Catching Up on TV

With sweeps upon us, I'll be spending more time catching up on new episodes I couldn't catch when they first aired. The Sopranos, Entourage, and Everybody Hates Chris after the jump.

The Sopranos: The feds are digging in a spot where Tony and Paulie buried a guy 25 years ago, so they have to take an unscheduled vacation just in case. Trapped in a car together driving down to Miami, Tony gets more and more irritated with Paulie, to the point where they go fishing together, and memories of Pussy come to mind. The scene on the boat was incredibly tense, and Tony seriously considers it, but passes. Paulie's pretty sure he came within inches of getting whacked, so when the scare with the feds blows over, he sends Tony a gift. But in the end, Paulie goes right back to being annoying, and Tony has an almost sitcom-like look of frustration.


Junior's in a mental ward. It seems like his new meds have him a little more lucid, but not too much. He's dealing contraband caffeine and sugar, and running an underground poker game, which causes one of the other patients to hero worship him. His aggressive tendencies though cause the staff to change his meds, and his attempts to not take them fail. With the new meds, he starts following the rules, which is unsatisfying to his protoge, who gives Junior a pretty nasty beating.

Really tense, two good storylines, plus they throw in a couple of Phil Leotardo scenes. He's apparently through taking shit from anyone, and it looks like New York could get pretty bloody. There were some really funny scenes. Junior dictates a hilarious letter to Dick Cheney figuring he might help him out, since they both are "all too familiar with accidental gun play," and Paulie spends about 2 minutes piling up pastries at a breakfast buffet. Great episode.

Entourage: Amanda wants an answer on the Edith Wharton script, and she's pissed that Ari planting the Medellin idea back in their heads is obviously what's holding them up. E and Vince want to give the boring one a last read before deciding, and they inflict the reading assignment on Turtle and Drama too. Shockingly, this did not go well, but they all decide it sucked. And when Vince confesses that finding her attractive made it hard to say no, Amanda heads over to "get the sexual tension out of the way." Which makes her pretty awesome. And Vince pretty lucky.


I made the first image a little something for the ladies, so I couldn't help but throw that one in to. Anyway, last week's concern for Lloyd is a symptom of a greater problem of actual human emotions for Ari, which makes his job rather difficult. But a visit with a shrink somehow puts him back on track in a storyline that existed I think only to show him hilariously unable to fire a guy with two eyepatches, then later even more amusingly able to fire him and enjoy it.

Everybody Hates Chris: Gambling, eh? A topic that hits close to home, since I used to gamble professionally. Naturally, they get a lot of the facts about gambling all wrong (sports bookies don't care if you win or lose, they work the odds in such a way that they make money no matter who wins). Vincent Pastore has a great cameo as one of the bookies, and shares a hilarious scene with Rochelle. The B-story is about a checkers showdown between Drew and Tanya, which a much less amusing cameo by Jim Lampley. Even with that, and a really predictable ending, it was a fun episode.