Television
Jul 29, 2011

ENTOURAGE COMES TO AN END

Entourage is coming to an end, befitting to their audience. The show premiered seven years ago when I was still getting boldly trashed in a trashier apartment and spending my meager tips as they came. But times have changed, my trashiness is decidedly less bold and the value of my dollar has skyrocketed. I’m really no longer that interested in the wily hijinks of four ‘man-children’ making their way in Hollywood. Perhaps women watching Sex and the City felt the same way at the end. Though box office results belie that theory.

Admittedly, I will miss the campy comradeship of Carrie, I mean Vince, Samantha er… Drama and those other two girls who are both interwoven between Turtle and Eric (though lately Turtle’s entrepreneurial spirit gives him a Miranda vibe, plus Eric’s a bit more emotional like Charlotte). The premiere episode of this eighth season written and directed by creator Doug Ellin was fun, but it gave little insight regarding closure for each character, and with eight episodes left I worry about the shows tendency to rely on the deus ex machina for resolution (see season one finale amongst others). I don’t need anything Shakespearean where everyone finds their one true love and you can see the rest of their perfect lives clearly spelled out on the horizon, but I am curious as to where this is all going.

With these reservations, I begrudgingly ride my own youth into the horizon with the boys. It has been a fun ride- from the Playboy mansion, to Cannes, Cameroon, Colombia, and Vegas, back to Cannes, Queens Boulevard, Joshua tree, rock bottom, and rehab… they always kept it lively. The end of such is certainly bittersweet, but I am older now and those selfish, superficial pleasures that we eventually regret no longer hold the same appeal.  Living vicariously through these characters at this stage only makes me lament the days gone by in that ambivalent way where the nostalgia betrays you into remembering only the freedom. It’s frustrating, and I guess I’m just tired of it.

God, I hope there’s a movie (if Executive Producer Mark Walhberg has his way, it seems like it’s only a matter of time).