Valerie And Paulie G.: Frenemies By Contractual Obligation

Earlier this week, Vulture ran a post in which Lisa Kudrow and Lance Barber of The Comeback discussed the tensions that ran under the scene a couple of weeks ago in which their characters, Valerie and Paulie G., clashed over a scene he'd written that called for her to fellate his fictionalized avatar, played by Seth Rogen. What normally presents as open hostility on his side and craven approval-seeking on hers was exploded in that episode, which brought back up some Season 1 stuff with regard to Paulie G.'s "frustrated sexual longing," as Vulture's Jada Yuan put it. But this week's episode added another layer of complexity to their relationship. They're not just enemies yoked together by confusing sexual feelings. They're frenemies yoked together by ambition.

The Seeing Red production, which just last week was forced into shooting some scenes at Valerie's house to save money on locations, has run into a new problem: because Paulie G. has fallen behind delivering scripts, he's been replaced as director by Andie Tate, a director of dance-themed features who's basically Paulie G.'s polar opposite -- fresh-faced, enthusiastic, warm and encouraging to Valerie, apparently healthy and not, having given up heroin, trying to kill herself with Doritos instead.

In light of this change-up, it's kind of weird timing for HBO also to have arranged for Liz, a New York Times reporter, to come cover the production on this particular week, and Valerie is even more self-conscious than usual knowing that a reporter is watching her act out Paulie G.'s second-most degrading fantasies of her (this time she's not performing any sex acts -- she's just tearing his inner child apart with her bare hands and turning into a monster) while wearing an unflattering green unitard. When Liz quietly tells Valerie that she's watched the first episode of the show and thinks Valerie's performance is very "brave," Valerie assumes Liz is trying to tell her that Seeing Red is her Monster, and gets Jane to use her Dax password to show her some of the dailies. And though Mickey is impressed, and marvels that Valerie can actually act, all Valerie can see is how haggard she looks in the harsh lighting Paulie G. demanded.

Valerie is so horrified by how she looks in the footage she sees that she finds Paulie G. and confronts him about it. Since the last episode found him relaying orders to Valerie through Shayna when Valerie was standing directly behind him, this doesn't go well, and when pushed, Paulie G. admits that he specifically indicated that Valerie was not to be shown any dailies. She thinks it's because he didn't want her "to see that [he's] making [her] look bad." He spits, "I don't want you looking at the dailies because I don't want to have fucking pretend conversations with you about lightboxes!...I am two scripts behind, you hear me? Two. I do not need this shit right now, Valerie. You want to put a fucking needle in my arm."

So...there are a couple of things for Valerie to consider now. One is that Paulie G. is a human being and that if there's anything she can do to keep him from harming himself, she should. Another is that if he does do anything to harm himself, he's just been filmed blaming Valerie. And a third is that if Paulie G. can't survive the production, Valerie's big chance at another comeback is going to slip away and she'll have to go back to playing crime victims in student films. Some combination of these considerations leads her to track down Tom, Paulie G.'s writing partner on Room & Bored, who's now bitterly toiling on a successful kids' show he didn't create and is seeing no financial benefit from. He, unsurprisingly, is disinclined to do as Valerie asks and check in on Paulie G.; after Room & Bored ruined both their careers, Tom's resentful that Paulie G. is getting a second chance at relevance thanks to HBO. He goes on to tell Valerie some of the things Paulie G. used to say about her then, like that she was the devil, and that he'd like to put a stake through her heart, if she had one.

Valerie realizes that maybe stopping by to see Tom was a mistake, but it does give us more insight into Paulie G., the most enigmatic character on the show. Obviously, he is an abusive bully, with the generally complaisant Valerie his perfect target. But for him to have called her the devil is intriguing. That's not an epithet you use to describe someone who's so irritating that you consider her beneath your notice, and for Paulie G. to choose it suggests that he thinks they're mutually tormenting each other.

But at the same time, he must be getting something out of their relationship because he can't quit her. Not only is she still, all these years later, so firmly lodged in his mind that he's made her the villain of his TV show, but when he had the chance to cast practically any other actress her age to play Mallory, he chose Valerie. Part of him knows she's his muse, and even though he clearly hates her for it, he can't completely commit to destroying her with Seeing Red: even if Valerie, in her vanity (or ignorance) can't see past the bad lighting to notice what Liz and Mickey have determined, the combination of Paulie G.'s direction and Valerie's acting has created something special. They both want success, and now they need not just to keep tolerating each other but to keep each other on the right path so that they can achieve it, both together, and in spite of each other.