Apparently, Amanda was just interested in teaming up with Ari to bring an NFL team to Los Angeles, but now that opportunity is gone for good. It definitely wasn’t Ari’s proudest moment, but I’m sure he’ll survive. Of course, the suggestion that Amanda would suddenly be willing to work with Ari after threatening to ruin him only a few episodes ago seems ludicrous in and of itself. I mean, why the sudden change of heart? It’s not like they were ever friends, and Amanda clearly still isn’t over Ari’s sabotage of the Warner Brothers gig that ultimately went to Dana Gordon.

Simply put, it would never happen, though I am warming up to the idea of Drama doing “Johnny’s Bananas.” I still feel like Drama takes the craft of acting a little too seriously to consider voicing a character on an animated show, but after a series of conversations with Eric’s secretary, Jenny – where we not only learned that the job would only take an hour or two a week to record, but that his condo has been foreclosed – it makes sense that Drama would finally decide to do the show, even if he is selling out as a result. It’s just a shame he didn’t come to that conclusion a little earlier, because it looks like Phil put a lot of effort in creating that presentation.

And speaking of indecision, the Avion tequila soap opera rolls along as Turtle hits yet another road block when Carlos lectures him about being left in the dark about the Mark Cuban situation. He wants Turtle to sign a nondisclosure agreement to prevent him from talking to anyone about the company until Carlos decides what he wants. But that’s exactly the problem: Carlos doesn’t seem to know what he wants. Though Turtle has lined up a reliable investor in Cuban – who’s not only willing to front the $5 million to build the factory, but also has plenty of ideas about how to take it to the next level – Carlos gets overly protective, insisting he set his own terms. Instead, Cuban tells Carlos that he’s just going to sidestep him and buy the business outright, and since it’s technically not Carlos’ company (something about an older brother), he can’t do anything about it. I don’t know why Turtle’s upset, though. Cuban will probably still hook him up with some sort of finder’s fee (or even keep him on board as a business partner) and it’s not like he didn’t do his best to help Carlos make Avion popular. If anything, he almost did his job a little too well.

Meanwhile, Vince’s cocaine-fueled bender continues to affect his relationship with Eric after he’s unable to promise Sasha a part in “Airwalkers,” leading Vince to go straight to the source instead. Surprisingly, new director Peter Berg doesn’t take much convincing, and he casts her in a role that could grow in future sequels. But when Vince tells Sasha the good news, he doesn’t get the response he was hoping for. Although she’s understandably excited, she still plans to do the adult film, despite what she may or may not have promised Vince. And worse yet, one of the guys in the gangbang is her ex-fiancé. So what does Vince do? He tells her that he loves her, of course, no doubt in a last-ditch plea for her not to do the movie. Watching his girlfriend having sex with strangers will be the least of his worries, though, after Lloyd discovered his hidden stash in the house. I’ve heard of dime bags before, but Vince was storing his blow in a gallon-sized freezer bag. That’s not a drug problem – it’s a crisis.

Unfortunately, it looks like that’s where the writers may be going after Billy Walsh suggests that Drama isn’t attractive enough to star in his own show, but has the kind of voice that could headline an animated series. It’s all part of his plan to reignite his own career with the help of Eric, who he believes can get him back into the business the same way he did with Vince. But while he may have gone straight since the “Medellin” debacle (to the point that he’s completely sober, doesn’t swear, and is now an ordained minister), this might just be his craziest idea yet. Drama may be desperate, but why in the world would he want to settle for a cartoon after spending the better part of his adult life trying to make it in Hollywood? He’d be much better off just acting on stage, and would probably make more money doing it. Voice acting can certainly be a lucrative career for some, but Drama believes too much in the craft of acting, and it would be a major disservice to his character to suddenly abandon that philosophy.

At least Turtle’s love life is on an upswing of sorts after he finally scores with Alex, although it didn’t exactly start out great. In fact, Turtle tells the other guys that their first night together was a complete disaster after he got so freaked out from seeing Alex’s bald nether regions that he didn’t perform to his best. Alex thinks that it was Turtle’s first time (though he quickly assures her it was not) and decides to give him a second chance, which goes much better than the first. Of course, as Vince’s friend, it’s hard to imagine that Turtle has never seen (or been with) a girl who was completely shaved, so I didn’t really buy the storyline at all. Then again, it’s also hard to believe that Turtle would be so stupid to think it would be a good idea to post videos to Vince’s Twitter account of him and Sasha Grey positively smashed on his tequila.

And as it turns out, it has major repercussions when Dana Gordon contacts Ari with concerns about making Vince the star of Warner Brothers’ new franchise. It’s a deal potentially worth $100 million across three movies, but only if Vince can prove that his recent behavior isn’t going to be a problem. Ari promises that it won’t, but that’s going to be hard sell after he walks out to discover Vince passed out by his pool. Mixing Vicodin with all that tequila probably wasn’t such a great idea, but with Ari knee-deep in his own problems, and Eric trying to make his own millions with Scotty Lavin, there’s no one around to play babysitter to Vince anymore.

Eric would certainly be disappointed if Vince somehow manages to screw this up, but Ari doesn’t even have time to worry about it now that Lizzie is considering suing for sexual harassment/general harassment/being just a really lousy boss. Not only would it hurt his image, but his lawyer assures him that if it went to court, win or lose he would lose his deal with the NFL. Fortunately, Ari discovers that Lizzie has no intention of suing him (she wants to be successful on her own, despite her new boss’ thirst for revenge), but she still sent recordings of his sexist rants to Deadline Hollywood. Who knows what kind of ramifications this is going to have on the agency, but it looks like the NFL deal is pretty much dead in the water unless Ari can somehow save face. And if there’s one thing Ari Gold is good at, it’s coming out on top. Lizzie’s not going to like what comes next.

Sasha may be classier than she looks, but Drama and Scotty Lavin most certainly are not, launching into a discussion about anal sex that results in Eric confessing he’s never tried it. Scotty claims that Eric needs to do it at least once before he gets married, and Drama agrees (“You kidding? Vagina’s my third favorite hole.”), but when Eric mentions the idea to Sloan, she reminds him that they did try it once… unsuccessfully. That didn’t stop them from trying again, however, but just as Eric suspected, he likes her vagina. It was a rare comedic twist in the relationship that was sorely needed, because up until now, the writers have made Eric’s decision to marry Sloan seem like a bad thing. And if you’ve seen her recently (or heard the actress that plays her talk about all of her awesome qualities in that promo HBO has been airing recently), then you know that it’s not.

Getting back to Vince, while it may have seemed a bit unprofessional to bring Sasha with him to his meeting with Stan Lee and Randall Wallace, I don’t think it should have had anything to do with the fact that she was a porn star. Granted, I can understand their caution about working with young actors who turn out to be the latest fuck-up of the month, but if they hadn’t been so prudish about Sasha’s career, then Vince probably wouldn’t have acted like a giggly little child. The fact that he mixed some of Turtle’s tequila with a Vicodin certainly didn’t help, but I’d be more concerned about him getting addicted to pain meds (or looking like an ass as the face of some tequila) than losing out on a job because he’s dating a porn star. And from the looks of things, Vince is about to go 2-for-2 in that area.

All is still not well in Drama’s camp, either. After freaking out upon hearing that John Stamos still hasn’t called back about the script, Drama nearly has another panic attack when he learns that Bob Saget is trying to steal his role. It certainly doesn’t help that Saget and Stamos are old friends, or that the network actually prefers Saget over Drama, but when Drama learns that the part was never actually written for him as he was led to believe, he seems to just throw in the towel. Hopefully that’s not the end of Drama’s search for a new show, but I have to imagine that if Phil is still fighting for him at the network, then there’s a good chance he’ll get it when all is said and done. Who knows? Maybe Stamos will drop out and Drama will take over his part.

I’ve been right before – as early as last week, when I suggested that if Lizzie was working in cahoots with anyone to get revenge on Ari, it would probably be Amanda Daniels. Granted, it took an entire episode of prodding clients about who was backing Lizzie before Amanda herself called Ari to proclaim war, but this is definitely a nice little twist for the season. Though Ari succeeded in holding on to some of his star clients (including Mike Tyson, Jessica Simpson and Aaron Sorkin) for the time being, he might have to take a more hands-on approach to his agency if he hopes to keep them. I can’t imagine he’ll be able to follow through on Tyson’s idea of a black “Brady Bunch,” but I am curious to see if anything comes of this Sorkin/Simpson business. It’s hard to imagine Simpson doing a dramatic acting role, or someone as well-regarded as Sorkin to actually write it for her, but we’ve certainly seen crazier things on the show.

The fun didn’t stop there, either, as Drama was challenged to a second match later in the episode at the ping pong club where Stamos trains three times a week. Stamos even promises Drama that he’ll do the show if he can beat him, but it didn’t matter, because even though Stamos won, he still agreed to read the script. Of course, Drama claims that he threw the match on purpose, but does anyone really buy that? I know Phil told him that he needed to stroke Stamos’ ego by letting him win, but with such big stakes on the line, it seems like too big of a gamble for Drama to take. Plus, he’s just as arrogant as Stamos, so I guess we’ll never know.

At least we have one less rivalry to keep track of now that Eric and Scotty Lavin have made amends. Though it certainly took them long enough to man up and apologize to one another for being dicks, Eric had no choice after he discovered that the “Airwalker” script that Scotty was pushing him to read was actually pretty good. Even Vince likes it, describing it as a darker version of “Aquaman,” so it looks like that’s going to be his next project. And perhaps with no copyrights to worry about, we’ll actually see him in costume this time around. While that should make for an interesting subplot for next season’s premiere, the story I’m more curious about how Eric and Scotty’s new partnership develops. We haven’t seen Murray at all this season, so it’ll be interesting to see what he thinks of their plans for the future, or better yet, if Scotty is just playing Eric for his own benefit.

On the other side of town, a rivalry continues to blossom between Ari and Lizzie as she leaves TMA for supposedly greener pastures. Though Ari tries to part with her on good terms, all Lizzie has on her mind is revenge. And when Ari gets a frenzied call from Andrew Klein in rehab relaying news that she’s stealing clients, everyone in the office is sent scrambling to find out what agency she’s joined that has the cajones to mess with Ari. My money is on Amanda Daniels, so expect to see Carla Gugino reemerge at some point before the end of the season. Still, even if Lizzie manages to nab a few star clients, Ari’s dreams of bringing an NFL team to LA seem closer to reality after his pitch to potential investors went resulted in big checks being signed. On a side note: Ari’s new assistant, Jake, is really starting to grow on me, but where has Lloyd been all this time?

I’d rather see more of him than Turtle, whose storyline continues to be a plague on this otherwise excellent season. I know I complain about it every week, but I just don’t see where it’s going. His business trip to Mexico may not have been as shady as I predicted, but while the tequila that Carlos Javier is hocking may be legit, the idea of putting Vince’s name (and face) on it just sounds incredibly tacky. Turtle definitely feels like he’s being exploited, but for some reason, he decides to stick around to visit the factory. I still don’t have a very good feeling about this, and if Vince gets involved (which he will, because he’s stupid like that), it might hurt his career in the long run. Then again, it wouldn’t be a season of “Entourage” without Vince’s career in the crosshairs.