
Val is right to be concerned – there are serious issues happening behind the scenes. After accidentally sending a voice note to the studio, Brandon Wollack appears on the set of How’s That?! to tell Valerie that Josh and Mary have been fired. His explanation – that the studio owns the actors’ names and their silence, so everything is fine – isn’t very comforting, and it’s even worse to learn that the showrunner position has been given to the clearly unqualified Marco. Brandon claims they don’t need a head writer because AI can simply copy the work of others, which feels like a step backward. He’s a disturbing figure, as you’d expect from a studio executive, and he expertly manipulates Val to keep her compliant. He appeals to her ego and desire for approval by praising the pilot’s test scores and thanking her for keeping the show from becoming a bigger problem for NuNet. (It’s almost like he’s studied past seasons of The Comeback.) However, Brandon offers Val no advice on how to tell the actors about the changes, especially since she’s not allowed to reveal that the show is being written by AI.