The Existential Entourage — “Date Night”
Reviews of the HBO series Entourage which make me want to kill myself.
It’s the opening of Head On and Emily has finally asked out E, so we can all officially begin referring to them as their OTP portmanteau — Emily. Vince receives a nude photo from a fan and Drama is in a relationship with Tanya — a woman with visible musculature and therefore worthy of abject ridicule once she leaves.
We have all heard of “TV ugly,” but Entourage is breaking barriers in this storyline by presenting a completely feminine model as “TV androgynous.” Drama defends himself from the accusation that he is fucking Evander Holyfield by refusing to cook everyone’s breakfast. The Entourage goes out to eat.
Vince learns of Eric’s date and, alarmed and offended that the man was asked out by the woman (this is the real plot, not a petty joke on my behalf), Turtle goads Vince into making the movie’s opening night into the episode’s titular date night for the guys. Appearing on Big Boy’s Neighborhood, Vince explains the hilarious series of events and his current predicament — he has no date. Lo and behold, Justine Chapin, whom we last two episodes ago expressing profound remorse at the fact that Vincent wouldn’t take her media-publicized virginity within an hour of meeting her.
“‘Media-publicized virginity’? What an odd combination of words,” you may say. Well, just in case you forgot who Justine Chapin was, at the mention of her name, co-host Fuzzy Fantabulous shouts “Virgin in the ‘hood!” and we learn that Justine is driving across the country (although conveniently reaching Los Angeles tonight) on The Pure Tour, as though someone were trying to conjure turn-of-the-century Britney Spears from a pop music-centered Necronomicon, yet somehow haplessly misread the incantation to focus solely on her vagina.
E answers a video chat from Ari — still in philandering mode, who casually avoids the question of whether the Ecuadorian girl he just had cam sex with was eighteen. They discuss matinee returns, Ari inspects E’s outfit through which it is revealed that Ari bought E the (both vaguely telescope and phallic-shaped) webcam he’s using to talk to him. Had Ari’s character not been reeled in, would he have been on track to become an omniscient, pansexual scopophiliac? A chilling dystopic future wherein his thousand eyes peer unblinking across the globe in search of extramarital depravity. Instead we just got some bullshit about him forming his own agency or whatever.
Alternatively Annoying to Downright Evil Ex-Girlfriend Kristen also phones E, just to keep emotionally harassing him. Poor rational white E thought their break-up sex meant something last episode, when she made it clear that it didn’t. Now he has a date, made public thanks to Big Boy, and Kristen shrugs into the phone, saying: “Maybe I don’t know what I want.” You know, like all women.
Downstairs, Vince is straight up playing Halo: Combat Evolved on an original Xbox in 2004. I originally thought this was dated, and then I noticed that the controller was translucent green. Apparently that was a special Halo edition of the console put out that year. As portrayals of video games in other media go, this gets a 7. He and E share some ableist dialogue, and the Entourage is off to date night bowling in their white prom limo.
Ah, the hilarious third act of the sitcom, where all the pieces come into play. Dateless Turtle has called the one woman he can count on: the unbalanced fan who sent her photo to Vince earlier. She aggressively flirts with Vince while displaying obsessive tendencies, gets on Justine’s case with increasingly audible hostility, and then finally just leaves when she spots Jason Bateman — because I guess she’s just a starfucker? Even though Vince is a new star in Hollywood and Head On is his first lead role?
So, Drama’s girlfriend proves everyone right, I guess, by being mean to him? She slaps his butt, which is hardly a womanly thing to do, then is condescending of the way he eats his food. At the club, she is harshly overprotective of him towards a fan and responds to his criticism with a homophobic slur — so the gang was right the whole time, she was a man in disguise! Real women do cardio! Only!
Justine and Vince make out and Justine acts slightly more like a human being than in the second episode, maybe? At the party last time, Justine, with a more instantaneous ardor than Romeo and Juliet expresses disappointment that Vince wouldn’t be anyone’s first sexual encounter. Now, upon their second meeting, she says, with more clarity of thought if not of wisdom: “I think I want you to be my first […] but you’re really gonna have to work for it.”
I know Justine Chapin is a fake character on a fake show and probably nobody else even remembers her name, but what is the internal logic here? Is the reality of Entourage that Chapin’s virginity is such a commodity that she is judging every man she meets on whether or not he should be the first inside of her? In the hands of a different writer, this is actually a tragic character — she is being so exploited by the marketing machine around her own chastity that she herself has become preoccupied with it and can’t even form a real relationship with this relatively decent, if totally vacuous, puckish figure she’s just met. In the hands of Doug Ellin, however, she simply leaves Vince with the whispered promise of “I would have given you the best head you ever had.”
Finally, Emily (ExEmily) have a wonderful night, because Emily (Emily) is perfect, and finding a blonde-but-not-blonde, fit-but-not-muscular, sexual-but-not-slutty, modest-but-not-virginal, professional-but-not-career-withered, fun-but-not-Los-Angeles-fun woman who tolerates your horrible friends that even you hate is all it takes.
4
