The nine year gap (due to a cancelation, then a years-later reconsideration by HBO) between the first and second season of HBO’s The Comeback worked exquisitely with the series’ theme of Hollywood obsolescence. The characters, and particularly Valerie Cherish, had nine years of further career decline to reveal to us in a tragicomic montage at the beginning of the season. It made it all the more biting when, out of nowhere, Valerie was given the opportunity to star on a prestige cable series — only if she’d essentially play an offensive, male-gaze-envisioned-version-of-her-former-self. So while it was a bummer that the return of The Comeback didn’t stretch for another season right after its second, it also made sense: perhaps for this crazy, meta series about television to work, we also need to give the show a bit of time to take on a changed TV zeitgeist. So…has it been enough time since 2014?
At a recent panel, co-creators Lisa Kudrow (who also stars) and Michael Patrick King discussed the potential for a third season. As Indiewire reports, they spoke at the AXT TV Festival, and Kudrow said, “There’s always a possibility. If [Season 2] happened, then it’s a possibility.”
Michael Patrick King seemed to already be ideating, saying:
There’s so much aggressive sales needed, it’s like a perfect humiliation trap.These small shows you’ve never heard of […] on whatever networks you can never find: Valerie would be like Where’s Waldo on TV…TV is so desperate now, it’s finally caught up to Valerie Cherish.
During the panel, they also paid tribute to Robert Michael Morris, who played The Comeback‘s endlessly hilarious/sad hairdresser character, Mickey. (Who sort of seems like a precursor to Gary on Veep.) Morris died on May 30 of lymphoma, which he’d been battling during the filming of the second season. King had a particularly special relationship with Morris, as Morris had been his high school drama teacher; he’d retired from acting before the first season had even been conceived, but King had approached him to play the part nonetheless. Honestly, it’s hard to envision the series without Morris’ Mickey being there to wander onto the camera every two minutes to fix the swoop in Valerie’s hair, or not-so-skillfully insult one of her adversaries.
Take a recollective dose of the show’s meta antics:
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