The Big Bang Theory's Best Actor Deserves Their Own 'Comeback'

In case you've never seen HBO's "The Comeback," the best way to describe it is this: what if "Entourage" was smart and also good? Beyond that, though, it's also a perfect showcase for one of Hollywood's funniest actors ... and proves that another sitcom standout, Kaley Cuoco, deserves her own version of a show like this.

First things first, though. The series, created by Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, takes a meta approach to Kudrow's career up until that point by casting her as the now-iconic figure of Valerie Cherish, a former sitcom star who's not as popular as she once was. Given the opportunity to play a supporting role on a new sitcom called "Room and Bored," Valerie jumps at the chance even though she's forced to play an older character named "Aunt Sassy" whose catchphrase is, "I don't want to see that!" (Kudrow's delivery every time she has to say this line is nothing short of delicious.) In yet another brilliant touch, each season of "The Comeback" has Valerie followed around by a camera crew and producer Jane Benson (Laura Silverman) as they make a "documentary" across three stages of her lengthy career — from "Room and Bored" to a fake prestige HBO series called "Seeing Red" to a sitcom penned by artificial intelligence.

So what does Cuoco have to do with any of this? Well, Cuoco and Kudrow were part of two of the biggest network sitcoms in TV history: "The Big Bang Theory" and "Friends," respectively. Despite the undeniable success of those two shows, a project like "The Comeback" gives an actor like Kudrow more freedom and a chance to show off a wider range than a show like "Friends" ever could — and Cuoco has earned a project like this.

There are probably endless debates out there about whether or not Lisa Kudrow is the standout actor on "Friends," but anyone who's ever watched even a few minutes of "The Big Bang Theory" knows that Kaley Cuoco is the show's most valuable player by a long shot. As Penny, who moves in across the hall from mega-nerds Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) and Leonard Hofstadter (Johnny Galecki), Cuoco is basically the audience surrogate who helps us learn more about these two California Institute of Technology physicists and their two best friends Howard Wolowitz and Raj Koothrappali, played by Simon Helberg and Kunal Nayyar. Put simply: as Penny learns to understand these weird guys, so do we.

Throughout "The Big Bang Theory," Penny gets a genuinely great character arc ... and through all of her character's ups and downs, Cuoco's utterly charming, winning, and surprisingly layered performance holds the entire show together. (It also gets even better after the show's third season when Mayim Bialik's Amy Farrah Fowler and Melissa Rauch's Bernadette Rostenkowski add some much-needed girl power to the series.) Cuoco is genuinely so good at playing Penny that she often, honestly, transcends the material she's given.

Cuoco's sharp, self-aware, and outright excellent performance as Penny on "The Big Bang Theory" never won her an Emmy, but it should get her a show like "The Comeback" where she gets to play with her own self-image like Kudrow does. Plus, it would just keep proving that sometimes, actors are at their best when they leave the shows that made them famous.

Again, with the utmost due respect to the massively popular and influential sitcoms "Friends" and "The Big Bang Theory," there's an argument to be made that the actors on these shows really blossomed after they left those iconic sitcom roles behind. Lisa Kudrow was good on "Friends" as Phoebe Buffay and is great on "The Comeback," and that's also true of several of her cohorts.

David Schwimmer shone on the first season of "American Crime Story" — "The People vs. OJ Simpson" — as the late lawyer Robert Kardashian, and Matt LeBlanc notably played a version of himself on the comedy series "Episodes," similar to Kudrow's work on "The Comeback." Jennifer Aniston is really funny as Rachel, but when she gets to let her freak flag fly in a project like "Horrible Bosses," you remember that she's a legitimate comedy powerhouse; and Courteney Cox's work on "Cougar Town," a more modern sitcom than "Friends," proved that she's got considerable range.

After "The Big Bang Theory" ended in 2019, we got to see that cast take on new and exciting roles too ... including Kaley Cuoco, who's flat-out excellent in the dark comedy "The Flight Attendant" and downright delightful as the profane voice of Harley Quinn on "Harley Quinn" (both of which she produced for HBO Max). Simon Helberg was astonishingly good in the French-American film "Annette," Kunal Nayyar scored a BAFTA TV nomination for "Criminal: UK," and Jim Parsons has shown that he's more than just Sheldon Cooper in movies like "The Boys in the Band" and "Spoiler Alert." Cuoco's already proven herself, but the industry should give her something like "The Comeback" just to see her reach new heights in her career.