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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
But even David Duchovny and his real-life sex addiction can't save the go-nowhere story of sad sack Hank Moody, a writer who can't help giving in to his basest urges. Hank grumbles about how hopelessly full of shit everyone around him is, but seems to have little interest in anything beyond alcohol and screwing random women. How you build a narrative around a charmless, irredeemably smug fuck like Hank is anyone's guess. It certainly didn't work all that well in the show's uneven, only occasionally amusing first season.
And now that Hank has won his beautiful girlfriend Karen (Natascha McElhone) back from the rich, stable, ultra-boring Bill (Damian Young), what next? Most men would be reasonably happy to have landed such a babe, to restore a full-time relationship with their daughter (however irritatingly adorable and hip that daughter might be) and to work on rebuilding a high-paid writing career for themselves. But not Hank. He's tortured by hot hippie chicks in bikinis, sucking provocatively on popsicles at the corner store. He's hobbled by envy when a new music producer friend waxes romantic about Led Zeppelin while getting head under the table from a pretty stranger at a Hollywood bar. Moody wants more. He lives among sleazy middle-aged miscreants and he can't stand not to be a part of the sleazy middle-aged fun.
Sure, Karen draws lines in the sand and pouts, but mostly she puts up with Hank's self-destruction and stupidity. Aside from a few cursory allusions to her passionate love of her work as an architect, it's not entirely clear that Karen is an actual person. Instead, she haunts Hank's life like a benevolent, sweetly smiling ghost with very high cheekbones.
Meanwhile, Hank's closest friends, married couple Charlie (Evan Handler) and Marcy (Pamela Adlon), are still trying desperately to party like rock stars, but they make the pursuit look about as appealing as making out with a heroin addict in a trash-strewn back alley. In one particularly disturbing scene, the couple screams at each other while snorting lines of coke and shoving forkfuls of lobster down their throats.
Charlie: Marce, I gotta tell you something, Marce! (Pause) I love you.Yuck. Now at least it's clear why God hates us all. ("God Hates Us All" is the title of Hank's critically acclaimed book.) Sure, with all of the drug-induced yelling and sweating and affectionate nastiness, this may be one of the more realistic scenes on the whole fantastical show, but that doesn't change the fact that we're tolerating the company of frighteningly desperate, self-involved losers who are aging badly.
I know, it sounds like a great show when I put it that way. Desperate, self-involved losers who are aging badly? I can't think of anything I'd rather see on TV. But sweaty, half-dressed couples snorting drugs and mumbling "Wanna fuck?" at each other? There's just something so vulgar and sad about the way these people talk. Foul language is my friend, and even I find them crude and unsavory.
"I wax hairy tacos!"
"Dude, you ate the wrong pussy."
"Any tit suckers?"
That last question is the smarmy music producer again, asking Hank in his charming way if he has kids or not. Meanwhile, it's very important that we understand just how talented Hank is, via the constant flow of half-wits hellbent on gushing over his supreme brilliance -- in slightly rusty boomer terms, of course. "Your writing always had this in-your-face, rock 'n' roll energy to it, Hunter S. Thompson meets the last Stooges album," the producer tells Hank, his references as quaint and irrelevant as a dusty embroidered throw pillow. Didn't we all tire of sweaty, wild-eyed men raving about Hunter S. Thompson way back in college?
"Jimmy fucking Page used to get under-the-table oral from Miss Pamela right here!" the producer barks like a tiresome adolescent (while he himself gets a blow job under the table). "I bet you could still scrape some of his DNA off the floor!" Has anyone ever made sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll look quite so unsexy before? It's like being thrown back into your hard-partying 20s, only this time you're old, queasy and grouchy, and the people around you are even more boring and insipid than they were the first time around.
No wonder Hank is always in such a crappy mood.
When the fifth season of "Entourage" opened, it was easy enough to catch the spirit (as it often is at the start of each season of this show). When the cameras zoomed across the crystal-blue waves onto the island paradise where Vince (Adrian Grenier) was enjoying a threesome with some hot naked ladies -- hell, even Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) was scoring -- it was tough not to applaud this one small step for hedonism in a dark universe of recessionary gloom.
But just a few episodes later, we were back to the same old manic succession of meetings with agents and producers and studio executives, fielding the same onslaught of circuitous phone calls, navigating the same deal-making stops and starts and big opportunities and bigger disappointments and conflicts of interest and double-crossing Hollywood nastiness. One of the boys has a big crush, one of the boys is heartbroken and wants to "drown his sorrows in some pussy," and one of the boys (guess who?) just wants some pussy, period. Yes, Vince's stock is down, but he still wants to hold out for a film that's truly great -- not that we trust that he and Eric (Kevin Connolly) even have the brains in their heads to know a good film when they see it on the page.
Ultimately, it's tough to care whether Vince has another hit and revives his career, whether Eric gets the girl again, whether Turtle gets laid, whether Drama (Kevin Dillon) humiliates himself right now or waits until later. "Entourage" is officially treading water, and the truth is it was never a great show to begin with, save for the always-entertaining scenes with agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), so these rewarmed leftovers aren't all that appetizing. Frantic phone calls, devious executives and the endless search for more pussy can only seem fun and lively for about as long as it takes to play the first few bars of that new tune by Kanye West.
But then, the same old story of restless players on the make, replete with the same old crude jokes and predictable sexy scenarios, doesn't do it for us anymore. Like aging whores, these TV writers seem to think that doing the bare minimum will still get us off, but they're sadly mistaken. The dark truth is, as the world falls apart, most of us would really love to indulge in a little escapist fun via ashtrays and dark bars and glasses of hard liquor -- just look at how much we love "Mad Men" -- but badly drawn losers, badly aging boomers and empty-headed celebrity whippersnappers leave us cold. Everybody wants to drink before the war -- we'd just like to share a drink with someone who's not demonstrably stupid and shallow, that's all.
Next week: Women on the verge of something or other, from USA's "The Starter Wife" to Bravo's "Real Housewives of Atlanta" to NBC's "Kath & Kim."
Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic. She also maintains the rabbit blog. You can find more of her columns in the I Like To Watch directory.
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