Entourage Recap: The Third Turn on the Way to the Finish

Entourage‘s writers are trying something difficult in the few weeks before the series ends — giving Vincent Chase, the womanizing, patronizing movie star, actual character development. They’re trying to have Vince grow up and see the sadness in his years of chasing women, but they’re doing it by having him chase a woman. Strange, I know.

With only three episodes to go before the end, we’re in full overdrive to complete character arcs and set up final dispensations before the boys ride off into the sunset. The bulk of last night’s episode centered on Vince and the fallout of his interview with Vanity Fair. The episode opened with Vince clad in white tie and tails (with the white tie being ridiculously large), at a photo shoot for what we hope will be the cover of Vanity Fair. But when Vince read a preview of the article, he discovered that Sophia, the magazine’s reporter, described him as a tail-chaser who has no real respect for women. This does not sit well with Vince.

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The periphery action included a menu of Drama’s insecurities (he really is the George Costanza of this show–Drama always has a vendetta) and the ramifications of E sleeping with his ex-fiancee Sloan’s ex stepmother (for a full explanation on that one, please see here). When we picked up last night, Drama had been on strike from his cartoon “Johnny Goes Bananas” for all of a day in hopes of getting the Diceman back on the cast. When Lloyd, his agent (one of my favorite plot developments of all time) informed him that the network was going to cancel the show, Drama paid the Diceman one last visit.

E, meanwhile, had problems of his own. It seems he was pretty quick in helping Melinda get her career back on track and she thanked him with a gift of a $300,000 car. When he met her for lunch to confront her about whether the car was a gift for sex, he was spotted by Johnny Galecki, playing himself, who just happens to be seeing Sloan. E is clearly not happy. To see what happens with E we’ll have to wait another week, but Drama, after sticking to his guns, appears to have gotten his way. Diceman is back, and Johnny looks to be riding high.

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And on the Ari front, much of the episode detailed his lament over his impending divorce, but he realized there were thorny issues he needed to confront. Back when Ari had left his old company, Mrs. Ari invested $11 million to help Ari start a new agency. Ari’s divorce lawyer advised him that he needed to pay that back, or risk losing his stake in the company. The only problem is, he doesn’t have it. So Ari went, hat in hand, to his house, and who happened to be there: the grill master himself, Bobby Flay. We came within seconds of seeing a Flay-Piven showdown when Flay said, “Are you okay, Melissa?” Ari looked stunned and said, “I don’t know who you are anymore.” It was a subtle inside joke — for eight seasons, we’ve known Mrs. Ari only as Mrs. Ari, and this is the first time we’ve learned her first name.

But back to Vince and his attempt to grow into an actual adult. After semi-stalking Sophia to a restaurant, Vince began examining his relationships, and we saw him talking to a waitress with whom he once had a fling. She admitted it wasn’t the deepest relationship, and reminded Vince he had also slept with her sister, a waitress across town. Vince was stunned–he remembered the girl, but didn’t know they were sisters. The motivation for the new Vince is born. How far he’ll get is unclear with only two more episodes to go.

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Nate Rawlings is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @naterawlings. Continue the discussion on TIME‘s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.