Grid Effect

And in the penultimate season four episode, the writers decided to devote ten minutes of screentime to probably the worst guest supporting role this series has ever had, then another seven or eight minutes listening to Ari and his wife have the most cliche husband-wife argument I’ve probably ever heard. In the remaining five to ten minutes we had left, some things were brought into the fray, and none of it was particularly memorable. Such as a potential fictional terrorist attack, entitled bitching about having to fly commercially and Vince and Eric arguning yet again over what course of direction to take with his suddenly disinteresting career.

But the Anna Faris thing is what really sucked the life out of this episode. The show isn’t one for spontaneity, so the route they took wasn’t terribly surprising. Eric hits on Anna, Anna has a boyfriend and asks him to manage, Anna dumps said boyfriend, Vince bitches to Eric about “losing focus”, Eric defends himself, he pursues her romantically, she the part ways professionally and personally. And all in three episodes! The issue with these meta-romantic interests is that we all know they’re temporary. So why droll them out trying to in an attempt to develop chemistry? If Anna Faris’ career were going as poorly as it should be, then maybe it would keep me in suspense. But instead she has a steady stream of work, and I know she’ll be a footnote in Entourage history by the end of the season. At least she has enough self-recognition to realize she might be being mocked when someone is complimenting her on Scary Movie.

Now to the Ari subplot. Are we supposed to believe Ari isn’t perceptive enough to detect that his wife was being coy when she claimed to be “fine” with not traveling to France? Needless to say she got her revenge for him taking what she said at face value by purchasing multiple, expensive products. That’ll learn him to always second guess her. God, what a miserable marriage that seems to be.

Outside of that, there really wasn’t much to discuss. Set aside a couple late cameos. One from Sydney Pollack who’s making the rounds this year on HBO series (he also played the wife murdering former oncologist who befriended Johnny Sack in this seasons “Stage 5″ episode of The Sopranos, and another from Kanye West, who was compensated for by having his song “Good Life” played over the credits. Both of whom offered the guys a flight to Canne, but since Pollack had limited capacity, Kanye saved the day at the last moment. It would have been fantastic if he was somewhat self-deprecating and wore a shirt that mocked his “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” diatribe. But no, he made a few bad jokes, saved the day and that was that. Still, the guy writes some decent hip-hop music.

Next weeks episode looks entertaining. Which is all I want from this show. A half hour of mindless humor with an industry plot. And if they cannot piece that together in an episode set at the Canne film festival, then it might be curtains for this series.

Back later with a recap of a dually mediocre Conchords episode.