The final season of The Sopranos (or if you prefer, the last two-fifiths of the final season) will start in a mere four weeks, and I am pretty excited. What's even more exciting is a new season of Entourage is starting up the same night!
I’ve seen Entourage referred to as the “male Sex In The City” more than once, but I can’t agree with that assessment. The similarities are obvious: a group of four friends live in a glamorous locale and get into adventures, of a sort. Their adventures include activities such as hanging out, chilling, kicking it, drinking, and occasionally talking about relationships. It would be captious to point out that one show involves four men in their twenties, the other four women in their thirties; that one show takes place in Los Angeles, the other in New York.
One of the big differences, though, is in the presentation of the characters. While all four of the dudes on Entourage display behavior that reminds me of my friends, I just can’t see them as types. I can’t see guys walking around wearing T-shirts that read “I’m a Turtle,” or “I’m a Drama” (though, honestly, who would identify themselves with the biggest loser on the show?). I’ll admit that Vince does kind of remind me of my friend Tim, and sometimes E finds himself in situations that I’ve personally experienced, but I can’t pick one that I identify with more than the others. All four of them remind me of me and my friends collectively.
I don’t mean to suggest that the four women on S&TC are one-dimensional or that they aren’t as fleshed out as the four men on Entourage. I can’t make that call because I’m not familiar enough with the former show to do so. But on Entourage, the characters don’t represent “types” quite as clearly.
Here’s another difference: Entourage will not have the same pop-cultural impact because it’s not suggesting some new attitude for young urban men. It’s simply presenting a fantasy that the vast majority of them already want. Vince, Eric, Turtle and Drama live in a mansion, sleep with hot girls with ease, and have instant entree to any club, restaurant or bar they want. None of them have jobs in the traditional sense. Drama and Turtle don’t appear to really have anything remotely resembling a job at all. (Although Turtle’s burgeoning rap management career from the second season was a neat plot device. It also enabled to them to add some complexity to his character; by displaying some ambition, he doesn’t come off as such a self-aware yet unapologetic schnorer.) The only one who can’t sleep in everyday is Vince, and that’s only when he’s working on a movie, which is almost never seen on the show. In his capacity as Vince’s manager, E is the one who seems to have the most job related stress.
Sure, S&TC presented a fantasy, too: these women never worry about money; they eat at trendy restaurants, barhop to the hottest spots, and buy clothes like they’re going out of style. There is one crucial difference here. S&TC tacitly encouraged behavior that mainstream culture has traditionally depicted as exclusively male. There is one female fantasy that the show always conspicuously eschewed, or at the very least downplayed thematically: landing a husband. Whether this is an innate female fantasy or one that is constructed by popular culture is a discussion for another time. What made it unique and what accounted for its cultural impact was that it told women they didn’t have to spend all their time worrying about finding a man. It told them that it was okay for them to get in to their thirties without one, or even the prospect of one. That it was okay for them to be as promiscuous as men are allowed to be, to focus on their friendships with other women and their careers rather than on constantly obsessing about finding a husband and having babies. And that’s the show’s ultimate conceit.
Entourage's ultimate conceit is that the show is a bizarre combination of fantasy and reality. When I say bizarre, I mean it’s bizarre because it actually works. I’ve already outlined the fantasy element of the show. The four characters have, mainly through serendipity, found themselves in a situation that pretty much any dude their age would kill to be in. In order to maintain this fantastical element, I think they should be very careful about showing the crew doing anything outside of La-La-Land. I think it was a good call to have the entire shooting of Queens Boulevard take place in between the first and second seasons. And I’m not convinced that having an episode at Sundance was a great idea (but it was a great episode). I’m willing to let it slide because on one level they were in the same milieu but in a different location.
The reality of the show presents itself on three levels. Firstly, with Doug Ellin as the main creative force behind the show, and Marky Mark as an executive producer, it’s a safe bet that a LOT of the experiences the foursome go through are based on things that really happened to Doug Ellin and Mark Wahlberg when they moved out to California. Drama is a great character, though arguably his main purpose is to provide Marky Mark with an opportunity to rag on Donnie Wahlberg. (The great irony here is that Donnie Wahlberg is a much better actor than his younger brother; if you don’t believe me go watch the first five minutes of The Sixth Sense and then watch the new Planet of the Apes.) And of course, casting an actor whose older brother is a much more successful actor as the older brother of a much more successful actor was a stroke of genius. It also indicates that Kevin Dillon is probably a pretty self-aware cat.
The second realistic aspect of the show is one that I can’t comment on too deeply because I haven’t experienced it myself. But when I’ve spoken about the show to people who have worked in the Hollywood machine, they’ve told me it’s freakishly accurate.
The third aspect, which I will comment on more thoroughly, is the writing. Obviously, I have a bias towards writers, but I think what’s wrong with most movies and TV shows is the script. If the characters don’t talk like real people, then how believable can the rest of it possibly be? The brilliance of the writing on Entourage is that it seems extremely familiar to dudes who watch the show, particularly cats in their twenties. (Swingers was also really good that way.) The manner in which Vince, E, Turtle and Drama talk to and interact with each other is totally accurate. It’s very similar to the way I interact with my friends. And that makes the show compelling. There was a particularly good moment in the penultimate episode of the second season. Turtle and Drama are watching the climax of Brian’s Song, “the ultimate guy cry movie,” and both of them are obviously trying really hard not to cry. When Vince comes in and asks them to turn it off, Turtle initially objects, but when he turns around and takes a look at Vince, he complies instantly. Before Vince actually says a word, his friends can tell something bad has happened. That verisimilitude distinguishes it from your average TV show.
The similarities between S&TC and Entourage have been remarked upon, and they are shown on the same channel, a channel which has distinctive shows anyway. And while there are some similarities, ultimately it’s just not accurate to call Entourage the “male Sex & The City.” Great as it is, Entourage is most likely not going to have the same cultural impact as the earlier program. S&TC was really groundbreaking underneath its patina of superficiality. It suggested that women could place their priorities on things other than the quest to catch a man and get a rock on one's finger. And whether you argue that that idea is something innate, or something women are programmed to think through pop culture, the bridal-industrial complex, or whatever, you must admit that it’s pretty outré to encourage such a mind set. Entourage doesn’t really do that. Rather than devising a new mode for young urban men, it presents a fantasy that the vast majority of them already want. Entourage makes its mark by combining fantasy and reality so deftly that it actually works. And that’s no mean feat.
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