"Entourage" Season 2 [DVD]

Back from doing an indy movie in New York, Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his posse return to LA, ready for their next movie. Focussing on Vincent’s experiences at Sundance and trying to snare the next big comic-book-adaptation, Aquaman.

The second season of this series is leaps and bounds ahead of the first. The first season of Entourage really left me feeling dissatisfied – I found most of the ‘laughs’ fell either flat or very far off the mark, and I found most of the episodes off-putting. True, Vincent’s tourettes-suffering agent, Ari (the impeccably talented Jeremy Piven) was perhaps the only gem of the whole show. In season two he continues to be the main draw of the series, but it is clear that the other actors have become more comfortable in their roles and the characters benefit from this.

Having said that, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) is still annoyingly feckless and for the life of me I can’t believe the other three tolerate his presence (he’s useless!). His gullibility do encourage a few pranks that were worthy of a good laugh (mandatory drug testing at an Xbox competition, anyone?). Vincent’s brother, Johnny “Drama” (Kevin Dillon) and Eric (Kevin Connolly) have both improved, and Drama has provided a much bigger portion of the better jokes this season. Eric still comes across as a little too fragile and holy-than-thou at times, and finds himself struggling with the position of being Vince’s manager, butting heads with Ari on a number of occasions, tripping up over the surface bullshit of Hollywood – such as the incident involving his lack of a business card or company name, which only lead to complete apathy from other vacuous denizens of Tinseltown.

Entourage continues to bring us a whole new take on the Hollywood lifestyle, showing us that while there may be a lot of parties and gorgeous women, there are still plenty of assholes and bottom-feeders ready to ruin the party for everyone. Unlike my feelings at the close of the rather weak season one finale, I actually find myself eager for some more. If you’re looking for a relaxed, glitzy show who’s characters you can really envy (but feel for at the same time), check this one out.

(The idea behind this show might not really be as new as proposed, though: apparently the idea of having an entourage of buddies like this is based on Mark Wahlberg’s true-life experiences – not so hard to believe considering how involved he is with the show: he’s an executive producer, appeared in the pilot episode, and provides one of the DVD extras by interviewing all the cast members).