Entourage: The Complete Second Season

For pure vicarious-living thrills, you’d be hard-pressed to find a show as entertaining as HBO’s Entourage. Following the exploits of fictional newest Hollywood star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his three best friends, Entourage is a male-bonding fantasy: four friends who grew up in Queens strike gold and spend their time going to parties, meeting famous people, and sleeping with really hot girls.

However, with a premise like that, there’s a pitfall that this series has deftly managed to sidestep: why shouldn’t we hate these guys? Vince juggles dozens of girls but won’t even bother reading the screenplays of the movies he does, and his friends? Leeches desperately hanging onto his coattails. Right? Well, no. The eight-episode first season of Entourage veered dangerously close to that territory at some points, but with the second season, now out on DVD, the show found depths to its characters, and hit its stride.

The secret to its success? There are a few, but for me, the biggest one is this: the show isn’t about Vince. He’s not the main character and he doesn’t get first billing. That honor would go to Eric, played by Kevin Connelly, as Vince’s best friend/manager. When Vince moved out to Hollywood with his washed-up actor of an older brother Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) and their friend Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), Eric was still in Queens managing a Sbarro’s. Now he’s in Hollywood with his friends, simultaneously dealing with the headache of keeping Vince’s career floating while wondering whether he really deserves everything he’s been handed. We like him so much that, by extension, we like Vince too, a slightly vacant but also affable and loyal guy, since they’re best friends.

The show is often described as Sex and the City for guys, but it’s actually plenty more than that. It breaks up its time fairly well between the inner-workings of Hollywood and the guys bantering about video games, cars, and girls. On the Hollywood front, we have what many fans consider to be the central drawing factor of the show: Vince’s cutthroat agent, Ari Gold, played with manic delight by Jeremy Piven. The other secret to the show’s success.

Genius. I hate to gush, but when you watch him you hate for Piven’s scenes to end. A frantic, offensive, obnoxious, but somehow lovable guy, Ari has to be seen and not explained. Expect to walk away from each episode trying to memorize the half-dozen of Ari’s lines in each episode that are worth repeating to your friends later. He has spawned a bit of a catchphrase among Entourage fans (“Let’s hug it out, bitch”), but that’s really only scratching the surface. “Is that the way they drive in Tiananmen Square??” he screams at a driver

who cuts him off. When he finds out a relationship between his assistant and Eric just ended badly: “Now I gotta fire her so you don’t feel weird"¦well, I’ll just sexually harass her until she quits.”

While Piven is the standout, all of the actors deliver. Connelly is a strong hook to hang the show on. Grenier does his best with a deliberately underwritten character. The two other guys that fill out the entourage, Turtle and Johnny Drama, previously felt a bit one-note since they were mostly used for comic relief and to give Eric and Vince people to talk to. Ferrara, already a likable actor, is actually given something to do with Turtle this season (he starts managing a rapper he discovered). Drama, meanwhile, is a bit of a one-note joke — the less successful older brother with constant wounded pride — but Dillon makes him sympathetic and almost poignant. (He also knows a thing or two about his character, being the less successful older brother of actor Matt Dillon.)

This fourteen-episode season neatly splits up its time between two ongoing arcs. The first seven episodes deal with Vince and co. trying to secure the role of Aquaman in an upcoming James Cameron-directed superhero movie — to much difficulty, given that Vince just did an indie movie, which made his stardom “cool off” a bit. (James Cameron appears as himself in a few episodes. This is a show that knows how to utilize its frequent star cameos: when a fan asks him a question about the deeper meaning of Titanic, he replies, “No, I just wanted to make teenage girls cry.”) After the deal is complete, the second half of the season deals with problems with Mandy Moore (playing herself), Vince’s costar in Aquaman and an old flame: he falls in love hard, and the normally blank-slate Vince is finally given some depth. Of course, there’s plenty more action than just those arcs, with trips to the Sundance Film Festival and Comic-Con, desperate TV-movie auditions by Drama, and a brilliant subplot involving a feud between Ari and the top agent at his firm, played by Malcolm McDowell.

So while the show can occasionally feel as entertainingly empty as a drive with your buddies on a nice day, it’s deft in its handling of realistically immersing us in Hollywood with its insider-knowledge of the way the town works. Observe the efficiency of the following dialogue, as Ari tries to convince Eric of the necessity for Vince to do Aquaman:

Eric: So what if Cruise passes?

Ari: Then they go to Brad Pitt. He passes, they go to Keanu Reeves, and on down the list.

Eric: Where is Vince on that list?

Ari: He ain’t on the list.

Eric: Well, how do we get him on the list?

Ari: You do

Aquaman.

At its most basic, Entourage is about guys with deep friendships who are fiercely loyal to each other, no matter what happens. And that’s why we like them so much, and by extension, why we like watching these lucky jerks traverse the world of Hollywood. Season one was a decent start, but if you haven’t seen it, skip right to this, because season two is where the show really came alive. Plus, you’ll be able to watch it all in time for the third season, debuting on HBO on June 11th. Can’t wait.

DVD Special Features:

Aside from the “next week on Entourage” previews for each episode, only one: “The Mark Wahlberg Sessions”, a series of interviews Wahlberg (an executive producer, who helped develop the show’s concept loosely based on his own experiences) had with each member of the cast. It’s only about fifteen minutes long and surprisingly a bit dry. Ferrara is by far the best interviewee, offering up a few hilarious anecdotes (guest-star Gary Busey tackled Connelly on set and tried to tickle him) and general advice to the writers (his main suggestion being that Turtle should get more girls). Aside from him, there’s not much, although we get a few nuggets of wisdom (HBO originally wanted Vince to barely be seen, fearing he was an un-writable character). Luckily, the show stands on its own.

Show Grade: A-

DVD Grade: B-

Overall Grade: B+