If one were hoping that the short, eight-episode final season of “Entourage” would amp up the urgency or force the show into a fresh, final direction, Sunday’s eighth season premiere had to serve as a massive disappointment.
Highlighted by some goofy sitcom antics from Kevin Dillon’s Johnny Drama and a glimpse of the emotional Ari Jeremy Piven can deliver when needed, you basically had the same old “Entourage.” But not the “Entourage” that people liked for the first two and a half seasons–the “Entourage” people have tolerated since season four due to their strong investment in the characters.
Knowledge that this would be the final season, and a short one at that, should have invited the writers to shake the game up for the final run. This is where the (albeit overused) time jump could have been effective. Why not open the season with the reveal that a member or two of the “Entourage” left Vince in his rear window after the drug incident? Why not open with Vince truly at rock bottom–with no one else but his three best friends to pick him up? Why not jump to either Vince winning an Oscar or, in a darker move, at his (or a friend’s) funeral and weave the path to how he got there?
Instead, we pick up everything right where season seven appeared to be directing it–with no surprises. Ari is still separated from his wife, who dropped the bomb that she’s seeing another man. Sloan called off the wedding with E, who is elsewhere running the new management business with Scotty. Turtle’s tequila business is successful, as is Drama’s animated TV series, but neither seems confident moving away from Vince’s comfort zone. Vince, meanwhile, sobered up and is now ready to get back in the game.
The latter, the focus of the season premiere, created the problems that made the episode so weak. Drama, who always walks a fine line between comedically brilliant and cartoonishly unrealistic, fell deep into the latter territory, delivering cheesy sitcom material in trying to rid the house of alcohol, drugs and even Tic Tacs. E, who wondered why he seemed to be receiving the bulk of Vince’s anger, came off like a twelve year old school girl as he confronted his best friend. Turtle, Ari, Walsh and Scotty had nothing to do in this storyline and distracted from every scene.
And for what payoff? For Vince to essentially say he’s fine and that the rehab was a sham to stay out of prison? For him to develop a made-for-TV movie with Drama as the star? For him to claim for the five thousandth time he’s ready to get back to work?
It is difficult to praise last season’s atrocious arc involving Vince turning to drugs and a relationship with Sasha Grey, but one thing it did accomplish was finally allowing Hollywood to consume Vince. For all his ups and downs, the Vince character had always done a good job of staying immune to the celebrity pitfalls that ruin (or at least stall) many young careers. Previous problems mainly existed over women, bad movie reviews or petty arguments with his friends and agent–all things that could easily be fixed.
The drug problem, however, was a game-changer in that Vince couldn’t stay strong in the face of the problem. It wasn’t something an impromptu trip to Cabo or Vegas could fix. It was something serious from which to rebound.
Even if “rebounding from the bottom” would have come across as cliched or repetitive, it simply needed to happen here–allowing Vince to simply be “fine” is a slap in the face to those who watched last season, as the entire point was that Vince, no matter what he claimed, was NOT fine and needed his course righted. The handling of this storyline Sunday is tantamount to pulling the “season seven was just a dream” swerve.
Worse, it did nothing to carve a fresh course for the show’s final season. What evidence was created to suggest season eight will be vastly different than seven? Or six? Or five?
“Entourage” supporters can contend that because this show is about the characters and their relationships, a new creative approach would have been unnecessary, at best, and dishonest, at worst. They can even allege that had “Entourage” gone with a super-fresh storyline for season eight, it would have fallen victim to the “Lost” bug and made the finale about wrapping up the final season rather than the show itself.
Yet the reality is that “Entourage” has long been a storyline show (albeit a weak one) rather than a “banter” show. Yes, the relationship between the guys is central, but the characters have become increasingly-defined by what they’re doing with their lives rather than by how they relate. Vast changes and growth have not really been seen in any of the characters (and outright ignored in the case of Vince’s drug storyline); it has been the “stories” and “career decisions” that have moved the charcters along.
Even though “Entourage” was at its best as a character-driven show in the first three seasons, the last four seasons have largely been about “what’s happening” to the characters rather than “how they’re dealing with what’s happening.” Season eight indeed represents an opportunity to revert back to the character focus of the early days, but given what “Entourage” has become, the only way that will really happen is if the show plans some big arcs for the careers and social lives of the characters.
That may or may not be the case, but if it is, the season premiere did a terrible job of building the excitement.