What better thing to do than to finish the Entourage series the day that the movie comes out? I'm just gonna get straight to the point. The finale wasn't very good, though season 8 as a whole wasn't anything special.
Let's start with what worked. Although I would have preferred it if Ari really had to move on from his wife, it was obvious that he was going to win her back. Since the show had to go that route, the way the executed it was quite touching and the fact that he quit his job for her showed his development as a character.
So what didn't work?
-In regards to the whole season, it just wasn't very interesting. Entourage has always suffered from never having high stakes but it felt especially low this season besides Drama going on strike with Andrew Dice Clay but naturally that resolved pretty naturally. Besides that, Vince wants to fuck some girl because she didn't try to fuck him the first time they met, Turtle fears he might not become a millionaire with his investment, and E wants to win back Sloan...again.
-Alright, so let's talk about Sloan first. In an end move that surprised nobody, E wins back Sloan thanks to Drama, Turtle, and Vince all going to Sloan and LYING to her by insisting that E never slept with Sloan's former stepmother. So they got back together based on a lie. Yay! Also, Sloan's father Alex DeLarge (I'm still calling him that) threatened to kill Eric, but nobody seems particularly concerned about that.
-Oh and Vince gets E his own jet at the end. I get it, Vince, you have money, but seriously, wouldn't it be more environmentally friendly to just let E and Sloan chill in your jet? There should be room. But apparently E and Sloan aren't even going to Paris where Vince is getting married...which is confusing because isn't he getting married that day. I think I care about this more than the writers.
-Vince gets engaged to the British reporter whose name I don't remember and don't care to find out. Besides the fact that Vince hardly knows her, we the audience hardly know her as a character because she's barely on the show. Apparently she's really smart. We know this because Vince says she is. How did these two fall in love so quickly? Nobody knows because we don't get to see the 24-hour date they spend together either. It's just a boring, uninteresting storyline and a horrible way for the show to conclude Vince's story arc. I felt like the show was usually the most interesting when Vince was working but this season he does nothing but quickly write a script.
-Yeah, for a show about the movie business, there really wasn't much movie stuff at all this season. We had Vince writing a script for a tv movie and Drama's animated tv show, but no actually hollywood films or anything related to the bigger film business. I thought the episodes with things like Cannes, Sundance, and Comic Con were fun, showing an insider look into places most of us don't get to see, but the show just didn't seem to care about that stuff anymore.
-Oh by the way, did anyone else just not care about Scott Lavin at all? At least when he was first introduced there was some conflict with him and E, but did he do anything at all this season? It seemed like the show wanted to make him part of the gang, but he was so uninteresting and didn't have anything to do. At least he doesn't come on the plane with the other guys at the end. I like to think it's the show's way of acknowledging how unnecessary his character ended up being.
Oh and that post-credits scene definitely felt like a setup for the Entourage movie. Though I'm sure Doug Ellin and Mark Wahlberg assumed it wouldn't take 4 years before the movie came out.
Overall grade:
D+
