MAYBE THE HYPE WAS INEVITABLE. When HBO aired the final episode of Sex and the City two years ago, the network lost its chief serial attraction to the coveted 18-34 demographic. Sex and the City was a Beautiful People show, glamorizing a Cosmo-drenched lifestyle of chic clubs and eateries and designer clothes. It was easy to dismiss as vacuous and decadent. But it also blended humor with heart. No doubt many viewers tuned in as much for the touching friendships as for Carrie’s latest pair of $400 stilettos.
Is Entourage just Sex and the City for guys? It premiered on HBO a few months after Sarah Jessica Parker and company bid their farewell. Like Sex and the City, it is built around four friends who dine at expensive restaurants, down plenty of booze, and hobnob with the rich, famous, and gorgeous. (These four reside in L.A., not New York.) The similarities don’t end there. The female leads on Sex and the City often spoke of men in the most vulgar terms imaginable. The male leads on Entourage won’t soon win a Feminist Majority Foundation grant for their sexual commentary. But if Sex and the City had been just a vapid celebration of sybarites, it would never have attracted such widespread popularity. Likewise, if Entourage had been simply a weekly carnival of Hollywood hedonism, it would have been fun but wholly forgettable. And at times during the first season, it veered dangerously close to such self-indulgence.
The second season changed that. In 14 episodes, Entourage matured into a richly textured series, one with layered plotlines and compelling characters–plus all the beer, babes, and bacchanalia. It now draws around two million viewers per new episode. Hollywood A-listers jockey for cameos. Show-biz insiders routinely applaud its uncanny portrayal of their universe.
In many ways, Entourage has done for macho male 20-somethings what Sex and the City did for yuppie female 30-somethings: use a stylish, glitzy backdrop to probe what makes their relationships sink or swim. Just as every clique of young women could identify one of their friends with a character on Sex and the City, so every crew of rowdy bachelors can point to their Entourage doppelgangers.
Of course, Entourage is not explicitly about relationships, as was Sex and the City. And its leading man is not a sex columnist. He is Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), a hip young “actor of the moment” living in a Hollywood Hills mansion with his three best buddies from Queens, including his sensible-yet-novice manager, Eric (Kevin Connolly), his loutish, has-been older brother, Johnny “Drama” (Kevin Dillon), and his bong-ripping driver turned wannabe music mogul, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara). The Vince character is very, very loosely based on real-life movie star Mark Wahlberg, an executive producer of Entourage.
The show’s third season, which debuts this Sunday, starts off with Vince prepping for the red-carpet premiere of Aquaman, the big-budget James Cameron flick he agreed to do in the Season Two finale. The second episode follows the boys as they try to beat an L.A. heat wave and make it to an opening-day showing in the Valley, which leads them to a pool party and an Almost Famous moment. In the third episode, the gang reunites with an old friend, of whom Eric is suspicious, and heads to Six Flags for the unveiling of the Aquaman theme park ride.
Like the show itself, the initial episodes of Season Three are good but not great. New viewers will miss the frequent inside jokes. As usual, most of the laughs come courtesy of Johnny Drama and Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), Vince’s caustic, Type-A superagent. Having lost his job at the end of Season Two, Ari now runs his own shop in West Hollywood and is beset by money problems. But his trusted assistant, a young, gay Chinese man named Lloyd (Rex Lee)–“He covers two quotas,” quips Ari–is still around, despite Ari’s volcanic outbursts and incessant profanity. So is “Mrs. Ari” (Perrey Reeves), whose first name is never given.
By now it’s a cliché to say that Piven was born to play this role. Always a superb character actor, dating back to his turn on The Larry Sanders Show, he has finally broken out, and just may have created the funniest character on television. Ari is nasty, callous, and manic–the ultimate Hollywood predator. Yet Piven fires off his biting one-liners with such panache and precision that the audience can’t resist chortling and cheering him on. (Though, as Season Two revealed, there is also a softer side to Ari: hosting his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah and urging Eric to maintain his friendship with Vince despite a business spat.)
Kevin Dillon, meanwhile, led an anfractuous career up until Entourage, beginning with a small role in a great movie (Platoon), leading roles in some bad movies (such as The Blob), a mixed bag of supporting roles, and television cameos on NYPD Blue and 24. No question, Entourage is his big moment–his first chance to truly escape from the shadow of his older, more famous brother, actor Matt Dillon.
Art imitates life on Entourage, as the Dillon character, Johnny Drama, plays perpetual second fiddle to his brother, Vince. But Drama is a lovable loser. And Dillon’s dead-pan oafishness consistently has fans, and colleagues, in stitches. Kevin Connolly recently told Entertainment Weekly: “We did a scene the other day, where I’m talking, going on and on. Kevin Dillon walks in, says one line, everybody hits the floor, and I’m standing there, looking at him like ‘You bastard!'”
If Entourage is to swell its fan base and eventually achieve Sex and the City-type acclaim, it will need to highlight Dillon and Piven even more. They provide the real comedic pop. It is hard to imagine Entourage functioning without them. Luckily for fans, Drama and Ari each get plenty of face time in the new season.
Duncan Currie is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
