The ‘Entourage’ Guilt/Pleasure Index: Batting Our Eyelashes at Vince

Here it comes — can you feel the excitement? This is the week when this season will finally take off: Vince has sold his house to be a movie producer, Johnny’s hit show means lots of Chase-on-Chase jealousy … or we might just get stuck with the single most overused plotline in the series’ history, the old “Somebody wants to have sex with Vince, who bats his eyes awkwardly.� Yep, it looks like the latter. No wonder this is the one show we can’t stop watching–slash–can’t stop hating ourselves for watching!

Episode: “The Prince’s Bride�

Pleasure: Ari, Vince, and E head to the house of a shadowy mogul of indeterminate ethnicity, who wants to put up the money for Medellin. The only problem: His wife’s got the hots for Vince! Or does she? Do we care? Not really! It is, however, funny to see her mock E’s tiny hands and refer to him as “the little man.� As for the week’s other plotlines: Turtle continues his wooing of the Improbably Hot Love Interest, who invites him over to her vacant parents’ house. But then her dad comes home early. Whaa-whaa! As for Drama — well, here’s a promising twist: Drama hears he’s been handpicked to star in Rush Hour 3, the latest from Hollywood big-shot director Brett Ratner. When he shows up at Ratner’s mansion, however, he’s in for a surprise….

Guilt: …. As are we, as Ratner is apparently running a bordello on the side out of his home. Entourage has never been shy about the gratuitous bikini shots, but this is a bit ridiculous: women in garters stroll Ratner’s grounds like wide-eyed fawns in a satyr’s meadow, and we find Ratner himself conducting a photo shoot with a swimsuit model on a motorcycle. Sure, self-mocking star cameos got a bit tired after Larry Sanders, but watching Ratner strut around like Kubla Kahn in his personal Xanadu makes you long for the days of David Duchovny playing himself as a psychosexual stalker. As it turns out, Drama’s been recruited by accident — they wanted someone else from his show — but he hangs around and convinces Ratner to cast him as a bus driver in the film. Victory! Sadly, this is the same old sad-sack Drama we’ve been seeing for four seasons, not a new, interesting, fame-bloated, Vince-challenging Drama, alas. Not that Vince would notice such a rival. He’s too busy fending off the advances of the mogul’s horny wife. Who claims she doesn’t want to screw him! But really does! Thus, the show attempts a twist based on tricking us into thinking it’s not relying on a tired old plotline when, in fact, it is. Well played, gentlemen. Well played. —Adam Sternbergh