The Televangelist: ‘Entourage’ Season 8, Ep 5

• HBO.com
• “Daddy no one who’s 18 goes to Disneyland unless they’re high”

I had hoped after the episode featuring Ertz’s suicide two weeks ago that “Entourage” had turned a corner. That somehow, in its final season, it was about to get serious and show us something real from our characters. But it seems, from the two episodes afterwards, that moment was but a fleeting cloud over the sparkling, shallow waters of “Entourage’s” typical fare. This week the gang all reverted into depressingly familiar patterns, beginning with Vince and his interview with Vanity Fair. Was there one among you who thought, even for a moment, that the interviewer might have been a man? Or an older, married woman? HA! Have you ever seen this show before? She was stunning, extremely posh in her clipped Britishness, and a terribly accomplished Oxford grad, of course. Her disinterest in Vince and his shallow ramblings only made him - wait for this, I’m not sure you’re going to believe it - want her even more! “I’m in love,” a dazed Vince says to Turtle after she rebuffs him a second time. Predictable? Yes. Boring? Yes. “Entourage,” you have three episodes left. Give me something to work with here that’s fresh. No? Ok. Well then that takes us right into E’s storyline.

We all knew E would go flying back to Sloan as soon as he could. That’s a predictability we’ve learned to live with and maybe enjoy (just a tad). But along the way to that inevitable reunion we got a deliciously wicked turn by Melinda Clarke playing herself as a real-life Julie Cooper (her soapy siren from The O.C.). E is able to loosen up and join forces with Melinda in lightly bashing the McQuewicks with some standard banter. In a stronger episode this might have served as a serviceably fun scene, but it’s nothing to hang an major plot on.