'Word Is You're Going To Win'

Even if The Comeback's comeback has been less than a total success, the comeback within The Comeback has been win after win of the sort that not even Valerie could have predicted. A rave in the New York Times is followed by an Emmy nomination and all the attendant hoopla: laudatory talk-show appearances, a spontaneous round of applause when she turns up at Juna's big pre-Emmy party, and ET in her bathroom while Mickey and Brad Goreski primp her for the big event. It's all so unexpected and new that the perpetual extrovert Valerie becomes shy and awkward in the face of it, requiring Jane to bark out Valerie's status from the back seat when Juna's door guy can't find Valerie's name on his list -- which doesn't quite erase Jane's disastrous "wear a mic" gambit in the season's penultimate episode, but it does help.

Jane's gesture of amends is one of many late-season moments that doesn't quite undo the indignities Valerie suffered earlier on. It's nice to find out that Paulie G. doesn't get invited to Juna's annual party, but it doesn't mitigate all the abuse he's heaped on Valerie, from making her pretend to fellate his Seeing Red avatar or covering her in snakes. An encouraging moment from an HBO executive on the Emmy red carpet doesn't dull the viewer's memory of how little the network reined in its uncontrollable writer and failed to protect its star from him. And when Brad Goreski, who put Valerie in so many hideous dresses at their first meeting, takes a digger in her shit-covered driveway...

...okay, that is a punishment commensurate with his crime, especially when he then goes on to carry her to her limo. Minus his contaminated tuxedo.

Goreski? We're square.

But even before Valerie gets to the Emmys, she's been forced to acknowledge what my esteemed colleague Mark wrote about two weeks ago: that success -- the greatest success of her entire career, in fact -- is not as important as she's thought. Of course, there's the process of making Seeing Red, which has caused a serious rift between her and Mark. Then Juna has to take her aside at her party and point out, with more kindness and understanding than Valerie might actually deserve, that the content of the show, given its autobiographical elements and the fact that Valerie was in it, was hurtful to Juna. Though Valerie tries to give her the party line -- that Mallory is not Valerie and that none of it should reflect on Juna at all -- she knows it's bullshit and finally just sincerely apologizes. Mickey may lack the status to raise serious objections to Valerie about her bringing her documentary crew into his house the morning after he's just spent the night with a young gentleman caller, but if Juna is making a point of stepping away from her own party to have a conversations with Valerie about the ripple effects of her choices, even Valerie may be able to extrapolate exactly how far-reaching they may be.

In the end, it turns out we've been watching not The Assassination Of Valerie Cherish, but The Enlightenment Of Valerie Cherish, and as befits the arc of the season, all her biggest epiphanies hit on the biggest day of her professional life.

1. A nosebleed reminds Valerie that Mickey is mortal, and that just because he doesn't like to talk about it, his illness is actually serious.
2. The damage the crew did to Valerie's home wasn't just in the abstract, driving Mark away; the production has also literally shat up her house.
3. Though Valerie probably thinks of herself as a good person, when she really needs some neighbourly kindness, said neighbour has to tell her how she's slighted him.
4. If Mark isn't there to escort her, Ron is going to end up being her de facto red carpet companion.

And when Mark finally texts -- not to say that he's coming to the Emmys, but to let her know that Mickey collapsed at home and has been rushed to the hospital -- something happens that we've never seen on The Comeback before: a version of Valerie without any mediation from Jane. When Valerie walks outside the theatre into the hall, The Comeback is no longer a mockumentary. The voyeur-vision is gone, and from that point to the end of the episode, we're finally, and for the first time, seeing what Valerie is like when no cameras are on her -- no cameras in her reality, that is. She's not putting on a display of good cheer for the sake of her image; she's not trying to be cool. She's focused on getting to Mickey and nothing else matters. And, of course, we can tell we're in Valerie's consciousness because the lighting is flattering, at last.

I haven't been as sure as the show's producers that Mark should be the reward for all of Valerie's suffering and the payoff of her epiphanies -- yes, she put Mark through a lot, but he was hardly blameless -- but in that final scene, I can accept that Mark is just the means that unites Valerie with her true soulmate, Mickey.

And then Valerie also wins her Emmy, in kind of the perfect way: she gets to celebrate with the people who mean the most to her...

...strand Jane and Billy...

...and witness Paulie G. trying and failing to mooch some of her spotlight.

The Comeback has always been among the cringiest of our cringe comedies, but if the UK version of The Office could end by giving even the odious David Brent a chance at love, then surely sweet Valerie -- who was definitely irritating, but who really was here to make friends -- deserved a happy ending after all her trials. The only thing that could have made it more perfect is if HBO had aired it before Christmas and sent us into the holiday with cheery sniffles...but then again, maybe Valerie's new attitude is more fitting for the run up to the new year. If this is the last we see of her, which seems inevitable, we can at least have all been satisfied to leave her in triumph, without having to ponder how short-lived, since it's Valerie, that triumph might be.