How's That?! needs a real leader. The guys surrounding Valerie right now clearly aren't up to the task.
Season 3, Episode 5: 'Valerie Lights a Candle'
Valerie Cherish doesn't have the best luck with men, does she? I'm not just talking about her husband here -- even though in this week's episode, Mark does announce his highly questionable, nonnegotiable plan to go to Burning Man with their doorman. No, I'm thinking more about all the needy men who populate her workday, buzzing around her like pesky gnats.
In this week's episode, Valerie gets let down by Billy, her annoyingly unhelpful agent and co-producer, who has his phone set to "Do Not Disturb" at 10 a.m. She gets distracted by her male "How's That?!" castmates P.D.P., Frank and Walter. And she is out-and-out threatened by Marco, the former writers' assistant who is now her sitcom's showrunner, even though he has shown no knack for managing people or being funny.
So how does Valerie respond to all these demanding, angry, borderline-useless men? She calls in a toxic TV writer who has tormented her for decades.
Paulie G. (Lance Barber) makes his Season 3 debut this week, in what may be a one-time appearance -- if Valerie listens to reason. Paulie does ride to the rescue and saves a foundering "How's That?!" episode. But as is always the case with Paulie, he does it with a dark, dismal energy.
Valerie's desperate call to Paulie comes after it becomes clear that NuNet will not assert any real control over "How's That?!" Her angry voice memo last week did prompt the NuNet executive Brandon to fire Josh and Mary Abrams and promote Marco -- since, according to Valerie's rant, Marco was the only one listening to her. But Brandon shrugs off the idea that this show even needs a runner. He expects Valerie just to tell Allassist what she wants. "It's got all the greatest writers at its fingertips," he says, "From Shakespeare to the Charles brothers."
The problem is that while Brandon leaves Valerie effectively in charge, he does not pass this information to Marco, who quickly starts making terrible decisions. He hires his roommates to play the small but pivotal parts of an angry tourist couple, and they're so muted and mumbly that even the perpetually chuckling crew member Zeke (Mike Mitchell) doesn't laugh. Valerie has to call on her casting director, Sharon, to fire the roommates because Marco thinks they’re “fine.”
Enter Paulie G. In need of a writer with actual standards -- somebody "bruised and broken," as Jimmy Burrows suggested -- a panicked Valerie calls Paulie, who hasn't worked in a while. (He half-jokes that she could shake his favorite coffee shop and find "five Emmy-winners who need a job.") In no time, Paulie is able to diagnose what's wrong with the angry tourists. Even after replacing Marco’s roommates with more experienced -- and louder -- actors, he thinks the scene loses the studio audience because they don’t want to see a man yelling at Valerie’s character, Beth.
It’s not a coincidence that this particular “How’s That?!” scenario -- an unreasonable man yelling at Beth and making everyone watching uncomfortable -- is mirrored in this episode by multiple men getting upset with Valerie while we squirm. This has long been one of the most resonant themes in “The Comeback”: The Hollywood boys’ club treats Valerie shabbily, but she has become so used to it that she often goes out of her way to make it easier for them to humiliate her.
What’s especially fascinating about that theme in Season 3 is that, for once, Valerie actually has power over these men. Yet they still talk to her as if she were an employee they could push around. Last week, P.D.P. flipped out at Valerie because he had almost no lines in the episode Allassist hallucinated. This week, after Al spits out hundreds of alternate jokes for each scene, P.D.P. becomes livid again when Valerie asks Marco to cut the list down to two or three. He thinks she is stealing more of his screen time.
Frank and Walter are not as hostile, but they’re still a nuisance. When Frank hears the Abramses have been fired, he pesters Valerie for their contact information to thank them. When she explains that Josh and Mary hated actors and that the mysterious Al did most of the writing, Walter interjects and expresses some suspicions. For starters, one of Al’s jokes appears to be from an old episode of “Mama’s Family.”
Then there’s Marco, who may be a lightweight but is also no pushover. Concerned about Valerie’s backstage machinations, he warns, “Just remember that I know things.”
It’s easy to imagine how all of this might spin out of control for Valerie. It may be only a matter of time before the industry trades start filling with blind items about the tyrannical Valerie Cherish and her illegally A.I.-written sitcom. Even her new director, Bryan (Darien Sills-Evans), could spill some tea, given how quickly she shuts him down when he offers to play one of the angry tourists. (“Juilliard, just saying,” he mutters under his breath.)
As for Paulie G., it doesn’t take him long to figure out that A.I. is being used. But because he needs a job, and because he enjoyed playing the fixer for this episode, he lets Valerie know that he would like to stay. If she says no, will he expose what he knows about Al? If she says yes, will he bring all his old baggage?
"I need a captain," Valerie says to Jane. "He'll sink your ship," Jane warns. "He won me an Emmy," Valerie counters."You won you an Emmy," Jane insists.
If I were Valerie, I would be concerned that Paulie has never fully owned up to how he treated her on "Room and Bored" and "Seeing Red." He still blames his bad behavior on the reality TV cameras -- and not on his addictions to drugs and alcohol, his petty power trips, his inflated sense of his own genius, or his bias against older women. Even the way Paulie grovels for this new job should be a red flag.
To Valerie's credit though, she spots it. She can see Paulie is scared. "Nothing more dangerous than a scared animal," she notes to Jane, warily. "That's when they bite, right?"
- One of my favorite movie performances last year came from Andrew Scott in "Blue Moon," playing the composer Richard Rodgers on the night of the Broadway opening of "Oklahoma!" Scott is so good at playing someone who is engaged only partially with the person right in front of him while indicating clearly that he would prefer to be elsewhere.
- Valerie generally does not snipe much about the younger generation -- not even about the perpetually injured Patience -- but she does get annoyed at Marco's roommates and their inability to take direction. "That whole generation thinks they've 'got this,'" Valerie grumbles.