Entourage: the same old menu. What else did you expect?

If I walk into a McDonald's, order a Quarter Pounder and Fries and then take a bite, is it at all fair to wince and say, "This isn't even in the same ballpark as the Umami Burger I had last week!"

Probably not. McDonald's exists specifically because you know what you're getting when you order, because it's fast, it's cheap and it occupies space in your stomach until you again require sustenance. You can go anywhere in the country and be assured that the burger you order at one McDonald's is exactly the same mass-produced meal you'd get at any other McDonald's. It's not a place you go to expand your pallate. If you're gonna get picky about taste, what the hell are you doing going to a place with a drive-thru?

Entourage is the McDonald's of TV and film. Every episode has pretty much the same ingredients:

- Ari screams
- some vague conflicts and deal-making related to the film business, but not so detailed you ever get a sense the people making the show understand the business of producing and selling content.
- bikinis
- babes
- asses
- sexist remarks from Drama
- constipated looks from Eric
- short jokes about Eric
- asses
- references to banging
- weed
- Lloyd is mocked
- Vince is sure it'll all work out
- Drama worries about his career
- Drama embarrasses himself at an audition
- asses
- E's has relationship drama that couldn't be compelling if both parties were double agents for the KGB
- Despite being an abusive sexist boor, Ari has a heart of gold.

And honestly, that's exactly what you're getting with this movie. There's nothing you'll find in this movie that hasn't been done already in some form on the series. Sure, there are a few cosmetic changes. Vince's movie that's causing all the drama this time happens to be his directorial debut rather than merely a starring vehicle. Ari is also doing his screaming from his office as a studio head rather than an agency but it's all the same dynamics as before. Like the Mike Love-fronted Beach Boys, this reunion tour plays the hits, never approaching anything from "the new album."

Reviewing Entourage would be kind of a pointless exercise. On a relative scale, it's better than the final two seasons of the show were, but it doesn't approach the heights of season 2.

As always, a big part of the problem is Vince, who's written and performed uncompellingly. But if you watched the series, this is nothing new. After a few seasons it became hard to ignore that Adrian Grenier lacked the sort of charisma you'd find in a star of Vince's supposed stature. (He's spoken of as if he's somewhere between a Wahlberg and a DiCaprio... which writes a check that Grenier simply can't cash.) I took to imagining what other TV-level actors might have made more compelling Vinces, and ended up pondering how Revenge's Nick Wechsler and The Vampire Diaries Paul Wesley might have embodied the character.

I know it's fruitless to complain about this, but the film skips over the one golden chance it had to really take a risk. Early on, Vince declares he wants to direct his next movie. Flash-forward eight months and the film's in the can and Vince is overdue to show it to Ari. (Yes, that's lighting-speed for a $100 million film to go from pre-production to wrapping up post in that time, but just go with it.)

Those are the eight months we should have seen! Entourage has done the whole "will this movie kill Vince's career?" storyline before. We've seen Vince and crew in these kinds of situations. But seeing Vince behind the camera is totally new territory. The character has never been depicted as a big picture sort of guy, so it would have been interesting to see him deal with the weight of an entire movie on his shoulders as he stars in it. I want to see him setting up shots with his DP, directing other actors, and keeping this massive film on schedule.

It would have been a golden opportunity to really challenge Vince and maybe break the guy down enough to really show what makes him tick. The film ends up leaning on the idea that Vince made a brilliant movie and given what we know of Vince, I wouldn't have thought him capable of that. There's so much conflict that the movie skips over just so it can stay within the bounds of the familiar.

I know, I know. As soon as I walked into McDonald's I forfeited the right to complain about the menu.

Can we at least agree that it's weird that two Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models (Emily Ratajkowski and Alyssa Miller) play themselves in this film, but that an SI cover model (Nina Agdal) shows up as just a random hottie on Vince's yacht? It's a little like casting Ringo Starr as himself, but having Paul McCartney play a roadie.

Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage - an HBO study in contrasts

The season finale of Curb Your Enthusiasm and the series finale of Entourage on HBO last night made for an interesting study in contrasts. The former was the product of a modern comic maestro, a writer-performer who is constantly pushing himself and only commits to new seasons of his show when he has something to say. His comedy constantly challenges social norms and finds humor in taboos so controversial that half the laughs are motivated by shock at what is unfolding on screen.

The latter was the product of a writer who has admitted in the past that he's shocked when people take anything seriously on his show. Honestly, the last three seasons or so of Entourage have been so aimless and slapdash that I have only myself to blame for expecting more from this final season. I thought that with the foreknowledge that this was the end, the creators might have put in a little effort at investing the last hurrah with some sense of closure.

That wasn't in evidence. Instead we were served up sudden reversals from what would be akin to the "end of Act Two lowpoint" in most of the characters' lives:

- Ari and his wife are having season-long marital issues that send him into the bed of another woman and her running to the divorce lawyer. BAM! Fixed with a sudden over-the-top decision to sell the agency and move abroad. (If I had the strength, I'd detail that Mrs. Ari's issues with Ari fly in the face of years of previous characterization and the resolution honors neither that nor her bi-polar attitude this season.)

- Serial womanizer Vince is suddenly worried that an Vanity Fair article implies he's doesn't respect women. This is such a blow to him that he not only makes it his mission to prove the female writer wrong, but he decides in less than a day that she's the love of his life AND they head to Paris to get married. The formerly-insightful reporter played by Alice Eve is reduced to nothing more than a prop for Vince's 180 in characterization and a plot device for his happy ending.

- E's relationship with the most personality free recurring character on the show is on the rocks. He slept with her stepmother AND screwed over her godfather, but all is forgiven because she's pregnant and his friends went all out. Slone might have zero depth, but even she's too good for E, who didn't deserve this happy ending and really belongs slinging pizza at Sbarro's. Let's not forget the fact that two of E's friends lied to Sloane's face about his indiscretion.

- Oh, and Turtle's a millionaire. Sounds about right.

At the other end of the spectrum, Curb was a brilliant episode that stands alongside this season's "The Palestinian Chicken" and last week's Bill Buckner episode as some of the best half-hours of comedy ever. Michael J. Fox appeared as himself in a storyline that had Larry suspecting that Fox was exaggerating his symptoms so he could have carte blance to "accidentally" bump into him, give him dismissive headshakes, shake up a soda bottle before Larry opens it, and loudly clomp around in the apartment above Larry's. With each confrontation, Fox seemed to passive aggressively attack Larry, only to then play the victim, saying "It's the disease." Larry being Larry, he refused to accept this and his umbrage and frustration only served to make him appear more like the aggressor.

It's somewhat brilliant how Curb doesn't shy away from making "protected classes" the villains in these stories. I recall a blind man a few seasons back who took great advantage of his disability to impose on Larry far beyond what most people would consider reasonable.

I don't doubt some Parkinson's sufferers were offended by this episode, but having Fox play the bad guy in the scenario probably went a long way towards helping audiences see the lighter side.

(Honestly, the only fault I found with the plot was the fact that the "faker" element immediately reminded me of Rush Limbaugh's insane and completely indefensible statements about Fox, and how I hope that when Rush suffers the near-fatal heart attack he's long overdue, that someone may use national media to call him a charlatan. Right, because Parkinson's is SUCH a picnic, you overblown sack of shit.)

Okay, one other fault - the French street in the end was absurdly fake, but Larry getting into a shouting match with a Frenchman about parking etiquette was well worth it. That and Leon's chulupa discussion.

Writers - take a lesson from Larry David: Be bold, write things that sometimes scare you and others. But don't just cross the line for the sake of crossing it. I've seen plenty of specs that try to get by on just being outrageous and shocking - but it takes more than that. Curb didn't succeed because it made fun of Parkinson's. It succeeded because of how that premise created a trap that the protagonist was completely incapable of escaping from. It was a no-win situation and it was done in a way where we assume that Michael J. Fox was probably being an asshole.... but we're never 100% sure.

Better still, if he's not being an asshole, then Larry's reaction is incredibly insensitive and he deserves what he gets for escalating it. If he IS being an asshole, then Larry's still not helping the situation, as his aggressive defense is playing right into the "villain's" hands. If the story was just "Hey, let's make Michael J. Fox a faker," it might not have been as successful. Instead, the brilliance comes from Larry having to deal with the implications of that - in-character - and have his very nature make a bad situation worse. Long-time fans probably could predict many of Larry's reactions in this episode, and yet, that inevitability only made the writing more potent because after eight seasons, we know Larry is incapable of reacting any other way.

The difference between the two shows is that the Curb staff understands story and it knows how to put their characters in situations where their natural reactions cause conflict. Entourage understands neither of these things, so the characters are subject to complete personality reversals at any time in order to service the whims of the creator.

So if you have a choice to emulate Entourage or emulate Curb, choose the latter.