Cat’s out of the bag on “The Comeback”: The cast of “How’s That?” officially knows the show’s being written by AI. How’d they find out, exactly? Valerie accidentally lets the set’s most cherished secret out during a meeting with the actors. And the reaction? Understandably mixed.
But as everyone’s aflutter over the news and being lied to, Val learns that Jane didn’t sign the studio’s NDA, which leads to the documentarian being escorted off set. “People have a right to know AI is coming for their jobs, not just in offices and factories, it’s right here on this stupid sitcom!” she yells before exiting stage left. “I have to show them that it’s not happening sometime in the future, it’s already here!”
Billy argues that the studio owns the footage Jane shot since they’ve been paying her, but joke’s on them: She hasn’t cashed any of the checks. Since the NDA needed to be signed in order to gain access to the set, Jane’s jig may officially be up.
“Jane’s just thinking that she’s there undercover, thinking that she’s there to get a story,” Laura Silverman tells TVLine. “That isn’t what Valerie thinks she’s doing there, which is to cover this process and what happens, just like always. To document Valerie’s life. But she’s there to get a story. So, it gets a little hairy because it’s like, who’s paying for [it]? [Jane] owns the footage. This is her crew, but she wasn’t cashing the checks. She didn’t sign the NDA. She’s just like, ‘You don’t own me, and I can do whatever I want with this.’ It’s extremely painful for her. She doesn’t want to betray Valerie. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do. She has to make a decision really fast, and she makes the wrong one.”
Jane and Valerie’s relationship, explained
News of the show’s AI use leaks to the press, which leads to an angry mob of writers calling for Valerie’s head. (Not an “I hate Valerie” dance going viral!) Billy assumes that Jane is the leak, but once Val sees Jane on CNN defending her name, Val knows she’s not the culprit.
Silverman says the relationship between Valerie and Jane is deep, and that Val doesn’t deserve the flack she’s getting for the show’s (and studio’s) dishonesty and downfalls.
“There’s a sisterhood there, and sisters don’t always see each other exactly for who they are because they have expectations of each other,” says Silverman. “It’s emotionally loaded. It’s not like a close friend where maybe you just sort of don’t click anymore. I have three sisters, and my sister has three girls and they’re grown, so it’s complicated. My husband doesn’t understand it. We have so much power to hurt each other’s feelings at all times that we’re afraid of hurting each other constantly.”
Silverman says that “a sister quality has developed” between Jane and her subject.
“We see it come to the surface more and more as the season goes on, where Jane jumps in front of bullets for Valerie. She’s protecting her,” she says. “But more than that, I think Jane is evolving and growing in the sense that instead of being a dog with a bone, she realizes that she has to broaden her sense of what’s happening, and that it’s not black and white. This isn’t Valerie’s fault. Valerie is a person that’s trying to adapt and move forward and do the things she loves to do and she shouldn’t be thrown under the bus for that. It’s the world that’s changing. It’s technology that has been funded and that has been allowed to infiltrate. She didn’t do that. And so I think Jane is starting to see the story through a more human lens.”
What Laura Silverman will miss the most
As the episode wraps, Val is torn apart by the media’s incessant dogpiling. Luckily, Mark sees the news and returns home early from Burning Man to support his wife. It’s unclear whether “How’s That?” will survive the bad press or if it’ll continue to blow up in Valerie’s face. But Season 3 does force viewers to fully consider AI’s potential impact on the industry, at large. Silverman thinks AI-written shows could be right around the corner.
“I don’t think it’s impossible for that to happen,” she says. “I think it’s probably happening to a degree on certain kinds of shows because people are cutting staff. They don’t want to pay. Everybody’s crying poor. I don’t understand that whole thing. I know that there are people who are making a lot of money somewhere. It isn’t me, but that’s OK. It’s affecting a lot of people that I know personally.”
With the series’ swan song rapidly approaching (the series finale is set to air Sunday, March 10 on HBO), just thinking about the show being over makes Silverman emotional.
“Oh, now you’re gonna make me cry,” she says. “I get the chills now thinking [about] just showing up to work and acting with Lisa all the time. Whether I was on camera or not (and mostly, I wasn’t), all day long I was acting with Lisa Kudrow, who was playing this brilliant, layered, textured character. And she was looking at me doing it and she needed me to act with her. That was a gift. I’ll miss that. After two decades and three seasons, we’ve gotten to have a really special friendship. She’s just incredible. She is. I want to say for the record, Lisa Kudrow is the most real person. She’s just a down to earth, amazing, wonderful, empathetic person.”
Will Valerie’s show survive the tumultuous news cycle? And are you ready for “The Comeback” to end? Drop your Episode 6 thoughts below!
