Why ‘The Comeback’ Made AI the Big Threat of Its Final Season

The Comeback returned to TV this spring for one last critique of the Hollywood machine. After focusing on the comedic ire toward reality TV; the ebbs, flows and drama spilling out of writers rooms; and the broader landscape of network television, co-creators Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow, who also stars, turned their attention to the threat of AI in season three. “One of the main thrusts of why we came back was because Valerie’s character [Kudrow] has always had problems, in the other two seasons, with the writer,” King says. “So the idea of coming back for the third season with a writer that isn’t human was really interesting.”

In this scene in episode four of what will be the final season of the HBO comedy, Valerie has just wrapped filming on the pilot of her new show, How’s That?! Ever the optimist, she’s blindsided when the director Jimmy, played by iconic real-life TV director James Burrows, tells her the show will never truly be great as long as it’s written by AI, illustrating the main tension emanating throughout the season and Hollywood at large.

This scene works for Kudrow, she says, because it shows just how determined her character is. Explains King: “It also shows the two types of characters. One person who doesn’t need anything from the industry anymore, Jimmy — he’s had it all, and he doesn’t need it, it doesn’t look fun to him — and Valerie, who, no matter how fun it isn’t, still needs to make a show great. She has to work, but she also has to strive.”

Here, Jimmy delivers the sort of mission statement of the season, summing up the root of all the consternation around AI in Hollywood. “The part of the speech that I find to be most resonant is, ‘A group of writers in the corner beating themselves up to beat out a better joke,’ ” says King. “There’s so much in my history of having written sitcoms over the years about that group dynamic of beating themselves up to beat out a better joke. Like, it is not a prompt. It’s a fight.” He adds: “Life is rough, it beats people up. And the great thing about that is sometimes comedy writers can find a way to turn it into gold.”

While in the script Jimmy says that the husband-and-wife writing duo, played by Abbi Jacobson and John Early, aren’t fun, the episode aired without that line. King says they filmed it but wound up taking it out in the editing room.  “I thought, ‘Jimmy has worked with many writers who weren’t engaged, but they were [especially disengaged],’ ” he explains. “It’s not like Jimmy needs everybody to be in a kumbaya situation, but he does need them to be engaged. And all we really have seen by the time you’re actually seeing this is Valerie is fun. And the cast is fun. We were always trying to point out that it wasn’t them. It was the situation that wasn’t working for him.”

What Valerie wants, Kudrow says, is for AI to be able to write better, to write more surprising jokes, to get her back to being a top comedic force. Says King, “He says to her right before he leaves, which is the killer line in the scene, ‘It’s too bad, this could have been the one.’ Valerie’s been looking for ‘the one’ for quite a while now. She was No. 1 on her first show, back in the ’90s, and so, she’s got a tractor beam to get recognized as great. …And what she wants is to be seen as, ‘Wow, you’re the one.’ ”

“Like the first season with reality television — and Michael made up some hilarious reality TV shows that we then could not believe our eyes basically happened — we’re not trying to predict, we’re trying to reflect what the fear is, what it’s about,” Kudrow says about how they depict AI in Hollywood playing out.  “We had one thing we wanted to do,” adds King. “Our big threat was, we wanted to be on the air before any studio actually admitted they were using it.”

Up to this point in the season, the introduction of AI into the process of producing a TV show hasn’t come for Valerie directly. “She’s going to keep going, though,” Kudrow says. “It does become obvious to her that she needs a writer, that you need a showrunner who is a writer. Because it’s too much for her to do.” How Valerie handles varied conflicts — and how that changes from AI affecting the writing to impacting her role directly — was one King and Kudrow were keen to explore. “We did address it a lot,” says King. “One of the great arcs of Valerie for us is to show that she adapts and evolves. Even in the scene we’re talking about, she hears the truth and then decides, ‘He’s old-fashioned, I’m current.’ When faced with the reality of keeping going or stopping or feeling depressed or being excited, she will choose the positive.”

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.