Review: Entourage Season 3

I've decided that I'm not going to review television shows that I'm watching on DVD episode by episode any more. I'm just going to review them as seasons. That is the way I watch them, that is the way I'll review them. I will, however, continue to review single episodes of shows that I watch on proper T.V.

So, here we go. Entourage Season 3. This was a pretty good season. There were a few early missteps, such as the Dom storyline, where an old neighbourhood friend of the group's, who had been in prison for the last five years, shows up and makes everyone uncomfortable. This, in turn, makes the audience feel uncomfortable. And this discomfort doesn't really fit in with the tone of the show. If this were The Office, then, yeah, making the audience uncomfortable is what it's all about. But this is Entourage. It's a wish fulfilment show about a bunch of guys who are improbably rich, have no real problems, and have a lot of sex with attractive women. It's the male version of Sex and the City. Stop with these intrusions of real life, already.

But it's all okay: the Dom storyline only lasts two episodes, and then isn't mentioned again until season five. This is actually an example of something this show does a lot of - pick up and drop storylines seemingly at random. For example, Vincent Chase's desire to make Medellin was something mentioned back in, what, the first season? And then never mentioned again until now. Also, the film that Vincent doesn't want to do, Materhorn, is again mentioned this season, before being completely forgotten about. And the fact that Harvey Weinstein hates Vincent was brought up as a big important thing again, but it just never really went anywhere. Maybe it will go somewhere next season, maybe not. You just can't tell with Entourage.

They don't just do it with plots about films, either. They do it with relationships as well. In the first season Eric falls in love with that girl who works in Ari Gold's office, they have sex, she gets fired, the plot never goes anywhere. Then Eric starts dating Sloan, who he dated for two whole seasons, they actually move in together, and then when someone mentions that Sloan might break up with him, he just thinks, "oh well." And the Vincent Chase-Mandy Moore stuff never went anywhere. He almost gets kicked off of Aquaman because of it, then he doesn't. Then we never hear from Mandy Moore again.

It's not a bad thing, really, but I just wish the show was either more or less serialised. If it was more serialised - if events flowed in to one another, and storylines where continued through to their logical conclusion - then that would be fine. And if the show was less serialised - if each episode was a purely stand alone thing, with little to no bearing on any other episode - then that would be fine as well. It's this weird mixture of the two that can sometimes become annoying. You want to know what happened to a particular character, or with a particular plot, and the show just doesn't bother to tell you. Or maybe they do bother to tell you, in three seasons' time. There is no way of knowing. It's the suspense that gets me.