So I tuned in to watch Rome tonite. I usually TiVo Entourage and watch it later, but tonite I watched it live as a result of Rome and was floored. Who’d have expected the big hyped new series to be overshadowed? Of course I was immediately scared away from HBO as soon as Lisa Kudrow made an appearance, but still.
This was a monster episode! I’m simply freaked out at the prospect of all the uncertainty after next weeks finale. There’s no way they can adequately resolve everything that happened this week.
Ari getting caned was unexpected. I thought he’d end up with a long drawn out fued within the company, I never expected him to get caught at unawares like that. Plus, Adam Davies, what little bitch! Thats much more a Josh Weinstein thing to do.
Loved the dynamic with Lloyd. I’m getting a serious Jerry Maguire vibe from the storyline, though we know it’ll be way less trite…god I hope so anyways. Who would never have pegged Lloyd for a riced out Scion.
Plus, how much does Mandy Moore suck! Hopefully this will set the tone for another solid loop of naked flings next season, but it’s still a shock. I wonder what’s going to happen with Aquaman. I half expect James Cameron to refuse his resignation and to end up dumping Mandy Moore, but then again I can see them playing up the struggling actor angle for next season. That wouldn’t quite as much fun though, I think.
Jeremy Piven was great and Eric’s relationship with Terence’s daughter will complicate the relationship between Ari and Vince. I was surprised that Lloyd was a top Stanford Business School graduate and doing such a low-level job.
This was Piven’s best show yet, IMHO. He’s great with the physical stuff, isn’t he?
I think Vince and Aquaman are over. I can’t see Cameron putting up with any more s*** from Vince over this. Plus it’s more interesting when he’s looking for work, meeting new people, talking about projects. Filming Aquaman will take up the whole next season, unless they start it with the movie being finished and released, praised or panned, etc.
But that’s just me. I don’t see Vince as a superhero, and I never accepted Marlon Brando as Superman’s dad.
I liked the twist on that whole Jerry Maguire thing. I felt bad for Lloyd and I wonder how common it is for people with top notch academic credentials to be working as peons in Hollywood studios taking shit from assholes and idiots. I think it woke Ari up a little bit. It should make him realize that Lloyd is a person of substance and value who has a lot to offer as an employee if Ari is willing to treat him as a peer instead of a servant.
It was great to see her finally sock Paulie G in the gut. He’s had that coming for a while. I actually thought her husband was going to do it, but it;s better that she did it herself.
I was also a sap enough to be moved by Valerie’s field hockey story. For once, it didn’t even sound like she was telling it for effect or for drama. It just sort of came out, and it explained some things about her character. I loved the tears in Jane’s eyes after the story and the look of satisfaction after the punch.
Last season they filmed Queen’s Boulevard during the hiatus, and I was assuming they’d follow the formula for the season 2 - season 3 gap. Though, if Aquaman gets dropped I’ll be curious to see how much time lapses between seasons with no movie for Vince to work on.
As low as Ari has fallen, he has no choice but to treat Lloyd better. Will Ari be a better person? As long as it suits his needs. I’d hate to see him become legitimately nice; that would be boring.
Well, they could do the principal photography during the season break, and then come back for “How did Mandy and Vince work out?” type story-lines and then there’ll be doing press for the show, which will have an obligitory trip to the Tonight Show Studios. (which is bogus, cause Vince should definitely be a Letterman or Conan guy - NY and all)
And with all this we’ll get to see one scene where Vince pops his head out of the water and says, “… I am Aquaman!”
Loved the part where Lloyd made him promise not to denigrate him anymore. The response “I can’t promise that, but I will promise to say I’m sorry afterwards.” was priceless.
Do I think he’ll ever be nice? Hell no. But Lloyd’s pep talk was effective and apparently appreciated. I’m sure Ari will find it in him to occasionally give Lloyd some begrudging credit. I also think that Ari and Eric will finally have to actually team up and cooperate. Ari’s future is going to depend on whether Eric can keep Vince on board or not, since he’ll probably be Ari’s Rod Tidwell (or Cush, we’ll see).
As for the possibility for next season, I’m sure they could open with the Queens Boulevard premier, perhaps Mandy and Vince both attending as filming on Aquaman wraps up. To calm the publicists of course.
Did you ever see Swimming With Sharks? That movie seemed to indicate that being a personal assistant to a relatively high-powered Hollywood type can be a pretty good springboard to bigger and better things. In that movie, Benicio Del Toro’s charcter went from that job immediately to a studio exec position.
No idea if that kind of thing happens IRL, of course.
Man, if Vince pulls out of Aquaman, they are screwed. They’ve already spent the money!
My guess is that they somehow get Mandy bumped from the project, instead. That saves Vince and the boys, and also clears the way for a new love interest next season.
I loved Drama being excited that his road rage showed up on TV.
That was great right afterward when Lloyd tries to grab Ari by the arm as they walk out.
My sense is that one does not jump from assistant job to studio exec. That’s like someone jumping from assistant trader to Warren Buffet. More likely, there you take a job as an assistant or mailroom or whatever in hopes to get selected to be an agent, at which point you have the POTENTIAL to start bringing in big money.
Vince would be pretty screwed too if he quit Acquaman since he didn’t have a whole lot of offers before that. QB might bring him some work though.
I agree with pretty much everyone on here, good episode and a funny performance by Piven as always … but I just had to point out that Lloyd’s car was a riced-out Hyundai Tiburon, not a Scion.
i missed part of the show and have not yet seen a repeat… can someone please explain what happened with Ari… he showed up to an empty room and realized he was screwed… was he planning a meeting of the firm’s best clients? was he planning a coup?
Yeah, you’re on target phungi, he was planning a coup, a la Jerry Maguire. The tsetse fly thing was the signal for “viva la revolucion”, and those agents he sent Lloyd out to give the signal to were presumably the best at the agency, or at least the ones Ari found who would leave with him if/when he decided to start his own agency. Since things got to a boiling point with Terrance essentially coming back from retirement, Ari commenced Operation: Tsetse Fly. All the other agents were apparently on board, except the younger one he habitually chewed out. Whether or not it was just him or all of them who ratted him out to Terrance isn’t exactly clear, but I think it was just that one who narc’d on Ari, and then Terrance probably threatened all the others, so when it came to fighting time, none of them stood behind Ari as he was ordered to leave, except Lloyd, of course.
I personally think it’s all intended to be a con … Terrance’s daughter Sloan is trying to woo Eric romantically so that he’ll end up dumping Ari and stay with the agency under Terrance. I think it’s a nice father/daughter tag-team strategy that they use to get talent, and since Terrance obviously sees Vince as the next big Hollywood star, he’ll do anything to get him, including essentially whoring out his daughter to Vince’s manager in order to steal him away. Perhaps I’m too cynical, but this is supposed to be Hollywood, and they haven’t had any really good backstabbing occur yet. Sloan is too beautiful and nice to be genuine, and I think it’s all supposed to be a big double-cross.