The ‘Entourage’ Guilt/Pleasure Index: Turtle Gets a What?

Remember how Vince selling his house and shuffling everyone out into the streets was going to shake up the foundations of this show? Yeah, not so much. It’s business as usual as the boys crowd into Drama’s condo and resume their familiar antics: Drama blusters, Turtle smirks, E frets, and Vince does whatever it is that defines his character, along with occasionally batting his eyelashes. No wonder this is the one show we can’t stop watching–slash–can’t stop hating ourselves for watching!

Episode: “Malibooty�

Pleasure: We have to admit we cringed at hearing that Vince was headed to Dennis Hopper’s beach house. Self-serving cameos from Brett Ratner and Paul Haggis are one thing, but Hopper? Mr. Frank Booth himself? This definitely did not look promising, unless Hopper was going to take Vince on a midnight joyride in a convertible, then personally introduce him to the pleasures of Dean “Suave� Stockwell, nitrous oxide, and Heineken. Wait — Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst! Blue! Ribbon! Hopper, however, acquitted himself well, playing himself as a spaced-out, soccer-obsessed loon, surrounded by a suitably bedraggled and burned-out entourage of his own.

Meanwhile, Turtle and Drama headed to Malibu, where Turtle played wingman as Drama attempted to bed a woman he’d lusted after since the eighties, played here, with age-and-plastic-surgery appropriateness by former Melrose Place star Lisa Rinna.

And E curled up his little brow and worried! Oh, how worried he can get! Because Billy entered Medellin to Cannes without asking, and if it gets rejected, no one will distribute the film, at least so says the increasingly underused Ari, who appears in this episode for only a few brief seconds, like blessed drops of condensation in an otherwise arid desert of enjoyment.

Guilt: The entire booty call to Malibu story line hinges on what is, to our knowledge, the most unpleasant mental image ever conjured by a television show: Turtle receiving a rim job.

See, the woman he’s paired off with, as wingman, is fat! And ugly! But reputedly the best rim-job-giver in L.A.! By the way, this is a terrible subplot! If that’s not clear!

But then: In a hilarious switcheroo, Turtle gets the kind-of hot one, and Drama gets the fat, gross, rim-jobbing one. Ha ha ha! Are we adequately conveying how incisive and charming and downright sidesplitting this story line was? Cause who wants to get a rim job from a fat chick? NOT THESE GUYS.

Meanwhile, E tries to sell Medellin to Harvey, another exhumed character from days of yore, the Weinstein-esque producer still smarting from a Queens Boulevard Sundance snub. And guess what? Harvey wants to buy it for $25 million. But guess what? Medellin got accepted to Cannes after all! Oh, embarrassment of riches. Rim jobs for everyone!

Because guess what? Everything always works out on Entourage. Everything. Always.

Maybe that’s why Vince is so freaking smiley.

The Guilt/Pleasure Index:

—Adam Sternbergh