Spotlight on: Entourage
Since there isn't a whole lotta exciting or even weird and interesting stuff going on right now, I figured I'd take a moment to talk about one of my favorite television shows. Actually, there are only two shows I'm really watching regularly now, as I would rather just throw in a movie. The two shows are RESCUE ME, Denis Leary's hour drama on FX that revolves around a New York City firehouse, and ENTOURAGE.
Entourage comes from executive producer Mark Wahlberg and is supposed to be a semi-autobigraphical take on what it's like to be an up and coming star in Hollywood. In true East Coast fashion, the star (Vincent Chase, played by Adrian Grenier) has his friends close by. The friends are level-headed Eric (Kevin Connelly) who also doubles as Vinnie's manager, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) who is Vince's brother and an actor (albeit less successful than his younger sibling) as well. My favorite character, though, is Vince's high powered agent Ari Gold (played to perfection by Jeremy Piven). This character is the best thing on the show. Sharp, sarcastic, abrasive, always funny and with more energy than a gamer hopped up on Red Bull and Mountain Dew.
There are other characters as well, but these five are the real heart of the show.
At first glance, I wasn't a big fan. I didn't need to see another show about the "industry" with a bunch of snide, cute inside jokes. The characters seemed interesting enough so I took a look. At first my favorite character was Drama as the idea of the older brother being overshadowed by his younger brother intrigued me. Not to mention it was a lot like Kevin Dillon must go through with his brother Matt. I thought Ari was funny, but seemed like a caricature of what everyone thinks an agent is.
And then it happened.
I think it was about the 3rd or 4th epsiode and Vince was being wooed by a rival agent. Vince wanted to do an indie movie called Queen's Blvd. and Ari seemed to be holding up the deal. The hot, young agent smelled a rift and tried to get in there to steal the Vince as a client. Ari gets wind of this and crashes the beach party they are meeting at and it's then that his real motivations for holding up the deal are revealed. It was an episode that really fleshed out the character and made him real. Sure, he's all about the cash and fast talkin' and all the rest that goes with the agent type...but it also showed that he's not an idiot. And beneath all the bluster and insults he just might have his client's best interests at heart. After that one episode I was hooked.
This season has been really promising with the whole "Aquaman" storyline and Eric stepping up as Vince's manager. There were some definite fears though, as it appeared Ari was going to get stuck just popping in here and there making his quips (albeit hysterical ones...I've heard that most of them are improv'ed...if so, Piven is brilliant) and that Drama and Turtle were going to just become (as my friend Rick said) the "Tweedledee/Tweedledum" of the group. But in the latest episodes Turtle has taken a more serious, matured (as much as he could be) turn in finding his own career path and Drama has shown many different layers as well.
I read an interview with creator Doug Ellin and his comments echoed my own fears about what the show might be and the reality of what it actually is.
"The show is meant to be much closer to 'Diner' than to 'The Player.' It's not supposed to be a cynical look at Hollywood, it's supposed to be a look at friendship, and Hollywood just happens to be the backdrop. To me, these guys could be real estate brokers, they could be investment bankers, they could be medical interns. It's just about four friends, and how they're all trying to make it."
I agree. And with last night's episode all of the character's stakes were raised to new heights and new layers of storylines revealed themselves. There are numerous threads for cool storylines and character interactions coming from that show alone. I can't wait to see what happens.
And in the immortal words of Ari Gold:
"Let's hug it out, bitch"
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