Given that the good folks at HBO have seen fit to advertise their show on my sidebar, may as well give it a plug: Entourage is my favorite show on television. And not because -- or not merely because -- it's a male fantasy with superb production value. Entourage is, at least for now, the only show on TV that really believes in the happy ending. Far from the Big Love's and Soprano's of the world, where tension and drama are injected by ensuring you leave each episode with a knot in your gut, each episode of Entourage is a self-contained fairy tale -- 30 minutes that's guaranteed to end happily. Nearly every show finishes with the episode's minute bit of uncertainty or conflict fully resolved, and the four characters toasting the basic awesomeness of their existence, generally while surrounded by supermodels, friends, and success.
This week, for instance, the rolling blackouts that were supposed to hamper Aquaman's opening day take not only didn't push the film under expectations, as was hinted throughout the episode, but it didn't even derail its march to the largest opening weekend of all time. And this grand news was delivered, of course, at a high school party that the four protagonists attended in order to radically improve the social standing of two dweebs who'd approached them at a screening. The show isn't just kind and the actor's lucky; it's dreamily compassionate and its main characters are charmed. And, as it happens, I find that unstoppably refreshing.
