Five-Legged Iguana

ENTOURAGE
Season 5 Episode 2
“Unlike A Virgin”
Written by Doug Ellin
Directed by Mark Mylod


Now this is more like it.
After a passable opener, we get an episode that establishes this season’s narrative thrust: Vince’s comeback.
There’s a great scene in here towards the half-hour’s end, where Vince visits Ari’s office, and realizes that even Ari doesn’t think he’s a good actor (yet), but acknowledges that he can be a big movie star, if he only plays the Hollywood game.
And Vince is ready to play, if only to get another chance to rise above the Medellin fiasco.
And this sudden flip in his mindset puts his decision to so publicly leave a paparazzi-laden event with Justine Chapin on his arm in a very interesting light.


Yes, Leighton Meester—having been saddled with the suffix “of Gossip Girl fame” in the time since she was last on Entourage—is back, in an episode filled to the brim with guest shots, so much so that Meester and legend Tony Bennett actually get lost in the mix.
The other names that make this installment a solid winner include Mark Wahlberg (been awhile since the Pilot), who plays a cool scene on the golf course with Ari, the always sizzling Carla Gugino, and Lukas Haas and Giovanni Ribisi as screenwriter brothers L.B. and Nick, who E is thinking of representing, after having read their script, Nine Brave Souls.


While the rekindled fire under Vinnie’s a$$ is fantastic (he’s actually reading scripts now!), Drama continues to grate, his subplots always resorting to the overplayed “Drama sabotages himself” riff.
Now, his laptop relationship with Jacqueline (cute in the season opener) implodes after he lies to her about his whereabouts, then goes off the deep end when he imagines all sorts of scenarios when she doesn’t answer her phone.
I’m really hoping the show finds something more fresh to do with Drama, because I’d much rather see him just hanging about (as Turtle seems to be doing lately), than running through variations of the same subplot over and over again…
Oh, and where is Mrs. Ari?


(Images courtesy of hbo.com.)