Dan Bucatinsky Says ‘The Comeback’ Won’t Pick a Side on AI — And Why Its Modest Budget Matters
Photo Credit: HBO
by Chris Tremblay Apr 14
6 MIN READ
“The Comeback,” HBO’s meta‑comedy about fictional sitcom actor Valerie Cherish, is back for a third season more than a decade after its last run, this time using artificial intelligence and post‑strike Hollywood anxieties as its narrative engine. Executive producer and actor Dan Bucatinsky, who plays Valerie’s manager and publicist Billy, says the new season is less a polemic about AI than a character study of how working creatives respond to a tool many see as threatening their livelihoods.
The series first aired in 2005 with a reality‑TV‑inflected mockumentary format, then returned in 2014 with footage framed around Valerie’s appearance on a prestige drama, turning the show into a long‑running time capsule of the television industry’s evolving anxieties. Bucatinsky has described this third outing, arriving in 2026, as another leap forward in that time capsule, capturing the current mix of hope, fear, and confusion around AI and post‑“peak TV” economics.
In the new season’s premise, Valerie is offered a starring role and executive producer credit on a network sitcom whose scripts, in a twist, are generated entirely by an AI writing system. Bucatinsky’s character Billy brings her the offer, initially presenting it as a long‑awaited chance for Valerie to again anchor a broad, mainstream hit after years of near‑misses.
The catch is that Valerie and Billy are bound by a strict nondisclosure agreement that prevents them from telling the rest of the cast and crew that the supposed “human‑written” scripts are in fact AI‑generated, a secrecy that becomes a recurring source of tension and farce. Reviewers note that this NDA plot device allows the show to place working actors, writers, and craftspeople in direct, often uncomfortable contact with AI without reducing them to caricatures of either technophobia or tech evangelism.
In a recent interview about reviving “The Comeback,” Bucatinsky emphasized that the creative team never intended the season to serve as a simple anti‑AI or pro‑AI manifesto, describing the show instead as a place to watch flawed people navigate a new technology they barely understand. He framed the season’s viewpoint as deliberately ambivalent, saying that what interests them is not whether AI is inherently good or bad, but how human beings respond when their jobs, egos, and creative identities feel threatened.
Lisa Kudrow, who plays Valerie and co‑created the series with Michael Patrick King, has similarly explained that AI rose to the top of their story list after discussions about how to dramatize the post‑strike moment and the industry’s anxieties about automation. She described AI as feeling like a “big enough” story and “big enough threat” to the creative process to sustain eight episodes, mirroring the existential dread that reality television represented to scripted writers back in the mid‑2000s.
The choice to center AI is tightly linked to the recent Hollywood labor actions, with King and Kudrow having reportedly kicked around the idea of a story where Valerie finds herself in the first sitcom fully written by AI while they talked about the strikes and the need to renegotiate creative work in 2026. Critics have compared this thematic choice to the show’s original season, which used the rise of reality TV to dramatize fears that unscripted formats would displace scripted storytellers.
Salon’s review argues that by linking AI to earlier panics over reality TV and “peak TV,” the series gestures at a longer history of television’s disruptions and the ways marginalized workers—including many LGBTQ+ storytellers and performers—have often borne the brunt of instability and underpayment. The piece points out that peak TV’s supposed boom years did not translate into secure wages or sustainable careers for most working actors and writers, positioning AI not as a wholly new threat but as the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle over creative labor and value.
The new season broadens the show’s signature mockumentary format by incorporating footage from phones, security cameras, and other omnipresent devices, reflecting a world where almost everything is recorded and potentially mined as content. The ensemble, including Kudrow, Bucatinsky, Laura Silverman, Ella Stiller, Damian Young, and Jack O’Brien, has discussed how this mixed‑media approach mirrors the present‑day entertainment ecosystem, where creators, fans, and critics engage across multiple platforms at once.
This more expansive visual style also echoes the season’s themes of surveillance and data extraction, as Valerie’s every move on and off the AI‑written sitcom is captured, repackaged, and judged in ways that resemble the data‑driven logic behind AI training itself. For LGBTQ+ viewers, critics note that this hyper‑visibility can resonate with experiences of being scrutinized and surveilled in both hostile and supposedly supportive environments, even though the season does not foreground queer identity as a primary plotline.
While many prestige dramas and genre shows have come to symbolize the streaming era’s lavish spending, Bucatinsky has been candid in recent interviews that “The Comeback” operates on a much leaner budget, joking that “we’re not ‘Euphoria’” when it comes to HBO’s allocation of resources. His comments come amid a broader industry contraction sometimes called the end of “peak TV,” with outlets noting that scripted shows across genres are facing staff cuts, shorter seasons, and tighter spending even as expectations for polish and relevance remain high.
The show leans into its more modest scale, emphasizing small sets, character‑driven scenes, and meta‑comedy instead of elaborate visual spectacle, a contrast that subtly underscores the tension between splashy, youth‑oriented dramas like “Euphoria” and lower‑key series that still hope to say something **significant** about the industry. Critics suggest that this budgetary constraint actually plays to “The Comeback’s” strengths, pushing it toward intimate, awkwardly funny conversations about money, power, and creative control rather than expensive set‑pieces.
The franchise’s own history underlines how precarious television careers can be, a reality that resonates for many actors, writers, and crew members from underrepresented communities, including LGBTQ+ professionals. The show was cancelled after its first 2005 season, then unexpectedly revived in 2014 following a cult reassessment, only to disappear again for another decade until Kudrow and King found a new story that justified returning, according to Bucatinsky and other producers.
Bucatinsky has said that once the idea of Valerie starring in the first AI‑written sitcom was spoken aloud, the team felt they “had to do it,” because it captured both the absurdity and genuine anxiety of working in TV at this moment. In that sense, the series uses Valerie’s struggle for relevance as a mirror for an industry where many people, from veteran sitcom actors to emerging queer creatives, worry about being replaced or forgotten amid technological and economic upheaval.
Salon’s assessment of the season stresses that “The Comeback” is less concerned with the technical specifics of AI systems than with their social consequences: who gets empowered, who gets sidelined, and who is asked to compromise their values for a job. The review highlights how Valerie and Billy’s NDA‑driven deception places them in morally ambiguous territory, forcing them to weigh personal success against solidarity with colleagues who might oppose AI‑generated scripts if they knew the truth.
At the same time, critics note that the AI system itself is portrayed as a kind of generic corporate tool rather than a villain with agency, allowing the show to focus on human choices under economic pressure. This framing leaves room for nuanced audience reactions, including among LGBTQ+ viewers who may simultaneously welcome responsible new technologies and fear that automation will reduce already scarce opportunities for diverse, authentic storytelling.
Throughout interviews and coverage, Bucatinsky and his collaborators have been clear that “The Comeback” remains, above all, a character‑driven comedy about one woman’s near‑endless quest to be seen and valued. By filtering AI, budget cuts, and industry politics through Valerie’s particular mix of self‑doubt, resilience, and sometimes clumsy optimism, the show aims to explore systemic issues without turning its characters into mouthpieces for a single ideological position.
That approach aligns with the series’ long‑standing appeal among queer and other marginalized audiences, who have often seen in Valerie’s awkward perseverance an echo of their own efforts to navigate institutions that are not built with them in mind, even if their identities are not explicitly foregrounded in the plot. As Bucatinsky’s comments about not “taking sides” on AI and not being “Euphoria” suggest, the show is positioning itself as a scaled‑down but sharply observed chronicle of how ordinary people, including many LGBTQ+ creatives and fans, adapt to an entertainment industry remade by algorithms and austerity.
In the new season’s premise, Valerie is offered a starring role and executive producer credit on a network sitcom whose scripts, in a twist, are generated entirely by an AI writing system. Bucatinsky’s character Billy brings her the offer, initially presenting it as a long‑awaited chance for Valerie to again anchor a broad, mainstream hit after years of near‑misses.
The catch is that Valerie and Billy are bound by a strict nondisclosure agreement that prevents them from telling the rest of the cast and crew that the supposed “human‑written” scripts are in fact AI‑generated, a secrecy that becomes a recurring source of tension and farce. Reviewers note that this NDA plot device allows the show to place working actors, writers, and craftspeople in direct, often uncomfortable contact with AI without reducing them to caricatures of either technophobia or tech evangelism.
In a recent interview about reviving “The Comeback,” Bucatinsky emphasized that the creative team never intended the season to serve as a simple anti‑AI or pro‑AI manifesto, describing the show instead as a place to watch flawed people navigate a new technology they barely understand. He framed the season’s viewpoint as deliberately ambivalent, saying that what interests them is not whether AI is inherently good or bad, but how human beings respond when their jobs, egos, and creative identities feel threatened.
Lisa Kudrow, who plays Valerie and co‑created the series with Michael Patrick King, has similarly explained that AI rose to the top of their story list after discussions about how to dramatize the post‑strike moment and the industry’s anxieties about automation. She described AI as feeling like a “big enough” story and “big enough threat” to the creative process to sustain eight episodes, mirroring the existential dread that reality television represented to scripted writers back in the mid‑2000s.
The choice to center AI is tightly linked to the recent Hollywood labor actions, with King and Kudrow having reportedly kicked around the idea of a story where Valerie finds herself in the first sitcom fully written by AI while they talked about the strikes and the need to renegotiate creative work in 2026. Critics have compared this thematic choice to the show’s original season, which used the rise of reality TV to dramatize fears that unscripted formats would displace scripted storytellers.
Salon’s review argues that by linking AI to earlier panics over reality TV and “peak TV,” the series gestures at a longer history of television’s disruptions and the ways marginalized workers—including many LGBTQ+ storytellers and performers—have often borne the brunt of instability and underpayment. The piece points out that peak TV’s supposed boom years did not translate into secure wages or sustainable careers for most working actors and writers, positioning AI not as a wholly new threat but as the latest chapter in an ongoing struggle over creative labor and value.
The new season broadens the show’s signature mockumentary format by incorporating footage from phones, security cameras, and other omnipresent devices, reflecting a world where almost everything is recorded and potentially mined as content. The ensemble, including Kudrow, Bucatinsky, Laura Silverman, Ella Stiller, Damian Young, and Jack O’Brien, has discussed how this mixed‑media approach mirrors the present‑day entertainment ecosystem, where creators, fans, and critics engage across multiple platforms at once.
This more expansive visual style also echoes the season’s themes of surveillance and data extraction, as Valerie’s every move on and off the AI‑written sitcom is captured, repackaged, and judged in ways that resemble the data‑driven logic behind AI training itself. For LGBTQ+ viewers, critics note that this hyper‑visibility can resonate with experiences of being scrutinized and surveilled in both hostile and supposedly supportive environments, even though the season does not foreground queer identity as a primary plotline.
While many prestige dramas and genre shows have come to symbolize the streaming era’s lavish spending, Bucatinsky has been candid in recent interviews that “The Comeback” operates on a much leaner budget, joking that “we’re not ‘Euphoria’” when it comes to HBO’s allocation of resources. His comments come amid a broader industry contraction sometimes called the end of “peak TV,” with outlets noting that scripted shows across genres are facing staff cuts, shorter seasons, and tighter spending even as expectations for polish and relevance remain high.
The show leans into its more modest scale, emphasizing small sets, character‑driven scenes, and meta‑comedy instead of elaborate visual spectacle, a contrast that subtly underscores the tension between splashy, youth‑oriented dramas like “Euphoria” and lower‑key series that still hope to say something **significant** about the industry. Critics suggest that this budgetary constraint actually plays to “The Comeback’s” strengths, pushing it toward intimate, awkwardly funny conversations about money, power, and creative control rather than expensive set‑pieces.
The franchise’s own history underlines how precarious television careers can be, a reality that resonates for many actors, writers, and crew members from underrepresented communities, including LGBTQ+ professionals. The show was cancelled after its first 2005 season, then unexpectedly revived in 2014 following a cult reassessment, only to disappear again for another decade until Kudrow and King found a new story that justified returning, according to Bucatinsky and other producers.
Bucatinsky has said that once the idea of Valerie starring in the first AI‑written sitcom was spoken aloud, the team felt they “had to do it,” because it captured both the absurdity and genuine anxiety of working in TV at this moment. In that sense, the series uses Valerie’s struggle for relevance as a mirror for an industry where many people, from veteran sitcom actors to emerging queer creatives, worry about being replaced or forgotten amid technological and economic upheaval.
Salon’s assessment of the season stresses that “The Comeback” is less concerned with the technical specifics of AI systems than with their social consequences: who gets empowered, who gets sidelined, and who is asked to compromise their values for a job. The review highlights how Valerie and Billy’s NDA‑driven deception places them in morally ambiguous territory, forcing them to weigh personal success against solidarity with colleagues who might oppose AI‑generated scripts if they knew the truth.
At the same time, critics note that the AI system itself is portrayed as a kind of generic corporate tool rather than a villain with agency, allowing the show to focus on human choices under economic pressure. This framing leaves room for nuanced audience reactions, including among LGBTQ+ viewers who may simultaneously welcome responsible new technologies and fear that automation will reduce already scarce opportunities for diverse, authentic storytelling.
Throughout interviews and coverage, Bucatinsky and his collaborators have been clear that “The Comeback” remains, above all, a character‑driven comedy about one woman’s near‑endless quest to be seen and valued. By filtering AI, budget cuts, and industry politics through Valerie’s particular mix of self‑doubt, resilience, and sometimes clumsy optimism, the show aims to explore systemic issues without turning its characters into mouthpieces for a single ideological position.
That approach aligns with the series’ long‑standing appeal among queer and other marginalized audiences, who have often seen in Valerie’s awkward perseverance an echo of their own efforts to navigate institutions that are not built with them in mind, even if their identities are not explicitly foregrounded in the plot. As Bucatinsky’s comments about not “taking sides” on AI and not being “Euphoria” suggest, the show is positioning itself as a scaled‑down but sharply observed chronicle of how ordinary people, including many LGBTQ+ creatives and fans, adapt to an entertainment industry remade by algorithms and austerity.
Copyright EDGE Media Network. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
