The Newsletter #22: Entourage Might Be the Perfect Show for Quarantine (Patreon)

Hey friends,

John here. I know that we had a long and funny and clever name for the newsletters, but it was very annoying to copy/paste every time and the last time Stefan and I did the newsletters, we both called them #20—probably because we bury the number of the letter at the very end and it’s hard to find. So this is now “The Newsletter”, and this is #22 and I have a confession to make: I’m re-watching Entourage. I know, I know. I have a podcast about nu-metal, and now this? I am truly a white suburban piece of shit. But here’s the thing: I think Entourage is the perfect show for the quarantine. I seriously do.

Make no mistake, Entourage is a very, very bad television show. I tweeted a few months back that I had watched every episode of the law drama Suits and that I believed it to be the worst television show ever made. I still believe that to be true, as Suits borrows from the Entourage playbook, which drew from the House playbook before that, as every episode’s main goal is simply wish fulfillment. It’s just a stacking of inconsequential dominoes—playing by a different set of rules than the stack of dominoes that came before that—which appear ready to fall and then the character magically discovers the rules to this game of dominoes at the last possible second so everyone we want to win does, roll credits. House pretended there were consequences in the form of medical maladies, that we were led to believe the lives of these characters were on the line, and the drama and emotion that comes with that. Suits similarly tried to play with this dynamic with the dismantling of their law firm, and cases that appeared to be important to the people involved in them. Entourage wasn’t interested in any of that, as they managed to create the lowest-stakes television show of all-time, and that’s part of what makes it so damn good for right now.

If you’ve never seen it, Entourage ran for a whopping 8 seasons, from 2004-2011, on HBO. It probably ran that long because of a perfect combination of viewership numbers, a ton of absurd and fun stunt casting, and the fact that the major role players had virtually nothing else to do (and would continue that after the show ends, as none of the 4 main characters have done anything since the series finale, aside from a major motion picture continuing the “plot” of this show). The show is loosely based on Mark Wahlberg’s rise to fame, and the best friends he brought along for the ride. But unlike House or even Suits, in Entourage, absolutely nothing is on the line, ever. We are meant to care that Vincent Chase (played dully by Adrian Grenier in the Mark Wahlberg role) might make only $5 million on a movie instead of $3 million. It plays with the trappings of fame in such a way that the only thing we are cheering for is rich people, who are mostly bad and act very bad, to get richer. And mostly, they do. Very little ever goes wrong, and when it does, there’s always some magical roll of the dice that keeps the can kicked down the road for 96 episodes. For example, Season 2, the second season of the show, presumably when you’d still have, I don’t know, lots of good ideas for a show, concerns the entire first half of the season with a will they/won’t they about whether Vince will get "Aquaman", in a weirdly prescient storyline where the real world did eventually get it. The punishment if he doesn’t? He won’t be able to afford the $5m house he bought despite warnings from everyone he couldn’t afford it without getting Aquaman. Luckily, he gets cast in a Chinese commercial that pays him $500,000 and Jessica Alba (introduced in Season 1 as a co-star and friend of Vince) lends him her palatial oceanside Malibu estate because Aquaman is filmed in the Valley. Good for Vince.

So why is this the perfect show for quarantine? Why should you watch this terrible show, instead of doing other things, like baking bread, or going for walks, or learning an instrument, or even just watching another, totally different, far more artistic and much better show? Here’s why:

1. Everyone wins, all the time.

Let’s be honest, I think a lot of us are probably wandering around our houses every day thinking to ourselves, “you know what? I could use a win.” What better way to indulge in that fantasy than watching these people get wins everywhere, all the time. Are the wins deserved? Hell no, which somehow makes it even better, because then I can sit and watch the show and go, “you know what? I am a piece of shit, I deserve a win too!”

2. The Cameos.

The whole gimmick of the show is that it takes place in real-life Hollywood. Vincent Chase isn’t real (but he could be), Ari Gold isn’t real (but is based on a real, high-powered Hollywood agent), but the show works very hard to create the impression that all of this is taking place in real time, in real Hollywood. It maintains that artifice by having a ton of A-List (and down to D-List) celebs appearing in the show, with a hit rate of at least one major cameo per episode. While this isn’t *that* cool on its face, there are some legitimately very, very strong cameos by people who play an altered version of themselves (with Matt Damon topping that list) and it’s also very interesting to look back at just who was deemed to be popular or cool as a cameo item in the mid-aughts. Speaking of the mid-aughts…

3. Nostalgia.

Of course most shows have signifiers of the time they were recorded, but almost none hit you in the face as aggressively as Entourage does. Because of the nature of the show, the references are a near-constant wave of your teenage self (I aged from 18 to 25 over the show’s lifespan, their literal target demographic) being reflected at you, from the garish product placements for products that were never popular (Avion Tequila, for example, dominates a subplot for two entire seasons, and do you remember anyone ever drinking it?) (I’m doing a double bracket for a fun fact: the Entourage movie that came out in 2015 holds the record for product placements with 55 in 90 minutes) to the celebrities that were once deemed famous enough to be worthy of a cameo in the show (Ali Larter, anyone?) to just the general fashion of the time. I’m not saying nostalgia is everything, but it’s kind of fun to glance back at a time when things were simpler, maybe. I mean, that’s easy to say right now especially. 

I would be remiss not to mention that one thing I don’t have nostalgia for is all the homophobia and toxic masculinity. Yikes. It’s almost impossible to believe that less than two decades ago, dropping the F slur on a major television show on a major television network was just like, totally fine and normal. It’s horrible to watch, and even once the show drops the slurs after the second season, the bro culture surrounding the main characters and the show permeates and it’s the worst part of the show, easily. That said, it is almost fascinating to view in a way, as it is somewhat easy to draw a straight line between Entourage and the genesis of Barstool Sports. Does Barstool even exist without this show? It’s obviously terrible, but is a fascinating study in sociology and just might help us all understand some sects of Twitter.

4. Who cares what happens.

This is one of those rare shows with a plot that you could miss massive chunks of and it does not matter. The characters do not grow over the course of an episode, a season, or even the show’s entire run, really. They manage to stretch completely insignificant plot lines over entire seasons, and you’ll be amazed at how you could skip 4 episodes and they’re still on a tiny plot point from the last episode you watched and it still hasn’t been resolved. Watch it while you’re making dinner, doing shitty living room workouts, fighting with your significant other, anything. It doesn’t matter how much you miss, you can immediately pick up wherever you want and you’ll be up to speed within minutes. It’s the perfect show for not paying attention to anything that happens in it. It’s just beautiful people getting their way every minute of every episode and it’s weirdly glorious.

And hey, it did get nominated for 26 Emmys. And 13 Golden Globes.

Hope you’re all staying safe, indoors, and you and your loved ones are keeping well.

John