After a full season of strained loyalty, reluctant Tivo watching, realizations I wasn’t really laughing anymore, and a logic-defying lack of anger towards the show, I’ve finally collected my thoughts about “Entourage” enough to formulate two distinct theories, including one major aspect that I really enjoy and one major aspect I can’t stand.
The Good: Not Unduly Praising The Show Within The Show (aka, the “Studio 60″ Theory)
“Studio 60″ failed in large part because of the hilariously stupid conflict of interest it created; on one hand, there was an interesting backstage drama about a network not wanting to bring in these supertalented comedy writers and give them control over the show, and this whole conflict between integrity vs. commercial appeal and pushing the envelope and restoring the show to glory, etc., but then on the other hand, they would show the sketches and they were soberingly awful. You’d get to see a scene of “The Nicholas Cage Show” with hilarious and original special guest Nancy Grace, then it would cut to the afterparty where everyone was in awe of Matthew Perry for his unparalleled genius (I really wanted to type “Unperrylelled”). It was bad enough the sketches sucked, but then having the same person who wrote those sketches also write a bunch of people saying how good the sketches were? It was an obvious recipe for failure.
“Entourage”, on the other hand, shows very little of the actual show-within-the-show content, portraying just individual scenes of “Medellin” which were not only ridiculous and featured Vince looking like a worse-acting Tony Clifton, but which, ultimately, were perceived by the other characters in the show as being crappy, exactly as the viewer at home is seeing them. The only exception was the “Medellin” trailer, which all the characters loved, but which was actually convincingly awesome. By either avoiding the show within the show stuff altogether (not unlike “30 Rock”) or by handling the characters’ work on a believable level, “Entourage” consistently avoids succumbing to the tragic “Studio 60″ conflict of interest, and, ultimately, gives the goofy characters at least a realistic realm within which to operate.
After the Jump: The Bad
The Bad: Completely Glossing Over Really Important Scenes
This one isn’t so much a theory as it is just a complete, glaring flaw of the show’s structure. Why do they cut away from important scenes so often? In the finale, Vince, Billy, and Eric approached the panel at Cannes after a pep talk from Ari instructing them to “hype the sh*t” out of their movie because they just rejected a multi-million-dollar offer and were entirely banking on generating hype, then the three of them walk up to the panel, the show cuts to the Drama B-plot, then cuts back and Ari is telling the guys “you absolutely nailed it in there!” Why didn’t we get to see that scene?? Surely it didn’t have to be cut for time, it was far more integral than the scenes both before and after it. Do the “Entourage” writers just not feel they can write a convincing Cannes press conference? What even goes on at a Cannes press conference? Isn’t that precisely the kind of “livin’ the Hollywood dream,” seeing inside the biz kind of thing that I tune into “Entourage” for? If I just want to see sporadic breasts, can’t I just flip over to Cathouse? Think that was enough rhetorical questions?
Cannes panel discussion aside, the show did it again later in the episode when Dana Gordon cracked and offered the crew a major-studio deal which they accepted, but when they were all celebrating, Ari learned from his financier that another deal had already been struck and they’d have to cancel on Dana, whom they’d already screwed twice in previous episodes. The show then immediately cut to the crew walking on the red carpet, making me think “wow, it’s gonna suck when they have to tell Dana they can’t accept her offer,” but then the Billy character made a remark about how the other dealer “better not f*ck this movie up,” meaning that the show had literally jumped over the exact three-minute scene where Ari had to tell the group the news, thus literally skipping over the exact conflict built up through the first 25 minutes of the episode.
Why??? Why couldn’t we see Dana swearing at Ari and worrying about getting fired again and Vince awkwardly trying to console her and Eric trying to spin lies and excuses? THAT’S WHAT THE GOD DAMNED SHOW IS ABOUT!!! WHY DOES THE SHOW NOT ALLOW US TO WATCH THE SHOW THAT WE ARE WATCHING???
If you don’t have enough time to resolve every conflict you establish, then stop establishing conflicts! Have five conflicts occur and resolve them all, instead of setting up ten and cutting out all ten resolutions. I’m not a screenwriter, but surely I’m not the only person bothered by this? It reminds me of the old David Spade routine where he complains about watching “Summer Camp 3″ on USA, cause it’s just a crappy movie, then they’re all like “hey, let’s go to the Boobfest!” then there’s a quick, awkward cut and all the characters are saying “man, that was an awesome Boobfest!”
Ah well, at least HBO tosses us “Flight of the Conchords” as a chaser. Mmmmm…. comedy I actually still laugh at instead of watching out of loyalty and never feel the need to write long angry posts about it to sort out my own weird thoughts….
