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The rambling nature of the narrative isn’t necessarily a problem. ER, for example, got by on that model for a time (before it overstayed its welcome as well). Dennis Leary seems to be aiming for something cohesive, some grand celebration of 9/11 heroism, some grand lament of society’s lack of recognition, some grand tribute to the day’s tragedy. Instead, what he’s come up with is a diverting exploration of the silliness of the masculine gender role, sprinkled with some 9/11 rumination. In the end, it's not a bad show, but misses the bull’s-eye it aims for.

(On a completely separate note, it’s too bad that this last batch of episodes were shot a year ago. Seems a shame that a show with 9/11 woven into its DNA isn’t able to address Osama’s death. Then again, the narrative is so loose, they could have gone back to shoot an episode about it, snuck it in somewhere, and it wouldn’t have disrupted the flow at all.)

Another former buzz hit stumbling across the finish line also approaches masculine shallowness, but in a far less entertaining way and, I have to say, IS a bad show. When Entourage debuted, it was hailed as the male Sex And The City. Unlike the Sarah Jessica Parker show, however, people caught on to the disgusting superficiality of the characters before the second movie. People caught on about three seasons in.

The stakes involved in a show about Hollywood aren’t life and death. They pretty much come down to: will the movie get made? Who really cares if you don’t care about the characters? And the four main characters are a couple of swaggering peacocks (Drama and Turtle), an uptight stick-in-the-mud (E), and a supposedly good actor played by a boring actor (Vince). And this boring actor is the lead. How am I as a viewer supposed to care about this group with such a bland lead?

I will say that unappealing characters can make for good shows. Look no further than Seinfeld or Arrested Development. The difference is that those shows embrace the off-putting nature of the characters. Entourage, on the other hand, seems to think these four are charming. It doesn’t seem to think there’s anything unlikable about them at all. So, by not playing off their distasteful natures, the show asks us to sympathize with their frivolous show biz plights. And, once the glamour wore off a few seasons in, so did the show’s place in the pop culture stratosphere.

To the show’s credit, in recent seasons, they’ve tried to make the stakes higher, introducing drug problems for Vince and a divorce for Ari, but the writers never seem to realize, Ari excluded, that the characters are raging assholes. Perhaps this is why Ari became the breakout character. He’s the only one who revels in his assholery. However, while I might miss his brilliant offensive rants, I will not miss Entourage as it comes to its under-the-pop-culture-radar end.

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