After five seasons, “Entourage” finally lived up to its name this fall. While E, Turtle and Drama each enjoyed meatier storylines than normal this season, Vince’s role in the proceedings essentially amounted to an imaginary stalker and a random fuck scene of the week. But Vince’s marginalized contributions led to one of the strongest seasons of “Entourage” in a long time, culminating in one hell of a finale tonight.
Let’s hit the main arcs from least to most interesting, beginning with the saga of Turtle and Jamie-Lynn. I recently wrote in a comment on a different episode that Turtle’s UCLA co-ed was hotter than Jamie-Lynn, and I saw nothing tonight to make me alter that stance. I mean…good, GOD. And while it was nice to see Turtle resist her advances in the name of true love, I’m fairly confident that scene would have played out far differently in real life. Girls like that don’t get turned down that often, not by guys like Turtle, and especially not when they’re wearing outfits like that. I found it hilarious that they didn’t even bother to completely shut the vertical blinds in the room, but the topper was when Turtle offered his condolences for leaving after getting her worked up by asking, “You want me to go down on you or something?” Hey, Turtle is nothing if not generous. He’s also single now, after getting dumped right before his plane to New Zealand took off. May as well hop on over to Rome then, right?
I’ll lump Drama and Vince together here, if only because Vince’s auxiliary storyline couldn’t carry a paragraph by itself. Who would’ve thought that Turtle of all people would inspire Drama to figure out what’s truly important to him? You knew he wasn’t going to give up acting for good, but would he change his mind before the credits rolled tonight? Would it be too late? Turns out he killed at his “Melrose Place” audition but the network wants to go younger with the cast. I’ve got to say that the thought of building a show around Drama makes me chuckle. I just hope we get to see some of it next season. Of course, even better is that now Drama is free to go to Italy with Vince. Ah, but not before Matt Damon and his buddy LeBron James (um…what was with the glasses, LBJ?) railroad Vince into giving a bunch of hungry children $150,000. Actually, there were three great cameos tonight, if you include Bono showing up on Damon’s laptop. There were several classic lines in tonight’s episode, but one of the finest was when Damon bullied Drama into handing the phone to Vince. “Sorry, he Jason Bourne’d me,” Drama explained to Vince. Sounds reasonable to me.
I was tempted to rank Drama ahead of E but that would be underestimating just how shocked I was when E proposed to Sloan. In hindsight, maybe I should have expected it – I mean, what was so special about a lunch date at a restaurant the two of them used to go to? – but right up until E mentioned making a commitment to Sloan, I was oblivious. It was actually a pretty cool scene, capped by Sloan’s very believable reaction to the proposal. I feel almost embarrassed about the fact that I thought it was even remotely possible that they’d leave us hanging on Sloan’s answer until next season. I can’t remember an “Entourage” finale that didn’t have all the loose threads sewn up by the end of the episode, and tonight was certainly no different.
It’s not exactly a great sign that Sloan already tested E with that trick at the airport, and lord knows these two haven’t exactly had the most stable relationship over the years, but I’m thinking the engagement sticks and they’ll go through with the wedding next season. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the wedding is part of a series finale next season. E’s career is undoubtedly on the upswing and he’s now on the verge of having the family he’s wanted for a while; Drama is having a show made just for him; Turtle’s going back to school and is on one hell of a roll after landing Meadow Soprano and the insanely hot UCLA chick; and Vince once again is living the good life after avoiding last season’s career implosion. Could next season be the swan song for “Entourage”? At least on the surface, things seem to be advancing toward the show’s Happily Ever After.
Of course, without question, that also includes Ari and his recent business opportunity. There’s a chance I could find an episode or three through the show’s first five seasons to rival Jeremy Piven’s performance tonight – the guy has three Emmy Awards for a reason – but they’d have to be damn good to top this one. It started in the counseling session with the always lovely Mrs. Ari when he finally admitted that he wanted to destroy Terence, Adam Davies and Lloyd with an absolute classic Ari rant, highlighted by this gem: “And I would sell that Benedict Arnold, Adam Davies, into white slavery if we lived in a place that had a market for it.” But he sealed the deal and convinced his wife to cough up the cash needed to secure his loan by saying, “Please, support me like you always have, and I will deliver for us like I always have.”
So with his loan locked up, Ari arrives to finalize his purchase only to find that Terence is now insisting that his agency retains its name after the sale, a request Ari doesn’t seem all that fond of when he storms out of the meeting shouting obscenities and saying the deal is off. Fortunately, Terence comes to see Ari at his office, which leads to a memorable teacher-pupil moment that not only once more shows us just how human Ari is underneath all of his bluster (the guy just wanted an apology) but also ushered in perhaps the episode’s finest moment when Ari issues his own apology to Lloyd before showing him his new office as a Miller-Gold agent. The feud between Ari and Lloyd was one of the season’s better storylines but I doubt it was anything that anyone really would have enjoyed to see stretched out for too long.
Of course, there’s no way I can wrap this up without mentioning Ari’s awesome paintball rampage and merciless firing of what he viewed as the dead weight in his new agency. “I represent ‘Jon & Kate Plus 8’!” Did that poor guy actually think that would save his ass? And did Adam Davies actually think Ari would show him mercy? Please. He forgave Terence but Davies wasn’t getting off that easily.
With the bow put on another season of “Entourage,” it’s only fitting to close with the question that closed the episode: Which one of the guys will be the next one to get married, now that E is on his way? Let’s hope nobody is next, if only because one married guy in the group would be more than enough. But that didn’t exactly seem like a throwaway exchange between Drama and Vince, so I wonder what might be in store for us next season. We’ve got plenty of time to ponder that now.
