None of you are annoyed by the fact that one of the major plot lines is nothing but an endless commercial? I cringe when they mention how great avion tequila is. Oh, you sure know hard liquor don't you Lloyd, and isn't avion just the best! Golly! Let's talk about it some more to give free advertising to the creator's best friend's new tequila label! What's that Mark Cuban? You've had your engineers design a hot new bottle that's going to rock the American tequila market? I don't mind product placement, but this is laying it on a little thick. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/how_entourage_got_tequila_Gr0zQcbEnOQmgjFX38MnzI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/how_ent ... gjFX38MnzI</a> Pardon me if this was mentioned in this thread already, didn't feel like reading through the whole thing.
I honestly had no idea. Now that I do know...can't say that I care all that much, especially since it was for a life long friend and wasn't an actual paid enodorsement. What is annoying the fuck out of me, though, is...well, all the plot lines except for Drama's. The biggest one being Ari/Amanda/the NFL. Like, what the fuck? First of all, Amanda threatens the shit out of Ari, then does nothing. Then her assistant leaks the story, enraging Mrs. Gold because everyone in the business he's basically ruling knows that the man she married, rules his business with an iron, insulting fist (still no idea why it shocked anyone). Then she calls him, repeatedly, and either doesn't mention or isn't asked by his assistant what she's calling about, ever, resulting in a cheesy 80's sit-com-feeling scene where he doesn't bother looking at who she's sitting with before launching into a tirade. Fucking really? Equally silly/poorly executed, but slightly less annoying, is Turtle's tequilla plot. Lemme know if I'm missing something, but basically: Senor Guy-Who-Played-the-Rooster-Fighting-Racketeer-on-Seinfeld asks Turtle to provide Vince. Turtle not only delivers Vince, but also one of the most famous billionaires in the world, who just happens to want to take care of Senor's production/distribution problem. All that, while far-fetched, I can buy in the Entourage world. What I can't buy is him absolutely dimissing the idea and not giving Mark fucking Cuban the time of day. Anything E-related is annoying too (minus Sloan, of course), but I've reached the point where I just kinda accept him as the tiny dude who works an hour or two per day. Vince and Sasha? Meh. They're cute enough together, I guess. Overall, I've been highly entertained this season, which is all I've ever asked of the show, so I'm not totally shitting on it. But goddamn does the Ari plotline piss me the fuck off.
This was bothering me too, but I thought they explained it pretty well towards the end of the last episode. Hector's older brother is the one with the controlling stake in the company while Hector manages the day-to-day operations of the company. If Hector's brother sees Avion blowing up and guys like Mark Cuban willing to throw $5 million into the company on a lark, it's gonna make him that much more likely to want to sell the company and leave Hector standing there with his dick in his hand. As for blowing off Cuban, I think it was a combination of the above, and being completely caught off guard by the whole meeting. I didn't find it very far-fetched at all once he explained the situation with his brother.
Absolutely. But that makes me buy it even less, because of how stupid that would make Hector. Are we to believe between Driver Girl telling Turtle about Hector/the business, and Hector having Turtle at his mansion for a weekend, the little fact of 'I don't really own this business I'm asking you to help promote' never came up at all? He wanted Turtle to get exposure. Now he doesn't want the exposure Turtle's bringing him. Even take Cuban out of the equation -- what was he going to do if Vince's celebrity alone attracted a lot of attention (which it basically was)? Did he think his Big Bad Brother wouldn't notice that? Putting Cuban back in the equation, he only threatened to buy the company after Hector was a dick about the money to build the factory...which Cuban was willing to front. As for being caught off guard with the meeting, that wouldn't have happened if he wasn't a dick to Turtle on the phone. I don't even see why he had to fly out there to begin with. I'm mostly just bitching for the sake of it, but this post has made me really dislike the word/name 'Hector'.
I call bullshit on any reason Amanda would want to include Ari on the NFL deal. It doesn't make sense in context of everything she has done. Hiring a mole to report on him? Threatening to spill the tapes? Effectively making it known that she wants to ruin him? And after all that, she wants to bring him into one of the biggest deals in LA? Not even believable for a minute. On the other hand, it only took seven seasons, but I finally found Adrian Grenier attractive at the end of the episode when Sasha basically called him a little bitch and he did something about it. I agree with whoever said that Grenier plays AssholeVince very well. Edit: I think you guys are talking about Carlos, by the way.
Good finale. It's nice to see E get all angry, as if he can do anything without other people's involvement - his only personal clients are his best friends, one of which only agreed to do his show because of his assistant and his rival is there for Vince more often than he is.
Horrible finale. As I said at the beginning of the thread, I didn't order HBO this year to watch entourage. Originally I was just doing it because I was a cheap bastard. But I would be really pissed if I had just paid them for "three months"** of that. This episode ended exactly like the fucking last one. No plot lines were resolved. At. All. -Ari's marriage is still in hot water -Turtle is still struggling to negotiate the tequila deal -Drama is on board to do the new pilot and still trying to fuck E's secretary -Vince is left to explain another bag of cocaine. -Vince is still in a downward spiral; No serious attempts have been made to correct that -Sloan still wears the pants in the relationship. *Yeah, HBO/Entourage ran the season for three months. But instead of showing one episode a week they just pulled out the season by skipping two weeks/episodes in order to attain three full months of membership from their subscribers. Cocksuckers. I think people are starting to see through their bullshit: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i29f492889037dafd750b9fe7c857c19b Showtime and Starz are gaining subscribers because they don't fucking suck. I wish Dexter and Breaking Bad were back so we could see some quality television. Yes, I will be ordering Showtime for Dexter. Dexter isn't an abortion and I'm happy to support it. All in all, it's not like I can say I'm surprised that the finale sucked. There's no reason to believe this episode would be any different than the rest of them.
I thought it was pretty good and even if it didn't answer every question and seemed like another mid season episode. I thought it was funny enough for me to go off and completely trash it like RBGG here. Im actually glad Vince has something going on in his life that isn't the huge tease they have given us so many times before. Theyve stayed away from the E/Sloan relationship the whole season, looks like theyll be focusing on that next season unfortunately. Drama killed in this episode talking about Interventions and later slugging Eminem? Turtle's plot line has been pretty pointless and Id be more pissed that it really was Doug Ellin plugging a friends brand so blatantly than HBO doing anything nefarious. Im also interested to see Ari deal with a possible divorce and his biggest clients Lindsey Lohan like fall from grace. And dude, other than Dexter Showtime has the shittiest programing this side of the 700 club. Shit Boardwalk Empire alone will make everything showtime has done look like a piece of shit in comparison.
That's why I'm only ordering it for Dexter. After that I'll cancel it. I don't have a subscription now and will not until the day of the Dexter premiere. That same day I will cancel it again.
Californication is at least as entertaining as Entourage, if not moreso because they've only just begun to run out of ideas. The season should have been at least another couple eps. I think we're seeing that, with newfound legal trouble, Vince may actual address the drug problem. I still don't get how Cuban's investment helps Turtle at all, yet they tried to forcefeed us that this issue has been resolved. Carlos still has the problem of Hector probably wanting to sell the company once he realizes it's expanding. The whole goddamn storyline makes no sense and to me paints Carlos as an inept businessman. He wanted a top 10 movie star to promote his product but has absolutely no way in hell to meet the resulting demand? Is E's assistant legitimately interested in Drama? She's not a good enough actress for me to figure out if she was just pushing him towards taking the show or if she's the one hot girl in Hollywood attracted to blatant outward insecurity. Oh, and the Ryan Howard and Drew Brees cameos were highly entertaining, but I would like to see more screen time for Eminem and nude screen time for Minka Kelly.
The episode was made for me by Drama and Eminem at the end. First of all, Scott telling E he wasn't tough and Drama pushing them aside and saying, "I'm tougher than both of you, so let's go!" cracked me up, mostly because he had a point. Then the ending with Vince calling out Eminem and him beating the shit out of him, that was just a beautiful scene. Vince has been asking for a beating forever for being such a retard fucking himself over again and again. I think the secretary is legitimately interested in Drama though. She has blown off every other advance but it looks like the writers are painting her to be one of those hot girls that loves a project. I think it'd be great if she started dating Drama, because he's the only character I feel any sympathy for on the show. Also, Ari is a typical rich man, thinking his pissed-off wife would want a huge party. I just hope they don't have him getting a divorce next season, because then there will be much less naked Mrs. Ari and also would destroy the only functioning relationship on the show. PS: Why is she so pissed off about him calling women whores anyway? When did she become so feminist? If I recall, she has always known he was like this and only now cares. Are the writers thinking that just because she's 40, it's not okay anymore?
Aside from Doug Ellin's admission that he's helping to promote a friend's product, the most annoying thing about the storyline was the whole notion that Mark Cuban is some kind of "maverick" (no pun intended) that would deal with a hanger-on like Turtle in the same way he'd deal with a legitimate businessman. It's hard enough to swallow on its merits, but when it comes wrapped in Cuban's try-too-hard camera mugging it's pretty grating. And your points about Carlos are right on the money, too. All of this episode's cameos felt forced, rushed, and ultimately wasted. Don't even get me started on the Kevin Love/Jordan Farmar "appearances"; I had to rewind the scene three times to be sure they were even there after Drama mentioned them at the hospital. The only highlight was Terrence basically mocking Pizza Boy at dinner by referencing the fact that his clients were mainly his own friends; Malcom McDowell deserves some kind of award for trying to talk about Eric's "potential" while making no effort to hide the fact that he's making an effort to keep from laughing. All in all, this was a shitty episode that brought an end to a very shitty season. I can only pray that the writers felt all this suck was necessary before bringing the series' story arc to a satisfying conclusion next summer.
Things I liked: Kevin Love's awesome and hilarious "Fuck Gravity" shirt. Eminem punching Vince in the face, and Vince subsequently getting pummeled. Minka Kelly Adrian Grenier not completely sucking as an actor when Vince is an asshole Billy Walsh being the new Billy Walsh John Cleese, so random, and his dialogue about his GF was priceless Minka Kelly Things I didnt like/hated: Ms. Ari's annoying shrew of a sister Vince's outburst making him seeing like a petulant teen E's entire existence and continue attempts to seem badass No real answers to anything Sloppy usage of Drew Brees Lack of nudity
I listen to Dan Patrick a lot in the afternoons and he likes to both expound upon the degeneration of Entourage into an overblown cash cow that cops to cameos and big storylines rather than incorporating them as well as to spoil the new episode I have DVR'd to watch later in the week. But hearing his take on the episodes before I see it colors my interpretation, and in a lot of ways I think he is right. The cameos are cool and everything, but what does Adrian Peterson bring to the table other than some racial diversity? And why can't they use the CHARACTER of an eccentric investor rather than Mark Cuban whose only acting ability is to act like a tool. The character arcs have gotten a bit ridiculous as well. First of all in what universe does Turtle get laid by anyone, let alone the broads they are hooking him up with? And how do you go from super stoner to budding entrepeneur after taking a couple classes at community college? And one day Vince is a happy go lucky pushover who worked his ass off to get back on top and then someone hurts his feelings calling him a pussy and he's so emotionally damaged he develops an addiction to coke and harry bushed women? Yeah Ari is the Archetypal douchebag in power, but during his rise he gains no self awareness? Where is his PR agent? And if his marriage is going to shit why doesn't he bang lizzy? She is a fox and definitely knows some moves in the sack I've never even heard of. E and Drama have the most palatable storylines as follows with the rest of the show, but I still fail to understand how they even got Emmanuelle Chriqui to put her face near Kevin Connoly's let alone pretend to have anal sex with him. Of course people and characters have to grow. The guy's are all at least 30 so their lives need to go places, but the show is called entourage and that's what it's about. So I think it's time they go out with a bang with the movie before they drag it to the point of spoiling its legacy like Shaq has been doing ever since he deemed himself the big cactus in Phoenix.
I agree with this, it would have been better to get a decent actor to play a character that can be written to be funny. Martin Landau's character comes to mind as a good character that was pulled off well for a short arc. Shit in my life Ive seen fatter, stonier, bigger losers get laid by hot chicks without help from being friends with major movie stars. They of coarse had much better personalities than Turtle but his connections nullify that need in LA. Plus how much helpful input has Turtle really had outside of his connections with Vince dealing with Avion? If you listen to him talk about the sure thing business plan it sounds about right for a guy with little to no formal education or real world business experience. It was set off more by the stunt accident, not the best idea but not out of the realm of possibility. I don't know if you've dealt with people that have issues with hard drugs but it can be that easy to set them off, even if they have little or no personal history of drug use. Ari has changed the least through out the series. I personally haven't like his character's MO for a while, trying to find a new combination of swear words for everything that pissed him off just got tiring for me. I agree that his curse laden business style biting him in the ass is cheap. On the other hand he has NEVER been anything but a family man. If he started fucking someone outside of his marriage his character would be ruined and their would be no reason to like him more than any of the other slime balls in the business on the show. I can't be the only one that thinks Emmanuelle Chriquiuiuia is a tad over rated no? Does she have a combination of looks that puts her in the top 1 percent? Sure. I don't think she cracks the top ten TV stars though. And in my very own "sharp knees" moment, I can't over her upper arms being so damn fucking long. It's like she's got orangutan arms. Definitely would not hit.
Fairly entertaining episode to end a fairly entertaining season is about the most I could say about it. The only thing I full out liked in terms of plot is what they did with Drama this season. The Turtle story line was...whatever. I actually started caring about Vince's plot as it went on (what a horrible actor though...still don't get how he seems to have gotten worse the more he plays the character). And this is the least I've been annoyed by Eric in a while. What kills me though, is the incomprehensible story they forced upon my favourite character. First of all, the Amanda thing was ridiculous. But as the Ari/Mrs. Gold stuff unfolded, they made it clear that the women-bashing comments specifically pissed her off...to the point of divorce. Fucking seriously? He openly said many misogynistic things in front her over the entire series, along with many other insensitive slurs, all done in jest (albeit angrily). This has been common knowledge for her/everyone who knows him since the beginning. There was no new 'side' to him she just found out about. The story that got leaked was just one example of what he's always been: a ruthless businessman who says vulgar (some would say hilarious) things. When her troglodyte hermit-dyke sister said "Oh, so you just call women whores, you just don't fuck them?" I wanted to scream "Fucking yes! You crack-head donkey witch. That's the fucking point." Ari has always been an insensitive prick when it comes to business, and the best husband/father he could be when it comes to his family. Nothing about that changed this season, and yet he lost out worse than any other character. Fucking weak, and very unbelievable. Also: Yes, you are. Uh, come again? You're saying she's in the top 1% of...actors? Women? Earthlings? But also not in the top ten TV stars? What fucking shows are you watching that have nine hotter women? (I'm seriously asking because I wanna see) Oh yeah, bud? You're rolling in so much regular-armed pussy that you would kick this out of bed? Props, I guess.
The sharp knees comment was an over the top reference to the internet meme. I stand by my over rated statement though. Half of Barkers Beauties have sexier bodies than her and that is just before noon.
Emmanuelle Chriqui is one of the few actresses in Hollywood that looks just as good or better in person as she does on screen. I spent some time with her at a Spurs/Lakers game a few years ago and her figure is amazing; she's petite and thin, but not unhealthily skinny. In fact, her only real unattractive quality is the tool she's married to (or was, at the time).
I just watched the finale again to confirm my initial reaction. And it did. Awful. Well, to be fair, it predictably ended story lines we all saw coming from a mile away. I guess for me what made 'Entourage' so great was it truly captured friendships between guys. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but it's a sad state of affairs when the only character I like anymore is Drama. Fortunately 'Eastbound and Down,' 'Bored to Death,' and hopefully 'Boardwalk Empire' will keep me watching HBO. To the writers of Entourage: pull a Bob Newhart (or Dallas) and start next season with Vinnie waking up from a dream. I can't think of any other way to undo the damage done by this season. Blech.