'It's like, wait a minute, the doctor is a spy and a zombie?'
Despite starring in two shows at the same time, Valerie Cherish never has much power on either. Humiliated by writers on her scripted shows and pushed into uncomfortable truths on her reality one, Valerie is always in a push-pull with the camera, balancing what she wants against how she’s perceived.
Walking that line was never one of Valerie’s stronger skills, but her optimism carried her along well enough as she hoped that the finished product would be worth the dehumanization. That’s where she is when “Valerie Has A Secret” begins. Obviously, she wants to work in sitcoms again. But while heading to NuNet with Billy and Patience, Valerie reminds her followers that she stands union strong and remains uncomfortable with the AI of it all. Entering a cavernous conference room with Billy, she meets her new would-be boss, Brandon , on Zoom. In fact, Valerie and Billy are the only ones who returned to office for the meeting; the rest of NuNet is scattered around the globe and areing onto the screen. The echoey sound design of the room sells just how much Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, who directs this outing, despise this era of Hollywood. Packing in jokes about the power move of forcing a star to be in-person while the rest of the team is remote and the muted, obligatory jazz-hands celebrations from the marketing team to Valerie’s little jokes and Cher impressions drive home how insincere this type of deal making is. But at least, in person, the network would have the temerity to suck up to her face. But this is a new era, and the ad-wizards at NuNet have a fresh angle for Valerie and audiences burned out on hour-long dramas. NuNet has finally cracked free programming by breaking up the content with advertisements for products—or commercials, as Valerie acutely notes. A multi-camera, ad-supported sitcom made by the creators ofHow’s That ’s AI writing staff, the pleasantries end and the Zoomers log off. Brandon walks in the door of the conference room, revealing that the man behind the curtain was down the hall the whole time, and assures Valerie that there are writers on the show, Josh and Mary . They’ll be working with “Al Assist,” the AI script generator that the network wants to keep hush-hush for the time being. AI has bad branding, and they don’t want the public to know about it until the show is out and already picked up for more episodes. But because they need Valerie for the show—namely because AI generated the suggestion—she’s able to leverage an EP credit on the series. Hey, they’re in the Writers Guild agreement, so Valerie has no reason not to join the project. The EP credit immediately raises Valerie’s IMDb star meter and her reputation around town. That night at dinner, as Mark munches on his favorite flat crackers and shows off his new oversized, chunky glasses, she runs into her old casting director, Sharon . Tripping over her napkin to get a word with Valerie, even though she’s at dinner with’s EP. But suddenly in a position of power, Valerie reminds Sharon of the time Sharon shrugged off Valerie’s Tom Selleck connection. Selleck said yes, so Sharon apologizes, and Valerie gets to meet Jane Fonda. It’s a win-win. Valerie may be on the upswing, but Mark’s night ended on a sour note. At dinner, he ran into an old colleague who fired him over an inappropriate joke. Unfortunately, Mark told a joke at a time when jokes were illegal, and he’s clearly still smarting from the embarrassment and betrayal by his work friend. So he goes to drown his sorrows in chocolate cake, and Valerie heads to Trader Joe’s to get those crackers that Mark likes. While checking out, Valerie runs into Jane, who’s now a cashier. After the 2025 wildfires, Jane gave up Hollywood and the idea of challenging art. She started working a job at TJ’s to pay off her debts and seems happy outside of documentary filmmaking. But when Valerie mentions she’s back on TV in an AI-generated sitcom, those old, Oscar-winning gears start churning in Jane’s head. And, finally, we return to the comeback already in-progress. Jane’s cameras are up, and Patience’s phone is recording for Valerie’s first meeting with the new showrunners. Only thanks to an ill-timed Billy bit—Valerie really needs to fire this guy—she gets off on the wrong foot with her showrunners. Echoing the good-cop-bad-cop dynamics of’s Tom and Paulie G., Josh and Mary are already at odds with Valerie in different ways. Josh appears more amenable to his star, while Mary stares daggers through her. She clearly already clocks Valerie as an impediment to her art, but unlike Tom and Paulie, these aren’t the Emmy-winning wunderkinds from, you know, four ladies in a dog park that helped women of a certain age feel seen, maybe for the first time. But Mary responds to Valerie the same way Paulie did regardless.ComebackFriends prepared her for the multi-screen experience of modern television as Kudrow balances doing social media, starring in the documentary, and leading a table read with ease. But Valerie Cherish can’t be Valerie Cherish without legendary sitcom director Jimmy Burrows. Arriving at his rented mansion to meet his rental family, Valerie begs Burrows to direct the pilot. Though he gives her words of encouragement, Burrows tells Valerie that there’s nothing new in the show for him to sink his teeth into. He’s 85, and though he returned to direct a few episodes of Paramount+’s. It goes back to something Burrows tried to instill in Valerie at the Emmys in 2014: Working is not the key to happiness. Nevertheless, Valerie tells Jane he’s in, tripping on her way out the door as if to mirror Sharon’s groveling minutes earlier. As they’re driving home, Valerie asserts that she’s open to working with AI, while refusing to take her GPS’s route. No machine controls her.won’t be chained to its original format. This second episode melds the old with the new better, offering a clean expression of the messy world we’re living in. Surrounded by lenses, all controlled by different interests , Valerie is under constant surveillance. But by taking a third, more omniscient camera, King and Kudrow break the character out of the panopticon so that she can hopefully find some of that James Burrows peace.• “When Brandon left YouTube for NuNet, his very first call was to marketing. He was passionate.” • “Riddler, I hear ya.”• Billy, such a coward, is so useless in this meeting.burning down because she didn’t pay the right firefighters is one of the show’s darkest and truest jokes. • “The waiter comes over and hands me this doggy bag, and Greg looks at me like, ‘I don’t have the money to waste food.'”
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