Entourage: Season 8

Let me start things off with a bit of self-plagiarism. Last December, while ranking the final season of Entourage 40th out of 40 when it came to TV shows in 2011, I wrote:

For years, I've been waiting for Entourage to finish up so that I could finally stop watching it. Because for years, Entourage has been complete dogshit. It started out as a mostly silly and occasionally funny show about a fictional Hollywood A-lister and his loyal bros. And slowly but surely, the humor stopped, and the writers began to write Entourage as if we were supposed to try to care about the silly gang of absurdly wealthy D-bags and their minute personal problems. Vince is rich beyond belief for such an untalented actor, but will he ever find love? Drama has ridden his little brother's coat tails from minor fame to total fortune, but will he ever have a breakout role of his own? Turtle smokes a lot of weed in Vince's mansion all day, but will he ever get to realize his dream of starting his own tequila company? Ari is a total asshole to everybody he knows, but... wait, why are we supposed to care about Ari again? The guy who'd be a super-villain in any other TV show, we're supposed to feel bad for him when his wife demands a divorce? There's so much to hate about every character in Entourage, and there's been less and less to like each passing year. The series finale was unbelievably indecisive about just what values these bros have at the end of the day and what their goals are going forward. It was supposed to be emotionally touching, but it featured at least two main characters lying blatantly and profusely to loved ones. And where was the closure to those lies? I understand there's still a movie being planned, and that we may see repercussions for these lies (and rash decisions made by others) before all is said and done, but the episode ended without even a hint that bad things could be in store for the guy who promised his bride-to-be that he hadn't slept with her stepmother (when he had done so on multiple occasions) or the guy who promised his daughter he'd spend that night with her and then promptly set off for a week's vacation without her instead. This show ran for eight full seasons and yet accomplished nothing at all. It wasn't a sharp or cynical look into the "hidden" crap that goes on in Hollywood. It wasn't a moving example of loyal friends and undying brotherhood. It was just a show about sex and drugs and truckloads of money. It was "lifestyle porn," and like any other porn, there was very little substance of any sort beyond the superficial glean.

I've just re-watched the eight episodes that inspired that very negative review, and I've got a bit more to say about just how vapid and empty the proceedings were. Let's explore this on a character-by-character basis. Spoilers follow, but if you haven't seen the final season of Entourage at this point, it's safe to say you never will. (Especially after reading this post.)

Vince:

The season begins with Vince in rehab after he bottomed out doing coke and dating porn stars last season. He gets out of rehab, but thinks everyone is overreacting to his addiction problems. By the third episode, he's hanging out at cocaine-inclusive parties and smoking weed. In the fourth episode, he has to cheat to pass a drug test to avoid jail time and the loss of an upcoming movie role. His crew, initially upset with him for relapsing so soon after weeks in rehab, has a good laugh while throwing a rubber penis around and imagining that some other guy will get convicted for a crime based on a false positive drug test. Vince drinks and smokes for the rest of the season without anyone ever mentioning the whole addiction subplot ever again. In the fifth episode, an attractive journalist interviews him. In the sixth episode, Vince reads the printed interview and decides that his interviewer has got him pegged all wrong; even though Vince has banged every cocktail waitress and aspiring actress in Hollywood, he's not a womanizer at all. He's got a real soft spot for women. To prove this, he spends the seventh episode of the season getting his ex-girlfriends and buddies to vouch for him to the interviewer, and it turns into a strange courtship of sorts. Then in the eighth episode - the series finale, and just three episodes after Vince meets the interviewer - the two have decided to get married! Vinny Chase, who has been an unpredictable bachelor for 95 episodes of television, decides once and for all to commit to a woman he barely knows in the 96th and final episode. And even though the series is over, you just know that the marriage lasts, and that two will live happily ever after. Because that's how Entourage works. Rash decisions, bad decisions, indecision - it all works out in the end because if it didn't then the show wouldn't be much fun to watch. The moral of Vince's story (and pretty much of the series in general)? When you've got enough money you can basically just do whatever the fuck you want whenever the fuck you want for whatever reason you want. Inspiring! ...No?

Eric:

E, the "good guy" in the entourage with a level head and a sense of integrity, is dealing with a break-up with Sloan, the love of his lifetime. He decides to have sex with her ex-stepmother multiple times. Then he gets all pissed at Sloan for finding a new boyfriend and calls her a slut and rubs it in her face that he's been seeing her ex-stepmother. Then he learns that Sloan is pregnant with his child. Then he decides he needs to win her back, but she's understandably upset about his affair with her ex-stepmother, and this throws a wrench into E's familial plans. So E lies. He just straight up lies, telling Sloan that he never had sex with her ex-stepmother, even though he did. He gets his friends to cover for him, and they all lie to Sloan as well. Sloan remits and the series ends with E and Sloan ready to begin a family together - based, of course, on a total and complete lie. The moral of E's story? It's okay to lie about your sexual history to your future wife as long as your bros can share in the process of creating and perpetuating that lie.

Drama:

Since the series debuted, Johnny Drama has been a has-been actor looking to recapture his former fame and glory. He begins the season as the lead voice actor for an animated sitcom in the vein of The Simpsons which is testing very well. He then decides he should hold out for more money, even before the series has debuted and even though, since it is an animated program, he can be replaced with extreme ease at a moment's notice. Somehow, for some reason, the studio caves to his demands. But - poor Johnny - the studio is now too pissed off at him to make that made-for-TV movie they were doing for him as a charity project. But even that works itself out when brother Vince pays the studio off to make the movie after all. The moral of Drama's story? Humility and gratitude be damned, petulant and unreasonable salary demands will always be met with no repercussions whatsoever.

Turtle:

After Vince gets out of rehab, Turtle "can't handle all the stress" and smokes a joint in the kitchen. This starts a fire which burns Vince's mansion down. Later, the tequila company Turtle has helped create decides to move on without his services. So does his girlfriend. Presumably this is when we're supposed to feel bad for Turtle, who - again - is still doing irresponsible shit like burning down mansions with cigarette butts. Turtle then sells all of his severance stock in the tequila company against just about everyone's advice. The company then goes public and Turtle realizes he would have made $4 million had he held onto his stock. Okay - now I do kind of feel bad for Turtle. Except, surprise! It turns out Vince bought the stock Turtle sold, and now Vince is giving the earnings back to Turtle. Why not, right? The moral of Turtle's story? You can achieve millionaire status and delusions of success no matter how irresponsible and stupid you are as long as your best friend is an incredibly patient and generous A-list celebrity.

Ari and his wife:

World class chauvinist, feminizer, and asshole Ari Gold is having marriage troubles. In fact, his wife of nineteen years wants to divorce him because he works too much and always puts his family second. His kids start to feel abandoned as well - potentially because their father no longer lives with them and all on account of their mother's stipulations. Ari will have to sell a piece of his company in order to cover the alimony he will owe his soon-to-be ex-wife, even though he has created the company and his riches by working as hard as he did, which is what his wife claims to be divorcing him over anyway. At the eleventh hour, Ari winds up caving to his wife's every demand, quitting his job and pledging to spend more time with his children. In fact, in what is clearly meant to be the emotional climax of the series finale, the moment that's meant to show how far at least one character has come over these past eight years as a human being, Ari promises his daughter that he'll see her perform in a play or something that night, and wouldn't miss her performance for the world... only to then jet off to Europe with his romantically rekindled wife literally hours later without even considering the broken promise. The moral of Mrs. Ari's story? Being rich and beautiful gives you the power - nay, the right - to manipulate your hard-working husband into giving up his entire lifestyle for you. The moral of Ari's story? You can have a life-altering revelation that at the end of the day, family comes first, but it's still okay to break promises to your estranged children in order to take a spontaneous vacation without them.

And those are the various notes on which Entourage chose to end. No character has any redeeming qualities left. No plot had any semblance of clever storytelling. And throughout it all, you couldn't shake the feeling that the guys making the show felt like they were putting the finishing touches on a very important and very special story. I'm not angry. I'm not even disappointed. In fact, I'm almost kind of awe-struck that a reputable channel like HBO managed to air this uninteresting and thematically barren lifestyle porn for eight whole years, long after it had run out of anything meaningful to say about its characters or the Hollywood environment in which the show takes place. I mean, consider the legacy HBO has built over the past decade with shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Deadwood, and Game of Thrones. Now consider that there were more episodes of Entourage than there were of any other HBO show ever. In fact, right now, the series holds the record for the most episodes aired by any premium network in history. (Weeds will surpass it in a few weeks, but that's another problematic long-winded series that;ll get its own post another time.) Bottom line, Entourage outstayed its own meaningfulness by several years, and was never even a great show to begin with; it's no surprise that the final season was as shallow and meaningless as it was. And that's why, again, I'm not angry or upset or disappointed in the least. The show didn't really deserve a great ending, nor did any of its characters deserve memorable conclusions to the development arcs they never had.

I'll leave you with a link to this YouTube video of the show's final scene with a slight user edit at the very end. It's actually more meaningful and poignant than the real ending. Enjoy.