Reviews and More

I’ve been complaining about the quality of recent Entourage episodes, so I was happy to finally get a good one last night (at least comparatively speaking). It was episode number 4×04 and was called “Sorry, Harvey.” Again, nothing really happened in the ep, but at least this time the non-events were interesting. Here’s my recap.

Vince/Drama/Turtle: The first thing I noticed about the ep was how the boys were together for almost the entire time (with the exception of E, but who cares). That hasn’t happened in a while, and seeing them as a group again made me realize that I really miss that dynamic.

Johnny’s condo is about 40 feet away from the Beverly Hills city limits, so he’s wooing the mayor of Beverly Hills in an effort to get his property annexed by that city. A 90210 zip code would obviously be a boost to any residence, and Johnny will stop at nothing to try to get one. Fortunately, the mayor is a sucker for celebs. All he wants to do is spend a night hanging with Vinnie Chase so that he can get a beautiful girl without paying for her. Vince agrees to help Johnny out, so the two brothers, along with Turtle, head to a club with the mayor.

Of course, the mayor is a balding slob who wouldn’t even be able to get into the club without being in Vince’s posse, so getting him a girl looks like it’s going to be pretty challenging. Surprisingly, it’s Drama, not Vince, who convinces a good-looking girl to sit down with the mayor. The two hit it off and it looks like Drama’s plan might actually work for once.

Then a bouncer comes over and tells Vinnie that the “girl” the mayor is with is actually a transvestite. Drama has no choice but to go over and tell the mayor the truth. But the mayor has been having such a good time with the tranny (played by Natasha Alam, by the way) that he doesn’t care what’s underneath, and he ends up leaving with her.

The next day, TMZ.com posts a video clip of the mayor and the tranny on their site — complete with a money shot of the tranny’s package under his/her miniskirt when he/she gets into the mayor’s car!!!

E: E has to tell Harvey that they’re not going to sell him the Medellín script after all. This is not a task he relishes, since Harvey is known as something of a hothead and is not likely to accept the news in a civil manner. But E is too scared to do it, so he tries to get Vinnie to break the news for him. Vinnie can’t do it either, so finally Drama just yells out the news as Harvey is being dragged out of the club by security.

Ari: Ari had more screentime tonight, so I can’t complain about that, but once again there was no interaction with the boys (just one phone call to E at the beginning). He starts out by meeting M. Night Shyamalan in a cemetery to pick up a top-secret script. Night demands that Ari read all 200 pages right away so they can discuss the script at their meeting the next morning.

But Ari has to go to some stupid dinner with Mrs. Ari and her best friend, which seriously cuts into his reading time. After rushing out of the restaurant as quickly as possible, Ari realizes that the valet gave him the wrong car. So he’s got to use the navigation system to track down the car’s owner (who lives 50 miles away) and get the right Lexus back. Ari is able to do this, but gets busted for speeding on the way home and ends up spending the night in jail. At least he was able to read the script in time for the meeting with Night.

The next morning, Night comes in and says the first script had a garbage third act. He’s got a better one right here, and will wait for Ari to read it — from the top, so he can get into the “flow” of the whole thing!

My Reaction: Perhaps my standards for this show have fallen a bit, but I thought there were several funny moments in this ep. Of course the shot of the tranny’s package at the end was the best and had me laughing out loud for the first time in ages. I also liked Ari’s scenes with M. Night Shyamalan, and loved how E wasn’t man enough to take care of the mess he made.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty solid episode, and for once I wasn’t constantly checking the clock to see how much time was left in the half-hour. Let’s hope this upward momentum continues for at least a few more weeks!

I’ve been interested in online learning for the last 10 years or so, and have been following the trends in that area as much as I can. There have long been correspondence courses available to people who one reason or other can’t make it to campus, but e-learning is a relatively new phenomenon that has taken off in the last decade.

I remember when I first started checking into online classes all those years ago, the choices were very limited. Only a handful of classes were available from a handful of schools, and not many academic institutions offered full degree programs. But the opposite is true today: a majority of colleges and universities in the U.S. have some kind of online options for students, and there are many more degree programs to choose from now.

For example, I was browsing through the online catalog at Capella.edu a bit earlier, and saw that they have quite a few new courses in Public Safety and Special Education Leadership, as well as several new MS in Psychology specializations. I think it’s great that Capella continues to expand its online catalog so that students can get the degrees they really want instead of having to major in a discipline they’re not as passionate about just because of limited options.

I’m thinking about going back to school for my Master’s someday, so I hope these positive trends in distance education continue!