Grid Effect

Essentially all of Easter Sunday for me was cannon fodder until The Sopranos started at nine. And I might be in the minority on this but it did not disappoint. Not only did we have Tony dealing with the concept/reailty of aging and his assumed fate, but we had the most tragic Monopoly game in the history of Monopoly, Janice coming within ten seconds of confessing her murder of Richie Aprile to Carmela, Bobby “popping his cherry”, Janice and Tony both illustrating the traits they inherited from their mother and an appearance from Chris.

But I will delve into more detail about this on Friday (This is when Sopranos recaps will be posted, not only to give you the duration of the weekend to read them before the subsequent episode airs, but also to keep me from doing this on the weekends), right now I am here to discuss the second half of season three premiere of Entourage, which was better than expected.

Like I have stated numerous times before, if it were not for Ari Gold I probably wouldn’t watch this show, at least not regularly. And last night was no exception. When it comes to matters of the four “Entourage” members, they seldom have anything funny or interesting to say. They are always presented with extenuating circumstances, but rarely are unique in their approach to them. It’s the stangest case of writes block I have ever seen. How can they consistently set up intriguing storylines only to drop the ball with them so regularly?

If last night was any indication, they are going to stretch out the Ari and Amanda (Carla Cugino) vying for Vince’s attention/business for as long as humanly possible. And to be honest, Amanda and Cugino are simply out matched in this rivalry. For all of her bravado and dismissive remarks at Ari, she doesn’t have the clout to keep up with him. We are led to get the impression that “Medellin” is available and Amanda’s connections are unequipped to get significant insider knowledge. Hopefully, rather sooner than later, she is sent her walking papers to get Piven more screentime.

Meanwhile, the episode revolved around Vince’s 29th birthday party (or that is at least what I am assuming his age is, hence the episode title), which Eric, Drama and Turtle all agreed to foot the bill for without any financial aid from Vince. Eventually Turtle, who’s quite possibly more resourceful if not smarter than Eric, ended up making money on the event by having the party sponsored by varying advertisers and hosted on the deck of the Queen Mary.

It would be interesting to see a role reversal with the two of them, but for whatever reason, the writers are insistent in getting us to believe that Eric, by virtue of being responsible, is also more innovative. Maybe Kevin Connolly is the reason I don’t by this for a second, and the writers are not to blame.

But the party itself only accounted for the last five minutes of the twenty-five minute episode, the rest of it featured any combination of the four guys walking around their house and debating the Ari situation as if he were an ex-girlfriend, and Drama filtering every discussion with innuendo that could easily be interpreted the wrong way.

Outside of that, there were a few intermittent exchanges about Drama’s new series and the effectiveness of its advertising campaign (most notably his billboard), they took us back to courtside at The Great Western Forum (this time Amanda was their escort) with stock footage of the exact same game they showed us last time they did this in the sophomore episode of season two, “My Maserati Does 185″ and a number of references to Edith Wharton that I would have never expected to hear on this show.

All in all, it was good to have the series back (or maybe I was still elated from the brilliance of The Sopranos episode that preceded it), there were some decent lines and the setup for what could be an entertaining, if not competitive Agency war. In the previews, next week looked promising, I am optimistic Drama will sleep with Amanda then Vince will cease and desist his partnership with her (Not really, but wouldn’t it be a welcomed result?).