Shorts Review: Losing It With John Stamos featuring Michael Vartan

Spoilers Below

This week’s Losing It starred Michael Vartan, the… the uh, guy, from… You know what? I have no idea who this guy is. What say you, Wikipedia?

Well, apparently he was on Alias. Hmmm, never saw it.

He also had a starring role on Hawthorne. Haven’t even heard of that one.

He was in Never Been Kissed? Never seen it.

Oh, he played the son of Tom Selleck’s Richard character on Friends in a couple episodes? Okay, I’m on board now.

Despite not knowing the guy telling the story at the time, this was easily my favorite Losing It thus far – which is interesting, because he never actually mentions losing it in the story. You see, little Michael Vartan lived in a tiny village in France where suitable sexual partners were few and far between. So one time on vacation he met a girl, but was forced to leave the bar where he met her when his parents were departing. Seeing this as his big opportunity, Michael snuck out of the house and stole his parents’ car to drive back to the bar. After meeting back up with the girl, they returned to the hotel room where he was staying, and he gave her 17 seconds of passionate humping…in between her thigh and the mattress. So you now understand that Michael never really lost it to this girl. And he never mentioned losing it after that. In all reality, he could possibly still be a virgin. Even though he’s married. And his wife is possibly pregnant. Okay, never mind.

Worst of all, he ended up seeing this girl later in the vacation with a bunch of her friends. She pointed, her friends all laughed, and he died quite a bit inside.

As much as this sounds like a sad story (and it kind of was), it was wonderfully recounted by Michael Vartan. With lots of self-depreciating humor, and some well-timed witty comments, Michael really made it interesting. It didn’t even need the addition of puppets, but hey, I’m not complaining. This aspect of the episode was also really well done, considering there was both a club scene and a bedroom scene.

Also, Michael managed to be candid and descriptive about the whole experience, without setting off the censors too much. In fact, I believe there was only one f-bomb, and it wasn’t even used in a vulgar way.

This episode really had everything working right, from the story and storytelling, to the chemistry between the host and guest. They both got some good lines in, and it all added up to most successful episode of Losing It that I’ve seen.