Entourage Returns To Queens Blvd

Five seasons of success and living the dream have turned into bitterness, uncertainty, and one really bad pun: Vince returns to Queens to see if home is where the part is. When the chips are down, Vince has a tendency to fall apart, and part of me expected that to happen in the worst way. It happens in almost every season, and it certainly happened again in this one. Those meltdowns are what give the show its namesake; as much as Vinnie rolls with ease into fame and hot women, he'd be nothing but another whiny ass star witout his Entourage to get him through the toughest times.

Vince (and the others, except for Turtle):

Unemployed movie stars act a lot like unemployed regular Joes: they stay up all night and get hammered with their boys. Vinnie's mom makes another inspired appearance, getting on his and Eric's case about finding jobs and doing the typical mom routine of butting in about a new Gus Van Sant movie their filming in New York. Eric tries to reach out to the strange director, even though Ari calls it a lost cause.

After a barbecue with the whole neighborhood (and a totally forgettable love interest for Vince named Kara, who might figure into the next season), E decides to be the pushy manager he was born to be and waits hours at Van Sant's office just to give him some clips of Vince. Ari does his best to help. Then, they wait.

In the morning after E's epic effort, Van Sant calls up Vince and turns him down. Long story short, Vince flips out and projects all of his failure woes on E before firing him. E tells Vince to go fuck himself and returns to California. All seems lost.

Inexplicably, Johhny Drama buys a bar.

Then, here comes the SPOILER. Then, at the eleventh hour, Ari pulls up out of a taxi like a Gold angel. He hands Vince a cell phone with Martin Scorcese and a new lead role as Nick Carraway in a Great Gatsby remake on the other end. Vince and E make up, God is back in his Heaven, and all is right in the Entourage galaxy. I guess that isn't really much of spoiler, because we wouldn't have it any other way.

Turtle:

Strangely enough, Turtle's subplot far outshines the semi-thrilling drama of Vince's next job and same old reconciliation with E for two reasons: Jamie Lyn Sigler's dirty mouth and Turtle's mother. As far as minor characters on the show go, she initiates some of the funniest damn moments of a rather lackluster season for comedy. She is the pitch-perfect, ball-busting East Coast Italian mother. One very short scene that revolves around a Jamie Lyn/Turtle phone convo just may be the very best of the entire season. The finale is worth seeing it just for that.

Recap:

It took a few years, but I was happy to see a whole season in which Vince really did squirm a little bit. Any Entourage viewer has to know, though, that things will usually work out well with him in the end. As much as we love to see stars fail (e.g. TMZ and all those other godawful tabloids your girlfriend reads), our hater-ade usualy runs out before quench our thirst to live the good life vicariously through Vince and the guys. Time will tell if any of the blatantly dropped plot lines--Drama's girlfriend and Andrew Klein to name the two main ones--will ever reemerge or if Turtle will keep dating Jamie Lyn. But we can take heart in the fact that Ari will keep chewing people out, E might make something of himself, and Vince is still sort of employed.

At least we can hope for more dirty talk with Jamie Lyn.