By Buzz Byrne

The amazing thing about ENTOURAGE is that one episode can encapsulate the entire filming of movie star Vincent Chase’s dream project, MEDELLIN. Months in the jungle, budgets blown, the director losing his grip on reality — it’s a veritable APOCALYPSE NOW for the younger set, all wrapped up in 24 minutes.

Then, a few episodes later, you will slog through those 24 minutes to get to one simple plot turn in the seasonal story arc. That’s what we had this week: one simple plot point. It is time to end this MEDELLIN plot line. The last two episodes started to gather some momentum, but this week the boys just fell flat. With shortened seasons and the freedom use whatever subject matter and language they want, the writers should not be allowed to have these “catch your breath” episodes. The direction the show was headed and the re-mingling of Ari into the central storyline was working, but now that energy is gone and has to be built up again.
 
With MEDELLIN getting into the Cannes Film Festival, Vince and Eric no longer need to settle for movie mogul Harvey’s offer to buy the film. Since Eric set up the deal, he has agreed to tell Harvey the bad news in person. A good deal of effort is put into building up this task by making a monster out of Harvey, played by the believable Maury Chaykin. Eventually, Harvey is told. That’s it.

The B and C storylines involve M. Night Shyamalan yanking Ari’s chain and Drama trying to get the mayor of Beverly Hills some action. Both of these are somewhat amusing, but they are totally unrelated to Vince and Eric and MEDELLIN, and therefore do nothing to move the central story along.
 
Of course, the show is about the deals being made, not the movies being made, so let’s get back to that. Throw the shackles off Ari and turn him loose. He isn’t connected closely enough with MEDELLIN, hence the turns of this story take on Eric’s plainspoken nature and Vince’s laid-back vibe. I want blood and guts. I want Ari selling out family members. Isn’t his agency brand new and struggling? The stakes are high for him, if someone would bother to mention that. In order for the payoff — the inevitable success of MEDELLIN — to be satisfying, the struggle to get there has to be earned and not this “Hey, things sorta worked out in our favor” crap. Didn’t Eric hate the movie just a week ago? How much more interesting would it have been if they didn’t get into Cannes? These are tougher questions than the writers seem willing to ask, and since this is HBO, they should be expected to ask the tougher questions of themselves and their work. Yes, even if it is a sitcom.

Drama is tough, but anyone who knows will tell you that comedy is serious bleeping business. We don’t need to catch our breath, we need it taken away.