Greg Mottola and The Comeback

I got curious about Greg Mottola, the director of Adventureland, so I did a quick IMDB search on him (when I should have been doing “real” work). I discovered that he directed two episodes of The Comeback, Lisa Kudrow’s all-to-brief series on HBO.

It was a smart show that I thought had real potential and I was sorry to see it go. Occasionally, it shows up on HBO In Demand, so if you’re ever caught without something to watch, and you see it pop up—give it a shot.

The Comeback is the story of Valerie Cherish, a forty-something actress who’s fighting desperately to re-claim the adoration and status she enjoyed as a twenty-something hottie on what appears to have been a popular but dorky show (something along the lines of Threes Company. Ouch.)

At the start of the series, she lands her big chance—a small role on a new show, and a reality show documenting her “Comeback” (though like Nora Desmond, she laughs of the idea that she was ever gone). Valerie, with her feathered hair and seventies wardrobe, is every bit as awkward and self-conscious as Larry David, and what’s worse, she’s always smilingly trying to deflect the moments (and there are many) that show her in an un-fabulous light.

Other characters include her dorky but loyal husband, her bitchy step-daughter, who’s scornful of Valerie but loath to turn down a few moments in front of the camera and a shot at Nicole Richie-dom, a gay hairdresser who keeps Valerie’s hair in seventies fabulosity, and some snarky twenty-somethings (mainly writers on the show) who think being nice to her will diminish their coolness. Episode after episode, they try to humiliate her, and she gamely takes it all in, insisting on seeing it as peers teasing a peer.

You know, it wasn’t a perfect show. It was occasionally unwatchable in that I’m-so-uncomfortable-I-can’t-watch way that Curb Your Enthusiasm sometimes is. And it hadn’t quite found it’s pace—kind of like the first season of Seinfeld, in which the jokes are a little slow yet.

Seinfeld was given a chance to mature, though. I wish The Comeback had been given the same chance—and with directors like Mottola. I think we would have seen some great stuff.