“Play’n with Fire”
November 16th, 2008
It has been a good many episodes since I last discussed Entourage, a period explained by a variety of reasons. Perhaps first and foremost, I don’t quite have time: while Mad Men left a gap in my Sunday nights, other commitments have meant that The Amazing Race is all the time I’ve got (I’m two weeks behind on Dexter and barely catching up with Brothers & Sisters as it is).
But if Entourage had been anything but a mixed bag over these past few weeks, I may have been more likely to discuss it in earnest. Whether it had been horrible (like much of the fourth season) or fantastic (like the early days of the series), I would have found time to make note of the various developments; instead, the season just took its initial setup (Vince is in tough shape career wise, needs a new opportunity) and played that chord over and over again.
It was a good chord, in the begnning, and I’d tend to argue that it’s a good chord in the end; the entire on-set experience of “Smoke Jumpers” has been a return to the show’s proper perspective, and the explosion that takes place within this episode is a far more natural and logical wrinkle in the development process than anything we saw from the caricature of Billy Walsh. “Play’n with Fire” features a lot of things which feel natural: by abandoning the member of the group who has most resembled a walking punchline (Drama, that’d be you) for the one who is perhaps the most emotionally interesting and undefined (Turtle), and by frontlining Vince as someone facing a crisis of his own, the show just feels likes it’s on a more logical path heading into next week’s finale.
Cultural Learnings 