No one understands that better than The Comeback's Valerie Cherish, who — were she not fictional — might be the greatest reality TV personality of all time. As it stands, she's simply one of the greatest television characters. Embodied with impressive depth by Lisa Kudrow on the short-lived 2005 HBO series, Valerie is always playing to the cameras. When The Comeback begins, it's been 10 years since Valerie made her mark as the star of the sitcom I'm It. The series tracks her return to television as Aunt Sassy, a thin caricature on the dreadful sitcom Room and Bored and as herself on a simultaneous reality series designed to propel her back to stardom. Valerie is an actor so defined by her fame that performing in front of an audience is the only reality she knows.
But as is the case with 2014's actors turned reality stars, Lindsay Lohan and Tori Spelling, the more Valerie performs, the more we see through the act. As these actors put on a show, their true vulnerabilities are unmasked. It's the closest reality TV has ever gotten to reality.
Of course, that's not to say these actors have the same perspectives when it comes to how they choose to represent themselves. Valerie would be horrified by the uncomfortable candor on display on OWN's Lindsay, Oprah's somewhat botched attempt at reintroducing the world to a sober Lohan, and Lifetime's True Tori, an awkwardly intimate look at the fraught marriage of Spelling and Dean McDermott after McDermott's affair. Valerie downplays her own frustrations and disappointments, like getting shoved into the background of a publicity photo featuring her younger, hotter cast mates, while her modern contemporaries cry directly into the camera. It's not that the tears aren't real — it's that, like Valerie, Lohan and Spelling seem to process their emotions by way of public reception.
Spelling on True Tori.
Lifetime
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