Entourage Recap: Boys Behaving Badly

  • Share
  • Read Later
HBO

Since last week’s episode of Entourage delivered one of the least surprising “dramatic” endings in T.V. history, it was surprising this week to see a few twists that put the show back on track toward a respectable conclusion.

Entourage‘s writers spent a great deal of time last week with badly crafted suspense, trying to convince us that Vince may fail a drug test that could end his career. He passed (by cheating), and we left the extremely relieved boys vowing to redouble their focus on the projects at hand.

The first task this week for the “serious” Vince was an interview with a hard-hitting reporter from Vanity Fair. Only this being a Hollywood fantasy, the brilliant, take-no-prisoners journalist, Sophia, was played by Alive Eve, who made a splash on this side of the pond as the perfect-10 Molly in the romantic comedy She’s Out of My League (it’s really a pretty funny movie, so if you haven’t seen it, Netflix it soon). In that movie Eve turned out a pretty decent Pittsburgh accent, but here she let fly with her native British voice, pretty much sucker punching Vince and Turtle. The interview, however, did not go well. Vince played off his nervousness by asking her out, which pretty much ended the interview.

(LIST: 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME)

Across town, E was dealing with an interesting meeting of his own. Melinda (Clarke, the evil, then not evil, then kind of evil Julie Cooper from The O.C.), a one-time soap opera actress who once was Sloan’s father’s wife (making Melinda E’s former fiancee’s ex-stepmom — I had to explain this to my roommate three times), needs new representation. After a serious meeting where E said he’d think about it, he came to the conclusion that if he was ever going to move on without Sloan, he needed to do what was best for his company. So E met Melinda for a celebratory drink. Three guesses where this is going.

And in yet another part of Hollywood, Drama decided he couldn’t work without the Diceman, who made a splash as the sidekick on Drama’s animated series, Johnny Goes Bananas, before tapping out because the studio was paying him a pittance. Fed up with Dice’s worse-than-horrible replacement, Drama offered to give up part of his salary to get Dice back on board. Dice said it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever offered him, but turned it down. Apparently, the Diceman has principles.

Everything came to a head in rather quick succession. Vince called Sophia and apologized, and after a second interview in which he opened up about his childhood and painful memories, he asked Sophia out for drinks. She turned him down, but not before bowling over Vince and Turtle with some pretty crafty word play. Sofia, it turns out, is pretty darn smart (the character, and the actress who plays her, both graduated from Oxford). Vince never gives up when he really wants a girl, so it’s a safe bet Sophia will be back. Meanwhile, Drama decided he just can’t do it without Dice and he walked off the set too, and after getting drunk and discussing Sloan with Melinda, E slept with her, which we all saw coming. With E and Melinda still lying in bed in that “we probably shouldn’t have done this” moment, E got a call from Sloan, informing him it was all a setup by Melinda to get back at her former husband. Whoops. It’s not 100% clear if this will ruin things with Sloan, but let’s just say it wouldn’t help E’s cause of ever winning her back.

And then there’s Ari. Poor Ari. After ruining things with Dana Gordon last week, Ari tried to get out of the office, only to have a very awkward meeting with Dana. Ari tried, and failed, to spend the day with his kids, prompting Mrs. Ari to tell him, with no apparent regret, that she’s filed for divorce. Ari got drunk enough to call Dana by pseudo-accident, where Dana admitted she was lonely and she wanted to give it another shot with Ari. She knows it’s complicated, so they’ll take it one day at a time. Could it be too much to ask that Ari wind up with Dana Gordon? We’ll have to wait a few more episodes to find out.

PHOTOS: Funny Man Jeremy Piven