Tonight, on this episode of Cameo: The Series: John Cleese! Ryan Howard (and some other guy, who may or may not have been famous)! Drew Brees! Christina Aguilera! Lyla Garrity! Eminem punching Vince in the fucking face!
Steve Heisler was so worried about Entourage’s beloved ensemble that he couldn’t bear to cover the finale. I suspect he’s curled up in a ball in his new apartment in Brooklyn, silently weeping because Christina Aguilera’s so-on-the-nose-it’ll-require-reconstructive-surgery performance of “You Lost Me” sent him over the emotional edge. Steve, I’m here for you, buddy.
After Season 6, when literally nothing happened with Vincent Chase, Entourage dove into the darkness on this season’s back stretch and actually found some emotional traction. Granted, it was via an obvious trope, but with Entourage, you take your victories, however small.
The last episode teed up tonight’s many confrontations: Vince vs. his friends and family, Ari vs. Mrs. Ari, Turtle vs. Mark Cuban’s Jaw. For a show that has specialized in spinning its wheels, these were surprisingly high stakes. Would this episode actually avoid Entourage’s signature tidy resolutions?
Let’s dispense with the one that had the lowest stakes first: Does anyone care about Turtle and his tequila? I’m not even sure what the resolution was; it doesn’t look like Cuban’s going to buy out the company. That story arch collapsed at the finish line, propelled only by its inertia and cameos by sports stars. Assuming Entourage gets renewed and returns next summer, will anyone remember this?
Adrien Grenier’s Vincent Chase is nominally the center of the Entourage universe, but it’s no secret that he’s the least interesting person on the show. And he’s generally considered the weakest actor among a low-wattage cast. (Don’t believe me? Check out his moribund IMDB page.) Season 7 offered him a chance to flex some dramatic muscle, with mixed results. The hopelessly cliché story arc did him no favors. The drug-fueled downfall of a Hollywood star is pop-culture folklore at this point; Entourage rehashed the usual plot points without offering any original spin on them—unless you count tying them to another cliché, the porn-star bad girl enabler, as originality. No, you can’t do that when Entourage followed that story arc down the path of predictability: Vince can’t handle his famous adult-film star girlfriend banging dudes in adult films! “If you cared about me, you wouldn’t do this movie,” Vincent says on the set of Sasha’s new movie (apparently titled The Cumback), lifting a line from The Big Book Of Hollywood Clichés.
Vince’s downfall was telegraphed early in this season, so his angry confrontations with everyone tonight felt anticlimactic. Who didn’t see where things were headed when the room-service guy mentioned the Eminem party? (I’ll say this: I didn’t expect to see Minka Kelly telling off Vince, so that’s a bonus I guess.) The last scene of the episode had a grim air of inevitability, and not in a good way. We all knew this was coming, and I think we’re all ready to move on.
For at least three seasons, Jeremy Piven’s Ari Gold has Entourage’s only interesting character, so it wasn’t surprising that the finale’s real emotional center lay in the potential dissolution of his marriage. The anger on Perrey Reeves’ face in episode nine presaged it, to the point that I was shocked to see the two of them more or less behaving normally at their son’s little-league game early in the episode. I couldn’t believe she was speaking to him, especially when he chided her, “Some of these people saw you let me walk out of that place alone!”