This week's episode was pretty awesome. I think this was particularly the case because there were only two plotlines instead of a mix of several things going on, or uninteresting sideplots.
First off, Ari's wife kicked off the Ari/Davies battle by buying him a shiny red Ferrari. After he ran into Adam Davies on the street, they did a bunch of illegal street racing in which it looked like Davies should have crashed several times. Not to mention Ari somehow came to a complete stop despite driving over 50 miles an hour. Soon Ari and Adam were going back-and-forth with pranks and embarrassing each other (Ari sent Davies poop, Davies sent Ari "hot cops", Ari sent Davies pics of his girlfriend, Davies sent Ari a nude shot of his wife) which culminated in Ari going ape-shit and hunting down Adam. I was disappointed that Davies caved so easily in apologizing, but seeing Ari that mad was quite amusing.
Ari confronts Davies
The second major plot involved Vince's attempt to make some cash and avoid bankruptcy. I found the Marvin character pretty stupid/useless...they couldn't have just gone straight to Shauna? Shauna got Vince a sweet 16 appearance, and we find out the parents are played by Fran Drescher (ugh! ...at least she didn't do her laugh) and Kevin Pollack. They ended up striking a deal where Vince only had to sing a song to their daughter, who turned out to be some goth-looking girl who kept talking about having sex with everyone, especially Vince. But Drama decided to "save" Vince by adding his own drunken singing, and then ended up puking all over the cake which was really pretty hilarious. Also, didn't they say they were inviting 300 people to the party? From their panning around when Vince was introduced, it looked like less than 100.
Overall, a pretty solid episode. Really it was the Davies/Ari showdown that made it. And of course, it's looking like my prediction from last week is looking good with the "9 Brave Souls" script blowing up with Ed Norton. But I wonder if the fact that it's turning into a "studio script" will introduce some twist...either becoming big enough for Vince to appear in and rejuvenate his career (though he acted disinterested when E was telling him the news about Ed Norton), or becoming so different from what it was that the original writers will get pissed off and back out of it (can they do that? I don't know).
This was a review of Episode 57. See more reviews. And here's HBO's music credits for this episode (may not be up yet).
Posted by: junosand on Sep 22nd, 2008 | 5:42am