People on Entourage often say, “Looks like everything’s going to work out for us after all!” Then things don’t work out; then they do. Welcome to Entourage.
Man, I think I’ve run out of things to say about this show, which is probably great timing, considering there’s only one more episode left. And we all know what’s going to happen: Sloan and Eric are going to get back together; Ari and his wife are going to get back together; Vince and the journalist will get together; Turtle and Drama will get together; insert joke about Scott Caan’s chin, I’M ON TO YOU, ENTOURAGE!
You know what’s not suspenseful? Suspense that lasts only about 10 seconds. And boy, is that ever Entourage’s calling card. Tonight marks the return of those annoying Don Pepe’s owners, and they’re nagging away about how they only came to LA for the free trip, but now, they want to open a restaurant in a very specific location that’s two times what Turtle budgeted for. He wants to please them anyway, because even though they’ve exhibited signs of being legitimately crazy and likely very difficult to work with in future endeavors, Turtle conveniently ignores all of that and instead calls a bunch of cameos to get more money and cameos. That all falls through, so he gets stoned and sits around the apartment like he’s some kind of ME, THAT’S WHO!
If only Turtle hadn’t sold his stake in Avion because he was too proud to be in business with someone who didn’t want to be in business with him. Pssh, pride. But guess what? Vince ignored Turtle and kept his shares, and now the company has gone public, and Turtle got all he wanted. Oh, you guessed that? Sure, so did everyone, which in the world of Entourage is known as “mystery.”
Plus, remember how Drama went on strike for three seconds? Now that he’s back to work, he’s looking to go forward with the made-for-TV movie Vince wrote. Now, however, Phil isn’t interested in making it. He feels “hurt.” So Vince bribes him with a hundo-thouso donation to Phil’s favorite charity, and now his feelings no longer apply. Los Angeles: Amiright? Let’s talk about it. Deeply.
“Second To Last” (NAILED IT!) was clumsy and infuriating, but for whatever reason, I didn’t think it was as terrible as some of the other puss that’s dripped out from between Ari Gold’s luscious man-pillows. Maybe that’s because the more the season goes on, the more Ari is growing as a man, a person, a real-life character who is not just filling some role. The characters spend most of “Second To Last” talking about how great Vince is, like he’s Johnny from The Room or something, but there are few people singing the praises of Ari. He’s become a necessary evil on the show, only this season, he’s not even evil. In fact, he’s bucking tradition and merely spending a lot of time on the phone yelling, instead of all his time on the phone yelling. He’s gone back-and-forth throughout the season between his wife and Dana Gordon, showing incredible restraint when it comes to matters of Bobby Flay. But in this episode, it’s Dana Gordon who finally puts the brakes on the whole thing. She realizes Ari is still in love with his wife, and he has to fight for her. And you know what? Ari listens to her. I know: a woman! Ari’s changed, all right.
This episode was a little light on E, but when he showed up, he made it count. He’s still sleeping with Melinda Clarke, but now doing it much more obviously to anger Sloan. Melinda’s happy, but Eric’s loose fuse goes off when he hears from Turtle that Sloan and Johnny Galecki are having lunch. He confronts Sloan, who rightfully calls him out for being a shallow spiteful prick, then storms off. Later, E confronts Sloan, who tells him that even though she still loves him, she loves her family more, and her family hates E. Oh, and she’s pregnant with his child, is still moving to New York, and wants nothing to do with him anymore.
(Galecki fires E as a manager BTW. I can’t wait to see how this plays out in the deleted scenes portion of the DVDs I won’t be owning.)
So it looks like the show is going to end with two very simple morals: Fight for your friends, and fight for love. Sure, the fight itself hasn’t really left any characters with bruises, metaphorical or otherwise, but at least they’re fighting—which is more than I can say about myself, because I’m a wuss-face.