HBO
Spoilers for True Blood and Entourage coming up after the jump:
So last night, Sookie Stackhouse read the mind of Bon Temps’ real killer, was saved by the intervention of a shapeshifting man-dog who is in love with her (as well as her facility with a conveniently placed shovel), while her vampire lover became a charred lump in the attempt to save her but was revived by “feeding.” And on Entourage, Vincent Chase, having washed out of Hollywood and returned to Queens, was cast out of the blue as the star of Martin Scorsese’s next movie on the strength of his cut scenes from Smoke Jumpers.
Which was more believable? I say the vampire show.
So we’re now to believe that those crappy scenes we saw Vince performing in were works of craft that showed him “growing” as an actor? That they represented enough of a quantum leap over “I am Queens Boulevard!” to win over Gus Van Sant? See, this is where the whole believing-Vincent-Chase-is-actually-a-good-actor thing starts to fail me. (I mean, we’ve already established that even his own agent doesn’t believe he’s a good actor.)
It seems like it would be more plausible if Entourage simply made Vince a limited but successful actor, bounced him from one Aquaman to another, with the attendant hookups and headaches, and kept more of the focus on his fabulous off-set life. By introducing this notion of Vince as actual actor, with ambition and talent, the show has set itself a bar it can’t really clear. (Even if it’s not entirely unrealistic, seeing as how the show’s producer-inspiration, Mark Wahlberg, starred in Boogie Nights.) If Vince is meant to be a talent, then Adrian Grenier and the show’s writers are not making the sale. And if the message is, hey, who knows who’s a good actor—it’s all about packaging, direction and postproduction anyway—then Entourage is not a satirical enough show to make this interesting but cynical point.
The takeaway instead is that Vince is simply as good an actor as the series needs him to be at this point. Entourage had taken Vince’s downfall as far as it could—and Scorsese ended up being available to do something besides Amex commercials—so now he’s good again. Yay, Vince!
The episode did yield one interesting moment, which was for once, Vince losing his cool and blowing up over a career setback. Failing publicly in front of his Mom and old friends in Queens, Vince finally dropped the chill facade—you could never, interestingly, tell how bothered he was behind his passive-aggressive front—swore and threw his phone. But the breakup with Eric, quickly reversed by the deus ex Marty lifeline (Update: Sepinwall beat me to the joke), came and went so quickly it never really had the chance to play out.
That said, it will be interesting next season to see Vince either working again, or dealing with the afterglow of what may be an actual critically successful picture. And much as I didn’t care for the Jamie-Lynn Sigler storyline, seeing Turtle and her getting interrupted by his mom during phone sex was priceless.
HBO
As for True Blood, not a lot to say about the underwhelming finale. After I had come to warm to the show over the last several episodes, I felt it took two steps back with this wrap-up, returning to the heavyhanded real-world bigotry allegories of Alan Ball’s early episodes. And call me cold-blooded, but Sookie and Bill’s reunion didn’t seem like much of an emotional climax to me. Partly, like so much on True Blood, it was a casualty of special effects; his immolation was just so damn goofy looking I had a hard time taking it seriously. (Then again, bad FX never hurt Buffy’s emotional impact.) And her taking him back seemed more like a required end of a plot arc than an actual change of heart. I mean, yes, it’s sweet and all when your vampire ex-lover is willing to burn up to save you, but Bill’s willingness to sacrifice for Sookie was never at issue.
I’m intrigued by the developments pointing forward to next season, though: not just Lafayette’s disappearance but the thickening of the plot around Sam, who for my money is more interesting than Bill anyway.
And more important, I have just received the first episode of season 3 of Big Love, which returns in January. Let’s hope good TV returns from the dead in 2009.