Just a couple weeks ago I said that I was bored with the third season of “Entourage.” It’s amazing how quickly a plot and some actual conflict can change a man’s opinion. Oh, and a threesome doesn’t hurt either.
This week was the Ari show and, thankfully, not one of his scenes involved his daughter. Instead, Ari spends the entire episode trying to get Vince on the phone, only Vince won’t talk to him until Ari gets Johnny a job. Problem is, Ari really needs to talk to Vince because Alan, the head of Warner Bros., upped his offer to $12.5 million if Vince will drop “Medellin” and dive into “Aquaman 2.” And Alan’s getting impatient, which leads to this week’s Ari moment, and it’s a classic: He walks into the conference room and tells all of his employees that the staff meeting has been canceled. Instead, their #1 priority is to find Drama a job. “I don’t care if it’s a porn shoot in which he is getting gang raped by a gaggle of silverback apes. If there are cameras rolling, everybody wins.” Wait…a “gaggle of silverback apes”? That’s, fucking, hilarious. Ari even goes so far as to offer the first person to get Drama a job $10 grand, and when Lloyd asks if he can get in on the offer, Ari responds, “Sure, but you’ll get paid in Yen.”
This entire episode served as one giant example of why Ari Gold is the best character going on TV today. “Deadwood’s” Al Swearengen gets some love too, as does John C. McGinley’s Dr. Cox on “Scrubs,” but when Jeremy Piven is given some actual material to work with, he’s unstoppable and unbeatable. Ari was on a rampage this week, nearly throwing his computer monitor through the window before Lloyd reminded him that it was a rental, and his conversations with Alan over the phone were priceless, saying he’d make sure Vince didn’t “pull a Chappelle” by bailing on the “Aquaman” franchise. He even sent text messages to E all episode, since he couldn’t get anybody on the phone. One said, “You drunken, Irish, short, midget cocksucker! I need someone to call me back!” Another simply said, “FUCK YOU!!!!!!!!”
I’ve got a feeling Ari’s going to get even more worked up in the coming weeks. Vince stuck to his guns throughout, telling Ari he wasn’t doing “A2” for anything less than $20 million, and when Ari finally tracked him down at home, Vinnie said all he really wanted was to get the days Alan promised him so he could do “Medellin.” Too late, apparently, as Ari tells Vince that the role was given to Benicio Del Toro. Vince is crushed, and he’s pissed. Ari tells him it’s over, that he needs to do “A2” or Alan will sue Vinnie. Fine, Vince agrees to honor his contract but he won’t go to breakfast with Alan the next day, and he won’t take the $12.5 million. “I don’t want to be indebted to some douchebag,” he tells Ari, and then says he’ll do the sequel for the $7 million they originally agreed upon.
I think Ari’s bluffing. Benicio Del Toro didn’t get “Medellin,” but Ari knew Vince wasn’t going to budge unless “Medellin” was no longer an option. So he lied. Just like he lied about Dom being caught on camera swiping the Shrek doll a few episodes ago. He was desperate then, trying to get Vince the “Medellin” role, and he’s even more desperate now. In fact, this parallel could explain why Dom was even on the show. We’ve seen Ari pull a stunt like this before, and now he’s doing it again, only he’s lying to Vince’s face. That’s not going to sit well with Vince, a guy who’s shown that he’ll stick to his principles no matter what, a guy who doesn’t like being lied to. Once he finds out that Ari lied about “Medellin,” Ari’s in deep shit.
Of course, that’s assuming I’m right about this, but after watching Ari tell Alan that Vince agreed to do the movie for $10 million (not $7 million), it’s clear that Ari’s not playing things on the level right now. Even worse, since Vinnie stood Alan up at breakfast, Warners apparently is having Jake Gyllenhaal do “A2,” which means that not only does Vinnie not have “Medellin,” he doesn’t have “Aquaman” either. I was hoping the writers wouldn’t figure out a convenient way for Vince to get both roles; I never expected he wouldn’t have either.
I’m running long already, so I’ll try to wrap this up quickly. Seems Drama’s in a “Godfather” video game, and seeing his CGI self say, “Thanks bro” to Marlon Brando was awesome. As for finding a job, well, Lloyd actually got him an audition, and it sounds promising, but true to his word, Ari tells Lloyd that, if Drama gets the role, he’d give Lloyd 10,000 Yen. It’d be great if we started seeing more of the Ari/Lloyd dynamic in the coming weeks. Hell, anything’s better than Ari and his daughter.
And that’s pretty much it…oh, right, except for the threesome. Wow. We haven’t seen Sloan all season (save for a brief appearance in the premiere), and then, suddenly, she’s having a three-way with E and her smokin’ hot friend Tori. Thank the writers for that. Sloan had a rule, though: E wasn’t allowed to have sex with Tori. Hey, sounds pretty damn fair to me. But judging by the fact that Tori and E woke up holding hands, it’s safe to say they didn’t exactly avoid each other the night before. It’s also safe to say the ménage is going to cause some problems between E and Sloan. Stay tuned.
