After 11 Years, Lisa Kudrow's 'The Comeback' Is Back—Pitting Valerie Cherish Against an AI-Written Sitcom

It's been 11 years, but Valerie Cherish is finally ready for her next close-up. HBO's prophetic comedy 'The Comeback' will return for a third season next March, co-creator Michael Patrick King revealed in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly. This time, Lisa Kudrow's iconic character will star in a new sitcom with a challenging twist: it's written entirely by AI.

Twenty years after its debut, the show is once again tackling the zeitgeist head-on. "Twenty years ago, Valerie Cherish was obsessed with how she looked on camera," King told EW. "And here we are... everybody else is obsessed with how they look on camera." He noted how Valerie's behavior, once considered 'cringe,' has become an everyday routine in the age of social media, asking, "Is it possible that everybody turned into Valerie Cherish?"

Season 1 (2005) satirized the rise of reality TV, and season 2 (2015) explored the shift to prestige streaming. According to King, he and Kudrow waited for another significant industry shift before reviving the show. "We'd bat around ideas at lunch," King said, "but it's not enough just to have a one-joke idea." The current industry-wide panic over artificial intelligence provided the perfect storm. "Here we are now, and everybody's, maybe more than ever, in a panicked state about what's coming next: AI."

In the new season, Valerie lands the lead in a sitcom called 'How's That?!', written by a machine. For a character whose drama has always stemmed from her relationships with human writers, this presents a fascinating conflict. "The thing we didn't want to do is the obvious joke that AI is bad," King explained. "The scary thing about AI is that maybe it's learning really fast... The most fun thing about Valerie in AI is all her drama has been with writers. And now what will her drama be if there are no writers?"

**PRISM Insight:** 'The Comeback' has consistently used Valerie Cherish as a human barometer for the entertainment industry's anxieties during moments of technological disruption. From reality TV to streaming, and now to AI, the series isn't just a comedy—it's a recurring, long-form commentary on how new technologies challenge our definitions of creativity, authenticity, and what it means to be human in the content machine.