I just want to say right now before we go any further that I could not be happier that the newest of the "Critically Acclaimed Smash Hits HBO Original Series" commercials has stopped with that ghoulish Forrest Gump shit. I understand that you are marketing a single brand, I get that. It makes sense to have all of your characters juxtaposed in some way -- this is why some of my comics from the '80s have ads with, like, C-3PO and Punky Brewster hanging out with the Smurfs and, I don't know, those creepy head-in-a-box Max Headroom things from Pole Position. Hell, it's why Power Pack hung out with Cloak and Dagger, if you think about it. I get it. But the whole edited together with ragged edges thing gives me the fucking creeps. So thanks, HBO, for cleverly editing individual lines of dialogue from your "CA$H Original Series" for these new commercials. It's smart and it's funny.
And also? We get it. And you're right. Chances are, if we like The Sopranos, or say we do, we'll similarly like Six Feet Under, or say we do in the exact same tone, and either way you win, but it's not really advertising, in that you already have my twelve bucks for this month. You could just show me a shot of me getting hit in the head with a bag of bricks that don't make any damn sense, mixed in with scenes from Carnivale, for example, and make the same point: "This is like that, but it's all HBO." Just don't put Uncle Paulie at a poker table to Doc Holliday with a weird buzzing line one pixel thick between them and expect me not to get icked out.
Still no closer to figuring out who sings that awful "Superhero" song with the canned guitar and the stupid echo. The yellow Hummer That [HEARTS] Cock rolls up into The House With Just The One Bathroom. Turtle seems to have made friends with Arnold the Drug Dog -- not to mention the beat, as he rocks out to some rap, which is what the kids were into back in 1985 when this was written. The camera swings to follow them into the house, desperate to find a reason to have filmed this driving-up scene in the first place, and settles on a big lion statue at the front door. Because any true rags-to-riches story involves Doric columns and a big lion statue. But really it's so we'll be surprised by the sudden intrusion of Kevin Dillon's voice talking about his vagina before the camera gets to the kitchen. That's right, I said it. His vagina is "a shell, a round pink tender shell, opening and closing and opening." Please feel sorry for me. And please don't watch Entourage. It's bad for your health! Of course, yes, Kevin's reading lines from The Vagina Monologues, which as we all know was inspired by an amusing collision involving the chocolate of "The Famous Ghost Monologues," the peanut butter of how dumb this show is, and those ladies in the red hats and purple dresses (a.k.a. Your Mom), which ladies would be about as timely and hip to joke about as The Vagina Monologues, here where I am writing from. In 2004.
Eric walks in -- Hi, Eric! -- and demands to know why Kevin Dillon is telling their breakfast about his vagina. Kevin Dillon responds that he and "Faustino" -- and see, right away you can see the whole thing, where this is going, it's like you have mental powers, it's like standing at the veeeery top of a veeeery tall pile of garbage -- are going to be performing it together in acting class. And they keep talking, so you think the one joke they have in each scene is to come, but it's not. Because the joke is that Kevin Dillon and David Faustino are in acting class together, right? Hilarious, right? And they're performing The Vagina Monologues, okay? Isn't that funny? No? But they keep talking anyway. "I thought that was for girls," Eric needlessly points out. "It's a gender reversal exercise, bro," Kevin Dillon pointlessly answers. "I thought you already had your gender reversed," Eric giggles. And I'd like to point out again that there's way too much...stuff, for these boys to act with, in the kitchen. Every time they go in that room it's like the Cirque de Soleil with the amount of activity that goes into making coffee or Unspecified Breakfast Foods or walking around or whatever. Like the entire kitchen is this spinning, mechanical, 13 Ghosts kind of kitchen where everything is about to spring to life and dance around weirdly and start singing some Disney kind of welcoming song. Which to Vince, with his obvious drugs vs. reality problems, it usually is.
Speak of the movie star. He walks into the kitchen, clearly having begun this conversation in another part of the house, where there are not people, to tell "E" that he's decided they're "going with the Benz." Eric doesn't believe him, because Vince doesn't make decisions, just forces him into impossible situations where he has to make the decision and get burned by it. But no, this time Vince means it, because he had a dream about it. No wonder other people control your life. Because see, number one, you are making a huge purchase based on a dream you had, and number two? You dream about shopping for cars. The same cars you are shopping for in your actual, semi-waking life. You are an idiot and a creep. And to prove that I am right, Kevin Dillon also dreamed about it last night. Great. "We're cruising down Rodeo, suddenly two jerk-offs pull up and say, 'Hey Chase brothers! Fuck your mother!' and then opened fire." So they share a mother? And they have two different fathers. I get that, because in TV World that just means you're poor trash, and we already knew that. So but how was it that they thought they were cousins until high school? I can wank a million different scenarios here, but none of them makes sense unless everybody got remarried immediately, and that still doesn't make sense, because that would mean one of the dads would have to marry the mom's sister in order for the grandparents to work out correctly. Kids don't get that stuff because they don't care, so screw it. Basically, it seems, this Time Out was necessary for me to realize that Kevin Dillon is, in fact, both my mother and my sister. ["Oh my God, he's mine too!" -- Sars] Eric jerks me back to reality by pointing out that this was a fantastical dream of the highest order, since someone actually recognized Kevin Dillon. I would hasten to point out that the thing these guys did upon recognizing Kevin Dillon, however, was to open fire on him, which serves to make it more realistic.
Kevin starts shoveling something, some kind of food the preparation of which involves running around the kitchen island and doing jumping jacks and building small mountains out of mashed potatoes and making spirit fingers and jazz hands and "pretty feet," onto Vince's plate, and telling him how much he'll like it. Eric makes coffee for the third time in this scene while doing Pilates on the kitchen island. Vince bitches because he senses that Kevin Dillon has prepared the mysterious food with soy milk, to which Kevin Dillon responds in a very funny, no-nonsense fashion, "You're lactose intolerant, Vince. Don't fight it." Maybe it's Kevin Dillon's deadpan presentation, the "pretty feet" of it all, but I laugh, completely ignoring the fact that the elephant doing reverse crunches in the banana hammock is saying, "Lactose intolerance is the dead IBS horse of five years ago! It's not funny anymore! It wasn't really ever that funny!" Turtle oozes into this whirling, gyrating breakfast spectacle with, like, two stone of laundry and dry cleaning -- which I guess the big lion out front must have grabbed for him, since he utterly was not carrying it in that pointless opening scene -- yelling to Vince how "they got the stains out of your X," where "X" is equal to "any random blingish fashion line that proves they have a grip of cash on hand but everyone has heard of," and in this case is equal to "black Dolces." And he brandishes some dry-cleaned shirts, so I guess we're talking about either several stained shirts or a pair of pants I cannot discern because they're moving too fast because we're in the kitchen. "And I only got you nine iPods because they ran out." They ran out? Of iPods? Were you trying to buy them last year? Were you trying to buy them at the dry cleaner's? Eric, eyes on the prize, stops juggling swords and goldfish bowls long enough to ask if Turtle picked up "the trades," which he did, and which, he warns us, are not pretty. He tells everyone straight up that some "fucking prick" called Vince a thespian. I throw up my hands in despair. Then I just throw up.
Eric confirms what I thought last week, that Head On is a "by-the-numbers crime thriller," which makes me wonder why that wasn't Vince's "artistic bar mitzvah." Although if it was like one of those "by-the-numbers crime thrillers starring Ashley Judd," I can see why you're still not a man, artistically speaking. Eric continues: "Vincent Chase is guilty of fraud." Kevin Dillon laughs at this, because "fuck critics," because critics made fun of him when Viking Quest aired, and ended up going a whole 22-episode season. And I laughed again, because: Viking Quest. One thing I do love is the acknowledgement of actors, on this show and in real life, that the stuff they do is sometimes stupid. It's like, it's a job, you know? It's nice to see them laugh. My favorite, favorite thing, though, is when actors on science fiction shows have to walk that balance and pretend to be "serious actors who are so far above it" while still making half their income from convention appearances and ghost-written science fiction novels. No way, man. Give me like Ben Browder any day, who can out-geek the geekiest FarScape fan while still looking like a fucking supermodel in Those Leather Pants. No, I mean it. Give me Ben Browder.
"This fly-by-night pretty boy, who has been tapped as the 'It' Actor of the moment, makes walking and talking seem so difficult that by the end, you wish someone would just let the man rest." Word. Oh, we're talking about the pretend movie. Never mind. "At least he said I was pretty," Vince says somewhat unnecessarily, and lest we forget for five seconds that Kevin Dillon's character is flatter than Lindsay Lohan circa twenty minutes ago, he chimes in: "All the Chase men are pretty." To which I say: I wish this part were being played by Daniel Baldwin, because it would make that joke even more uproarious. Turtle calls him a beauty queen because he's ugly and has a vagina that is like a round, pink, tender shell. Ew, I just threw up a little and it's my own fault. Don't you hate it when you make yourself throw up using only your mind? Eric asks if Vince is okay with having just learned the self-evident and completely obvious fact that he is an exceedingly expensive piece of beautiful Heywood-Wakefield furniture, and Vince is, of course, unaffected by it. Turtle pipes up that we shouldn't listen to critics because we are "a fucking star." To which Vince responds, and I wish I were lying when I say this, but he says, "True knockin'." I'm sorry I had to tell you that. It's my job!
Hey, L.A. people? Do people say true knockin'? Because I'm willing to file it under "they say that in Sunnydale" catchphrasery, and I'd prefer to, because it makes the writers gianter assclowns, but if people do say this (or did back in aught-one when this shit was written) it's the kind of thing I'll need to know before I move to Hollywood to become a big fucking movie star. I've got a notebook with pictures of Brad Pitt scotch-taped to the cover where I carry all my Hollywood dreams and poems and collages and there's a lexicon section in there called The Pimsleur Program: Parvenu but so far all it says is, "That's hot."
So they have to meet with Ari now, and I'm happy, but first Vince offers to help Kevin Dillon with his scene and Kevin Dillon refuses on the basis that Vince is a "no-talent pretty boy" and they're kind of cute and believable and Vince tosses him the finger. At Ari's office, which is totally awesome, and where everybody is color-coordinated to the office walls and furniture, including the Funky Bunch -- except for Turtle, who clashes of course -- we see a girl. And this girl is a self-proclaimed virgin and a pop star, but we don't know that yet, we just see her walking toward the Funky Bunch with her own Funky Bunch and I get really excited in the slo-mo of it all, because what if there was an ugly older half-sister and a saintly best friend and a total skank in her entourage and then they'd be like Britney and the Chipettes to our guys, and I start singing "The Boys/Girls of Rock & Roll" from The Chipmunk Adventure because that's the best movie, like, ever. Oh, I forgot to tell you, this week I'm nine. So but instead of busting out and having a rock-off in the Parthenon, or at least an angry dance-off at The Lounge, they walk past each other and then Vince and the Chipette turn back and look at each other like they're Queer As Folk and then the Funky Bunch have a two-hour conversation about how much of a virgin she is or is not. Also, Turtle has given the Tribbiani Tribute to every single woman in this entire building but we all know he doesn't really care how they're doin' and it's like, so fake. Where's Ari?
Anna Stern! I love you, Anna Stern! I love you, Samaire Armstrong, you were so great on Freaks & Geeks! Run, Anna Stern! …Too late. Anna offers some brutally bullshit exposition about how her dad is from Flushing but she isn't and that means it's like total fate to meet these boys who are also, like her dad but not like her, from Queens. Eric is instantly in love because he's this show's shitty approximation of Seth Cohen in many, many ways, but without interests or wit, and that's what Anna does best. She offers them a drink and they all ask for water except for Kevin Dillon, who asks for Welch's Grape so that she will remember him for ordering something weird, which he apparently always does, and it's such a great strategy and so memorable that none of the other guys has ever noticed. Eric's so in love with Anna Stern that he gives Kevin Dillon shit about it, but he's nice enough not to point out that it doesn't really matter one way or the other if Anna Stern or anybody else's assistant remembers him, because he's still not talented, in addition to being one hundred years old. Vince always addresses all of his dialogue to Eric's lips like he's about to kiss him, and it's continuing to freak me out this week because it's unintentionally flirty and he does it in every scene, and I know that a big part of it is just his face so he can't help it, but it's also the talking to the lips. So he asks Eric's lips if he's into Anna and then tries to embarrass Eric by promising to "hook that shit up" and calling out to Anna while she's on thirteen simultaneous phone calls to ask if she has a boyfriend, because "my man E here just got his heart broken and he thinks you're kind of cute," and Anna's totally adorable here and plays it nice and cool. And she asks which one is "E" and they all point to Eric and instead of jumping out of the window at this point, which is what a real person would do, he waves cutely and is very blushy and she smiles and goes back to work, and it's pretty awesome because it's low-key. It's meet-cute, which the whole painful Flushing scene was not, but also a little meet-creepy, thanks to Vince, who seems to view the world as a sex buffet every bit as much as Turtle, just more quietly.
Ari comes out and says something stupid and his cute highlights are gone, but he's still Jeremy Piven, so I guess it just means we should take him more seriously. Kevin Dillon and Turtle wait outside, and Kevin stage-whispers to remind Vince that he has no representation, and Vince gives him a little bit of a thumbs-up instead of whispering back, "You have less talent than Duncan Nutter and less sex appeal than Paula Poundstone and you will never have representation in this town." Nice guy. Vince and Eric head into Ari's office. Back on the couch opposite Anna's desk, Turtle seems to be braiding a lanyard. Maybe it's a Kabbalah lanyard. Kevin wants him to help him get off book for his Vagina thing, and Turtle is kind of laughingly into it and it's sweet. Kevin Dillon asks what I hope is an extremely rhetorical question about "if your vagina could talk, what would it say in two words," which is not the awesomest thing about The Vagina Monologues, because the awesomest thing about The Vagina Monologues is when Eve Ensler asks if your vagina got dressed, what would it wear. But that's not a setup for a Turtle joke, it's a setup for a Buffy wardrobe joke or possibly another Macy Gray fallout joke. So what would Turtle's vagina say, in two words? He flaps the book open and closed in Kevin's face and says, of course, "Eat me," in a vagina voice that sounds like Elmo. The weird thing here is that it seems like the usual totally-belabored setup to a lame joke pattern that this show uses so often, except...The Vagina Monologues is, as the name implies, about what your vagina might say, and one of the questions was what it would say in two words. So it's lame, and five generations too late to be relevant, but it's not as gibberishy as usual. So that's cool.
All of which is less bizarre and off-putting than what's going on inside Ari's office, because he's forcing them to watch a home video on his computer of something confusing, because he's saying, "Look at the boy, look at the boy, wait for it, wait for it," and then a little boy, Ari Jr., bicycles by, but then he yells "BOOM!" and pauses the video on the ass of his door neighbor. And yeah, she's got a nice rear, I guess, except I would not take this shit from someone I worked for, much less someone that worked for me. Whatever the problem is, whatever you were denied at a formative age, whatever your therapist is still hesitant to bring up that makes you act this way, work it out on the handball court, dick. Vince is being nice about the whole thing, and Ari's blabbering about how this neighbor has four kids, and his wife says an ass like that is impossible to maintain, like it's this freaky mystery, and Vince tries to bring this back into daylight, saying, "You've got a good-looking boy there, Ari," but Ari will have none, and barks out, "He likes chicks! See that? See the glance?" And the kid kind of vaguely looks off in the direction of the mysterious Holy Grail ass. And he's tiny, this kid, like training-wheels tiny, just a little bitty baby of a kid, and I guarantee you that this kid does not give a damn about the neighbor's ass, unless being Ari's child has already so completely blown his mind that he's on his way to being Jack the Ripper by age six. Seeing that Ari can turn even the miracle of fatherhood into something pretty icky, Vince heads on a tour of the room and asks about the Chipette, Justine Chapin. Ari, charmingly, launches into this speech about how "every young actor in Hollywood wants to be the first one in there, man, take a number." Eric scoffs at the very concept of the virgin pop star, right, and Ari calls him a cynic, which is funny in a broad, ironic kind of humorless way.
Eric pulls off a shoe, the better to get his foot past his gag reflex, and asks if "we" should be worried about the review, and you can see the tiny cartoon storm cloud above Ari's head form and then immediately dissipate in the space of a nanosecond before he spits out the seemingly obvious fact that the review is completely unimportant because it was in Variety and that's not even a real paper. And that's kind of funny in that we all know that's not true, except so does Eric and so does Vince, because they sent out Turtle this morning for "the trades" and when he brought them to the kitchen, Eric immediately cracked open today's Variety without even bothering to put down the swords he had just been swallowing while juggling sticks on fire. Anyway, Vince isn't worried, right, but Eric is worried, but Eric says he's not worried, because it's more important to move forward, and then he asks Ari what they are "doing," and not paying attention to Ari's rising volume, clarifies that he means what they are doing about Vince's job. Which is pretty much an open invitation to throw him through the glass coffee table, because Ari's line is obvious: "I got Vince's job! It's Matterhorn! You passed on it!" And that's valid, and frankly, at this point I agree. I'm almost impressed by the continuity, but then Ari goes to an unnecessary, silly place when he starts screaming about how it's because Eric doesn't want to make money, because he's a Communist, or maybe a Socialist, and Ari asks which one he is, "or didn't they teach you the difference at Pepperoni U.?" Which is the tepid punchline to the reverse-engineered Communism thing, which itself only sticks out because this is Hollywood, and calling someone a Communist in Hollywood should be earned by at least a passing reference to the Hollywood Ten, just so it makes sense, instead of being a random weird epithet hurled out on the way to the Pepperoni U. punchline. God, just a Hubbell Gardner reference would have done it.
The highlights. Are they back? Let it go, Jacob. So then Eric and Vince work swimmingly together to get the meeting back on track, having a strange little Gilmore Girls kind of nothing conversation about nothing as a lead-in to asking a somewhat pacified Ari about the new round of scripts for Eric -- I mean, "for Vince" -- to read. Vince pays Eric $4000 a month. I want to be Vince's manager. Ari pays his dog walker $4000 a month. I want to be Ari's dog walker. What else you got? Anna brings in the scripts, in this box that must weigh a bomb, as Ari invites Vince to go golfing and invites Eric to caddy for them, and it doesn't really fit into the rhythm of the scene because now he's about getting them out the door, but whatever. Anna gives Eric the box and ruffles the pages sexily as she looks right at Eric's mouth and tells him to call her "if the pages printed out too light, or anything," and he stares after her, but she is gone, until the time they visit Ari's office. She's too busy not being on The O.C., I guess, to contribute anything more. What is it about Eric's mouth? It's a little weird, a little too, like, mushy or something, but he's a cute guy, there's no reason to focus on the lips unless you're going to kiss him, so that means everybody's going to kiss him, including way more than half of the Entourage forum posters. So I guess he really is the Seth Cohen.
Ari muscles Vince out of the room with some of that fake aggressive NFL man-love, with the squeezing and the slapping and the smacking and the grabbing, but keeps Eric behind. Instead of dropping that big old box and making for the nearest exit, or begging Vince not to leave at any cost, or pulling out a shiv -- all options I would consider at this point -- Eric still plays the game in his head where Ari doesn't want him deader than dead. So Eric smiles stupidly and Ari gets right up in his grill about how you never, ever bring up the review. "I got more calls about this stupid-ass thing than I did when my mother passed away, all right?" He's so close to Eric's face that he's on the other side of it as he explains that, when your talent isn't talented, you always book your job before the movie and the awful reviews come out. So we're over the Matterhorn thing, I guess. Not that he isn't completely right. It seems clear that Vince is untalented, since his skills don't even include conversation or walking across a room properly, and all that "give me four million dollars for something I love" talk doesn't actually amount to a hill of beans. Commerce/Art is now at 40-love. Which is unsustainable, as a conflict, because the only changes that can come about are either A. Vince somehow becomes talented or proves his worth, and the whole conversation shifts, or B. Eric gives in and becomes Ari. Both of which could happen episode, if the pacing of this thing weren't so completely off-kilter. Maybe that's why HBO green-lit a second season before the first episode even aired. Or maybe they did that because they are awful people and have realized that more than half of their original programming is only successful due to Emperor's New TV inertia. I mean, my God, did you see K Street? That is not the product of people with a strong work ethic. That is not the product of people with the Tru Calling production team's work ethic. Or maybe I'm just pissed because I stupidly thought it was real, until the ghost showed up.
Eric offers Ari an Altoid in such a sweet, disingenuous way that Ari can't even get mad about it, but he does back off a little before going into his Slimy Agent Zen Place and telling Eric he needs to distract Vince by any means necessary so that he can stay focused on blah blah acting blah. He offers a hand to shake but it's merely a psych-out. He flips right back to scary and drops an F Bomb threat. I love Jeremy Piven so much. He then immediately flips back to Nice Ari and asks if Eric would like to "hug it out." His gaze goes nowhere near the mysterious lips as he asks this, by the way; he's kept fearsome eye contact this whole scene. It's quite intimidating. Eric demurs on the nappy hug-out, but Ari will not be denied: "Let's hug it out, bitch." Eric must give in, under duress. The fuck you're not going to hug Jeremy Piven when he tells you to. What is this, science fiction? The Piven says hug, you say how hard. Bitch. The Piven is like second in command of the Hug Police, right after Andrew WK.
This just in: Even though this episode was probably written back in the Truman administration, they've somehow conspired to give a little shout out to last week's recap. The Orange County Register, at some point, called Johnny Drama a "functioning retard." Just like I did! California, here we come. While Kevin Dillon thinks that was a bad review, Turtle's kind of pulling a punch when he says he thought it was a compliment. Heh. Kevin tells Vince to try and join his acting class (and I must say I'm proud of the production staff for not just dropping a gratuitous Faustino in there, for their own supererogatory amusement), where -- even though most people have to audition to get in -- Vince would be, after all, "a legacy." I'm starting to like Kevin Dillon a little. It's not the character that's the problem, it's the writing, because Turtle's an obvious write-off so there's no balance to be maintained with his dialogue, whereas something a little more subtle is required to pull off the Johnny Drama stuff, because honestly I think Kevin Dillon can handle it. He gets the joke, of course, and already he's surprised me three or four times in this episode with his delivery. Too bad the writers don't really care to excel. Too bad nobody seems to think a director is necessary for filming.
Eric tries to derail this whole ugly train of thought regarding whether or not Vince needs acting class by offering up an afternoon activity: they'll all go buy a car. Turtle is unimpressed by plans to buy a Mercedes Benz, and takes them to the Rolls store. The Rolls store is kind of like if Pimp My Ride happened on a model shoot: everything's white with big photo-op bank lights and gleaming and scary, with a bunch of cars that individually you would recognize as Rolls Royce products but jumbled together look like the back yard of that guy who lives down the street from your parents. More irritating music from a billion years ago accompanies a prodigiously dumb shot of the Funky Bunch's funky slacks walking across the showroom floor. They are met by a somewhat uncategorizable man from Foreignia (tm djb) who immediately recognizes Vince. Behind the Foreigner stand two men, one a creepy white-haired man who looks fake and plastic and the other a model-pretty outback type who makes a really weird, really fast face at them from behind the main guy. Like he's biting something really large, or trying to warn you of like a giant mouth coming up behind you. All three are wearing black suits, and monochromatic shirts. All of them look like hired killers. All of them stare at Eric's lips for the rest of this scene.
The Foreigner approves of Turtle's blurted car choice, the Phantom. Rugged model guy is so trying to be more than a wordless extra here, nodding perspicaciously as if to suggest that Turtle has just unleashed for them his plans for worldwide domination. Then something strange happens. The bright whiteness of the dealership zooms away, revealing an unending Matrix whiteness. The Foreigner turns to us, the audience, and says, "I'd like to give you a speech I prepared on the awesomeness of the Rolls Royce brand." And then proceeds to do just this. Namedropping left and right, throwing around barnstormer ideas like "ultimate luxury" and how the car you drive makes a "statement." Seriously, it takes forever. It's so dumb. Red Target targets start popping up on my skin like hives and they install a Starbucks in my dining room and they're back-masking some kind of consumer programming into this show's soundtrack and Parker Posey gets a lisp. My first impulse -- and this is always my first impulse -- is to smash up a bunch of No-Doz and snort them through a ballpoint pen chassis in case the programming has taken and I spend the rest of the night dreaming about Ronald McDonald. Back in the real world of the Funky Bunch, where they're too dumb for advertising to have any effect, they learn that this is a $320,000 car. That's $320K USD. "That's hot." Okay? But if Vince signs a picture for the Foreigner's Daughter, he'll knock off a cool...thousand. Kevin Dillon points out that this is not the kind of car you buy, it's the kind of car you lease, and because Kevin Dillon is saying it, we should know it's a bad idea, but it sounds like a good idea to me. No, on second thought, no. We should tie up as much of Vince's money in durable goods as possible so he'll stop spending it and still have the option of selling the stuff when he goes the way of Skeet. Moment of silence for Skeet, y'all. Do we need to hug it out?
There's talk, but it's unimportant. Kevin points out that all the broke jerk-offs in L.A. drive 911s because they lease them, and Eric says that the car costs more than the houses they grew up in (because they were poor, you read me?) and Turtle points out that "a fucking Subaru costs more" than the houses they grew up in (because: still poor!) and Vince arches himself back against the hood and spreads his arms out and asks Eric's lips if he thinks he should buy the car, but Eric points out that this is a terrible, stupid idea and Rosenturtle and Guildendrama stare at Eric hatefully and hee! Kevin Dillon's got his sunglasses pushed up just above his eyes so he doesn't hurt the hair crop, and he's got his stupid facial hair and this impotent, petulant face he's making and I laugh, but it's with rage, and now Eric's backed into a corner so he can't very well say no, because Ari told him to make Vince feel good, so Eric just kind of waffles and lets Vince decide. Which is a stupid idea, because A. Vince is dumb as hell and B. Vince can't do that, and we all know that's true. Sensing something less than the firm hand his puppet self requires, he also gets the POV of Turtle, Kevin Dillon, and the Foreigner, who all, coincidentally enough, feel like he should get the car. Because none of those three have a vested interest in anything other than Vince's continued well-being. Kevin Dillon must be a fucking great actor to make me hate him so fucking much. His face in this scene, no matter where I pause it, just makes me see red. We're talking Carrot-Top level tool-face. ARGH.
Cut to some Jay-Z protest song he wrote during Viet Nam about the "rap patrol/gat patrol" and they're driving the Phantom and smoking pot and the camera ZOOOOMS in on the weed, and Eric is taking a drag on the weed, and asks if we've ever been so shocked in our lives. I'd like to point out at this time that the whole of the staff of the Fisher-Diaz funeral home, right down the street, gets foxy at least once a season -- at least once an episode if you're talking about the Chenowiths. And those people are funeral directors and massage therapists, okay? YOU are members of young Hollywood's elite. We pay your salary! Partly for the express purpose of watching you destroy yourselves with drugs and drink! So if you're going to do drugs on the show, could you maybe try to do ACTUAL DRUGS? I'm just saying. And then I remember that hushed-up takeover several months ago when Janet Jackson's right breast assumed the Head Directorship on the HBO Quality Board. And I know I mention it in every recap, but I think about the Breast all the time, because it's taking over like Big Brother, and eventually it'll cast such a long shadow that we'll forget the Bush family ever existed. "The Breast...it lies."
So Vince says that the Phantom makes driving so fun he might even get his license. So that explains why Turtle's always driving, and also why he has such a vested interest in the kind of car they bought. And while this is a little bit dumb, it's not unheard of. Your loyal recapper can't drive either. But Turtle says something weird and I guess it's because he's stoned, so I forget about that whole rant: "We should've had one of these in high school." How would that have come about? I need more back story. They've only lived in L.A. for 14 months, but Vince has been acting professionally for at least two years, and these boys are much older than 20, so they were still poor (they were poor!) when they graduated high school. Anyway, who cares, because this is Entourage so it's more about overlooking the random crap that comes out of Turtle's mouth in favor of the weak punchline ahead. "You think that would've gotten you laid?" And Turtle laughs kind of believably, "More than my yellow Fiero did!" This whole time the camera is on Eric like a hawk, drinking in the sight of him smoking pot with an obsessive attention. Kevin decides to add his disgusting two cents: "Shit, I got crazy pussy in high school, and I was driving a moped." Shut up, Kevin. Although it does provide a pretext for me to tell you all about my new dramatic project: The Clinically Insane Vagina Monologues, starring Sean Young, Jewel Kilcher, Brittany Murphy, and Sharon Stone in its original Broadway run -- with a special appearance by Margot Kidder.
Imagine your vagina has Tourette's syndrome. What would it say? Imagine your vagina woke up on a stranger's front lawn. What would it do ? Imagine your vagina is Anne Heche.
Eric wants to crack a Phantom window, because "we're stinking this beast up." Sometimes you just have to perform a line as written, Eric. You don't have to like it. Vince doesn't really care because he hates the "smell of new car." Two shots of Miutrix pull up in a red Jeep and start honking the horn on the off chance that there are rich men inside the Rolls-Royce Phantom that they can have sex with for money. When asked what he does, Turtle responds that he's "a lottery winner, sweetheart. Powerball." And it's a consequence of the troubling way Turtle conducts himself that I don't know if that's a double entendre or what. Pathetically, Kevin rolls down the backseat window nearest the Miutrix Jeep, basically ending up in Eric's lap in order to get closer to the possible consolation-prize sex. The Miutrix may recognize Kevin Dillon, as is often the case, but Turtle steps all over his game: "You watch Cinemax at 5 AM?" Kevin smacks him and lays down the agenda for the Miutrix: "Call two friends; follow us." He even uses helpful hand motions to indicate they'll be driving forward. "Not too close," Turtle clarifies, which is pretty funny. There's a weird little scene where we're shown that the red Jeep does, in fact, follow the Phantom, in case we couldn't infer that from the scene. Why not just have a shot of the girls dialing up two friends and telling them to meet them at Vince Chase's house? And then those girls, painting their toenails, and waiting for their friends to call back to give them directions, and how they're not really sure what path they want to take after high school, and what it was like growing up, and who their favorite celebrities are, and reminiscing about getting their first implants.
Back at the House with One Bathroom and a Giant Indoor Pool, Vince is cozied up with the most outgoing of the Miutrix quartet, the one that asked where Turtle's car came from, floating in the pool. Kevin Dillon is being cuddly with another one, and Turtle is being charming with a third. Some kind of underwater phone that floats around the pool starts ringing. I know what you're thinking, but it's not Ari. It's..."Marvin." You know: Marvin? Come on, you've got to remember Marvin. No? Just tag along, we'll all catch up together. Must be someone important, with a solid hand in Vince's future, because he immediately throws the phone across the pool to Eric. I'm not even kidding when I say the fourth Miutrix stares at Eric's lips the entire time he's on the phone with Marvin. Eric hangs up and tosses the phone back to Vince, and through a painfully and needlessly complex game of bluffing, obscuring, and occasionally revealing the facts, we learn exactly two things: Marvin is Vince's business manager, and he wants a meeting. And of course Vince doesn't want to go, because he doesn't want to go listen to some dude tell him how to spend his money. Which is so dumb, we're just going to power through. Miutrix asks Eric if Vince is, like, his boss. Turtle finds my pain center or migraine activator or whatever, I'm not all about biology, and starts pressing it repeatedly in a grade-school sing-song, about nothing, it's stupid, it makes no sense, and then barely manages to call Eric a dick before he falls sideways into the pool in the most unbelievable, over-rehearsed, telegraphed pratfall in the history of photography. Like the actor could be deathly afraid of water, and that would explain why this is performed so poorly. I'll check into that. So, since everything has started sucking and not making sense, I guess there's a "joke" coming. "Thank God I'm self-employed," Kevin sighs to the Miutrix...and that's it. And the lame punchline didn't even make sense with the nonsensical chain of events leading up to it. So nothing actually happened, except now there's Marvin. I hate this fucking show.
Eric and Marvin hanging out in Marvin's office. Marvin is freaked out because Vince bought a car that cost a bajillion dollars, and just like I said, he answers Eric's defense that it's a lease with pointing out that a car that expensive might as well be equity. Marvin tells Eric he's "supposed to be the one with some smarts," and asks what exactly the problem is. Marvin looks like Larry King, only alive. Eric's like, "He wanted the car, he bought the car. I can't tell him how to spend his money." It's weird, because they're having this grownup conversation as if Eric should be allowed to make decisions for himself, much less a highly disputed property like Vince's face. And yet, Marvin points out, Eric somehow summoned "the balls to tell him to pass on a four-million-dollar fucking movie offer," and Eric's all, "That was his call." Which it totally wasn't, and it never is, and I am severely disappointed in you, Eric. Grow a spine. But he's like, "The script sucked." And I think I fall in love with Marvin when he says, "He wants artistic integrity? Then let him drive around in a Prius." God, I hate Leonardo DiCaprio.
And we're back. "Ari's got my head all fucked up, he told me to take his mind off the review..." and again, fucking deal, Eric. Stop throwing it this way and that way. Just fucking take it. You're not accountable to this Marvin. You're in the driver's seat, fucking act like it. I'm hating on Eric so much right now. Marvin screams that they are all out of control and says that Kevin Dillon is spending $2500 monthly on "vitamin supplements" and we don't even go there, Marvin just points out that "nobody could take that many supplements and still fucking live," and it's kind of funny. Marvin and Eric scream at each other about Turtle's cell phone bill, and that ugly Entourage thing rears its cross-eyed head again: Premise #1 is that Turtle has a $1500/mo. cell phone bill. Premise #2 is that "you could get an unlimited plan for $200." Conclusion: "Get Turtle an unlimited plan!" Response: "I'll get him free weekends." Rebuttal: "Don't be a wiseass." Premise #1 is, of course, deeply flawed. I think I could talk non-stop from an airplane circling the globe and maybe...you know what? Never mind. Nobody cares. The people that made this crap happen in front of my eyeballs certainly don't give a damn, so why should we give them the satisfaction? Move on. Marvin throws Eric out of the office and reminds him to get his parking thing validated, because he loves money, because he's a Business Manager.
Some awful Strokes rip-off (which domain, through no fault of their own, now contains the Strokes) plays as Eric parallel parks some stupid hatchbacky looking car behind this other car, which is black and apparently a Rolls-Royce. Or so we're told by this random goatee guy (who on any other show in this arena would be famous or interesting instead of a two-line day player valet guy), who yells at Eric not to park too close, and then Eric tells him to calm down, and then they're at some eatery that could be famous or could be made up. The Urth Caffé? Shut up, Urth Caffé. I hope you're made up or I'm going to have to come beat you up. Turtle tells the Funky Bunch now assembled that he thinks they should move to "the Boo" and of course he means Malibu because this show is bound and determined to tick me off. ["I rented a Chevy Malibu once, and I called it 'the 'Bu.' Don't get up, I'll fire myself." -- Sars] I get worried because they are talking about real estate and that means they might...yep. They do it. Couldn't let it drop. Just couldn't do it. Kevin starts bitching again about, you guessed it, how he and Turtle have to share a bathroom. It is at this point that I contemplate turning off the television and just, you know, winging it. "So then they're at Urth Caffé and Christina Ricci shows up with vomit down her shirt and she thinks Vince is my friend Larry and Vince has to give her advice about turning her life around, and then they make a joke about Winona Ryder stealing things because that's so fresh and dangerous and then Jessica Alba gets Poor Little Ricci Girl a cab home, and then Ari walks up and he's got his cute highlights back so I'm good, you know, and so they all make out with the waitresses and there's a pool with a rope swing and Turtle does something gross but not that gross and they pretend to do some shocking drugs but not that shocking, and then it's over until Sunday." And Jesus, but I was trying to emulate the show, and be boring like that, but it still turned out slightly more interesting. And that's not because I'm so interesting, it's because this show sets the bar incredibly high, in terms of nothing ever happening, ever.
So let's just accept that there's the one bathroom, again. And let's accept that Kevin is going to harp on that, again. And that something gross is going to happen w/r/t Turtle, again. And boom-boom-boom, these things are all true. Turtle uses all of Kevin's products and Turtle asks, "What products?" and Klassy Kevin's all, "I found my Kiehl's open to one of your beat-off mags," and, like, just the phrase "beat-off mags" makes me feel like it's the early sixties and I'm on a rough cot with one thin blanket in the barracks in Biloxi to Matthew Broderick after lights out and we're talking about our girls back home and if they'll wait and then somebody "bums" a "smoke," not to mention I cannot believe you just name-checked fucking Kiehl's, which you can now get at, like, Wal-Mart. Kevin, not content with blowing Turtle's spot regarding the completely obvious masturbation non-shame (Turtle: "So?"), enumerates the issues at hand: "So A: Stop using my bathroom, and B: why do you gotta use $47 lotion to whack off with?" And again, advantage Turtle, as he responds with the smile of an angel, directed at Vince, "I've got sensitive skin." A word to my homies and those in my Funky Bunch: This is never going to be appropriate dining conversation for us. You are so out of my entourage if you start with this shit in public -- I'm looking at you, Dillon -- even if it's at Urth Caffé. The show pauses for the laughter and applause to die down, and Eric approaches, so they do.
Turtle tells Eric they are looking at house listings, and when asked what is wrong with the one they have now, Turtle takes a sharp swerve around "there's only one bathroom, idiot" and careens right into "The car's too nice for our place," so now they have to step it up a level. Which is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, which means it's either one of those Entourage things or this was actually said at some point by a friend of Marky Mark's. Vince shows Eric's lips one listing in particular that is $10 million. "That's hot." I mean, "Gross." "Yeah, but it's nice," Vince grins at the lips. The outdoor lighting in this scene makes me think Adrian Grenier is probably better-looking on film than in real life, because he's totally freaking me out here. Everything's pointy and jagged and mean-looking even though he's being friendly and trying to show the lips a good time. I think in real life sometimes Adrian Grenier is kind of scary-looking. Startling. Turtle tells us that Black Hack Tino says that "money's real cheap right now" and Eric points out that Turtle is talking out of his ass. The sad thing is, though, that he is in fact talking out of someone else's ass, a drug dealer who may or may not even exist. Vince looks adoringly across the table and then bad-actor-anticipates the very thing that's going to happen: some lady's hand across his eyes with that flirty girly Guess Who bullshit I hate. He reaches back and puts his hands every possible place you can find on this girl. It doesn't take long because she's quite small. He guesses "Edward James Allmus" as his hands continue to roam. "Yeah, right, you didn't even say his name right!" laughs the girl, who reveals herself to be...Jessica Alba. Well. Fucking great.
I love how she corrected him, like she's so reminiscent of Edward James Olmos that it happens all the time. She's got Starbucks and blonde hair in those well-moisturized Britney (Spears, not Chipmunk) lank-locks. She looks, as always, incredibly gorgeous and incredibly like a harbinger of bad things to come. She immediately launches into commiseration about the Variety thing, and then Ari shows up and screams at her and then hugs her. Just kidding, he only does that to Eric. Jessica Alba is...let me first say that I've not seen a lot of her acting. There was Idle Hands and then this one episode of Dark Angel where there was this guy who was, like, a dog. Like a regular guy, in a regular guy sweater, but with a dog's face. Surely she's been in other shows or movies? How mysterious. I know I've seen her somewhere else. I won't check imdb.com because that would defeat the purpose.
Oh, I remember where else I saw her, it was on Punk'd and I hated her so much and felt kind of bad about it because if it's Punk'd then you're actually just hating the person, herself, and that's mean. But dude, she pissed me off. This guy was harassing her in this lingerie store, okay, and I imagine that's stressful, and she got bitchy, and so would I, but she kept answering all his questions with this weird and totally affected, like, sound. This noise. This very high-pitched, nasal "no" sound, that sounded like "Uh-nyoo." He'd ask her some icky question and she'd say "Uh-nyoo," and then he'd follow her to the other side of the store and bug her about something and she'd say, "Uh-nyoo," and it was so fucking preposterous and I remember thinking, "This girl and all her little friends, her entourage if you will, somehow started saying the word no incorrectly and they all just passed it around like a cold sore and probably nobody even noticed they were doing it, much less how gay and pissy it sounds, and they say it to each other all the time, 'Uh-nyoo,' and language is a virus and so now I hate Jessica Alba and all her friends and if I run into her and she's like, 'Do you want to hang out?' I'll be all, 'Uh-nyoo' and then if she looks confused I'll tell her about how she pissed me off that one time and maybe she'll apologize. I sure hope she cut that shit out."
Anyway, keep that in mind because it turns out that Jessica Alba -- who may have turned things around for herself in the last couple of years as far as actually being herself, and I wish her the best of luck -- totally kicks ass pretending to be herself. Besides the Piven, she's totally the best thing about this episode. People can surprise you, if you let them. So she launches into this comfort-talking about how great Vince was in the movie and gets all the guys to talk about how great he was in the movie. And it occurs to me that nobody's mentioned what the eponymous review had to say about her, which is weird, because she's the co-star in the film. Kevin mentions though that she, too, was great in the movie. Jessica invites them to the party she's throwing for her friend Justine, who's going on tour. How weird! Vince gets all questiony and Jessica's immediately like, not a chance. I love how, again, nobody questions Vince's interest in her but just assumes he wants to nail her. It's kind of sad. The Funky Bunch all bug Jessica about whether or not Justine's really a virgin. "Yeah, for this album at least," she giggles. She's really just beautiful. The sun does all the stuff for her that it refuses to do for Adrian Grenier.
Kevin notes that the party at Jessica Alba's is going to be off the hook, and Eric -- of course -- reminds him about the vaginas and David Faustino. "Fuck that class. They ain't paying me to be there, bro." Back at the One-Bathroom Mansion That's Not Good Enough for a Phantom, Turtle opines that Vince has "gotta pop the pop star's cherry." I hate, hate, hate that somebody got paid to type that sentence on a piece of paper. Hate it! Vince uses his "slightly impaired" voice to point out that "virgins are too much responsibility" and Kevin notes that he should do it, since he could use the press. Eric's still like, "She's not a virgin!" and Turtle, weirdly, says that he can tell by the way that she sings that she's a virgin. Wha? Then some laborious and pointless talking about how Eric begged his prom date for "pussy" but at least it was his girlfriend's pussy and not a "forty-dollar hooker who declined your mother's credit card" as was the case for Turtle on prom night. And thus begat The Begging for Vagina Monologues. Starring Turtle. Off-off Broadway, now on tour in sunny California for an indefinite run. Imagine your vagina is boring and pointless to talk about. What would you say about it anyway, just to piss me off?
In a liquor store they discuss the losing of their respective virginities. Kevin Dillon: "Ugh, Tracy Richter, it was a mess. I always hoped I'd get to re-fuck her, you know, do it right." Is that like one of those catchphrases soon to be sweeping the nation? Is this, after all, the Sex and the City for boys we all desperately need it to be? Mm, no. It's just one snowflake in an avalanche of horrible writing. Vince: gives a 404 at this time. File not found. Eric clicks "refresh" because everybody remembers their first and it's still a 404. Turtle attempts to supply the information about Vince's first time: "It was Cindy Davis, behind the arcade at Nathan's." Gross. Vince gives half of a 404, a 202 if you will, to this one, like the page is loading but the pictures won't come. Like it's on Friendster. Eric calls bullshit, and furthermore likens this lie to Justine Chapin's virginity, because "what kind of virgin has a snake tat pointing down at her box?" Ew and EW. And Eric? Don't say "tat." And go get some manners. And while you're out, pick up a copy of my new play, The Crassly Decorated and Indecorously Described Vagina Monologues. It's sure to be a hit in package stores from coast to coast. Imagine your vagina is a richly-decorated room in your house. Is it a basement? An attic? A guest bedroom? How is it decorated? Is it influenced more by the faux finishes of Frank, or the cool architectural style of Vern? Perhaps it has a title; could it be called "A Blue Vagina, by Doug"? Is it possibly a "Hildi"? Did Kia put up borders? Can it introduce me to Ty?
While Vince and Eric argue over the $253 bottle of wine Vince has selected for Jessica Alba -- "you can't give her Boone's Farm," he explains -- Kevin and Turtle are...I don't know what they're doing. Making out? It's weird. Eric attacks Kevin Dillon for no reason. Turtle styles his hair. Everyone's looking in different directions and moving around strangely for no discernable purpose. Shape up, boys! This isn't the kitchen! Turtle calls out to the liquor guy that he should save Vince's signature and there's almost a cut and suddenly we're at Jessica Alba's house and the Snoop Dogg/Pharrell song "Beautiful" is playing (because it's an eighties flashback party, which is good news for Kevin Dillon), and I'm sorry, but Snoop? That's a Pharrell song. You've been punk'd. So anyway, this song is playing and there are bright blue drinks and it's just exactly like you think and there are no famous people there whatsoever, because this show can't even fake its own contrived bullshit. All the hugely-haired women have San Fernando faces and Long Beach breasts, meaning they are in no way pretending to be whores. They just are. Nice casting, jackass. The bit is composed of quick edits to no narrative purpose, as Jessica Alba hugs each of the guys in turn and then points out where all the bars are, and all the girls. Jessica Alba is a madam. She sends the boys into the mighty fray and runs off with Vince. Turtle sends Eric to the bar and runs off for "Silicone Valley." I send a box of hair to the HBO offices and run off, having taken complete leave of my senses. Rage is a force that cannot be directed. Turtle offers to show these girls the Rolls -- they're not Miutrix girls, I don't know what they are. The Girls RAINN Forgot. Vince has been introduced to Chipette, and Jessica leaves them alone really awkwardly and giggles and they don't care and I think I'm in love with Jessica Alba.
Ari's at the party and on the prowl and he runs up to Jessica and kisses her and calls her "Sno-Cone" and "my Dark Angel" and "Honey" and that is pretty cute. Well, I don't know what "Sno-Cone" means, and God help you if you try to Google "Jessica Alba" for any reason, because I guarantee you'll wish you hadn't. This information superhighway is so scary. So that'll stay a secret between Ari and Sno-Cone. We're introduced to a strange man, a Jason, who never actually appears in the shot or speaks aloud, but takes part in the following conversation nonetheless. I'm sure this is very clever, whoever this man is or is meant to be, but again: Jessica Alba broke the internet, so I have no way of finding out. She's also sucking on a lollipop throughout this entire scene, so she might break my TV too. Is she on E, or just on her third reading of The Collected Nabokov? Doesn't matter, because she and Piven are both at the tops of their respective games now. Ari never, ever stops talking, incorporating her responses and incredulity into the unceasing flow of his words as he woos her and claims to have slashed her publicist's tires and tells her she deserves an actual award rather than simply MTV awards and may I have the envelope please and he complains that her true essence has never truly been expressed on film and it's just...dazzling.
Meanwhile, Jessica Alba is so amazed at his lack of class ("You're talking shop? At my house? During my party?") that she seems poised the entire time on the edge of completely ripping him a new one, only barely covering it in friendly, flirtatious banter. It's delicious. It's that sushi moment from last week, again: if you took away everything about this show that doesn't work, you'd be left with a few core actors portraying complete characters (and the occasional Jessica Alba or Ali Larter, who are de facto complete characters by virtue of their objective reality) in scenes that describe, interrogate, or otherwise explore the world of Hollywood, its compromised values and diminished brain cells, its creative bankruptcy, and its position as arbiter of world stories and fashions, blah blah blah, the whole googlism of Hollywood has a place here, in this show of which we're only allowed tiny glimpses, spliced in thinly here and there between the dick jokes and Turtle crap. And here we are in week two, and I still don't see why that's such a huge fucking favor to ask.
Eric and Kevin do some shots and there's karaoke and I'm looking at my watch because I really just won't be watching Kevin Dillon karaoke. That's simply all there is to it. I have this deep psychological problem with watching people sing, like people I know? Or people who aren't singers? Like in Lost in Translation. Couldn't watch that part. That's like a slasher movie to me. Or on Angel, when they'd go to that bar and sing karaoke for the green Paul Lynde guy? Oh, that gave me the creeps so bad. It's like watching some kind of self-mutilation performance art. It's like Courtney on Letterman, that. As Kevin and Eric pants around about what Kevin will be singing, Faustino shows up. He looks the same as ever, but more so, like a sweating Daniel Clowes production of Death of a Salesman. They yell across a sea of foot-fetish video stars with prominent noses about why are you at this party and I knew you were going to fuck me and gender reversal exercises are for fags, et cetera. I'm going to start a running count of times Kevin Dillon implies that he is gay on this show, and the Vince Vaughn thing from last week is totally counting. Faustino's all, "Come meet my new girl" and all those watching who know about this stuff, viz. people other than myself, go into a tizzy about how Faustino is married to some chick so is this implying that he's a cheater, or is it that he's calling his wife his "girl," and to them I bring a message of peace: this was all written and produced in no time like the present, and the clues are in the music. It's all completely irrelevant.
Ari shows up and Eric is friendly because he just doesn't get it, and then Ari casually menaces him about how he told Marvin that Ari said that it was okay for Vince to buy the incredible automobile that cost a billion dollars, which he didn't, and then sort of offhandedly suggests that Eric never talk about him "behind his back again," or he'll have to artlessly "fucking kill" Eric, because he has insouciant "ears everywhere." And Ari runs off to railroad somebody else and Eric drinks his beer. Out by the pool, Justine Chipette is powerless before Vince's eyebrows and pot belly and slightly stoned demeanor and asks him almost subtly to initiate her into womanhood and he giggles weirdly. Turtle is still talking about the Rolls to one of those same hookers from when we got to Jessica Alba's bordello a thousand years ago. Eric, somewhat bothered by Ari's careless murder talk, has retired to the edge of the property, where he's looking out over the city, and is joined by Vince, who has apparently ditched Chipette in the time it took Turtle to say that both the front and back seats of the Phantom get warm at the push of a button. Not that it would have been interesting to see that or anything, I mean God forbid, but we're talking about the main character and the main plot of the episode, so it's surprising and a little jolting. Vince lost his virginity when he fucked Eric's cousin. Actually he fucked multiple cousins of Eric. Thank heavens we got to the bottom of that mystery nobody cared about.
Eric starts whining about how Ari might be right and maybe Vince should get a real manager, and he's caved so many times in this one day that I think maybe he's right after all, but Vince tells this story about how in third grade he was trying out for basketball -- ah, third grade intramurals, how I remember you fondly even though no school district has ever had such a program -- and Eric said, "Hey, douchebag, you're too pretty for basketball, you know, go try the school play." Third grade this happened. Maybe in Queens that's different than what I think it is. Have I been wrong all these years thinking Queens is in America? Is it maybe in England? Because they've got a weird grade system over there, I think. In Canada they call subs "supply teachers," and thus ends my knowledge of other countries' educational systems. I think Vince's pot belly is cute. Vince points out (to Eric's mouth, so I guess we're back on that again) that they're totally hanging out at Miss Jessica's Fancy House and they might as well enjoy the trappings of his fame as long as possible, because they can always go "tear it up in Queens" like they always have. Wherever that is, exactly. Kevin walks up to notify the rest of the Funky Bunch that Turtle's "out front christening the Rolls," if you know what I mean. I'm picturing Marvin out there with a can of Armor-All screaming, "You fucking kids, you little bastards, Turtle you're going to come in five seconds anyway, just let me protect the investment!" and Turtle yelling, "Jessica Alba's friends all charge by the hour, retard! Hurry up!"
Then Vince decides that Eric should be in charge of returning the car to the Rolls place and getting out of the lease, negating the only change effected in this entire episode from status quo -- and one, I might add, we spent a great deal of time exploring -- and Kevin points out the view to them, again, and talks about...you know what, it's almost fucking verbatim the speech that Vince gave Eric mere moments ago, about how they're totally hanging out at Miss Jessica's Fancy House and they might as well enjoy the trappings of his fame as long as possible, because they can always go "tear it up in Queens" like they always have. Wherever that is, exactly. Vince decides at this point to find Eric a girl, and Kevin says, "What about me?" and they walk away from the camera and then they all argue about how they're never going back to Queens, "tearing it up" or no.
day, they're all hanging in the sun on big hideous wicker Adirondacks, basically fully clothed, except for Kevin Dillon. Okay? I think Turtle's braiding another lanyard. No, it's a joint. Vince's cell phone rings, and now it's an enigma, because you're not sure: Is it Ari? Is it Marvin? Is it possible there are...three people with Vince's number? Fooled ya! It's Ari! Vince hands the phone to Eric, who gets to deliver the good news that the New York Times just called Vince "the Johnny Depp." Vince is like, "Cool. Let's go look at houses." Everybody starts saying how indoor pools are overrated and they should get a house with an outdoor pool, but nobody says anything about how many bathrooms. You have to plan ahead. Gang Starr's "Work," a beloved song from my childhood, starts playing. week there's Debi Mazar (who's in the credits for this week but nowhere to be seen, because not even the credits guy cares about this awful mess), Jimmy Kimmel, and Sarah Silverman. This creepy lady with the devil in her soul is like, "The only thing better than being the new Johnny Depp? Is finishing the new Johnny Depp." See how my joke didn't make any sense, really, just the NYT thread from which to dangle, and the punchline was from five years ago? Isn't that funny? Can I have an HBO show now?