We Are Here For The Jennifer Garner Comeback Tour

By Joe Reid @joereid
Published March 27, 2018, 9:52 a.m. ET

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Jennifer Garner

As the philosopher once said, everybody loves a comeback story, especially starring me. Over the years, the “me” in that sentence has referred to everybody from Robert Downey Jr. to Drew Barrymore to Neil Patrick Harris. Whether they’re returning from scandal, rehab, or obscurity, we have always welcomed our stars back with open arms. One of the most memorable recent comeback tours belonged to Matthew McConaughey, whose path towards disfavor didn’t involve drugs or alcohol so much as terrible romantic comedies. Still, McConaughey’s comeback trail — generally accepted to have included The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, Mud, Magic Mike, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Dallas Buyers Club, with the last one getting him an Academy Award for Best Actor — was among the better-marketed comebacks in recent memory. Dubbed the “McConaissance,” it changed the way we see (and anticipate) comeback stories.

Since then, every actor or actress’s comeback has been filtered through the lens of the McConaissance. And it’s a high bar to clear, what with that Academy Award and all. Reese Witherspoon’s emergence from rom-com hell into a new era of acting/producing A-list-ery was dubbed (by some) the “Reese-urgence.” (Well, I like it.) Michelle Pfeiffer’s return to acting last year was the “RePfieffal.” Everybody’s chasing that same comeback story.

And so for your consideration for the comeback story of 2018, I present Jennifer Garner. You can feel the momentum for this building. After an appearance at the Oscars, a supporting role in a buzzy and successful film, and suddenly a few really interesting roles on the horizon, it feels like things are about to happen for the woman who once pledged to refuse to be the ashes from her and her husband’s failed relationship. She deserves this! Please consider the following arguments in her favor.

The Case for the Jenaissance

  • For one thing, you could call it the “Jenaissance,” which is almost too perfect.
  • Jennifer Garner wouldn’t be coming back from scandal or bad behavior. Just a series of bad career choices and personal setbacks that conspired to make her look like less than the shining light that she is. The series of roles she took from her post-Juno era until essentially this year kind of tells the whole story. Underwritten girlfriend roles (The Invention of Lying; Draft Day), misbegotten passion projects (Butter), disastrous remakes (Arthur), and then graduating to moms who were either uninteresting (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) or monstrous (Men, Women & Children). Add to that all those Capital One commercials that could double as torture devices and the marriage to Ben Affleck that conspired to make her look like a sad, cheated-on creature instead of the SD-6-busting super-spy we always knew her to be.
  • She’s weirdly very connected to the original McConaissance, having starred opposite McConaughey in Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (the pre-renaissance nadir of his career) and Dallas Buyers Club (the comeback topper).
  • She killed it at the Oscars. Showing up on the red carpet with big hair and a statement color (blue! the color of royalty and people we need to pay attention to once again!) to intro the In Memoriam segment (traditionally reserved for someone we all really love), it felt like Garner was stepping back into the ring to reclaim what’s hers.
  • She also capitalized on a meme that was going around from Oscar night, from a shot of her in the audience seemingly realizing something profound.
  • Said self-meme not only provided a refreshing sense of humor for an actress whose reputation had begun to veer sad, but it also led people to her Instagram page, which features various delights like the occasional reminder that she and her Alias co-star Victor Garber are thick as thieves or this birthday greeting to Reese Witherspoon:

  • Garner then followed all that A+ social media up with an acclaimed supporting performance in the hugely likeable gay-teen romantic comedy Love, Simon. As the mother of a teen son struggling with coming out, Garner got to deliver one particularly affecting scene that played like the Michael Stuhlbarg Call Me By Your Name scene, but for kids. It’s easily the most anybody has focused on Garner’s acting career in several years, and it’s about time. Not since her criminally underrated performance in Juno (it was genuinely Oscar worthy, and I will fight those who say otherwise) has the spotlight shined this warmly on one of her performances.
  • Also, not for nothing, but Ben Affleck emerging on a beach in South America filming Triple Frontier and letting his abominable back tattoo fly freely is only serving to remind us all of that Vanity Fair interview she did about her and Ben’s divorce where she refused to be the ashes.

Of course, one supportive-mom role and a few great Instagrams does not a renaissance make. But the ground is fertile for a flowering comeback, and it looks like Jennifer Garner might have her ducks all lined up in a row. She’s currently filming with Girls creators Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner on the new HBO show Camping, a professional partnership that is as exciting as any she’s had since Diablo Cody. She’s also signed on to star in the feature film Peppermint, and action-revenge drama from Taken director Pierre Morel. So, yes, the once and future Sydney Bristow is going to be the new Lady Taken?? That sounds genuinely awesome.

So what next needs to be done to help Jennifer Garner truly cement this comeback? A few suggestions:

  • Find yourself a Big Lady Ensemble Project. All the cool actresses are doing it. There’s the Witherspoon/Kidman/Dern/Woodley/Kravitz (/and now Streep!) collective on Big Little Lies. Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett are drawing quite the crowd themselves with Ocean’s 8. Viola Davis, Elizabeth Debicki, Michelle Rodriguez, and Cynthia Erivo will be teaming up in Steve McQueen’s Widows later this year. No true comeback can be complete without a Big Lady Ensemble. Make this happen.
  • Don’t work with Jason Reitman again unless Diablo Cody is involved. Juno was a revelation. Men, Women & Children was a disaster.
  • Stay open to an Alias reunion, but ONLY on your terms. (And make sure Lena Olin signs on!)

Otherwise, we the fans remain fully prepared for 2018 to be the year Jennifer Garner returned to us. Let Capital One sell their own credit cards for a while. Ms. Garner is more urgently needed somewhere else: the spotlight.

Where to stream Juno