Entourage

Thanks to Netflix, if a TV show gets enough critical and popular acclaim, I'll check it out, as long as it's something that seems mildly interesting. I may even add 24 to my queue.

But right now, it's Entourage. I just finished season 1, and beyond the "WTF?" response to a "season" being a lousy 8 episodes (I knew it going in, but it's still annoying), I actually enjoyed it. The second half of it.

I watched the first four eps, and wasn't charmed. Vince is a self-absorbed asshole who doesn't deserve the treatment he gets. Turtle is disgusting. Ari makes you want to rip his ear off with your teeth. And though I know it's naive, I'd like to believe that not every single person in Hollywood is doing drugs and having sex every five minutes.

Luckily, the show's not about Vince. It's about Eric, or "E," his best friend and manager, who still does drugs but is at least a considerate and well-mannered human being. It was enough--barely--to get me to watch the second disk. That, and I didn't get to the queue in time to stop it from coming.

The second half was amazingly different. Ari had moments of honesty and sincerity that made me actually like him. Turtle was still disgusting, but Johnny Drama was played by Kevin Dillon (who I've always really disliked) as endearing and sweet and much smarter than he acts most of the time. They're still doing drugs, but there's a complexity to the relationships now, a depth that took five episodes to develop, that make me glad I waited it out.

Looking forward to season two, with the hope that they'll bring in at least one woman who's not perfect and vacant. :)