Monday, April 23, 2007


ENTOURAGE
Season 3
Episode 13
(WARNING:
SPOILERS)
“Less Than 30”

After, what, a four month break, the boys are back, and look who their new hottie agent is: Amanda, played by Carla Gugino!
And speaking of breaks, that’s sort of the way Vince and Ari are acting, as if they were once an item and now they’re on the outs. (E makes an interesting point: outside of Mrs. Chase and the guys, Ari’s is the longest relationship/friendship Vince has had.)
All this tension (and yes, jealousy) comes to a head when, ostensibly as a birthday gift, Ari gives Vince the script for Medellin (which was once a bone of contention in light of the Aquaman franchise; of course, Benicio Del Toro ended up with Medellin, and Vince was passed over for Aquaman 2). Amanda’s understandably annoyed by that, and Ari makes his pitch at Vince’s party.
It’s a great scene, where it’s pretty clear that beneath all the agent schmooze, this is really just a friend reaching out to another, hoping to salvage the relationship. And the thing is, with Ari, his friendship with Vince is all wrapped up and intertwined with their being agent and client. (Perhaps not the best set-up, but there you have it.)
And though Vince says all they really can be at this point is friends, he holds back on signing a deal to make an Edith Wharton adaptation with Sam Mendes, just to see if the whole Medellin thing pans out the way Ari claims it will.

Parting shot: It’s too bad the Carla Gugino-headlined Threshold was cancelled. One of the Lost clones to storm the network schedules in 2005, Threshold was a great X-Files throwback I enjoyed.
Maybe that was its downfall, though. Classic case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If it had come out during the whole X-Files boom, it would have been a rip-off. In 2005, when it premiered, it was probably a little too late, given that the boom had already gone bust. (Invasion—another show I enjoyed—was a fresher and more involving approach to the X-Files idea of aliens among us, but even that couldn’t get past its freshman year.)

(Image courtesy of aol.com.)

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