By: Mariah Thomas
Valerie (Lisa Kudrow) is asking Mark (Damian Young) to come to her pilot taping. She is convinced he is her good luck charm. Mark is hesitant to go since he can’t take the previous friends he would in the past. Valerie suggests he takes some of his new pickleball friends. The next morning, Valerie struggles with remembering specific lines. Since it is largely written by AI, there are many complexities to the script. This leads to a funny montage of Valerie on a hilarious tongue twister tangent.
The live taping of the pilot is set up and Valerie comes out to greet the audience. She spots Mark in the front row with Fernando (Federico Dordei). She assumes he is one of Mark’s pickleball friends but quickly learns he is actually their doorman who is surprised to learn Valerie is famous. The taping kicks off and the cast watches as the live audience is shown the pre-taped cold open of the pilot. Most of the jokes land well except for one. Valerie instantly goes to attempt to change the line; however, the writer, Josh (John Early), is not willing to change it. Valerie and Jimmy (James Burrows) turn to the AI assistant writer to write a new joke for them behind Josh’s back. Jimmy signals for the crew to reset the shot for the new line. This one gets a much bigger laugh from the audience. Of course, Jane (Laura Silverman) is taping the taping.
Valerie tracks Jimmy down at the end of the pilot taping to thank him. However, he is quick to tell her he does not continue to work on the show beyond the pilot. He doesn’t like how the show doesn’t have “actual writers with good jokes” and doesn’t want to rely on the AI assist in the future. Valerie continues to remind him of Mary and Josh’s role as the writers on the show. Jimmy has a “fun clause” in his contracts that states if he is not having fun on a project, he is out. So, he is stern on not continuing on the show. Valerie looks over to see Fernando arguing with the warm-up comic (Edgar Blackmon), which embarrases her.
Valerie gets a copy of the script for the next episode. She continues to be disappointed with the writing choices for her character. In the midst of this, Mark returns home drunk from his margarita outing with Fernando. Mark and Fernando seem to be developing a new friendship and he drunkenly tells Valerie all about it. Mark tries to seduce Valerie, but she is too focused on the script issues and he is too drunk.
At the table read for the next episode, most of the cast is not happy with the script. On top of mostly being written out, there is so much complexity to accessing the script. It is coded for security purposes to avoid leaks. Valerie rushes to talk with Josh but he storms off set before she reaches him. She then tries her hand at speaking to director Bryan Frasier (Darien Sills-Evans) to tell him how the script doesn’t work but Bryan isn’t able to lend much to the conversation as he was hired two hours prior.
Valerie continues to run up the chain for the script to be changed. The AI has scrambled the plot so much. Her next stop is to speak with Marco (Tony Macht). He is the assistant for the AI program. Her next attempt is to get writers Mary (Abbi Jacobson) and Josh to write a new script themselves. When that falls apart, she reaches out to Billy (Dan Bucatinsky). His focus is completely on a photoshoot he was in the middle of and doesn’t pay attention to her concerns.
When Valerie sees Billy won’t be much help either, she rushes to find Mary. When she finds Mary she is informed that her job is mostly to babysit the AI assistant. Mary and Josh aren’t as hands on as Valerie has been assuming. Mary refuses to teach the AI how to write and that is why they won’t help further. She also seems to be sabotaging the project to slow the rise of AI in the business.
With all of these huge blowups with the show, Valerie realizes the deep hole she has found herself in. She decides to find Billy again and voice her concerns. He doesn’t know how to help so tells her he wants to record her to better understand what she’s saying. She doesn’t realize he is directly recording her to send to NuNet. She is angered that he did this and feels let down.