Entourage: Season 5, Episode 11: "Play'n with Fire"

Season 5, Episode 11: “Play’n with Fire”

Grade: A

This week’s Entourage showed me that the writers do have the ability to cash in on the potential they show week after week by giving us what probably is the best episode of the entire show. With only one episode left of the season I am anxious and excited to see what they do with Vince’s acting career and with Turtle’s character as they finally give him some depth and show that he actually is a worthy character to have on the show .

I’ll start with Vince. Vince’s acting career has been the most interesting part of the show for me as I said last week and if it did not exist I would not watch the show. One can imagine how excited I’ve been by these past few weeks and this entire season for that matter. Early this season the show started to hint at the idea that maybe Vince does not have much talent as an actor. Yes he can act, but can he truly act? As distinctly different characters? This is a man who loves acting but someone who I do not believe needs it to survive at all. I think he enjoys being famous and the wealth and advantages that come with that. He has no training and he is not someone who I believe to be talented enough to function without it, at least within “films” as opposed to movies. If we look at his resume we see “Head-On” and “Aquaman”, two movies that simply require leading man type actors with charisma but not necessarily enormous amounts of talent. Queens Boulevard is a project he can easily relate to and Medellin is apparently an awful film with an awful performance. Can he truly act? I don’t know. So they very subtly brought this into play early in the season. I found Dana’s comment at the end to be interesting as she said that both her and Ellis saw the footage and thought he was great. I did not a lot of what they saw and I wonder if that if supposed to put to rest this idea of Vince’s acting ability and we are left to assume that Vince go unlucky with a difficult director (which he did, there’s no denying the douchebagery of Werner.) Werner was a huge asshole but I wonder if the show is still going to put a little bit of the blame on Vince's ability to emote? I feel like this should still be gone into a bit and I hope they do. I feel like it would be taking the easy way out to blame everything on Werner.

I loved what this episode did with Vince, we got to see Vince being directed in a way that was a disaster. Vince got fired from “Smokejumpers” and eventually the film was cancelled. Which is a shame because the entire season was about Vince getting this film. Basically what made this episode so great was that it went into all of the issues that they have only ever lightly touched on and expanded on them in a very intense and effective way that changes things and that shows that the show can actually be great and not just good or annoying or repetitive or one note which is often the case. Adrian Grenier was great in this episode showing Vince finally loses it through frustrations with Werner, getting to see Vince act in a way we have not before. The screaming match that takes place in the office with Ari, Dana and Werner is great. I felt really bad for Vince as he just sat there and listened to people argue about him for an extended period of time. This episode really takes the cake as the best of the series because it shows a certain amount of depth that the other episodes either do not have or touches on in a way that never really fully explores the issues that are hinted at.

I think that Turtle’s story however, stood out as the most interesting part of the episode, managing to show more depth to his character in one episode than the writers showed in 5 seasons put together. It had been hinted at a couple of times, most prominently in the episode when they take mushrooms. This episode spends as much time on Turtle as it does on Vince and actually ends with something having to do with Turtle which emphasizes how important this episode was for him. None of these characters on “Entourage” are truly deep. They never will be and that is fine. But they do have a certain amount of potential linked to their characters in terms of what can be done with them. And it is really nice to finally see this being done with Turtle. I’ve liked him more than Drama in recent episodes and by the beginning of Season 5 I decided that I liked Turtle more than Drama. Drama is a whiny annoying little bitch whereas at least Turtle sees how ridiculous Drama is and thus I was relating to him in that way. Jerry Ferarra’s chemistry with Jamie Lynn Sigler is really fantastic, easily the best guy-girl combo on this show ever. This is in no large part because they are dating in real life. It has not been confirmed but they are. She is adorable and I love that she sees something different in Turtle. This episode really marked new territory with his character and officially made him more useful than Drama. Note to Drama: fuck off already.

So overall this episode marks the best in the series, showing depth I had only dreamed of and expanding on Vince’s and especially Turtle’s characters greatly. By dealing with Vince’s acting career in a way that ended with the gang going back to Queens (!!), we really see Vince and Turtle completely beaten down, one by the ruin of his career and another by the premature end of the first potentially great relationship for Turtle. With only one episode left of the season, let’s hope they can keep it up because Lord knows that this won’t last forever and pretty soon we will be back in the throes of boring “wacky” shenanigans, lots of pointless naked women and heaven help us, Sloane.

Entourage: Season 5, Episode 10: "Seth Green Day"

Grade: B-

After last week's fantastic flawless episode, I knew it would be hard to live up to the greatness that was last week. If every episode of Entourage was as good as last week's I would be saying very different things about this show. While it lived upto the expectations in some aspects and was overall a good episode, it has introduced a couple of potential subplots will severely disappoint me if they continue.

I wish this whole season could be the making of "Smokejumpers". Vince having to deal with a director whose intentions are unclear is making him question how he functions as an actor and whether or not he can trust a director that he is so unsure of. I do not know what this director's deal is. I like that they are sort of stereotyping the whole European director with strange filming methods and an overprotectiveness over the vision of their film schtick. Not because I am against it at all, but where else are you going to see an interpretation of these directors? I feel for Vince and I want him to dive into acting and to benefit from this experience but I have a feeling this is just going to get worse. Vince's acting career has always been the most interesting aspect of the show for me. Nothing else will ever come close in being more interesting.

I really enjoyed the scene between Ari and his kids at the beginning of the episode and generally enjoyed his story. I am quite interested in the subplot involving Ari and Andrew. I like to see Ari taking a chance on someone and wanting to do good. It will be interesting to see if this pays off. His speech to the Women's Convention sort of disgusted me. Actually it completely disgusted me. It was Ari's big speech of the episode and it is intended for laughs but it was a speech ripe with misogynism and disgust for women intruding on the buisness world of men and frankly I was a bit sickened by it. I know it is supposed to be funny. But since I am going through the stage of my life when I realize how truly this is a men's world, I have a hard time watching something like that. I know I am overreacting but at a time like this something like that makes me implode. I know what you are saying: why do I watch this show? I know, it's the absolute worst show to watch for a women who is against many of the things on the show. But the aspects of the show I am interested in are enough to keep me watching.

Drama and Turtle did nothing this week. Drama is just annoying now. Nothing they can do will get me to like him. It's not so much the change in him, although that is a big part of it. The character has just worn on me. Turtle, even though he pisses me off a lot is someone I actually like more than Drama now. I like his line delivery and I like the fact that he calls Drama out on his ridiculousness all the time. The annoyance with which he calls Drama out is the same annoyance I have and thus I am allied with Turtle against the annoyance that is Drama.

Eric's subplot is where I had this week's problem. If they get him back together with Sloane I will jump off a building. That relationship was the saddest saddest saddest attempt by anyone to write a relationship. These writers do not know how to write women, they obviously do not think it is very important because it was never evident that Eric's relationship problems impacted him all that much. And he's the character that's supposed get the most emotionally connected to women! It's a joke! And I love Eric when he is doing anything else except being with Sloane. Please do not do this Entourage! As far as the rest of E's subplot goes, the Seth Green stuff, although I like him very much, seemed like a waste of time. It was entertaining but it was the least appealing part of the episode which is sad considering the title of the episode.

Favorite Moments:

Vince watching the dailies with the director.

Ari imitating Barbara after she walks out.

And there is my first TV Episode Review on my TV Blog!! Overall very strong in a couple of aspects while upsetting me in a few and making me dread the possible return of a subplot that I thought was dead.

I will grade the episode based on the seperate plots and then as a whole.

Vince and "Smokejumpers": A-

Ari and Andrew: B

Seth Green and Eric: C-