'Entourage,' Giving HBO Summer Fare A First-Class Escort

By Tom Shales
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006

There may not be enough water coolers in the world to host discussions of HBO's best shows. The broadcast networks are starting to catch up, increasingly presenting programs that dominate the office chitchat. Even so, "The Sopranos" -- which as of last Sunday's mercurial installment has gone into yet another infernal hiatus on HBO -- easily remains the medium's all-time chatter champ: diced, discussed and dissected as no other drama series of its time.

A "Sopranos"-size hit can set off a ripple effect that helps carry a network's evening. With the Soprano saga having gone back into orbit until early next year -- and HBO declining to reveal when the final eight episodes will air -- the pay-cable channel needs another series strong enough to carry the rest of Sunday night with it.

Obviously, HBO thinks it has that in "Entourage," a smart and disarming lark about a sweet-natured young movie star and the three pals who try to keep him humble when he gets too lofty and tell him that he's hot stuff should he become insecure or depressed.

As the show's hero gets sterling support from underlings, and in turn uses his clout to clear their way to the promised land, so it is hoped that the 12 new episodes of "Entourage" will lead the way to a victorious summer for HBO's mix of the old -- "Deadwood," David Milch's raunchy whirligig of a western (returning tonight for its last full season of weekly episodes) -- and the new: "Lucky Louie," a working-class sitcom whose collar isn't the only thing blue about it; and "Dane Cook's Tourgasm," a reality romp about four young comics touring North America in a wackily wayward bus.

During the first two seasons of "Entourage," its central character -- an actor named Vince -- lobbied and campaigned for the lead role in "Aquaman," a James Cameron picture about a superhero of the same name. Tonight, as the third season begins, that movie is about to open, and both industry scuttlebutt and word on the street is good. Even so, Vince (played engagingly by Adrian Grenier) knows better than to get cockily overconfident, despite the many temptations that accompany career leaps in Hollywood; he already has to be planning a face-saving spin campaign should the costly ship sink.

His friends, who've gallantly offered support in the forms of woman-hunting, communal carousing, gamboling, gambling and just plain partying, know that it isn't over till it's over and not even then; in fact, it hasn't really begun till it's begun. The entourage includes top-billed Kevin Connolly as the manager, Eric, the level-headed brains of the group; and amiable hangers-on Jerry Ferrara as the burly Turtle and Kevin Dillon as Vince's self-deluded brother Johnny Drama. Most pivotal of all -- pivotal partly because he is perpetually twirling himself into the tautest of twisters -- is Vince's agent Ari, the ruthless scavenger who's a snarling shark one moment and a paternal porpoise the next.

Ari is played with masterfully modulated desperation, ferocity and bravado by Jeremy Piven -- without whom there simply would be no show. Piven is not the central character, but he is the Rolls-Royce engine that keeps "Entourage" heading down the highway. Bumblingly robbed of an Emmy last year, Piven is back and as deserving as ever for the latest season of "Entourage," refining a characterization of awesome complexity and elusiveness -- a man who is never in the rifle's sights long enough to be a bona fide target, even though there's an infinite number of candidates who'd love to pull the trigger.

In the season's first three episodes, viewers are likely to find it harder than ever to dismiss Ari as a mere deadly menace, since he's in exile from the big plush talent agency he'd called his home away from home and is having a harder time of it -- learning to cope on, curse of curses, a smaller expense account.

Naturally, as the "Aquaman" premiere approaches, there is the manageable crisis or two. Actor James Woods (as himself) has fewer tickets than he'd requested, and industry savants estimate the movie needs to gross $100 million its first weekend (vs. the mere $95 million originally estimated), and so on. But then, even as the red carpet is being unfurled, comes news from the North: a calamity so profound that it can only be called an act of God (except that, in this environment, even God might sue), something too awful to have been included on Ari's list of potential and arguably avoidable catastrophic mind-blowers.

A new character named Dom will be complicating the scenario as the weeks wear on. An alumnus of the state's Department of Corrections (although he appears still to be fundamentally incorrect), Dom likes to walk around Ari's house naked and commit such social faux pas as borrowing another man's deodorant -- the roll-on kind! Dom rubs everyone the wrong way, with the possible exception of the very vocal young woman whose shrieks of "oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah" fill the house during an assignation that threatens to register on the Richter scale.

"Entourage" returns with feathers fully unfurled, zooming and soaring across the Sunday-night sky and elevating escapism to dizzy new altitudes and basically untroubled new attitudes. The cast and creators have pulled off a neat and tantalizing trick: They make you yearn to be there with Vince and his boyish brigade, romping through decadence but never wallowing in it -- Lost Boys in Ever-Ever Land, enjoying it all while it lasts and subconsciously aware that, like life itself, it could vanish in a poof without so much as half-a-moment's notice.

'Lucky Louie'

Elsewhere in its newly renovated Sunday-night lineup, HBO unveils "Lucky Louie," a blue-collar sitcom that might better be termed a ring-around-the-collar sitcom -- yet another attempt to breathe new life into a genre that is forever being declared as dead as the atrophied parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch.

It seems the much-mourned sitcom is not "bleedin' demised," but merely turning a tempting new corner. "Lucky Louie" is the precocious brainchild of comic Lewis C.K., who wrote tonight's pilot and stars in the title role: an embittered hard-luck Lou who faces bleak working-class realities made tolerable by Pamela Adlon as wife Kim and, as daughter Lucy, a strikingly adorable child star named Kelly Gould.

In an apartment that seems clearly a homage to the dingy flat once occupied by Ralph and Alice Kramden (in Jackie Gleason's masterpiece "The Honeymooners"), Louie and Kim struggle to attain their own minuscule portion of the American dream, with Louie staying home to watch Lucy while Kim holds down a respectable 9-to-5 office job. The back story is all spelled out in the opening scene, one that fans of Louis C.K. will recognize from his comedy-club act.

As children do, Lucy keeps asking "Why?" in response to every explanation that her father can offer. The answer to "Why don't you know, Papa?" is an unusually straightforward "Because I was high all the time. I smoked too much pot." Why? "I figured my life would come together on its own." But it didn't, and now his only employment outside the house is part-time work at a muffler shop. Why? Because "there's no real jobs in America anymore," he glumly tells his daughter.

In the opening episodes, Louie also tries to deal sensibly and intelligently with a new family that moved in down the hall and happens to be African American. Louie's attempts at conversation or socializing amount to a faux pas followed by an outright idiotic blunder.

"Lucky Louie" is not a runaway smash right out of the gate, but neither does it stumble or implode. The language is far earthier and more explicit than could be found in a sitcom on the broadcast networks, suggesting that one way for sitcoms to survive is simply to talk dirtier. There are also scandalous running gags, such as Louie's occasional lengthy sieges of the bathroom for purposes that have nothing to do with the digestive process.

The comedy becomes poignantly funny when it evolves that wife Kim, instead of choosing celibacy for herself (and thereby for poor Louie), decides she wants to have another baby, and proceeds to seduce her spouse via such dubiously subtle techniques as sticking a breast in his eye or bending over teasingly at the oven door. A pal of Louie's tells him -- as they discuss life on a park bench that seems designed precisely for that purpose -- that a man's first and second marriages are almost certain to fail, in various senses of the term, but that "the third wife is the best."

"Yeah," the friend says knowingly, "you'll enjoy that."

'Tourgasm'

Less inviting than "Lucky Louie" -- but also a bold departure from genre traditions -- is another in the swelling population of hybrid television shows. "Dane Cook's Tourgasm" is a combination of a reality series and a string of stand-up comedy concerts.

Cook, who created and appears in the show, might be the first comedy superstar to emerge from the murky wilds of the Internet. He used the Web to grow his fan base, and grow it did -- to such an extent that "Retaliation," Cook's comedy CD, has become the highest-charting comedy album in 25 years.

Unfortunately, the show's format -- inviting us along on a bus tour of college campuses by Cook and three other young comedians -- is off-putting from the outset, largely because comedians are among the most self-absorbed and self-fascinated creatures on the planet -- monkeys in front of mirrors who seem never to tire of making allegedly funny faces. Their onstage work is largely undistinguished, one comic opening with the unspeakably banal "How you guys feelin' tonight?" and another congratulating the audience for appreciating his humor: "You're amazing. Thank you so much," and "I had an awesome time. Thank you very much."

Okay, you're welcome, but aren't we the ones who are supposed to be having the "awesome time"?

The comics sit around the trailer making wry observations ("We're dysfunctional; that's why we do comedy") or venture out to sample the recreational activities of the towns they visit. Occasionally the chatter is interrupted by on-screen printed "rules of comedy," such as "Never trust an anti-Semitic horse" and "Learn the rules -- then do what you want."

If the prospect of accompanying comedians on a comedy bus does have a certain allure, don't get too excited. At any moment the group might hop on a private jet and fly from, say, Bozeman, Mont., to New Orleans (pre-Katrina, or so it appears). We are also given access to the questionable treat of watching comics hone raw remarks into jokes; one of them tries to find humor in such observations as: "You know what I hate about grapefruit? It ruins a fruit salad."

Hmm. Seems like a little more honing might be in order.

It would be unfair to expect 100 percent pure gold from HBO's Sunday-night lineup. It would even be unfair to expect nothing but comedy; the schedule, as of tonight, includes "Deadwood," the television show that boasts, among other features, more four-letter words per five minutes of airtime than any other series on television. "Deadwood" does have comic elements, to be sure, but could hardly be called a comedy to the degree that the other shows in the lineup are.

What they all have in common is that whether the roads they take could be called high or low (or in "Deadwood's" case, virtually impassable), they all go off in directions unusual for television. This is true of "Dane Cook's Tourgasm," the sitcom redux "Lucky Louie" or the fresh-breeze escapism of "Entourage." No other network has a night of television quite so intoxicatingly quixotic or as heavily dedicated to daring departures.

It used to be that the arrival of summer meant television turned to low-budget clunkers or scattered, tattered reruns. Cable and, particularly, HBO have changed that -- and just when you thought it was safe to turn the thing off and head into the water.

Entourage (30 minutes) airs at 10 tonight on HBO, followed by Lucky Louie (30 minutes) and Dane Cook's Tourgasm (30 minutes).