Consider Valerie Cherish, the perennially desperate-to-be-seen, desperate-to-be-loved Hollywood C-lister played by Lisa Kudrow. Valerie, bless her, reenters our collective lives once every decade, like the census.

And like the census, her return always assumes the form of an appraisal, a ruthless and clear-eyed taking of stock. In The Comeback‘s original 2005 season, Valerie donned a cupcake costume and pratfalled her way through the rise of reality television, starring in both a corny sitcom and its making-of documentary. In 2014, a second season found Valerie headlining a prestige HBO series about that sitcom, auguring the fusillade of high-end, self-satisfied streaming dramedies that were about to pummel an unsuspecting populace into submission.

In this third season, she’s still out here hustling. Sure, she’s got an Emmy under her belt, and she’s been booked and busy, but there are signs of trouble — she and her husband (Damian Young) have downsized from their Brentwood mansion to a West Hollywood apartment. Her publicist-turned-manager (Dan Bucatinsky) seems even more checked out than baseline. She’s hired a social media consultant (Ella Stiller) and has even started (ominous chord, shudder) … a podcast.

As we meet her, she’s older, wiser but still essentially Valerie: Blithely optimistic, hungrily opportunistic. She’s still desperate for attention — but the precise nature of the attention she’s craving these days has subtly but significantly shifted. It’s no longer enough for Valerie to be seen; now, she wants — expects, demands, even — to be heard.

She remains ridiculous, thank God. And Kudrow once again imbues her with the physicality that has come to define Valerie’s essential self: She’s still going through life nodding like a bobblehead, still punctuating just about every sentence with a “right?” or a “yeah?” or a “y’know?,” because it’s a learned response. If the world refuses to affirm her in any way — and somehow it continues to find endlessly novel ways to do just that — then she’ll just affirm her own darn self, yeah? Right?

But something happens in the first episode of the new season that efficiently signals how much has changed for Valerie. The setup is classic The Comeback: She’s agreed to star as Roxie in Chicago on Broadway (after receiving assurances that her choreo will be the “dumbed down, Real Housewives version”). Rehearsal isn’t going great — her director and fellow dancers are mean, catty and dismissive (apart from one gay guy, whose words of praise Valerie seeks out like a homing missile — which checks out).

What happens next is quietly remarkable, given the Valerie Cherish we’ve come to love/cringe-in-sympathy-with over The Comeback‘s previous seasons. She doesn’t chirpily ignore their insults and blithely soldier on. She doesn’t try to excuse and minimize their bad behavior so she can take advantage of the opportunity they’re affording her. No, she calls them out, and she quits. (More accurately: She finds a ready, contractually viable excuse to quit — same difference, I’d argue.)

This isn’t the Valerie we used to know. When an opportunity to star in an AI-written sitcom arises, she doesn’t knock over furniture to lunge at the chance, as she would have before. She refuses (at first), she seeks assurances that actual writers will be involved (they will, sort of), and she steps up as the show’s executive producer as soon as it becomes clear she’s the only one involved who cares about the cast, the crew and the quality of the show itself.

There remain plenty of opportunities for Kudrow to make us laugh at Valerie, but as the season progresses, we find ourselves rooting for her more than ever. That’s because Kudrow has altered Valerie’s fuel mixture a bit. She’s always been acutely self-aware, she’s always known when she’s being disrespected, but the Valerie of seasons one and two was perfectly content to swallow other people’s low opinions of her if it meant she got some time in the spotlight.

Now, that self-awareness is matched to something besides her default, pathologically sunny perseverance; it’s married to defiance, and to action.

She stands her ground against a costume designer (Benito Skinner) who sees her as camp and nothing more (yet another of The Comeback‘s knowing digs at its rabid gay fanbase). She agrees to play nice with a network executive (Andrew Scott) until she, very publicly, doesn’t. And when her dour husband starts flailing on his own reality show, Valerie draws on her vast reserves of experience on both sides of the camera to show him how it’s done.

But a self-actualized Valerie affects the show’s comedic chemistry, and there are times when the season can’t quite manage to sustain its satiric bite. On two occasions, the show’s pitched disdain for Hollywood phoniness and hollow ambition falters, and something akin to sincerity peeks out from behind the mask. In one, a beloved real-life Hollywood comedy legend delivers a short monologue to Valerie about why AI can never replace real comedy writers, because comedy needs broken people. In another, a cast member from The Comeback‘s first season returns simply to assure Valerie that she is a good person, a wonderful person, and that she is in no way in the wrong.

On both occasions, seasoned viewers will be patiently but eagerly awaiting the turn, the rug-pull, the reveal that such abject, wet-eyed earnestness will of course get swatted down, because this is The Comeback. But the turn never comes, the rug remains firmly in place and we are left to grapple with the knowledge that we’ve just been exposed to the creators’ true intent, delivered with a gravid plainness, without anything even resembling the gimlet-eyed take we’ve come to, well … cherish.

But you know what? Fine. Who knows if Valerie will return in ten years’ time to once again Cassandra us all about the state of the entertainment industry? Who knows, in point of fact, if there’ll be an entertainment industry for her to return to? I forgave those moments of uncharacteristic ingenuousness because I managed to convince myself they felt valedictory, triumphant — a few discordant bars within Valerie Cherish’s swan song.

Which, as viewers of The Comeback’s definitive, beloved, iconic Season 1 finale will remember, is “I Will Survive.” Because it could never be anything else. Y’know?

This piece also appeared in NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what’s making us happy.

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This week’s show was recorded in Savannah with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Alzo Slade, Not My Job guest D.W. Moffett and panelists Adam Burke, Shantira Jackson, and Joyelle Nicole Johnson. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.

Who’s Alzo This Time

Flotus and Robotus, Ineligible Bachelorette, and a Change of Season

Panel Questions

Fold-out Coach

Bluff The Listener

Our panelists tell us three stories about a hot new dining destination, only one of which is true.

Not My Job: Actor, director, and chair of the film and television department at SCAD, D.W. Moffett, answers our questions about melees

Actor D.W. Moffett, part of the cast of One Battle After Another, plays a game called “Lots of Battles All At Once.”

Panel Questions

Hairless Whisper, Signing Off

Limericks

Alzo Slade reads three news-related limericks: Buns on the Runway, Constructive Play, Getting Work Done at Work.

Lightning Fill In The Blank

All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else

Predictions

Our panelists predict, after the Bachelorette, what’ll be the next TV season to get cancelled at the last minute.

We are more connected than ever before, with our high-speed internet, pinging smartphones and ever-updating apps and social media networks. (iPhone 17e, anyone?!)

And yet, we are also lonelier than ever, especially younger generations who are even more likely to be on their digital devices for longer periods of time. Gen Z, it turns out, is the loneliest generation of them all, according to the 2025 Cigna Group report “Loneliness in America.” It found that 67% of Gen Zers reported being lonely (65% of millennials, who also grew up with digital technologies, did as well, as compared with 60% of Gen Xers and 44% of baby boomers).

What’s more, about 1 in 5 teenagers ages 13 to 17 experiences high rates of loneliness, according to a World Health Organization’s 2025 report; and according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 40% of high school students reported “persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness” in 2023.

Dr. Shairi Turner, chief health officer of the nonprofit Crisis Text Line — a free, 24-7 text-based mental health service — calls it “a public health crisis” that is especially affecting Gen Z for a reason.

“They’re 14-29 now, so they’re digital natives, very comfortable with being connected to people by phone,” she says. “But that connection isn’t a replacement for human connection. It gives the illusion of being close, but without real interpersonal interaction.”

That’s compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and increased single parent households, she says.

“This is a generation that lived through the pandemic during some key developmental years — some of their formative years may have been in lockdown, using smartphones, [instead of] developing critical social skills,” Turner says. “And Gen Z is more likely to have been raised in single-parent households, and may have come home to an empty home where one parent was working or they were going back and forth between homes.”

So where to go from here? Note the warning signs, Turner says.

“Is your child spending more time with their phone than their friends?” she says. “Are your kids coming home upset about interactions at school or with their friends more times than not? And: Are they avoiding in-person extracurricular activities like sports or clubs? These are all things to look out for.”

Here are Turner’s top three tips for helping your Gen Z kids cope with loneliness.

Be present and engage in active listening

“Give them the space to share their feelings. Just be present and listen to your child — don’t put words in their mouth. Create that safe space so they know they can share with you that they’re feeling lonely. Ask open-ended questions. Instead of saying ‘did you have a good day?’ where they can say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ ask a question that elicits more: ‘What did you do today that you enjoyed?’ Or: ‘Is there anything you found challenging today?’ Brainstorm with them options or ways that they could have handled a situation differently; or do some role playing with your child, so they feel prepared the next day.”

Plan outdoor social activities

“That can be with your child or with your child and their friends. Connect in a low-pressure way: ‘Let’s bring some kids over and go to the park.’ Plan something around a shared interest, like soccer or baseball, where they’re enjoying the sport together and they don’t have to sit and talk in a high-pressure way — they can just have fun. Our report on young people in crisis shows that outdoor third space areas — parks and recreation — help young people cope with their mental health. These same young people identified sports and opportunities for social connection as helpful to their mental health and well-being.”

Explore mental health resources

“Know what the school resources are, what’s available, before your child needs mental health support. Are there counselors, school psychologists? What’s the bevy of resources in school or in the community if my child is in need — therapists, local support groups? Our Crisis Text Line is great because it’s on the phone and most young people are comfortable with that and they can text our volunteers and it’s confidential. It’s about being prepared and aware.”

Ultimately, Turner says, young people are resilient — their brains are still growing — and intentional parenting goes a long way toward offsetting the effects of digital devices and social media.

“It’s never too late to encourage — and model — positive interpersonal skills,” Turner says. “Meaning: human to human connection.”