With the start of the US TV season starting, I thought I would give a little countdown of the worst shows I’ve watched. One thing you should know is that I love American TV shows. I think it all started with The OC when I was at school. My friends and I were addicts, which meant that we couldn’t wait for it to air on UK TV, so it was downloaded as soon as it came out in the US, and every Wednesday, after homework time (I was at boarding school), we would communally perve over Mischa Barton. Since then, I have religiously watched around thirty shows. These don’t include comedies, since as you may know, I despise American comedies. They are all of the drama/action genre, ranging from 24 to Gossip Girl. Naturally, I have come across some really shit shows as a result.
So onto number 3, Entourage. This is a pretty controversial one, as I know there are so many people who worship this show, many of my friends included. But I just found the whole show really gay (in a lame way, not in a homo way). Incidentally, the best part of the show was its gay character, Lloyd. I also like Ari, and his wife. What I dislike is the ‘entourage’ itself. The show attempts to depict a group of guys essentially living the dream. They are supposed to be living the life everyone should aspire to – barely working, going out all the time and constantly surrounded by girls. They are also supposed to be a group of ‘lads’ with whom everyone would want to be friends. They’re constantly making fun of each other, giving ‘banter’, but at the end of the day they’re always ‘there’ for one another.
What pisses me off about the show is how cool they think they are, contrasted with their insecurities. Vince is obviously a shit actor, which he knows. Drama is the unsuccessful older brother, Turtle’s fat, and E feels he should be doing more than living off/working for his friend. All this results in repetitive situations whereby the characters compensate for their flaws by showing off how awesome and macho they are. How many times does Vince just drop in the fact that he’s having a threesome, clearly chuffed with himself, but appearing casual about it? How often do Turtle, E and Drama give chat about how many girls they ‘could fuck’, and fight about who’s most successful in their conquests? And how many times to the characters get into trouble, but brush it off, ‘cos that’s how they roll’? On top of this, the characters overtly try to be funny. They make jokes, rather than simply being funny characters, which makes them offensively unfunny.
What makes it worse, is that having given us these vapid, carefree characters which I didn’t like in the first place, the writers then tried to add depth, which simply didn’t work. Having sold this group of guys who don’t give a shit about anything, you can’t suddenly take this away. That’s not character development, it’s complete change, and it doesn’t work. The show was supposed to be a spoof of the Hollywood lifestyle, but it had to change direction when this spoof got old, and this is when bad went to worse. It turned from a spoof into an attempt at drama, but it became implausible. This, and the fact that I already found the show annoying, has landed Entourage at number 3 on my list. Apologies.
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