HBO dissing Aspen? Maybe we missed the point.

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on August 8th, 2005

If you haven’t been following The Comeback, HBO’s original comedy starring Lisa Kudrow, it’s a fascinating, if somewhat excruciating peek into the manufacture of a mediocre sitcom. We follow Valerie Cherish (Kudrow) as she is followed by a camera crew that is documenting the reality series that focuses on her. It’s a show within a show, within a show. It is excruciating because it is an unblinking look at the demeaning and debasing life that is (sometimes, at least) life working in a sitcom in Hollywood.

When the show gets mediocre ratings (after the first episode or two), the producers are forced to halt production and eventually retool. One of the major “improvements” they make is to re-focus the show on two characters– a comedy team of two “middle eastern” guys (or maybe from India?) who speak in gibberish.

During the re-tooling meeting, it’s explained to the existing cast that that same comedy team (the ones generally promoted as the key to the redone show’s success) would be “a really great comedy team that they discovered at Aspen.” (“Aspen,” of course, being shorthand for The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. )

In a subsequent scene, the team is revealed to be just ungodly awful. The Show Runner and the Head Writer love them, though. And the rest of the cast is wildly unhappy.

What we have here is an original series on HBO, which purports to be an unflinching look into the production of a television sitcom, which holds up a fictitious “comedy team discovered at Aspen” as an object of ridicule. Aspen, you may recall, is/was the brainchild of… HBO.

We give them huge points for… bravery? Honesty? Stupidity? Self-loathing? Why would HBO essentially disrespect everyone who has ever appeared at their festival to make a point in one of their series?

Curious!

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