“Entourage” has managed to run on HBO almost as long as “Sex and the City” did, but you don’t hear many people talking very enthusiastically about the series.
When it was launched four years ago, the show looked like it was designed to be a male version of “SATC” set in Hollywood rather than Manhattan — four show biz guys on the prowl for connections in a very realistically rendered contemporary Los Angeles.
The other night I watched most of the new season four DVD set that HBO Video will release on Aug. 26.
A mediocre series has declined and become unwatchable with the exception of the funny and energetic performance by Jeremy Piven (left) as Ari Gold, the long-suffering agent of actor Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier).
Piven has stolen every scene in which he has appeared as the manic flesh peddler. The character has all of the color and energy and wit that is missing from Vince and his old New York City gang — best friend turned manager Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly); faded 1980s brat packer Johnny “Drama” Chase (Kevin Dillon); and court jester Turtle (Jerry Ferrara).
Ari is a man surrounded by boys.
Although the Vince crew has been in Los Angeles for four years they are basically the same adolescent louts we met in the first season. Women have come and gone in these guys’ lives, but none of them have stayed long enough to work any lasting changes on the buddy dynamic.
“SATC” went through peaks and valleys during its six seasons on HBO, but the four women did evolve and mature.
The crude joking of Drama and Turtle is a sexist bore, Eric is a semi-nice guy stick figure and the rising movie star at the center of the action remains no more than a pretty cipher. The show gives the illusion of taking us behind the scenes of the Hollywood entertainment industry, but the low brow New York buddy quartet could be transplanted to a sitcom set in any other city and any other business.
Piven won a deserved supporting actor Emmy for his work on “Entourage” but he is so much better than the rest of the cast — and his scenes at the agency and with his neurotic wife (Perrey Reeves) ring so true — that I wish he could be spun off into a series focused on Ari.
It would be fun to see Piven freed up to react to adults rather than the dopey Vince crew. Ari is a powerhouse who squanders his energy on people who don’t deserve to be in the same space he occupies.
An “Entourage” about Ari and his wife and his OTHER clients could be a terrific show.
