By Michelle Lerner

There is no show on television that infuriates me as much as ENTOURAGE; not GREY’S ANATOMY and its treacly melodrama; not HEROES and all its many characters; not even LOST and its drifting plotlines. ENTOURAGE is the most frustrating show on television because it holds so much promise, yet delivers so little.

Each episode feels thrown together; like the shooting script is a first draft. Every scene feels like a first take; all mispronounced lines, actors indicating their hearts out and awkward set-ups, with very little actual framing of shots. The writers aren’t even trying. It’s like a slap in the face.

Hollywood is a place where everyone is playing a game — constantly strategizing about how to get more, bigger, richer. The show feels best when a deal is on the table and Ari and Vince are maneuvering. The knowingness of the show is what the audience trusts. This is rooted in the fact that the viewer suspects that some of the absurdity of what goes on behind the scenes in ENTOURAGE’s Hollywood might be the real thing. (After all, we are about to get TRANSFORMERS, the movie.) But, lately the show has been so far-fetched; we know none of what goes on is possible. For example, no financier or producer would ever actually shoot a film in Colombia. The movie would be uninsurable. And, that’s when ENTOURAGE loses us. It’s not a parody, it’s a lie.

The one scene with true potential for suspense and humor in this episode was the scene in Ari’s office, where he tells the boys that Vince can’t again work until people see “MEDELLIN.” The reasons behind this are complicated and could be interesting. If only the camera wasn’t panning back and forth, as though it was trying to squeeze the scene into the episode all by itself. There was no room for anyone to breathe, and Jeremy Piven seemed like an antic monkey instead of a knowledgeable and frustrated agent trying to make his client see reality. It’s a shame to waste all that energy.

I cringed when I realized that the B-story was going to be centered around yet another party. We get it. All these guys do is party. Yeah, yeah. So, Turtle wants boobs and Johnny doesn’t want people messing up his stuff. I am pretty sure I saw that story line in an episode of FRIENDS, only Courteney Cox was actually funny and believable.

Vince and Eric’s wild goose chase all over town for Billy the director feels pointless. We all know they are going to find him. Going to his house and then to a strip club are not twists, they are hack stops on a journey to the obvious. I bet they thought the scene with Billy driving out of his warehouse on his motorcycle through the film would be so cool and unexpected, but it wasn’t. It was boring. Billy has always been crazy. Not crazy like a fox, just crazy.

After Eric and Vince screen MEDELLIN, I was praying for something interesting to happen; maybe the shared look that they know they just sank everything they had into the film and it’s a stinker. But, that would create conflict. Instead, Vince likes it and Eric hates it. That’s almost as bad as declaring the thing a masterpiece. Even Vince hating it would have been more interesting, because it’s really his opinion that matters to the town. But, on ENTOURAGE, stakes are blissfully ignored. That’s what makes it so easy for even conservative Eric to hang up on Marvin the money guy. He can rest easy knowing that writers hate conflict as much as he does. They are sure to write him out of this mess. After all, this is a show about a young hot movie star, not a sad washed up ex-actor. But, maybe if they cared more about Marvin, we would care more about them.