No, comet brightness has little to do with its path in relation to us.
We're currently closer to the sun than to this comet and moving apart. You can see the orbital path
here. As you can see it never even comes inside the orbit of Mars.
What likely has happened (as the Bad Astronomy post says) is that a piece of the comet broke off exposing new ice which is brighter and is ablating. The comet is pretty far from the sun but it was also recently at perihelion so at its warmest, creating new stresses.
I'm sure the answer provided no tonights Coast to Coast will be either a spaceship starting its drive to leave the solar system or an alien craft of some sort shedding its rocky camouflage.