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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: July 31, 2005
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Comeback, “Valerie Relaxes in Palm Springs” (Season 1, Episode 8) [Stream on HBO GO]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: HBO’s The Comeback had a lot of virtues, but one of its biggest was how relentless it was. Valerie Cherish faced a non-stop barrage of indignities — some of them external, many of them of her own making — and The Comeback never blinked in the face of what a self-involved monster of Hollywood Val had become. Which isn’t to say that the show was one-note, however. For as much as we all tuned in to see Valerie get steamrolled by her own career, we were also secretly living for the moments when she would take a small step towards self-respect. Or at least a small step towards being petty to the people who are worst to her.
In “Valerie Relaxes in Palm Springs,” you should not be surprised to learn that Valerie does no such thing. She and her husband, Mark, do take a weekend getaway to a Palm Springs spa, yes, but they’re followed by not only producer Jane and the reality TV cameras but also an annoying product rep for the car they’re driving in exchange for Valerie’s endorsement. It’s all incredibly cringe-worthy, the way Val happily surrenders her dignity in order to shill for the product. When they get to Palm Springs, it’s more of the same, but they do meet up with a brassy acquaintance of theirs named Donna, a recent cancer survivor. Valerie has no idea how to process this information, at first, and she’s horribly embarrassing about it all. But eventually, Donna gives Val a crucial piece of advice: stop worrying about what other people think. It doesn’t seem to sink in at first, but by episode’s end, Val is unloading her frustrations on her show’s vile head writer Paulie G.
It can’t last, of course. Valerie makes some changes over the course of the series, but on some level she always wants the spotlight more than she needs to feel good about herself. But moments like the trip to Palm Springs are just as crucial, in that we got to see a glimpse of the real Valerie underneath.
