"Extra Cheese": Entourage Fills Sunday Night HBO Void Nicely

If your like me (single, mid-20's and working a later than 9 to later than 5) your weekend follows a routine.

Thursday night is social night, where you cling to your inner college student by checking out young coeds in sluttier clothing than when you were in college and hate the fact you were born four years too soon...Friday night is recovery night. When your hangover tells you you aren't in college anymore and forces you for hopefully a drink or two at the corner bar just so you aren't called a pussy by your friends...
Saturday night is more like Thursday except with no expectations because anything is possible, including nothing...

Come Sunday, you spend some time at church, synagogue, or at home with the family, just so there is a glimpse of hope you won't go to hell when you die or take guilttrips from your parents until that day. When Sunday night comes the reality can be harsh that the weekend is over and a full work week lies ahead.

Thank God for HBO. HBO put all of its quality television series (Sex and the City, The Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, The Wire) and some of its not-so-much quality series (Arli$$, Mind of the Married Man, Carnivale) on Sunday nights to give fans something to look forward to on Sunday nights besides the work week.

During its peak time HBO became ritual television. You would actually wake up Sunday and think about nothing but what was going to happen on your favorite HBO series Sunday night.

Lately, however, HBO has become missable television. Carnivale was too weird and was cancelled quickly. Carrie stopped annoying everyone with a penis last year. Oz ended two years ago after shanking most of the entire cast and anthraxing the rest. Six Feet Under is too dark for most anyone I know. The Wire, while the best show on television, and I will die on that sword, may be too "ghetto" to gain mainstream popularity. I don't fucking watch fucking Deadwood as the fucking dialogue is too fucking confusion to fucking decipher between all the fucking gratuitous fucking cursing. And we can expect the next season of The Sopranos in 2018, when AJ orders a hit on the doctor who misdiagnosed him during his prostate exam.

Luckily for our demographic. HBO debuted Entourage last summer. Judging from the casting, HBO had little hope for success for this show but it has become HBO's biggest surprise hit since The Sopranos. While lack of anything else to watch during the summer may be a major reason, the show has some redeeming qualities.

The show is produced by Mark Wahlberg. The main character Vincent Chase, is the name of a role actor in one of Wahlberg's first films "The Traveller". The storyline is very removed from Wahlberg's career (Chase never rapped, and won't be doing a movie with a prosthetic penis anytime in the next season) but the premise for the show is sparked by Wahlberg's real life friends and agent.

Vincent Chase is a B+ list actor from New York. Good looking, decent actor who fits into the mold of many cliche Hollywood roles. His two best friends and half brother move to Los Angeles and support and live with Chase instead of getting regular steady jobs. Chase is played by Adrian Grenier, whose only other starring role was opposite Melissa Joan-Hart in "Drive Me Crazy". What he had to do to get this role, we may not want to know.

His best friend Eric, played by Kevin Connolly (the brother in the Married With Children ripoff "Unhappily Ever After". He took forth billing to a Bobcat Goldthwait voiced dog-puppet and Nikki Cox's breasts) is his de-facto Manager. Eric is a stubborn manager who is very picky when selecting roles, much to the dismay of Vince's agent Ari Gold played masterfully by Jeremy Piven (more on him later).

Jerry Ferrara plays the obnoxious, portly freeloader Turtle and Kevin Dillon (ironically Matt Dillon's brother) plays the underachieving bit actor older brother Johnny Drama.

Last season, Eric convinced Vincent to make him his official manager and they both decided Vince should do an independent move "Queens Boulevard" over a more lucrative but poorly scripted "Matterhorn" pitched as "Die-Hard in Disneyland" by Chase's agent and proponent of the project.

This season, Gold struggles to find Chase work as his visibility has dropped considerably due to the "Queens Boulevard" project. His one hope is the comic book adaptation "Aquaman" which while having the possibility of making Chase an A-list star, does not excite him as a legitimate acting role. As Chase likes the project more the waters are muddied as to whether or not the role is his to take.

I could go in more detail, but unfortunately this show is unlike many HBO shows as it is pretty hard to care about the storylines of the show. 90% of Entourage fans could give a shit whether Vincent Chase gets the Aquaman role or not and chances are you don't either. Entourage depends on three things to carry its Sunday half hour.

1)Ari- Jeremy Piven was the only accomplished actor signed to the series. Therefore he is given all the best lines in the show and executes them brilliantly. He doesn't try to be Jerry Maguire, and thank God he doesn't try to be Arliss Michaels. He portrays the slimey Hollywood agent perfectly and the best of the writing on this show is his.

2)Cameo Appearances- More this season than last but some of this season's most memorable performances have been given by the show's cameo actors. Whether it was Ralph Macchio's "yes I am alive" visit to the Playboy Mansion, or Bob Saget as a frequent brothel john, or this past Sunday's James Cameron "I just wanted to make little girls cry" line. It's good to see celebrities depricate themselves or try to portray a different image of themselves then we are accustomed to.

3)Hollywood Life- The best thing Entourage does is depict Hollywood's "starfucker" culture. While Chase is accurately written as someone who can sleep with anyone he wants, gets showered with freebies and asskissing and go to every party he wants, his friends pickup the leftovers. And the leftovers are pretty good. The highlight for this season for me was Eric being set up by Chase with a Perfect 10 model who exclaimed her love of one night stands with the line of the year "I never met a guy who didn't want to fuck me the next morning!" that turned me on so much I actually Googled her to find out she is Australian Pop Star Holly Valance (pictured below).
The genius of the show is for all the shit Vincent, E, Turtle, and Drama get just because of who they are, it is hard not to like them because they let us into a world we wouldn't know without them.

Not a bad group of guys to spend your Sunday nights with.