amanda

(S03E13) "This town's not safe for a bitch."
It certainly isn't. What we have here is a good thing. Something you don't often see on television. Usually after a mediocre run of episodes, you expect a show to keep heading in the same direction. No matter how much you may love it, you expect the same mediocrity. Entourage has gone ahead and blown away all my expectations. This show feels new again. The way it did when it first premiered. Suddenly, there's this extremely serious tone and to top it off? It's just as funny as it ever was.

(S01E16) To quote Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill and as The Chin on Ugly Betty, "You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?" Tonight's theme - "it's complicated." I ended my review last week by saying this, but I think it bears repeating. Watching good TV can be an emotionally masochistic endeavor. One of the first lessons you learn in "how to be a TV writer" class is to put the screws to your characters. This lesson is often phrased as, "Give the audience what they want, and then take it away." This week's episode was all about giving us what we wanted and taking it away. Betty opens up to Henry about her feelings for him. Done. Christina catches a break. Done. Alexis gets to feel a little human connection post-op. Done. Justin gets to see Hairspray. Done. Hope you enjoyed it because now those cruel, cruel writers are going to make us regret that we ever wanted those things to happen in the first place.

Acting is a funny business; one day, you're anonymously playing a waiter or waitress in a silly commercial, and the next day, you have a major supporting role in a new hit series. The interesting part is when the struggling and non-struggling phases of that actor's life collide on the screen, and you begin to recognize the actors in those previously-anonymous bit parts.

Many people have already noticed that Becki Newton, who plays the mean-but-vulnerable receptionist Amanda on Ugly Betty, plays a waitress on an Olive Garden commercial that's currently in pretty heavy rotation across the dial (heck, the ad was shown during a Betty episode where Newton played both Amanda and a Betty look-alike). But, did you know that Michael Urie, who plays Marc, Amanda's partner in cattiness, also played a waiter in an ad?

An explanation, and the video of Becki's Olive Garden ad, is after the jump.