The Comeback Season 3 TV Review: Lisa Kudrow returns to blend reality TV and A.I. in the long-awaited final series

Plot: Valerie Cherish navigates 2026 Hollywood by starring in How’s That?, the first-ever sitcom written entirely by AI. Still followed by reality cameras, Valerie tackles modern fame and cultural landmines.

Review: If you are wondering what The Comeback is and how it is already on its third season, you have missed out on one of the best comedy series of the last twenty-five years. Created by Friends star Lisa Kudrow and Sex and the City creator Michael Patrick King in 2005, The Comeback originally chronicled a reality-show comeback for sitcom actress Valerie Cherish, played by Kudrow. The first season became a modest hit, airing on HBO after Entourage, but was unceremoniously cancelled. After making countless lists of the decade’s best shows, The Comeback returned for a second season in 2014, which was met with critical acclaim. Now, twelve years after season two, Kudrow and King have reunited for the third and final season that takes aim at the current state of small-screen programming and the looming spectre of artificial intelligence. Loaded with cameos and smart dialogue, The Comeback makes its triumphant return, and it is so much better than we could have wanted.

Season three begins in 2023 with Valerie Cherish (Lisa Kudrow) splitting with her longtime documentarian, Jane Benson (Laura Silverman), who sees no point in continuing to record the sitcom actress. Left with her social media intern, Patience (Ella Stiller), Valerie heads to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, where A.I. was the hot topic of contention. The series then shifts to 2026, where Valerie struggles to find any consistent work while her husband, Mark (Damian Young), is filming a reality show about finance bros. Valerie’s publicist and manager, Billy Stanton (Dan Bucatinsky), lands the actress a project at the recently reformed television conglomerate NewNet, where new CEO Brandon (Andrew Scott) offers her the lead in a sitcom written entirely by artificial intelligence. Signing an NDA and earning an executive producer credit, Valerie sets off to try to make A.I. scripts sound funny. Working double duty as cast and producer, Valerie must navigate this new frontier of television while trying to create the most traditional project: a multi-camera sitcom.

The eight-episode third season of The Comeback shifts a bit away from the entirely found-footage style of the first two seasons. Blending handheld mobile phone footage, documentary crews, and traditionally filmed sequences, this season is as hilarious as the first two but with a very timely edge about the growing paranoia and anxiety around A.I. in the workplace. By using a similar formula to the first season of The Comeback, which saw Valerie at the cutting edge of the reality television genre, this season takes us behind the scenes of a typical studio audience sitcom, but one with a secret technology at its core. With showrunners Abbi Jacobson and John Early, as well as old friends returning from prior seasons, the set of Valerie’s new show, How’s That?, is a chaotic experience for the veteran performer. New additions to the cast include Tim Bagley, Matt Cook, Barry Shabaka Henley, Brittany O’Grady, and Zane Phillips, as well as cameos from famed sitcom director Jim Burrows (Frasier, Friends), who plays a fictionalized version of himself.

While I appreciated the first two seasons, this third season is the best the series has been. The humor is fantastic and plays to Lisa Kudrow’s strengths as an actress, drawing on a character she created at the Groundlings before starring on Friends. Kudrow is a gifted performer, and she gets to evolve Valerie Cherish from being a self-absorbed diva to something much more interesting here. Valerie has always wanted fame, success, and acclaim, and this season of The Comeback gives her more to do across the entire production of her sitcom, as we see her grow. There are also several dramatically tinged moments that refer back to events from previous seasons and to the hole left by the passing of Valerie’s longtime friend and hairdresser, Mickey (Robert Michael Morris). These smaller, emotional moments are embedded within the larger comedy of the season narrative, which follows the sitcom from inception to release and all of the challenges in between. This includes a ton of famous actors playing themselves and fictional characters throughout Valerie’s final journey back to the limelight.

Series creators Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow shared credits on the first two seasons, along with a writing team, with King also helming several episodes. This season finds the duo serving as the primary writers on all episodes, with King directing. There is a very clear structure to this season that works as a standalone for anyone who has not seen the first two seasons, while also providing a satisfying level of closure to subplots and relationships that go back to the very first episode. It is amazing that a series of fewer than 30 total episodes spread over three decades can connect so satisfyingly. That is a testament to King and Kudrow, who never lose sight of the story they are trying to tell, while keeping the focus on Lisa Kudrow as a performer. Kudrow is such an underrated actress, and The Comeback is a showcase for every ounce of her talent. The entire cast is great, especially Damian Young and Dan Bucatinsky, who are the main supporting players, but this is Kudrow’s show, and she owns it from start to the perfect final scene of the finale.

Other recent films and series have tackled the presence of A.I. in Hollywood, but none have done so as deftly and hilariously as The Comeback. While A.I. is a major factor in the third season’s plot, The Comeback uses the technology as a plot device without actually using it to create the story. It is at once an indictment of the potential replacement of human writers and a haunting, Black Mirror-esque cautionary tale, but told in a deeply funny television series. Lisa Kudrow’s performance as Valerie Cherish will go down as one of the best characters in contemporary television, and The Comeback has now wrapped up one of the most solid shows of all time. The Comeback is a funny insider look at the world of Hollywood and television, but it is also just a really enjoyable character-driven series that will have you laughing the entire time.

The Comeback premieres on March 22nd on HBO.