Episode Title: "Porn Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"
Writer: Ally Musika
Director: Kevin Connolly
Previously on "Entourage":
Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) met and fell for a former pornstar named Sasha Grey. Shortly thereafter, he began behaving in an extremely self-destructive manor, including doing lines of coke with Sasha and Scott Lavin (Scott Caan); the fellow manager and frenemy of Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly) — Vince's oldest friend and his manager. Recently, Sasha received a lucrative offer to return to porn, which alarmed Vince and he attempted to keep her from doing it. At the same time, Vince's bizarre behavior caused the studio and the director Randall Wallace to ask him to submit to a drug test. While the studio caved after Vince responded angrily in person, Wallace did not and quit the project.
While continuing to push the Avion tequila, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) was met with angry resistance by his Mexican boss, Carlos (Miguel Sandoval). Carlos laughed in Turtle's face when he said that he could help Carlos get the funding to expand the company. Turtle managed to do just that thanks to a chance encounter with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who loved the tequila. Meanwhile, Billy Walsh (Rhys Coiro) created an animated series about a talking gorilla with Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) in mind. Although the network loved the idea, Drama refused to participate in it.
Finally, super-agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven) received a devastated PR blow when someone leaked damaging transcripts of his legendary tirades to Deadline Hollywood; which ended his NFL ownership aspirations and hurt his reputation in Hollywood and his marriage to Mrs. Ari (Perrey Reeves).
Story:
Unnerved by the fact that one of Sasha's potential co-stars in her new porno is her ex-fiance, Vince frantically pushes Eric to get her a role in "Air-Walker." Eric is noticeably reluctant and convinced that Vince is high, leaving them to part on bad terms. Eric also continues to ignore Scott Lavin at their office. Later, Vince and Eric take a meeting with the new director, Peter Berg. Berg says that he doesn't care what's happening in Vince's personal life as long as it doesn't effect the movie. Over Eric's objections, Vince pitches Berg on the idea of casting Sasha in the movie. Berg is receptive to it, provided the role is small and has potential sequel possibilities if she's good in the part.
Carlos angrily calls Turtle demanding to know why Mark Cuban is interested in his business and he orders Turtle to stop talking about his company. When Cuban's money man calls, Turtle tries to avoid talking business, but Cuban's guy insists upon meeting with them. Carlos arrives at the mansion armed with a lawyer and a contract strictly forbidding Turtle from talking about his business again. However, Cuban and his money man are already there. Feeling ambushed, Carlos rudely demands $5 million to expand his factory without strings. Cuban responds by threatening to buy the company outright and leaves. Carlos furiously explains to Turtle that he has an older brother with controlling interest in Avion who would only be too happy to sell it and he blames Turtle for the potential loss of his company.
Eric's lovely assistant Jenny (Janet Montgomery) develops a phone rapport with Drama and manages to get him to hear out Phil Yagoda's (William Fichtner) pitch for "Johnny's Banana's." Prior to the pitch meeting, Drama gets cold feet again. But another pep talk from Jenny wins him over, even before he gets a chance to see the elaborate presentation Phil set up for him. Elsewhere, Ari is on a family bowling night with his wife and kids. He refuses to talk to Amanda Daniels (Carla Gugino) despite several attempts on her part to reach him. Later, a during a chance meeting with Queen Latifah, Ari learns that Amanda is now part of the group attempting to bring the NFL to LA.
At a fine restaurant with his wife (and under a strict no-phones rule), Ari is dismayed to see Amanda at another table with a group of associates while Vince is nearby with Sasha. Ari sneaks a brief phone call to Amanda while in the bathroom, but he is interrupted by an employee sent by his wife. Amanda approaches their table to finish their conversation and while she is cordial with Ari, he explodes at her with an angry outburst and promises to destroy her in front of everyone at the restaurant. To his surprise, Amanda reveals that she didn't leak the tapes to Deadline and that she had been attempting to bring Ari back in on the NFL deal, which is no longer an option for him. Furious and humiliated, Mrs. Ari refuses to leave the restaurant with him.
Near the bathroom, Vince tells Sasha about her potential role in "Air-Walker" and once again pushes for her to drop the porno. He says that he loves her and she holds him to it. They continue to argue before having sex in the bathroom. Back at the mansion, Lloyd, Billy, Turtle and Alex (Dania Ramirez) are with Drama and celebrating his new series when Lloyd discovers a very large bag of cocaine hidden by Vince.
Breakdown:
This is actually one of the better episodes of "Entourage" this season. I guess if the show can't be funny, at least it can be dramatic.
Before we dive into the Vince story again, I want to point out something about the tequila storyline: absolutely no one in that plot is sympathetic at all. They've all been d**ks. Turtle screwed up big time by representing himself as someone with authority to make decisions on the behalf of Avion, which he clearly doesn't have. So, it's understandable why Carlos is pissed off. In fact, it's not even clear if Turtle was getting paid for any of this work. On the other hand, Carlos is so arrogant that he basically created his own problem with Mark Cuban. And Cuban? It's amusing that he's allowing his fictional self to come off as pompous and entitled, but he's clearly not a victim either.
As for Alex, I don't even understand what role she's playing in this farce anymore. She was the one who brought Turtle to Avion and Carlos. So, presumably her loyalty would be to them when Turtle screwed up. But she's still dating him at the end of the show, which qualifies this episode for the Saturn Awards.
Vince's story is actually driving the main narrative for once. Usually events have almost always centered on Eric, but this season seems to have been designed to bring Vince to the forefront. And I don't necessarily think that was a good idea. At least not in this plotline. Grenier is able to play an incredible jerk very convincingly, but it's definitely hard to enjoy. In seasons past, Vince had the personality of a tree; but he was always fun to watch. Vince's decent into drugs is actually a very familiar Hollywood story and it was probably one of the few ways left to bring him down in his career before inevitably building him back up next season.
But the most compelling story still belongs to Ari Gold. The hidden iPhone in the restaurant was classic and a great call back to "The Godfather." While we've seen Ari meltdown in public before, we've rarely seen him do it in front of his wife. The relationship between Mrs. Ari and her husband has been steadily declining this season and it wouldn't shock me if the next phase is a divorce.
Of course, this is the show where almost everything finds a way to work out, no matter how implausible. So it wouldn't shock me if magical elves showed up to save Ari's marriage by the end of next week's episode.
But if the producers are serious about taking "Entourage" into more dramatic territory, they might as well go all the way.
Crave Online Rating: 7 out of 10.
