The Existential Entourage: 106 “Busey and the Beach”
From Gary Busey’s Wikipedia page:
On December 4, 1988, Busey was severely injured in a motorcycle accident in which he was not wearing a helmet. His skull was fractured, and doctors feared he suffered permanent brain damage.
During the filming of the second season of Celebrity Rehab in 2008, Busey was referred to psychiatrist Dr. Charles Sophy. Sophy suspected that Busey’s brain injury has had a greater effect on him than realized. He described it as essentially weakening his mental “filters” and causing him to speak and act impulsively.
While it’s likely inaccurate to say that Gary Busey’s acting career has risen to new heights since his persona became one of, let’s call it, “eccentricity,” his career as a seemingly oblivious carnival freak rivals Charlie Sheen’s cocaine renaissance (who could also plausibly appear on the show, somewhere down the line).
And so, the titular, longtime Trump supporter Busey comes to this episode ostensibly as a Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque parody of himself, which nonetheless satiates the voracious public appetite for trainwrecks.
“Fucking art, man, fuck fucking art. What are we? Come on,” opines Turtle in the thesis statement of the series, as the Entourage makes a reluctant appearance at Gary Busey’s gallery opening at the behest of their mutual publicist.
Now, on the show, Busey’s work takes the form of avant garde paintings and sculptures. This is considered more ludicrous than Gary Busey’s actual artistic pursuits:
The plot moves at the gallery once the show has made its statement on the frivolousness of art. Josh Weinstein introduces himself after de Bergerac-ing his way into Vince’s heart via Queens Boulevard. He advances toward the f-close with an invitation to his titular beach party. Emily, ambiguously present for professional reasons or as E’s date, warns her one-lettered beau that she’ll have to report such an invitation to Ari.
Johnny Drama runs into Joey Slotnick, playing himself as under-employed actor Gus. Working catering at a hilariously dysfunctional Los Angeles social event, for a moment it’s like we’re seeing an episode of Party Down filmed from the wrong angle. That moment passes when he offers Drama a shrimp puff and the former Viking Quest star presumably thinks he means the, uh, widely-known gay slur “shrimp puff” and instantly takes offense.
By the way, Viking Quest has its own Wikipedia page, free of any header questioning its notability (and acquitted in the sole nomination for deletion it underwent in 2009). I tried to go further down this rabbit hole by searching for the Viking Quest browser game HBO apparently had made as promotion for season five, but all I could find was one working mirror for a game of the same name, apparently commissioned by BBC History. I had to close the tab before it distracted me further from my work at hand. I won’t be insulted, though, if you want to abandon this mundane blog in favor of an “An epic tale of loot and legend.”
I strongly encourage you to find a new, semi-ironic iPhone wallpaper here, though.
“Storm that beach like it’s fucking Normandy” orders Ari once Emily informs him of Josh Weinstein’s machinations. The comparison is apt as we immediately cut to the party, where a screaming horde of adults war against one another with Super Soakers in a scene incomparably better at communicating the dread misery of the human condition than Saving Private Ryan.
Multiple story threads converge at the party in a way that actually starts to resemble real screenwriting (Seinfeld alum Larry Charles co-wrote this one, which might suggest a certain pedigree in plot structuring, but Charles’ filmography is fairly coated by blemishes at this point, with Entourage itself a notable one).
Having broken a sculpture at his gallery earlier, Turtle finds Gary Busey staring whimsically at the ocean and attempts to apologize. A series of jump cuts follow, which seem to deliberately suggest a wide array of kooky ad-libs from Busey: he points out the gravity, inertia, and physics which surround them, lowers his glasses to stare into Turtle’s eyes, then baptizes him from a plastic toy bucket. It is reminiscent of a montage of improvised outtakes from a Judd Apatow movie, only devoid of punchlines and exclusively meant to hammer home that Gary Busey is comically unstable.
Johnny Drama has his confidence further eroded in conversation with another struggling waiter, telling Vince that he’s destined to work the grill at Chili’s. Josh Weinstein informs E that Queens Boulevard‘s now blissfully kushed producer, Scott Wick, has made an offer to Vince which Ari presumably ignored. E presses Emily for information, asking her if Ari is more important than “whatever we are.” (For the record, I believe the new Tumblr tag for their relationship is EmilE.)
Ari leaves his child’s birthday party (perhaps signalling the transition from lecherous Ari to rapacious Ari I’d previously mentioned) once E defies his whatever-she-is and calls to say Josh is Vince’s new agent. For perhaps the first time in the series, Jeremy Piven gets to fully tap dance through a scene as he emasculates Josh and seduces Vince and E back into Ari’s lovable sitcom misogynist embrace.
On his way out, Ari lets Drama know that his new agent secured him three auditions. “Guess I don’t have to be a waiter,” Drama says smiling, tragically unaware of the imminent start of his season-spanning storyline as the lead in Good Things Come to Those Who Waiter, Tuesdays on ABC.
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Originally published at theplayercharacter.wordpress.com on August 26, 2017.
