Television: Coming Back Is Hard To Do

So if you can't hide your problems, at least disclose them on your terms. Take singer Bobby Brown and wife Whitney Houston: she just got out of rehab; two members of his entourage were stabbed at a restaurant last week. In Being Bobby Brown (debuts June 30), we meet them in the middle of a marital-bonding experience: his court hearing for allegedly beating her, a charge that Houston has denied. (We learn that their daughter gets out of school on daddy's "court days," like other kids do on snow days.) Brown has said he signed up for the show to counter his tabloid image, but also to boost an R&B career that peaked in the Reagan Administration. "I'm just an entertainer, man, that is trying hard to get back in," he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

True, baring all on TV is a great way to become successful--at baring all on TV. But it won't necessarily sell any CDs. For every Jessica Simpson, who this summer stars in the Dukes of Hazzard movie, there's an Anna Nicole Smith, who's shilling for Trim Spa. Fat Actress put Alley on magazine covers, but then its ratings plummeted like her weight.

The Comeback knows how quickly and badly this story can end. But this HBO sitcom can be self-serving and smug about those awful networks and their barbaric reality shows. When Valerie meets Kim Fields (The Facts of Life) and Marilu Henner (Taxi) playing themselves at an audition, Fields sniffs, "Who is so desperate for a comeback that they actually want cameras to follow them around all day?" Fields, we should note, once did an episode of the E! dating show Star Dates.

What gives The Comeback its, well, reality is Kudrow's layered performance; she gives sympathy and poignance to what could have been a one-joke dimwit. Valerie is the Willy Loman of sitcoms, trying to will herself into the second half of her career on a blow-dry and a nervous smile. When it gets past its preaching about reality TV and show biz, The Comeback hits a universal theme: Valerie is being forced, despite her struggle, to recognize the truth about herself. During a spat, she tells her sitcom's producer how much better she was treated on I'm It. "You know what?" he says. "You're not It anymore."

For just a second, hurt and defeat play across her face. Then she plasters on a smile and moves on. For the reality that matters is not what she feels; it's what the camera records. And as long as she can keep that little red light on above the lens, she can be It for just a little longer. --With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles