Entourage (Season 2)
HBO
2005
Rating:


As the hippest show on television, "Entourage" is the perfect form of summer entertainment — it contains about as much substance as a warm breeze, but it's fun as a block party. The adventures of movie-star-on-the-rise Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), his best friend-manager Eric "E" Murphy (Michael Connoly), Vincent's struggling-actor-brother Drama (Kevin Dillon) and hanger-on Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) having fun in the Hollywood hills captures what it's like to be young and surrounded by friends in a world where it's always possible to get what you want. But there's a real dearth of drama to the show's avoidance of drama. In the world of "Entourage," if Vinnie wants to play Aquaman for James Cameron, he will; if his indie movie turns out to be a four-hour-long, black-and-white, gritty epic, he can still be the next Martin Donovan; and if Mandy Moore leaves him to go back to her fiancι, hey, there's still plenty of women in Los Angeles left to sleep with. The only bite in the series comes from Jeremy Piven's deliciously ferocious Ari Gold, a super-agent prone to vulgarity and creating hilarious catchphrases ("Let's hug it out, bitch!" "I'm like R. Kelly at recess here!"). In the first real shake-up in the "Entourage" universe, Ari was fired from his agency in the second to last episode of the season, paving the way for possible turmoil in season three. That'll be a nice change of pace for the laid back series, which only needs to discover the narrative powers of conflict and substance to become a truly great comedy.

Posted Monday, September 19, 2005

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/tv/entourage.season.2